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My startling chat with Grok Grok tries to serve Elon Musk, the aggressive censors at X, and me X deleted several of my posts with no explanation. Instead of complaining to X, I contacted Grok and asked why my posts were being vaporized. We communicated for 45 minutes, which resulted in more than 25 pages of single-space copy! People wonder what AI is all about. I can report that Grok does everything super-fast. He (she if you prefer) does not make grammatical or spelling mistakes. Like me, he loves alliteration. Whatever you say, he weaves that into his conversation so...

I'm proud to mention that I’m a columnist with Renew America. The editors suggested I provide a review of my new novel. The problem with reviews, good, bad, long, short, is that each is one person's opinion. Surely I can be more helpful. Here are the first six reviews: ——————————————————————- “I LOVED IT. It's interesting and fast-paced." —Laurie Endicott Thomas, author of "Not Trivial: How Studying The Traditional Liberal Arts Can Set You Free” —————————————————————— "A riveting sci-fi thriller that delves into artificial intelligence, government surveillance, and the nature of free will. At the heart of the novel is Carlos,...

Most probably do. So much of our K-12 is conducted at a dumb level, where students and teachers know little. So how's that working out for everyone when suddenly there's a know-it-all machine in the classroom?? The AI is just dripping with factual information. Is each bit true or false or what? Who knows? Teachers are supposed to referee such questions, but the typical teacher has no idea what the AI is talking about. You can't fix this overnight. You have to start educating students and future teachers from the first grade onward. All the best that has been known...

For years, everyone trying to undermine K–12 often had to look the other way. They didn’t dare discuss Rudolf Flesch’s famous book explaining why Johnny can’t read. Instead, these resourceful meddlers treated Flesch as a pariah. They won the battle. As a result, a huge percentage of Americans can hardly read or write. Our schools don’t bother with geography, arithmetic, history, basic science, etc. But why would our subversives want these particular victories? Come on, let’s state the obvious impasse. Schools are supposed to transmit knowledge, right? What would be the motive for deviating from this most excellent tradition? Two...

Here's the starting point for this article. For almost 100 years the Education Establishment has maneuvered, plotted, and schemed to eliminate phonics, and to make American children memorize sight-words. The pitch has always been sweeping: phonics can’t possibly work for a complex language like English, and sight-words are the only way to go. Teachers, students, and parents have been bullied relentlessly to embrace what phonics experts (such as Rudolf Flesch) assume is a fraud and a nonstarter. How does the ordinary citizen deal with this? Well, it's been rough because the professors at Harvard, etc. do not play games. They're...

Bottom line, many of my articles conclude that our public schools operate at an unacceptably low level; that this mediocrity is the result of a strategy cunningly pursued by our Education Establishment for ideological purposes; and finally that the techniques employed in this strategy can be singled out, explained, and rejected. Let serious educational reform commence! Alas, the public is perennially confused and unsure what to believe. They don't want to think badly about the people in the local school. They don't want to feel guilty about letting their children attend an inferior school. They would have no idea how...

[Author's note: a checklist for what all schools should offer, and thus a guide to identifying bad schools, which won't have any of the recommended items.] UNFORTUNATELY, SINCE THE TIME OF JOHN DEWEY, many schools have been obsessed with social engineering, and indifferent to what might be called intellectual engineering. This mistake in emphasis needs to be corrected. The goal of education is not indoctrination but to take each child as far as each child can go. Genuine education is the cement that holds the people in a society together, and connects past, present and future. ONLY WHEN CHILDREN acquire...

If you support a school system that won’t teach children to read, do math, learn the simplest events in history, or understand the most ordinary facts about the world we live in, you’re guilty of child abuse. Maybe not sexual child abuse but certainly academic child abuse, education child abuse, cultural and intellectual child abuse, cognitive and psychological child abuse. You're guilty. Look at the evidence. It's the size of Texas. To flee from your guilt, you might try to deny the undeniable, and believe the unbelievable, for example, that the Education Establishment cares about improving education. That's funny because...

K 12: Excuses, excuses, always excuses For many decades, the Education Establishment has shown itself unable or unwilling to improve public schools. I suspect they actually prefer wallowing in failure; this serves their ideological goals – namely, Americans should settle for mediocrity because that's how we make the world more equitable.A big topic now is how will students recover from the Covid pandemic. Sounds reasonable, but the Washington Post ran a long article full of double talk: on the one hand this, on the other hand that. This smorgasbord of expert opinions pointing in every direction gives each teacher and...

Episode 76: Dyslexia is a Fancy Word for Sabotage ======================================= Ladies and gentlemen… 1: INTRODUCTION: every year our public schools spend more billions to help children become readers. But nothing works. Scores remain flat. The majority of children do not learn to be good readers Common sense tells you that your school officials do not know what they're doing. Don't let your children be sabotaged. Insist on phonics. The official story is that a fifth of all children suffer from a brain disorder which they have named dyslexia. In fact, the phonics people say that so-called dyslexia is usually not...

Did you ever wonder what it would be like to live under communism? Well, now you know. The last two years have seen a parade of dumb and dumber policies, the kind you expect in totalitarian dictatorships. The distinguishing traits are as follows: rulers show contempt for their serfs; policy wonks concoct endless stream of counterproductive ideas; and casual cruelty hurts everyone, day after day. Here are a dozen examples. Think back to Biden's decision to shut down the pipeline bringing petroleum from Canada. Could anything be more irrational than shutting down a functioning pipeline, thus causing higher prices for...

Emily Hanford became famous over the last several years for talking constantly about the Science of Reading. That's where children learn to read in the simplest, most efficient way and go on to enjoy many hundreds of books. Long story short, what she means by the Science of Reading is phonics — nothing less, nothing else. The problem is that the left in our country forced phonics into oblivion starting in 1931. So what was going on for those 90 years from 1931 to now? A titanic and quite stupid con, that's what. Basically, the professors of education at Harvard...

(BACKGROUND: When a local group wanted to start a new school some years back, they asked me to write a proposal. Here is that proposal, which anyone may use for ideas and inspiration.) A new private school is coming to your neighborhood. You can be involved with the school in several ways— parent of a student, investor, donor, volunteer, and community support. To create something we can all be proud of, that's the goal. AlphaAcademy serves boys and girls in Grades K-9. The overarching concern is preparing students for success throughout life. The school favors a traditional curriculum and classical...

Why would a country undermine phonics? One of the most startling queries I ever received came from a teacher in Israel. Here is the entire communication: I watched some of your youtube videos with thirst and feel the frustration that I feel when I tutor private elementary students, who come without any clue as to how to read English, as if for 5-6 years all they had done was filling workbooks and learning word lists. Older students keep telling me their teachers insist on guessing from texts and looking for clues when words are unknown, and they fear to use...

I encountered my first robot 40 years ago, and have followed the field ever since. I am interested in the miscommunication that robots and humans will have. We could see some very strange scenarios because it's two different worlds talking to each other. I recently published a novel called Frankie. "She" is designed to be harmless. So why are people dying, in the story? For more info, visit http://Frankie.zone The people who would most enjoy this book like mystery, suspense, robots, intrigue, thriller, crime, sci-fi, even romance and academic. The book is for all readers and especially anybody who wants...

Bruce Deitrick Price: The big problem for all of us is to grasp the entirety of your work. So my first question is, what is the broad concern that ties together all this research? Linda Goudsmit: The most important thing is to realize that globalism is at war with the nation-state. I am talking about globalism as an ideology and political force that seeks to reorder the world from the existing system of independent nation-states into one single global nation-state ruled by themselves, of course. But globalism cannot succeed without collapsing the United States. So we face an alliance of...

When Governor Gavin Newsom disappeared for a few weeks after receiving a COVID shot, the public worried: was he alive? His wife did not like this curiosity. You might think citizens have a right to know where their leaders are. Nope. She viewed the nosy public as haters. Mrs. Newsom posted: "When someone cancels something, maybe they're just in the office working; maybe in their free time they're at home with their family, at their kids' sports matches, or dining out with their wife. Please stop hating and get a life." Hating? Who was hating? Note how this situation works....

On a regional Mensa forum, I posted analysis of problems in education. To my delight, an indignant parent left her assessment of how bad our schools have become. First-person reports from the trenches are the most reliable intelligence you can get about this murky and unintelligent demimonde:: ----"I read your article and couldn't agree more. I have lived it with my twins for the last 13 years. I nearly cried when we moved from a NYC public school to a school district in an affluent part of NJ only to find out they had the same mind-numbing constructivist Math program...

The Communists have always been on offense. They always played to win. The Communist International started its worldwide campaign of subversion and sabotage circa 1920. The goal was always the same: wage a disciplined, low-budget attack on soft targets such as foundations, unions, universities, education, and media. The MO was the Fabian three-step: take a job, work up to higher management, overthrow the country. Globalsecurity.org, a think tank concerned with international security, concludes: “The Communist International was a tool or weapon such as no other country possessed, and the Soviet Union never hesitated to use it when the occasion demanded....

Here's the problem with communism (and sometimes socialism). If you study these subjects, you will encounter lots of abstract theories about how best to organize society, money, property, and so on. Some ideas might sound appealing. But they have little to do with communism as this ideology has existed in the real world. Better to think of these theories as maps and guidebooks for people who want to rule others. Communism appeals to dead souls hungry for power. These are not normal, healthy people. When they finally seize power, everyone else becomes a victim, even as never-ending propaganda promises the...