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I like it when the New York Times agrees with me. Nicholas Kristof’s recent column “Boys have fallen behind” (April 4) is an exact echo of my column on CanadaFreePress several weeks earlier (March 15). My piece was titled “Our Schools Are Skilled At Making Sure Boys Don’t Read." It’s longer, more aggressive, with more suggestions on how to deal with this very huge problem, namely, that boys don’t read well or they don’t read at all. If boys not reading is an aspect of your life, please see this article. [Link at end.] Now I want to mention the...

In a surprising, yet reassuring turn of events, Pope Benedict XIV, the head of the Catholic Church has announced that he is willing to excommunicate any and all Catholic Priests who have been rightfully accused of pedophilia while in service to the Catholic Church. "It is my sworn duty to uphold the tenants of the faith which rest securely on the never changing, holy scripture, which speaks succinctly, yet passionately, against sexual sin within the body of Christ." Pope Benedict wrote in a letter addressed to "Fellow Catholics, Christians, and citizens of this great planet." ...

"Last week I posted background on FreeRepublic about a column published months earlier titled “Education as Neurotoxin.” This column tries to explain why the US has 50 million functional illiterates and 1 million dyslexics. Were these people born this way? Or had bad education methods caused the impairments? (In which case, our enemies never needed to put fluoride, etc., in the water as our public schools were already harming the nation’s intelligence.) Someone left a half-dozen bitter comments insisting I was “delusional,” “illogical,” “irrational,” “nonsensical,” etc. I’m not sure which part offended him most, that sight-words cause mental problems; or...

Boys and Reading: Not to worry. Our top educators have pretty well got this thing figured out. It’s a two-punch combination, researched-based, that almost always works. Bingo, you don’t find American boys wasting precious time inside the pages of a book. First of all, you want to make sure they don’t hear much about the alphabet (shhh!), letters, sounds all that right-wing nonsense. They have to learn to read with sight-words, Dolch words, whole words (all the same thing). And you want a whole lot of hoopla, thousands of brightly colored books lying around, and constant chatter about literacy and...

Why do we have so many problems in the public schools? I’m always trying to boil the answer down to the essentials. This try is less than 600 words. Here's how it starts: ---------- "Simply judging by appearances, you might suspect that the American Education Establishment is hostile to Knowledge, Kids and the USA. When you look closer, you are sure. What do Knowledge, Kids, and the USA have in common? Here’s the common denominator: the (American) Education Establishment is contemptuous of all three. Do you think I jest or exaggerate? Not at all. The truth is straightforward, and easy...

Oh this truly is sad. Image at link.

To save the country and the economy, we first have to save the schools. To do that, we first have to save reading.

Donna M. Beegle, PhD, is spending her career explaining to audiences that there is poverty in America, that the solution to poverty is education, and that too often poverty prevents people from getting educated. A few weeks ago I heard Beegle speak at the high school where I work. While the impact of most motivational speakers lasts only a few days, this one was different. You can get an idea of her qualities as a speaker from excerpts available on YouTube, and from a trailer for "Invisible Nation," a one-hour documentary about Beegle and her family that is in the...

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis student Keith Sampson was charged with “racial harassment” when he was spotted reading Todd Tucker’s “Notre Dame vs. the Klan: How the Fighting Irish Defeated the Ku Klux Klan” while on break from his job as a janitor. The charge, since dropped after being widely criticized as “idiotic,” was filed by Affirmative Action Office of the university. The affirmative-action officer, who asked that her name be withheld, explained her action. “The fact that the book may have been anti-racist is not the point,” She said. “The fact that he was reading in itself is what is...

One in four Britons don't believe wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill existed, according to a recent survey. Churchill is compared to Florence Nightingale and Sir Walter Raleigh, seen by many survey respondents as a mythical person, the London Daily Mail reported Monday. The survey, conducted with 3,000 respondents to test their general knowledge, reported other historical figures such as Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi, Cleopatra and the Duke of Wellington were made up for books and films, the Mail reported. The survey, by UKTV Gold, also found that Sherlock Holmes was a real person.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison did relatively well in a 50-college test of how much students learned about history and economics during four years of college, but students in Wisconsin and nationally knew little when they came in and not much more when they left. No college did better than a D-plus on the Civic Literacy Test released Tuesday by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, a nonpartisan conservative educational organization that stresses the values of a free society. The national average was F.The test of 14,000 randomly selected students revealed that some of the most expensive Ivy League universities, with the highest-paid...

An official state inspection of Arizona public schools reveals that many students are being taught English by Spanish-speaking teachers whose command of English is so poor that the officials can barely understand them. The recent inspection revealed teachers providing instruction in Spanish instead of the legally required English, students unable to answer questions in English, and teachers' instructions such as "Sometimes, you are not gonna know some." The results of the inspections were reported by the Arizona Republic, which concluded hundreds of students in the state are trying to learn English from teachers who don't know the language. The inspections...

FORT WORTH — Students who had been planning to walk across the stage at graduation ceremonies this weekend were instead walking a picket line Thursday morning. The Trimble Tech High School seniors marched in front of Fort Worth Independent School District headquarters to protest Wednesday's decision by trustees to bar students who failed the TAKS test from commencement exercises. About a dozen young people, carrying signs and chanting, began picketing at 8:30 a.m. Thursday. They represent the 613 Fort Worth seniors who did not pass the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills exam

Remedial classes await. Thousands of Colorado high schoolers are graduating this month with plans to go to college in the fall. Hundreds of them will be academically unprepared when they get there. Those students will take — and pay for — remedial classes that don’t count toward a degree. Educators say the need for remedial work is fueled largely by a lack of communication between high schools and colleges about what’s important to know. They also say high school students need to pay closer attention to class selection and grades, especially in the senior year when many coast toward graduation...

Share this with All your Friends... And SHOW this to your children and grandchildren !!!! THE YEAR 1907 This will boggle your mind, I know it did mine! The year is 1907. One hundred years ago. What a difference a century makes! Here are some of the U.S. Statistics for the Year 1907: ************************************ The average life expectancy in the U.S. Was 47 years old. Only 14 percent of the homes in the U.S. Had a bathtub . Only 8 percent of the homes had a telephone. A three-minute call from Denver to New York City Cost eleven dollars. There...

I did a search and didn't find this posted in the past on FR. I also checked Snopes and found this is TRUE. They're standing on the corner and they can't speak English. I can't even talk the way these people talk: Why you ain't, Where you is, What he drive, Where he stay, Where he work, Who you be.. And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk. And then I heard the father talk. Everybody knows it's important to speak English... except these knuckleheads. Mushmouth is what they speak! You can't be a doctor with that...

The American Institutes for Research assessed the literacy of graduating seniors from two- and four-year colleges and universities. The findings indicate that many college graduates are only semi-literate. 20 percent of U.S. college students completing four-year degrees have limited quantitative skills. For example, they are unable to estimate if their car has enough gas to get to the next gas station or to calculate the sum of a list of purchases. The study also finds that more than 50 percent of students at four-year colleges have limited literacy skills. For example, they can’t understand the arguments in a newspaper editorial....

The Food and Drug Administration approved over-the-counter sales of the "morning-after pill" on Thursday, but only for girls over the age of 18. The hormone pill, until now available only with a prescription, prevents implantation of a fertilized egg if it is taken within a few days of unprotected intercourse. Easier access to the drug known as Plan B has drawn strong opposition from conservative groups, who say it will end up in the hands of young girls, regardless of what the rules say. Focus on the Family is among the many groups that have argued against over-the-counter sales of...

this weeks "navy times" came out. it had the usual articles in it. one very touching one about the last carrier operations of the f-14s. then.....

WASHINGTON (AP) - 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...