Free Republic

Why is it that a country that has produced some of the most beloved authors, prolific inventors, and has advanced the fields of science, medicine, and technology, recently found itself at the epicenter of moral and financial decline? Our current president has become the butt of Marxism jokes in the same week that he is appeasing Islam– how sad for America and its people. Yet, I fear it is our people that have become complicit in this deterioration, for more often than naught, we take for granted our freedoms and the responsibilities tied in to those freedoms. One of our...

The "entitled" Generation has taken office! The "entitled to" generation is now in charge and it is being proven by not letting failures fail! It appears to me that the best lessons learned in life are the failures turned into successes. When a child takes a fall, they learn to get back up and walk again. When a newborn calf stumbles and falls, they scramble back to stand again. When a young horses running through a field, take a tumble, they get back up and run again. These are all failures with successes in the learning cycle. In the "entitlement...

"In that miracle at Philadelphia 222 years ago, theFramers gave us a document which they hoped would secure our freedoms," OCPA Vice President Brandon Dutcher said in a statement. "But they knew that only a well-informed citizenry could remain free. If these survey results are any indication, we are very much a nation at risk." OCPA promotes public policies favoring free enterprise and limited government.

"It's had serious repercussions," Swihart said. "These young adults who were raised in the '80s, now in their 20s and in the workplace -- those who received praise, rewards and prizes for everything they did without working very hard -- often are very entitled and self-absorbed

The Scene: A fictitious meeting in the new era of the GOP’s ever-expanding “big tent.” ------------------------------- I had the pleasure of sitting down to dinner with two members of my county Republican Party steering committee this week to discuss the GOP’s options as we move into the 2010 election cycle. I was joined by Dr. Eric von Dersgarten (of the Rhine Valley Dersgartens, of course) and Cecilia Montgomery. Ms. Montgomery chose the venue for our meeting and I have to say it was one of the most unusual ever, nicely setting the tone for what was to come. It was...

Dear Mr. President: Kids Share Hopes for Obama in New Book Thousands of kids detailed their hopes and expectations for President Obama in letters and drawings as part of a worldwide project. AP Sunday, February 15, 2009 NEW YORK -- End war, forever. Make the planet greener. Please help my dad find work. Make it rain candy! Thousands of kids detailed their hopes and expectations for President Barack Obama in letters and drawings as part of a worldwide project, with 150 chosen for a free e-book being released on Presidents Day. Most had tall orders for the new guy in...

Neo-Luddite and Undiagnosed hysterical lunatic Harvard Physics Professor Alex Wissner-Gross has released a study that asserts that Google searches and web browsing cause global warming, presumably using some kind of scientific methodology.

I have often written about the ignorance that has resulted from decades of pathetic, dumbed-down parenting and schooling, and, sadly, there's no shortage of material on this subject. There is often a profound difference between morality and legality, and, if this were a just world, a good percentage of the American Left would be tried for treason. If that seems a radical statement, I ask you: What price should be paid for sowing the seeds of your nation's destruction? What should be the punishment for creating millions of people so ignorant, so effete, so corrupted in judgment that they are...

Thousands of high school seniors are racing this month to complete their applications to the University of California in hopes of becoming freshmen next fall. Meanwhile, UC officials are struggling with the question of how to create more opportunities for low-income and minority students to attend the state's elite public campuses. It's been a tense issue since voters passed Proposition 209 in 1996, banning race and gender preferences in public institutions. Now, the UC president and regents are weighing changes to the admissions process that include dropping the SAT subject tests, loosening course requirements, and lowering the minimum grade point...

One in three teachers believes schoolchildren should be taught that creationism is just as valid as evolution, according to a survey. The poll also disclosed that pupils in almost a third of schools already learn about the controversial divine explanation of the universe, with even science teachers thinking it has a place in classrooms. Almost all of those questioned by Teachers TV, a satellite television channel, agreed that children with strong religious beliefs would feel excluded from science lessons if their views were ignored. The findings support the views of the Rev Professor Michael Reiss, who lost his job as...

While self confident debaters, politicians and other sorts of experts argue over which country in the world actually is the best example of a guiding light to humanity there ever was (GWB would say it is the US of today, Obama would claim it's the UN, while a proud European like my fellow countryman Hans Blix probably would say it is Saddam Hussein), evidence of the rapid decline of Western civilization is everywhere. Yes, there are still parts of the West that function very well and where most people are well educated and well off, but for how long? An...

A fyoo duhzen ambishuhss intelectchooals, a handful ov British skool teechers and wuhn rokit siuhntist ar triing to chang the way we spel. They are the leaders of the spelling-reform movement, a passionate but sporadic 800-year-old campaign to simplify English orthography. In its long and failure-ridden history, the movement has tried to convince an indifferent public of the need for a spelling system based on pronunciation. Reformers, including Mark Twain, Charles Darwin and Theodore Roosevelt, argued that phonetic spellings would make it easier for children, foreigners and adults with learning disabilities to read and write. For centuries, few listened, and...

NORFOLK At the end of this semester, Steven Aird will lose his job as an associate professor of biology at Norfolk State University for giving out too many F's. He is not going quietly. Aird says his termination is part of a dumbing-down of academic standards at NSU - a move by administrators to intimidate faculty members into passing undeserving students and rewarding inferior work. Other faculty members in NSU's School of Science and Technology say they, too, have experienced pressure to bend their standards to pass more students, and more than a dozen current and former students in the...

If any recent day typifies life in this crazy modern world, it was probably this past Tuesday. World financial markets were in a meltdown and the Federal Reserve held an emergency meeting to cut the interest rate a massive three quarters of a point in an attempt to stave off a precipitous stock market drop. President Bush was working with congressional leaders on an economic stimulus package to reduce the likelihood of a recession. Meanwhile the U.S. presidential campaign was in full swing with Hillary and Obama having just ripped each other to shreds at a debate, and Fred Thompson...

Okay, okay, a lot of school children aren't gaining basic skills. But many are learning to be culture warriors. What's not to like? The National Association for Multicultural Education (NAME), meeting in Baltimore, helps ensure this. Here are some of NAME'S workshops: • "The Unbearable Whiteness of Being: Dismantling White Privilege and Supporting Anti-Racist Education in Our Classrooms and Schools." Taught by a professor from St. Cloud State University in Minnesota, this session "is designed to help educators identify and deconstruct their own white privilege and in so doing more deeply commit themselves to anti-racist teaching and critical multicultural teaching."...

Have we, as a nation, become completely fascinated with stupid chicks—or what?!? Girls, if you want to have our society’s spotlight shine down on you for no real reason other than you’re an idiotic, drunken narcissistic whore, well then . . . this is your window of opportunity, girlfriend! (*Remember: the opportunity of a lifetime must be seized within the lifetime of the opportunity. You can get more successful loser principles from my new book, 10 Habits of Decidedly Defective People: The Successful Loser’s Guide to Life!) Yes, ladies, if you . . . 1. are a semi-decent looking ditz...

Locke High seeks to leave L.A. Unified Its teachers have signed petitions urging control be given to Green Dot charter schools. The loss would be a blow to the district and union. By Joel Rubin, Times Staff Writer May 10, 2007 Challenging the balance of power in the city's public school system, a leading charter school organization is poised to wrest control of a failing high school from the elected Los Angeles Board of Education. Green Dot Public Schools, which has clashed frequently with the board in its aggressive push to expand, has quietly overseen the collection of signatures of...

This is unashamedly a VANITY post but it is intended to be a SERIOUS one. I have finally reached the point of complete bafflement in wondering what , if anything, is being taught to our young people in school! Here are some of my RECENT experiences as an employer. Am I the only one experiencing this level of idiocy in our country? 1. Two days ago I said the word 'penicillon' in a conversation. A young employee interrupted me and asked, "What is that?" I didnt' know what she was asking until she repeated, "What is that peni...you just said"....

W. Stephen Wilson teaches mathematics at Mayor Bloomberg 's alma mater, Johns Hopkins University. Last fall he conducted an experiment on the students in his Calculus I course. Professor Wilson administered the same final exam to last fall's students that he used for the same course in the fall of 1989. He chose that year because he was able to obtain data for both his exam and the SAT math scores for both cohorts of students. The surprise: the 1989 students did much better than their 2006 counterparts. Everyday much ink is spilled discussing the failure of America's schools. Most...

NEEDHAM, Mass. -- A Massachusetts school's decision has brought about mixed feelings from the community. Needham High School has abandoned its long-standing practice of publishing the names of students who make the honor roll in the local newspaper. Principal Paul Richards said a key reason for stopping the practice is its contribution to students' stress level in "this high-expectations-high-achievement culture." The proposal to stop publishing the honor roll came from a parent. Richards took the issue before the school council, which approved it. Parents were notified of the decision last month. Richards said he received about 60 responses from both...

Superintendent of Grand Rapids Public Schools Bernard Taylor is looking for ways to improve after an instructional audit showed high rates of failure in high schools. The audit shows more than 50 percent of students at all four high shools did not meet district standards on writing assessments. Also, more than 65 percent of freshmen are failing classes. (snip) Other numbers in the audit indicate the number of freshmen with a grade point average below 2.0 increased and more than 40 percent of high school students missed more than 10 days of school in core classes. Taylor said he won't...

In late September, just as the present academic year was getting underway, The American Civic Literacy Program at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute released its report The Coming Crisis in Citizenship: Higher Education’s Failure to Teach America’s History and Institutions. Its findings are based on extensive survey research, conducted on fifty American campuses, from large state schools to elite private universities to liberal arts colleges. Over 14,000 freshmen and seniors across the country completed a questionnaire comprised of sixty questions covering a wide range of topics in America’s history, founding ideas, political institutions, economic system, and place in the world. The...

The day starts at Redmond Elementary School with students taking the Pledge of Allegiance, and then the PeaceBuilders Pledge, a promise that the children will build peace in school, at home and in the community... The PeaceBuilders program, which employs techniques and activities to promote nonviolence and prevent bullying, is built around a simple tenet, that students, teachers and staff members will be good to one another, won't hurt each other and will tell someone they trust when they have conflict with one another... "The school has adopted this as a way of life; it's an undercurrent in everything going...

KATIE COURIC last night underwent her second on-air colonoscopy. Watching the procedure was not a horribly painful event. Nor was it an experience I would volunteer to repeat any time soon. For her very first night as CBS News diva, Katie spent a half-hour looking as if she desperately had to go potty. Her back was so stiff as she looked into the camera, pop-eyed and self-conscious, I feared it would snap. Her face was Botoxed beyond normal human endurance, proving that even pampered, overpaid news babes possess the courage to suffer for their art. And for the first time...

If you can read this, thank a teacher. Specifically, thank the teacher who didn't force you to memorize the Initial Teaching Alphabet for all time. In the 1960s, Akron-area schools experimented with a 44-symbol alphabet that was designed to help beginner readers. It used 24 letters of the standard 26-letter alphabet -- minus the ``Q'' and ``X'' -- and added 20 other characters. Some educators hoped the phonetic spelling system would help pupils become more fluent in English. In other words: Lerning to reed wood bee eezy if Akron skools maed bois and girls chaenj from konvenshonal spelling to the...

Mayor Daley suggested Thursday that high school be extended for a fifth year to defray college education costs now squeezing working poor and middle-class families.

My little brother is starting the forth grade. His teacher is making all of the students write in cursive. This is a problem for him since he hasn't recieved much instruction in it so far and even his printing is kind of messy. But my question is why? Why are we making kids write all of their classwork in cursive? The last time I used that skill was in the fifth grade when I was learning cursive. Except for a few rare occasions, I haven't used it since. I can understand teaching it a little bit so you can read...

The Baltimore school board this week lowered the passing grae from 70% down to 60%. I was travelling to Baltimore this week and read the Sun Tues/Wed morning and read this article and how the hacks though it was wonderful but the parents were outraged due to the lack of public input and the lowering of standards.

Growing lack of English in schools By Julie Henry, Education Correspondent (Filed: 06/08/2006) At least half the children in more than 1,000 primary schools in England do not have English as their first language. New statistics show that six per cent of primaries and five per cent of secondaries have intakes where 50 per cent or more of pupils do not have English as their mother tongue. In inner London, 50 per cent of primaries and more than a third of secondary schools are heading for, or already have, a majority of children with English as a second language. The...

WASHINGTON - When "say," "they" and "weigh" rhyme, but "bomb," "comb" and "tomb" don't, wuudn't it maek mor sens to spel wurdz the wae thae sound? Those in favor of simplified spelling say children would learn faster and illiteracy rates would drop. Opponents say a new system would make spelling even more confusing. Eether wae, the consept has yet to capcher th publix imajinaeshun. It's been 100 years since Andrew Carnegie helped create the Simplified Spelling Board to promote a retooling of written English and President Theodore Roosevelt tried to force the government to use simplified spelling in its publications....

The adage "like a kid at heart" may be truer than we think, since new research is showing that grown-ups are more immature than ever. Specifically, it seems a growing number of people are retaining the behaviors and attitudes associated with youth. As a consequence, many older people simply never achieve mental adulthood, according to a leading expert on evolutionary psychiatry. Among scientists, the phenomenon is called psychological neoteny. The theory’s creator is Bruce Charlton, a professor in the School of Biology at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, England. He also serves as the editor-in-chief of Medical Hypotheses, which...

School term papers may be going the way of the typewriters once used to write them. "It's so easy to cheat and steal from the Internet that I don't even assign papers anymore," said Bobbie Eisenstock, an assistant professor of journalism at Cal State Northridge. "I got tired of night after night checking for cheaters." Across the country, teachers and professors are abandoning the traditional academic chore of tidy margins and meticulous footnotes because the Internet offers a searchable online smorgasbord of ready-made papers.

Archaic Words in the NIVAdapted from, Archaic Words in the NIV by Dr. Laurence M. Vance featured at Dial the-Truth Ministries Website   NIV BIBLE VERSE AV abasement Ezra 9:5 heaviness abashed Is 24:23 confounded abutted Ezek 40:18 over against acclamation 2 Chr 15:14 voice aghast Is 13:8 amazed alcove Ezek 40:13 little chamber annotations 2 Chr 13:22 story armless Num 31:50 chains bewilderment Acts 2:6 confounded blunted Ps 58:7 cut in pieces blustering Job 8:2 strong breakers Ps 93:4 waves brooches Ex 35:22 bracelets brood Is 57:4 children burnished Dan 10:6 polished carnelian Rev 4:3 sardine charioteers I...

Candidates for Congress get questionnaires from many organizations. Most encourage us to file our answers on line. All but one have assured us that our “answers will not be edited” or censored. There was one, glaring exception, the North Carolina “Edukashun” Association. This group keeps their answers private, sharing them only with their state leaders and their “member-convenors” who interview us in district to see if we’re really toeing the party line. Answers are never shared with union members. Okay, let’s break the embargo. Here are some of my answers, and I welcome responses from teachers who agree, or disagree,...

Why Jon Stewart isn't funny By Michael Kalin | March 3, 2006 THE SELECTION of Jon Stewart as the host for Sunday night's 2006 Oscars undoubtedly marks a career milestone for the aspiring king of late-night comedy. Unfortunately, however, the ascension of Stewart and ''The Daily Show" into the public eye is no laughing matter. Stewart's ever-increasing popularity among young viewers directly correlates with the declining influence of progressive thought in America. Coincidence? I think not. Let me explain.

Around this time for each of the past three years, the Board of Regents has announced that it's lowering standards on the Regents test that high-school seniors must pass to earn a diploma. This year, the annual nod to the state's low expectations for its students arrives in record-breaking fashion: Students must correctly answer just 23 of 84 questions — or 27 percent — to get a "passing" grade on the Math A component of the Regents exam. That's the lowest in the test's history. The trend started in 2003, after only a third of high-school seniors managed to pass...

Our local Catholic High School recently announced its intention to eliminate class ranks, and also to stop weighting student GPA's to reflect honors and college credit courses. I've done a lot of research on the Net over the past few days, enough to find out that this is a growing trend across the country. Arguments in favor of dropping class ranks and weights mainly have to do with "making children feel we value all educational choices". Arguments against have to do with the issue of incentive and reward for taking on challenges.

The Indiana State Police is dropping a long-time requirement that would-be troopers have some college education. A requirement that's been in place for more than a decade says state police candidates must have either 60 credit hours of college, or previous police or military experience. Starting as early as next year, trooper applicants will need only a high school diploma or to pass the general educational development test to apply for the agency. Superintendent Paul Whitesell says the goal is to increase the number of candidates, especially minorities, who want to work for the agency. Whitesell says that dropping the...

A key component in the draft national high school curriculum proposes replacing much Norwegian, European, world and modern history with digital presentations of the Viking age, the rise of the Roman Empire and the development of medieval China. Students already fear a knowledge gap filled by repetitive Power Point presentations on the same few subjects. The new program leaves out the world wars, the Russian Revolution, the Cold War, and does not mention the topics of Nazism or Communism. The world wars are potentially included under a clause that would allow teachers and students "to choose and examine two or...

LAST spring, when he was only a sophomore, Jim Munch received a plaque honoring him as top scorer on the high school math team here. He went on to earn the highest mark possible, a 5, on an Advanced Placement exam in calculus. His ambition is to become a theoretical mathematician. So Jim might have seemed the veritable symbol for the new math curriculum installed over the last seven years in this ambitious, educated suburb of Rochester. Since seventh grade, he had been taking the "constructivist" or "inquiry" program, so named because it emphasizes pupils' constructing their own knowledge through...

CARSON CITY: "HE SAID/SHE SAID" School administrators in Carson City, Nevada, had a very...bad...day yesterday, thanks to y'all. By the time school administrators went home, over 6,500 online petitions in support of history teacher Joe Enge had been sent to the school superintendent, the Carson High principal and the 7 members of the school board. Alas, the volume of emailed petitions overwhelmed the district, and by lunchtime the petitions were being "bounced" by the school district's system. Then came the phone calls. At first, administration personnel tried fielding the flood of calls it was receiving, but by mid-afternoon most...

Two Wars at Once- Wake Up America ! I sit in the comfort of my home in the United States of America which was founded in 1776 and is the greatest nation ever conceived in human history. We are the benefactors of many generations who have built and sacrificed. Make no mistake, Christianity has been the bulwark of this evolution. There is a slow and agonizing decay of our culture and country, under both external and internal subversive attack. It would appear that Americans have not yet realized the magnitude of the challenge. Our culture has become decadent and does...

Talk host Howie Carr has done "dumbing down of America" as a topic in the past. Let's do it here: Put down examples, funny ones hopefully, of people saying, writing, doing stupid things. Stuff that makes you shake your head. So many people are stuck on stupid. I will start by quoting, verbatim, a messageboard post by "Ed Beal the Rap King" after the Boston Herald published an article about Hurricane Katrina evacuees blowing their government-given money on booze and strippers. The following is verbatim from a radio-interest board: " "94.5 morning show , talk about The Boston Herald front...

Okay this was taken from a fellow student that wrote that these were the 5 major problems in the USA. Just wondered what you intelligent people thought of this... 1.) the War in Iraq; this war has gone on way to long and it is doing nothing for the US or Iraq but building even more hatred and anger to one another. 2.) Response to Hurricane Katrina; I thought we established a government agency that handles catastrophes? Wait we did FEMA, well needless to say they were a day late and a dollar short, they may of made up for...

Responding to Will [Jonathan Adler 10/05 11:00 AM] A former White House lawyer — a conservative who worked with Harriet Miers — offers this rejoinder to the Will column. George Will's column on Harriet Miers and the President is both unfair and sloppy. He begins by suggesting that the President is uninterested and incapable of making sophisticated judgments about the Court and judicial philosophies. This charge is patently unfair. The President picked John Roberts, and has a stellar first term record of selecting conservative judges for the appellate bench. There hasn't been a single liberal in the bunch with the...

The report that a hospital in West Yorkshire has banned visitors from cooing at new-born babies is, in fact, only the second dumbest thing the Brits have lately done. They’ve also removed science from the school curriculum. New regulations just announced by the Blair government, and taking effect next year, will allow students to bypass the hard sciences in favor of courses deemed “relevant.” More precisely, students will be permitted to choose between traditional courses that teach the Periodic Table, ionic equations, the structure of the atom, Boyle’s law, and Ohm’s law – and newly-designed courses that will teach about...

WNYC Newsroom NEW YORK, NY, July 18, 2005 — Mayor Bloomberg wants to hold back struggling seventh graders if they can't make the grade. The mayor announced his plan to extend his policy of ending social promotion - which already applies to third and fifth graders who fail their citywide math and reading tests. REPORTER: In a speech at Teachers College, Bloomberg said he's targeting seventh graders because Middle School scores are stagnant showing students need additional help. BLOOMBERG: The truth of the matter is if they get to the next class and can't do the work they are going...

Incorporating Ebonics into a new school policy that targets black students, the lowest-achieving group in the San Bernardino City Unified School District, may provide students a more well-rounded curriculum, said a local sociologist. The goal of the district's policy is to improve black students' academic performance by keeping them interested in school. Compared with other racial groups in the district, black students go to college the least and have the most dropouts and suspensions. Blacks make up the second largest racial group in the district, trailing Latinos. A pilot of the policy, known as the Students Accumulating New Knowledge Optimizing...

Thanks to generations of indoctrination, Mexicans believe California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and southern Colorado still belong to Mexico. The tens of millions of dollars the Mexican government took in exchange for the land notwithstanding, Mexican children are taught early and often that the 1845 annexation of Texas, the 1848 treaty after the Mexican-American War and the 1852 Gadsden Purchase allowed the United States to "steal" the American Southwest from Mexico. This is why so many Mexicans don't believe they need anyone's permission to enter this country whenever they please. As badly as Mexican schools have mangled history, they are...

My understanding from previous reading is that trends have been negative for a while, but a friend begged to differ, opining that scores are up and that selective schools are more selective than ever. Any help in tracking down this information esp concerning long-term trends would be greatly appreciated.