Free Republic

For those who enjoy a good puzzle, K-12 education is more intellectually entertaining than most people imagine. Classrooms are full of convoluted theories and mystifying methods. Probably the teachers themselves can't explain the reasoning behind approaches that are used almost universally in American public schools. Chat with friends who are smart and successful. Try to find even one who can explain Sight-Words, Prior Knowledge, Multiculturalism, Constructivism, Reform Math, or Common Core Math. Why are Geography, History, and Science so often slighted? What justifies the hostility toward memorization and academic content? Can anyone understand the paradox of most students getting A...

Looking away from sinister Jeffrey Epstein and horrific truth’s easy, but denial is dangerous, like the malfeasance within public schools, doesn’t just go away. People Don’t Want to Know the Truth, Even When it’s Undeniable Lionel Nation, a lawyer and radio host, argues that Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes are so staggeringly repulsive that most people won’t be able to deal with them. Better to look away. (Nation speculated in August that this aversion may save Epstein. Now that Epstein is officially dead, this aversion may save his friends and accomplices.)In a video, Lionel Nation explains the power of extreme evil. Most...

Summary: One thing our public schools do well is undermine real education.... K-12 education is a big swirl of unnecessary problems and impasses. Millions of children are damaged by what seem to be ideological decisions. Our self-appointed experts, which I call the Education Establishment, appear unable to improve the schools. Worse, they don't seem to want to. Let’s identify the three main problems as the first step toward fixing them: First, our schools seem to become dumber by the year and probably by the month. Government statistics say that the majority of our students, in both fourth grade and eighth...

It is a common scene in World War II movies: a captain maneuvers in close to a big ship and fires a spread of torpedoes. None of them detonate. Some submarine officers lost the will to fight and had nervous breakdowns. In fact, German engineering was not always at fault. Sabotage (sporadic, opportunistic, often a personal enterprise) was almost a second army arrayed against the Third Reich. Here are some revealing war stories: 'U-505s fifth patrol, in July 1943, lasted less than two weeks--she was attacked by Allied airplanes and had to return to France for repair. The next four...

[SUMMARY: the latest educational theories require that teachers stop teaching. No one should be surprised if children stop learning.]--- A few years ago the city of Virginia Beach paid a Harvard consultant to come down and announce the big news: teachers must stop teaching. They would be given a new name and a new job. They would be called “facilitators.” Their job would be to “facilitate.” Imagine the shock. These teachers have been ordered to forget what they spent years learning. They have been downgraded from doing something that the world has always esteemed, i.e., teaching, to doing something that...

We hear a lot about bullying as if it’s as common as cheering at a football game. But who is really the Big Bully in our public schools? Who is throwing their weight around all the time? More specifically, who is insisting on the use of bad methods that never seem to work better this year than 10 years ago? Who is making lame excuses for poor performance so that nothing seems to get better? Who fills the air with propaganda and sophistry so that no one can think clearly about the issues facing us? Consider Whole Word. Rudolf Flesch...

“Oh-oh, yes you are the great pretenders Pretending that you’re doing good Your need is such that you pretend too much You’ve done all the damage you could” The top 1000 people in public education, let’s call them the Education Establishment. They make all the decisions. Our public schools are what they are because of this tiny elite. Some observers think these people are incompetent, clumsy, addled. Maybe many are. But at the very top I suspect you find people with total clarity. They know what they’re doing. They know it’s not what most of the public wants. But they...

What Students Learn and Don't Learn By Phyllis Schlafly If you are attending college to get teacher certification, you will probably be required to attend classes on "multicultural education." This is supposed to bring diversity to the classroom and prepare teachers to teach pupils of various ethnic or national backgrounds. The textbooks in these courses typically include Teachers as Cultural Workers by Paulo Freire, a Brazilian socialist who preached that society is divided into oppressors and oppressed. Other required readings teach that Americans are an institutionally racist society and are designed to train teachers to create political radicals to...

Okay, it took me 3 years but here's what I finally figured out. Not only is Constructivism a mostly useless gimmick but it hurts younger, less educated, and poorer kids the most. Here's a short new article that explains why:------------ "Constructivism versus Minorities and the Poor.... Constructivism is the latest fad burning through American public schools. Here’s a quick definition: children are supposed to invent their own new versions of all knowledge, while teachers (now called facilitators) are supposed to stand back and encourage the process. I’ve been writing for some years about how unrealistic and time-consuming this approach is....

Parents need to know about something called Constructivism. Coming soon to a school near you. Constructivism is the unseen sophistry that is oozing into every corner of every classroom. Bottom line: Constructivism promises a lot, teaches a lot less. Of all the sophistries pushed by modern education, Constructivism may be the champ for pomposity, pretentiousness, and impenetrability. And it's expensive if advocates get their way--they want to "revamp" schools, textbooks, and teacher ed. So here's a little video that lays out the main features.

Michael Bloomberg, one of the most successful businessmen in the United States, pledged to fix the public schools when he ran for mayor of New York in 2001. He said that he could get better results without any additional money, just by applying proven managerial techniques. He promised a back-to-basics curriculum and an end to bilingual education. After his election, he persuaded the state Legislature to give him control of the school system, with its 1.1 million students and 80,000 teachers. He selected as chancellor of the schools a respected antitrust attorney, Joel Klein, who--like Mr. Bloomberg--had no experience in...

I’ll bet you think that the problems with our nation’s schools are a fairly recent phenomenon. Wrong. It dates backs to the 1960’s. Those that have implemented the subversion of our educational system have sought to fly well below the radar of public awareness, depending on stealth and duplicity to achieve the wreckage that has already stunted the lives of thousands who have passed through it. In this and three other commentaries, I will walk you through the history of the problem with the help of an extraordinary book, "The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America" by Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt. The...

Does anyone know of a website that rates school districts ideologically?

Whereas over 80% of Americans support external, high-stakes, standardized testing as the best method for determining what students are learning; discovering their academic deficiencies, so that they may be remedied; and in deciding whether to promote students from grade to grade; you’d never know it, to listen to the socialist, establishment media or the progressives and constructivists who have taken over university departments of teacher education and the nation’s public schools. One such progressive is Kevin Kumashiro. Kumashiro, who is the “director of the Center for Anti-Oppressive Education, a resource center for educators, leaders, students and advocates base in California,”...