Free Republic

Here's a short blog entry I can't improve. It's a tease for a longer article (see link) but almost complete in itself: "21st Century Bull Okay, here's the last century of American education summed up in a sentence: the Education Establishment pretends to care about education, knowledge, basics, all that stuff, even as they undercut them at every opportunity. That's it. A century of disingenuousness. Every single pedagogy and method was a con. New Math and Whole Word, most spectacularly so. The others less blatantly so but just as subversive....It's as if we're dealing with drug addicts here. They say...

Only two choices about the Liberals in power: they’re deliberately undermining the country or they are too dumb to figure out the right things to do. My impression is that Rush just swerved into this harsh either/or menu within the last month. Traitors or fools! Communists or dopes! Subversives or exceedingly clumsy! When you first hear the two poles of the dilemma, you might react, oh, that’s awfully drastic, isn’t it? Surely there are some other choices. And your mind sorts urgently through all the possibilities you can think of... I’ve been fascinated by Rush’s logic because I went through...

Graphic video provides a quick look at most of the bad ideas now undermining public schools. Takes four minutes. The video's main purpose is to clarify the debate and to provide a checklist of what the video calls "the usual suspects." Arresting these bad actors is how we improve the schools. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9kNtdSfCLo Video created by Bruce Deitrick Price / Improve-Education.org

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.

If liberal politics and good intentions helped all students learn, then Berkeley High School should be an exemplar to all California. Yet, according to its governance council, Berkeley High was identified last year as the high school with "the largest racial equity/achievement gap in the state." The worst part, as far as low-performing students are concerned, is that you can't expect the school district to turn its record underachievement around - not when its governance council, which makes recommendations to the school board on operations, approves a plan with a preamble that quotes Karl Marx: "From each according to his...

Institutionalized Child Abuse Life in an American Fourth Grade: Teaching Kids to "Respect Other Views" by Making Them Not Have Any of Their Own By Barry Rubin thelastcrusade.org First came the reading list of four books: one about an African-American, one on an Asian- or Hispanic-American, one on a Native American, and one--amazingly enough--a free choice. Then came the first book read in class on an African-American runner. By the way, it should be understood that all these readings are not about a group of youngsters from all races, religions, and creeds, playing together while getting along but rather...

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...