Free Republic

Video is only 3:15 minutes long. A short graphic presentation of the nine big flaws in public schools. Suppose someone is asking the question, well, what can we do, where do we start? Here's a list of nine places to start. ---------------------------------------------- Personally I like trying to radically simplify things. That is especially appropriate in education. What these professors spend their time doing is creating so much confusion, disinformation, propaganda, alibis, excuses, lies, etc., etc., etc., finally no ordinary citizen knows what to think about the subject anymore. And that's how the Education Establishment wins. At some point you have...

In the last year there have been a lot of conservative rumblings against the new progressive education agenda called Common Core. This is yet another in a long line of new progressive initiatives since they created modern government education a century ago. The last was Outcome Based Education, which as usual failed to produce increased learning or test scores unless the tests were dumbed down. You say that it was a failure, the progressive left views this a success. The goal of American government education has never been about learning, it’s been about indoctrination. It’s about separating the next generation...

Have you had enough of the testing tyranny? Join the club. To be clear: I'm not against all standardized academic tests. My kids excel on tests. The problem is that there are too damned many of these top-down assessments, measuring who knows what, using our children as guinea pigs and cash cows. College-bound students in Orange County, Fla., for example, now take a total of 234 standardized diagnostic, benchmark and achievement tests from kindergarten through 12th grade. Reading instructor Brian Trutschel calculated that a typical 10th-grade English class will be disrupted 65 out of 180 school days this year...

When kids put pen to paper, chances are they are printing. But Toronto’s Catholic board, hand-wringing over the handwriting skills of its students, is now looking to make sure all of them learn cursive. Parents have told her their children can’t sign their name, “or they have been handed a handwritten note and can’t read it,” said Trustee Ann Andrachuk. She proposed a recent motion—unanimously approved—asking board staff how to reintroduce cursive in all schools, and how early children should start learning it. […] Across Canada and the United States, concerns have been raised that cursive is becoming a lost...

In a Breitbart column insisting that Ronald Reagan was not as assertive as commonly believed on military and foreign policy issues, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) mentions, in passing, “I met Ronald Reagan as a teenager when my father was a Reagan delegate in 1976.” . But his father, Ron Paul, is hardly a Reaganite today. Indeed, he is now claiming that Crimea has a right to leave Ukraine and join Russia, and that U.S. sanctions against the Russian regime are “criminal.” “That’s just people looking to start a war,” Paul said. “This is criminal, it’s stealing and will just aggravate...

One of the fascinating things about journalism is looking at the factual data that both sides of a controversy agree on and finding that the facts support the critics’ viewpoints. For example, the Thomas Fordham Institute has been, more or less, supportive of the Obama Administration’s Common Core education reforms. Nevertheless, in their progress report on it, the relatively right-of-center think tank paints a rather dismal picture of CC2014: “Teachers and principals are the primary faces and voices of the Common Core standards in their communities; “Implementation works best when district and school leaders lock onto the Common Core standards...

State Board of Education Encourages Schools to Include Cesar Chavez into Social Studies Curriculum Contact: Martin Ackley, Director of Public and Governmental Affairs (517) 241-4395 Agency: Education February 13, 2014 LANSING – The State Board of Education this week unanimously adopted a resolution honoring the late Cesar E. Chavez as an American hero, a civil rights leader, Latino, farm worker, and a labor leader; a religious and spiritual figure; a community servant and social entrepreneur; a crusader for nonviolent social change; and an environmentalist and consumer advocate. State Board member Lupe Ramos-Montigny initiated the resolution to honor the life, legacy...

These kids should learn write from wrong. Earlier this month, The Post exposed a scheme at Manhattan’s Murry Bergtraum HS for Business Careers in which failing students could get full credit without attending class, but instead watch video lessons and take tests online. One social-studies teacher had a roster of 475 students in all grades and subjects. Red-faced administrators encouraged a student letter-writing campaign to attack The Post and defend its “blended learning” program. Eighteen kids e-mailed to argue that their alma mater got a bad rap. Almost every letter was filled with spelling, grammar and punctuation errors.

Not all at once, by some surgical procedure. No, this will be a slow, subtle process, taking place over years. Every step will be conducted with utmost seriousness. Scientific validity will be claimed. Endless research will be constantly referenced. If there is little progress or outright failure, teachers always seem amazed, as if such a thing had never happened before. Principals explain that the school is doing everything it can, if only parents would help in this delicate training. Children and families will be told with absolute confidence: we use the best methods here and our students learn to be...

A school hosted a congratulatory event for its straight-A students, which would not normally be a controversial event… but the America we live in has changed. No longer do we push our children for excellence… now we make excuses for mediocrity.

“I trudged the several blocks home from school, satchel in hand. It was a beautiful, golden afternoon, and I was ready for some adventure. I had a little homework, but that could wait until after supper. My parents knew that kids needed time to play and there was only so much daylight left. My best friend and I spent the afternoon exploring in the nearby woods and seeking out “evil” boys to annoy. We got home in time for supper and had plenty of time to finish our homework before bed. I don’t remember ever being stressed about tests and...

The "propaganda of the deed" or propagandas by deed have traditionally been an anarchist tool - and for violent purposes....... or have they? That's what we have been told for a long time, but why can't other activities by various statist oriented groups also be deeds intended to make a point - even non violently? I think they are and I think they have. In the 1920's, the New York State Legislature put together a joint committee to investigate seditious activities, and the result of all this was a work titled "Revolutionary Radicalism". I actually think this does a disservice,...

The Common Core gold rush is on. Apple, Pearson, Google, Microsoft and Amplify are all cashing in on the federal standards/testing/textbook racket. But the EduTech boondoggle is no boon for students. It's more squandered tax dollars down the public school drain. Even more worrisome: The stampede is widening a dangerous path toward invasive data mining. According to the Silicon Valley Business Journal, the ed tech sector "is expected to more than double in size to $13.4 billion by 2017." That explosive growth is fueled by Common Core's top-down digital learning and testing mandates. So: Cui bono? In North Carolina, the...

<p>Two factors have so far shielded the American university from the sort of criticism that it so freely levels against almost every other institution in American life. (1) For decades a college education has been considered the key to an ascendant middle-class existence. (2) Until recently a college degree was not tantamount to lifelong debt. In other words, American society put up with a lot of arcane things from academia, given that it offered something — a BA or BS degree — that almost everyone agreed was a ticket to personal security and an educated populace.</p>

School officials at a public elementary school in Chicago are ordering teachers to sign students up for “designated restroom times” when entire, overcrowded classes of little kids must use the bathroom each day. The rationale for the draconian pee policy is to improve the school’s dreadful results on Common Core-related standardized tests. An anonymous teacher at the unidentified pre-K-8 forwarded a memo concerning the policy to Anthony Cody of Education Week. The memo reportedly went out to all faculty members at the school last week. “Welcome back and Happy New Year!” the memo reads. “In order to maximize student learning...

Another high school student at Farragut High School in Knox County, Tenn. is receiving widespread attention for an eloquent speech he made against Common Core at a school board meeting. This time the student, Kenneth Ye, gave a rousing speech before the Knox County school board urging it to drop the Common Core standards because they make learning joyless and, in fact, turn American schools into something approaching Chinese sweatshops. “Our schools are being turned into data-run factories,” Ye charges around the 4:30 mark in the video, “factories based on speedily-approved standards that are now being implemented around the country.”...

Peonage for the Twenty-First Century The Common Core exists only because we have forgotten that parents have a right to educate their children. The state has no educational authority of its own apart from what parents delegate to it. A young man and woman arrive at the office of the town clerk to procure a marriage license. They're all smiles, until the secretary hands them a document to sign, wherein they read this remarkable sentence: “The State, conceding to the parents the making of their children's bodies, asserts its primacy in the making of their minds.” [...] I've lately been...

For quite a while, The Motley Monk has been on top of the Common Core, concerned about its implications for Catholic schools. Last September, The Motley Monk discussed some reasons why parents should be wary. In November, he pointed out why a number of Catholic school principals fear its potential impacts for curriculum. Also in November, The Motley Monk questioned whether the NCEA had embraced the secularist educational agenda of the Common Core irrespective of what those principals fear. The Motley Monk then followed-up with a post asking whether the NCEA’s President had put the proverbial “cart before the horse”...

Fifth grade students at Fremont Elementary School in Colorado were assigned a reading passage that describes global warming as a dangerous, man-made phenomenon that will destroy civilization in a few hundred years. The reading assignment was found inside a workbook aligned with the controversial national Common Core curriculum guidelines, and was titled “Homework from the Future.” It tells the fictional story of a visitor to the year 2512 who discovers that the eastern United States is under water and the country’s population greatly reduced, all thanks to man-made global warming:

Common Core is full of pretentious little gimmicks, each a potential Pandora’s box of nasty surprises. For example, there is one called Close Reading, which says that children in elementary school should read the same difficult passages over and over. I didn’t trust this thing from square one, so I wrote an analysis called “Close Reading is close to a con” (link below). This article was meant to be a strong indictment but to my surprise one of the comments was even stronger. “Domo,” the commenter, clearly has experience in the trenches. Note all the weird little twists. The Devil...