Established ¡n 1970
www.portlandobservcr.com
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Volume XXXX, Number II
Wednesday • March 17, 2010
rrucr
Double Coronation!
Jefferson boys and girls
win 5A basketball tourney
See story, page 2
'City of Roses’
Committed to Cultural Diversity
Classroom Controversy
Instructor Roy Chambers leads local kids in a science curriculum at the Air National Guard Base in northeast Portland.
HOTOS BY JAKE T homas /T he P ortland O bserver
Air Base instruction draws fire
by J ake
T homas
T he P ortland O bserver
Roy Chambers, a long-time Portland science
teacher, stands before 30 fifth graders explaining
the basic principles behind Newtonian physics.
He has a pony tail, a salt-and-pepper mus­
tache, and talks with the cadence you might
expect from an aging Grateful Dead fan.
This seems like it could be a typical scene in
a classroom, but a handful o f Portland activists
see it as an under-handed way o f recruiting
children into the military.
Since 1993, Portland Public Schools has of­
fered fifth grade classrooms the “Starbase” pro­
gram, which gives kids 25 hours o f hands-on
teaching in math, science, and engineering. It’s
funded by the U.S. Department o f Defense, and
the instruction takes place on an Air National
Guard Base on the outskirts o f town.
In recent years, parents have complained that
program is an insidious effort by the military to
prime young children to join its ranks.
“It’s like your typical predator grooming his
victims,” said Jessica Applegate, the mother o f
two children who attend Winterhaven K-8 in
southeast Portland.
Applegate refused to let her son, who attends
Winterhaven K-8 in southeast Portland, partici­
pate in Starbase three years ago, and plans to do
the same with her fourth-grade daughter.
When she heard about the program, Applegate
asked to sit in on a class. She doesn’t dispute that
science is taught at Strabase, but finds it suspect
that it needs to be taught ori a military base.
“There was nothing special about it,” she said
o f the curriculum, which she feels could be taught
just as easily in any Portland classroom.
Applegate, who describes herself as a “total
peacenik, argues that having kids on a military Portland’s Air National Guard Base hosts Starbase Portland^programto
base is intended to warm them up to the idea o f raise the interests and improve the knowledge and skills of at-risk youth in
continued
on page 19
math, science and technology. Critics say it provides a recruiting tool to get
children interested in military careers.