Free Republic

During his six years as New York’s schools chancellor, Joel Klein has spent many a Sunday morning speaking from the pulpit of a black church about his efforts to reform the public school system and to help African-American kids get a better education. “We have to make education the civil rights issue of our time,” Klein asserted in a speech for Al Sharpton’s National Action Network in Memphis this year. “In America today, we have a racial achievement gap that is the shame of this great nation, and until we get right on education, we are not going to be...

As a voracious reader, the genre does not matter as much as the story’s ability to engage and interest me, to help me view things from a different perspective and learn a bit along the way. As a child, I read books everywhere: school, home, church, and the car. During college, there was enough academic work -- and extracurricular activities -- to keep me busy, with little time for pleasure reading. In recent years I have begun to read more. As the mother of two young children, I have tried to pass this love of reading to them. We read...

CAMP VICTORY, Iraq, July 28, 2008 – Iraq is targeting more than 6 million illiterate adults through a national literacy campaign. Iraqi policemen submit applications for modified security badges, May 22, 2007, in Salman Pak, Iraq. Literacy is a requirement for members of the Iraqi security forces. U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Shawn Weismiller  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization estimates that more than 60 percent of the adult population in Iraq cannot read or write. This was not always the case, U.N. officials said. At one time, Iraq...

...Children like Nadia lie at the heart of a passionate debate about just what it means to read in the digital age. The discussion is playing out among educational policy makers and reading experts around the world, and within groups like the National Council of Teachers of English and the International Reading Association. As teenagers’ scores on standardized reading tests have declined or stagnated, some argue that the hours spent prowling the Internet are the enemy of reading — diminishing literacy, wrecking attention spans and destroying a precious common culture that exists only through the reading of books. But others...

RAMADI — A middle-aged Iraqi woman, widowed and a mother of two young children, walks into a cream-colored concrete classroom filled with women of all ages. The woman, draped in a black abaya, sits down in a wooden desk-chair and gazes at the instructor with a look of determination and conviction. She knows, along with the other women in the classroom, she must learn to read and write if she is going to continue to support and properly care for her two children and has taken the initial steps in bettering her family and herself. Women’s Literacy Program classes are...

Can't resist it - I was raised on American culture and am all the happier for it. It formed me culturally and made me what I am. Since I come into contact with Americans professionally on a frequent basis, it's always a great pleasure to have 'common ground', so to speak. Today I started reading 'Moby-Dick' for the fifth time. And believe me, I do have an exceptional memory. But this book is so rich that you can spend a lifetime with it and still miss out on some things. The pretty pragmatic, relativistic Ishmael embarks on a boat trip...

HAWIJAH — In the month which marked the birth of the United States of America and the liberation of other nations, July 5, will be remembered in Hawijah, Iraq, as the day its country’s deputy minister of education Nehad Al-Juburi and the prime minister’s education advisor Zaid Chaid paid a historic visit to bring national attention to a pilot literacy program underway here. Five-hundred SoI members in four of the sub-districts of Hawijah, Iraq - Zaab, Abassi, Riyadh and Hawijah city - are currently participating in this program, which teaches students up to a 3rd to 4th grade reading...

OK everyone, it's time for my quarterly "What Are You Reading Now?" thread. I like finding out what Freepers are reading lately. It can be anything...a technical journal, a trashy pulp novel, an old classic...in short, anything! Please do not defile this thread by posting "I'm Reading This Thread". It became very unfunny a long time ago. I'll start. I'm close to finishing "The Last Valley" by Martin Windrow. It's about the siege/battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954. Well, what are you reading now?!

I was talking to a friend the other day who teaches at an elementary school and has a student whom I shall name Shakir. Shakir is ten, and he's barely literate. My friend's class is not a large one; she has five to eight students. She also has a teaching assistant, and between them, the kids receive a lot of personal, one-to-one attention. Nevertheless, Shakir still can't read. The why of this phenomenon is quite important; you see, there are lots of Shakirs in the black community. For he is one of many kids flunking his way through the educational system,...

Reading and math scores for New York students in grades three through eight showed extraordinary gains across the state since last year, with particularly striking leaps in the large urban areas, including New York City. The gains were apparent for nearly every grade tested in both subjects, in some cases with double-digit increases in the percentage of students performing at grade level or above, according to the scores on the annual statewide exams released by education officials on Monday. The improvements were so substantial that several education experts expressed skepticism, noting that large gains were posted even by cities like...

FReeps have such great taste! So, I thought I would put this out there. One of my favorite things to do during the summer months is read to my children before they go to sleep. Actually, I do this year round, but particularly enjoy reading to them during the summer months. At times we get carried away with some of the great children’s lit available ~ with Mom finally coming up tho the bedrooms at 10:30 to shut down the evening's activities. At which point we may have to get real quiet and me straining my eyes. It’s great to...

Employers, the military and intelligence services may soon be using computerised mind-reading techniques and there is a need for a public debate about "mental privacy," a leading neuroscientist said yesterday. At the Cheltenham Science Festival, backed by The Daily Telegraph, Prof Geraint Rees of University College London said that, although hospital patients and experimental volunteers are protected, there is a need for debate about, for example, whether employers could use mind reading methods to decode brain activity to screen job applicants. Another possibility raised by studies of how the brain encodes memories and other information is that these methods could...

LACKLAND AIR FORCE BASE, Texas, May 8, 2008 – Wilford Hall Medical Center here has launched a new program emphasizing the importance of literacy to parents and children alike. Reach Out and Read, a national nonprofit organization, uses several methods to promote early literacy as part of routine pediatric care, including having volunteers reading aloud in pediatric waiting rooms. Its main approach, though, is to promote literacy during well-baby or well-child visits for children from ages 6 months through 4 years. Pediatric providers trained in the Reach Out and Read model offer age-appropriate tips to emphasize to parents and...

Reading, PA - An impromptu celebration of the Dominican Republic’s independence day involving as many as 1,500 students outside Reading High School erupted in violence Wednesday afternoon. A city police captain was injured and at least a half-dozen students were arrested. An unruly crowd of 1,000 to 1,500 high school students blocked streets around the school and threw rocks and bottles at police when officers tried to disperse them, authorities said. Deputy Police Chief Mark E. Talbot Sr. said the violent mob was unprecedented and created one of the scariest situations he’s had in his career in Reading.

Looking for FR book recommendations.

What will happen to reading and writing in our time? Could the doomsayers be right? Computers, they maintain, are destroying literacy. The signs -- students' declining reading scores, the drop in leisure reading to just minutes a week, the fact that half the adult population reads no books in a year -- are all pointing to the day when a literate American culture becomes a distant memory. By contract, optimists foresee the Internet ushering in a new, vibrant participatory culture of words. Will they carry the day? Maybe neither. Let me suggest a third possibility: Literacy -- or an ensemble...

"As a school librarian, I wind up reading all sorts of damning reports on students' lack of reading skills. The latest dire news came from the National Endowment for the Arts' recent "To Read or Not to Read" study, which warned that "less than one-third of 13-year-olds are daily readers, a 14 percent decline from 20 years earlier." High school students are faring even worse: Among 17-year-olds, the percentage of "non-readers" has doubled over a 20-year period, from 9 percent in 1984 to 19 percent in 2004. This multitasking generation, we're led to believe, can't focus on any item for...

In her recent biography of Condoleezza Rice, Elisabeth Bumiller tells us that Condi, a former professor and provost at Stanford University, has a curious relationship to books — curious at least for an academic. As she was growing up, Rice relates, her parents piled books up on her nightstand and the result was a distaste for reading. “She stopped reading for pleasure, and does not to this day,” Bumiller writes. This was the strangest fact of many curious nuggets that can be gleaned from Bumiller’s work. And it left me wondering about modernity’s relationship with books. Many of the most...

It's time again for my quarterly "What Are You Reading Now?" inquiry. I'm always curious as to what Freepers are reading and what they're recommending to others. It can be anything...a classic novel, a scientific journal, a magazine, a cheap pulp novel...anything. Do not deface this thread with a smart-ass answer like "I'm Reading this Thread". It became very un-original a long time ago. I'll start. I'm reading "The Great Deluge: Hurrican Katrina, New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast" by Douglas Brinkley. This is a full account of Katrina striking the Gulf Coast. The book starts 48 hours before...

It was hard not to notice that Kindle was born unto us about the same moment the National Endowment for the Arts released a report on reading's sad lot in our time. Amid much other horrifying data, it revealed that the average 15- to 24-year-old spends seven minutes daily on "voluntary" reading. Cheerfully, this number rises to 10 minutes on weekends. An earlier, equally grim NEA report, "Reading at Risk," announced the collapse of interest in reading literature -- basically books. This newer study widened the definition of "reading" to include magazines, newspapers and online leisure. No matter. Even if...

In his preface to the new 99-page report Dana Gioia, chairman of the endowment, described the data as “simple, consistent and alarming.” Among the findings is that although reading scores among elementary school students have been improving, scores are flat among middle school students and slightly declining among high school seniors. These trends are concurrent with a falloff in daily pleasure reading among young people as they progress from elementary to high school, a drop that appears to continue once they enter college. The data also showed that students who read for fun nearly every day performed better on reading...

..One thing is certain: Americans—of either gender—are reading fewer books today than in the past. A poll released last month by The Associated Press and Ipsos, a market-research firm, found that the typical American read only four books last year, and one in four adults read no books at all. A National Endowment for the Arts report found that only 57 percent of Americans had read a book in 2002 a four percentage-point drop in a decade. Book sales have been flat in recent years and are expected to stay that way for the foreseeable future. Among avid readers surveyed...

An angry parent has blasted the East Penn School District for requiring its students to read books he said are "full of filthy vulgarity." Richard Jones of Upper Milford confronted the school board Monday about some of the books on his 15-year-old son's 10th-grade summer reading list at Emmaus High School, saying they're trash. Following its standard practice, the board limited Jones to three minutes and didn't respond to his criticism during the meeting. But later, board President Ann Thompson said, "We listened carefully and it is being investigated carefully."

It is not surprising that when doctors examined people who had worked at a lead smelter for years, they found no lack of neurological problems associated with lead. But not every worker was affected equally, a new study says, especially when it came to those who were good readers. While those workers had the same sorts of motor skill losses as their colleagues, they had retained much more of their thinking skills. People who are good readers, generally a sign of better education, have been found in earlier studies to have better health. The presumption has been that this is...

Richmond, Virginia In a classroom at Ginter Park Elementary School, a century-old brick schoolhouse on a dreary, zoned-commercial truck route that bisects a largely African-American neighborhood in Richmond, a third-grade teacher, Laverne Johnson, is doing something that flies in the face of more than three decades of the most advanced pedagogical principles taught at America's top-rated education schools. Seated on a chair in a corner of her classroom surrounded by a dozen youngsters sitting cross-legged on the floor at her feet, Johnson is teaching reading--as just plain reading. Two and a half hours every morning, systematically going over such basics...

Well, it's time again for my quarterly inquiry for "What Are You Reading Now?". It can be anything. A classic novel. A technical journal. A trashy pulp novel. A best-seller. Please DO NOT defile this thread with a unfunny reply such as "I'm Reading This Thread". I'll start. I'm reading "Backlash: The Killing of the New Deal" by Robert Shogan. A interesting and easy read about how Roosevelt's court-packing scheme as well as labor union troubles helped to derail his plans for explanding the New Deal. Well, what are you reading right now?

WASHINGTON - A federal investigator looking into allegations of conflict of interest and mismanagement in a $1 billion-a-year Education Department reading program said Friday he has referred the matter to the Justice Department. John Higgins, the Education Department's inspector general, refused to specify for reporters what he has asked government prosecutors to look at, but investigators have been highly critical of the department's management of the Reading First program. Referrals are made by investigators when they encounter evidence of possible federal crimes or other misconduct, which only the Justice Department has authority to pursue. A spokesman for the U.S. attorney's...

AN Iraqi Muslim man allegedly raped a Muslim woman as "punishment" for her reading the Bible. Campbelltown District Court in Sydney's west yesterday heard Abdul Reda Al Shawany twice sexually assaulted the woman, a practising Muslim, and then said to her: "Let your Jesus help you." Al Shawany, 52, has plead not guilty to two counts of having sexual intercourse without consent between September 1 and 27, 2002, at a unit in Warwick Farm.

Time and space are not available to point out the naiveté and multiple errors in Diana Schemo's March 9th above the fold article, "In War Over Teaching Reading, a U.S. – Local Clash." As the New York Times bills itself as the newspaper of record, that is a missed opportunity. In the same issue another front page story caught my eye. It discussed the 71 percent increase of crime in America's cities. In the article Rochester, NY Mayor Robert Duffy is quoted as saying, "his city had the state's highest dropout rate - half of all students drop out.” Hello?...

Most parents are pleased to hear, “…plays nicely with others,” when their children are assessed in preschool or kindergarten. Getting along is a skill that will transfer throughout our lives. On the flip side, it’s hard to be around people with nothing positive to say. Beware the other -all too common- colloquialism, “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.” Nowadays, in order to get along, people are told what they must believe, who they must accept, and what they cannot say. Society is losing the option of going against the politically correct grain. Daring to disagree...

What reading material do you have in your "home of the seat"? We have quite an eclectic collection, thanks to a long vanity counter that can hold a lot of books! You will never be bored with the selection in our reading room. Nora Roberts, Night Shift/Night Shadow German-French dictionary German-Chechen Dictionary Yves Simon, Philosophy of Democratic Government Chicken Soup for the Mother & Daughter Soul Farber, The Foundation of Phenomenology Michael Savage, the Compassionate Conservative The How and Why Book of Science Experiments Everything your baby would ask National Geographic (assorted issues) American Baby (assorted issues) Sudoku puzzles Fourier...

The Free Republic Book Club is an informal gathering of readers and lovers of all genre of books, which meets on an irregular basis, which would whenever I remember to post and have a copy of the ping list available. Actually, the last time we "met" was July of 2005. Sorry about that. If you would like to be on this ping list -- or if you are on it and wished to be removed -- please send me mail. If you already sent me mail wishing to be removed and you were pinged anyway, oops, my apologies, please request...

My mother never had the opportunity to attend college. Yet, on her nightstand, next to her bed, could always be found books by the likes of a Evelyn Waugh, C.S. Lewis, or Robert Louis Stevenson. The product of parochial schools and an America that still treasured high-quality literature, my mother breathed the healthy air of culture not yet polluted by the corrosive effects of the radicalism of the 1960s, rampant egalitarianism, consumerism, or postmodernism. My mother's literary tastes, an inheritance, really, of the society into which she was born and raised, came to mind as I read of the purging...

Sorry, no one's reading that resume you sent Computers now doing most of the weeding out By Loretta Grantham Cox News Service September 27, 2006 WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. -- Baffled because you nailed the qualifications for a job and never heard a word? Peeved because you blew an entire weekend polishing your resume? Here's the likely truth: No one ever saw it. "The first thing that job seekers have to get over is that it's not personal," says Gerry Crispin, a recruiting technology expert. "The chance when you apply for a job that someone actually sees your resume is...

I have found that a reliable way for me to choose authors is by word of mouth. That is, if people whom I share values, or people with whom I enjoy conversation, tell me about an author they like, I often find that I like that author as well. What is odd about this is that we often end up liking the author for completely different reasons from each other. Or, sometimes, after I read the author, I dislike much of what they say, but there is enough I do agree with that I am able to share those things...

A few years ago I wrote a book for young Christians graduating from high school or college on the theme of how best to prepare to influence the world, "In But Not Of." It has sold steadily, and occasionally I hear from a reader who especially appreciated the reading list I provided for those who had been ill-served by their history teachers and professors. It is difficult to make sense of the world if you don't know the stories of the Greeks, the Romans, and the English, and so I suggested titles that could give any persistent reader a spine...

English and Math. The two staple subjects of our society. Look at the SAT. Half of the questions are verbal and the other half are math. When measuring a student’s college acceptance worthiness, admission offices place a large focus on how well students perform in these two subjects. Statistically, girls outperform boys in English, while boys outperform girls in Math. Seems fair enough; however, a closer look tells a different story. The National Assessment of Educational Progress provides statistics on female versus male performance in reading and math. By the time children reach the age of seventeen, girls outperform boys...

This is troubling - Backstory: my ex recently got prescription glasses at the age of 36. Cool, she can drive better now. So she picked out a very fashionable pair of frames for her prescription, I told her they looked great, and I assumed that was that.

According to a recent study published by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), public school students are outperforming their private school counterparts in fourth grade mathematics and have equaled “private school students in fourth grade reading and eighth grade math.” However, as Shanea Watkins, Policy Analyst in Empirical Studies in the Center for Data Analysis at The Heritage Foundation, explains, these results require greater scrutiny. Some commentators that reference the NCES report believe the study points to a causal relationship—that attending a public school will cause higher academic achievement in math. However, the study focuses on data provided by...

A mix of suburban and city state legislators gathered at the Montgomery County Courthouse to urge new legislative action. A group of Democratic state legislators, led by State Rep. Dwight Evans of Philadelphia, went to the heart of Republican Montgomery County yesterday to announce a new legislative initiative aimed at reducing gun violence. The legislators, a mix of state office holders from the suburbs and the city, were at the Montgomery County Courthouse in Norristown to announce plans to submit a package of bills during a day-long special session of the House on crime scheduled for Sept. 26. Pointing to...

George W. Bush a bookworm? White House aides say it's so. The born-again president's literary interests start with the predictable, such as his daily readings from the Bible. But he also enjoys books about Abraham Lincoln, his political hero, and, of course, yarns about baseball-in a past life, he was, after all, the managing partner of the Texas Rangers. Staffers say the president is actually engaged in an informal contest with White House senior adviser Karl Rove to see who can read more books this year. The latest score card has Bush ahead 60-50.A sampling of the president's reading list...

Sunday morning vanity for a buddy. One of his new careproviders is fufilling his interest in reading books out loud to him. He does not care for books on tape as he enjoys the interaction of reading with someone. He is a quadroplegic 27yrs now and very active in all aspects of life, case you are wondering. So our little town started a community reading circle and he can check books out of the Library but would rather buy the book and keep it. So word is getting out. But he needs Titles/Authors as people want to give him books....

The Iowa-based ACT is trumpeting its latest college entrance examination scores as improved but a closer examination of the test results reveals them to be pretty pathetic. “National ACT scores rose significantly in 2006,” the organization claims. “The average ACT composite score for the U. S. high school graduating class of 2006 was 21.1, up from 20.9 last year.” “Scores were higher for both males and females and for students across virtually all racial/ethnic groups.” This year, 1.2 million students took the test, on which 32 was the highest score they could possibly attain. Few did. It gets worse. “For...

NEW YORK (1010 WINS) -- Students who are learning English as a second language could soon have to take the regular state English exam. The federal government has informed New York State that some of its testing methods don't comply with the No Child Left Behind law. The finding applies to tests given to students with disabilities and those with limited proficiency in English. Richard Mills, the state education commissioner, was notified of the finding in a letter from Henry Johnson, the assistant secretary for elementary and secondary education. The state could lose one-point-two million dollars if the problem isn't...

The Long Small War: Indigenous Forces for Counterinsurgency "The [11] September attacks can be understood as the first battle in this new [epochal] war. If, as some historians argue, the twentieth century began in August 1914, it may be that the twenty-first century will be said to have begun in September 2001. . . . The alliance of which the United States is a part faces a long and bitter struggle." --snip-- Massing Effects in the Information Domain: A Case Study in Aggressive Information Operations ...I say to you: that we are in a battle, and that more than...

These are pics I took at the WWII weekend show in Reading, PA on June 4,2006. I also have posted a few pics from last years. This is a very neat show they put on for one whole weekend every year in Reading, PA. I have them posted in my new Picasa Web album I am testing out. I thought WWII buffs would enjoy these pics. Click on the URL link above.

U.S. Special Operations Command: Meeting the Challenges of the 21st Century Born from crisis and shaped through experience, today's special operations capability did not come easily. Contemporary Special Operations Forces (SOF) are the product of tragedy, vision, and the innovation of Congress. Unique authorities given to the U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) empower Special Operations Soldiers, Sailors, and Airmen to perform diverse yet critical missions. Exceptional training, enhanced education, cutting-edge technology, and force maturity, coupled with the authority, agility, and willingness to change, form a responsive framework fundamental to Special Operations Forces defeating adversaries across the globe. Looking to the...

USS RONALD REAGAN, At Sea (NNS) -- Even though they are deployed thousands of miles away from home, hundreds of Sailors assigned to USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76) are keeping in touch with their children through the “United for Reading” (UTR) program. More than 700 Sailors have taken part in the program since Reagan departed San Diego Jan. 4 on its maiden deployment. “We’re coming up on two months of operation and have hundreds of smiling children that are the recipients of over 750 video recordings,” said Lt. Chris Anderson, Reagan’s program coordinator. Sponsored by the Family Literacy Foundation, the...

1. "Leave It to Psmith" by P.G. Wodehouse (Doran, 1924). May I begin a survey of superb comic novels by offering the collected works of P.G. Wodehouse--100 volumes, give or take? No? Well, how about "Leave It to Psmith"? Everyone knows about Bertie and Jeeves. Allow me to introduce Rupert Psmith. The "P" is silent, he explains, "as in phthisis, psychic, and ptarmigan." But the comedy is uproarious in this tale of an impecunious though impeccably turned out dandy who impersonates the modern poet Ralston McTodd--a scaly specimen--in order to cadge an invitation to Blandings Castle so that he can...

Authorities to consider charges against man By Keith Mayer Reading Eagle A Reading shopkeeper on Friday fatally shot a knife-wielding man who had robbed him of an undetermined amount of money, city police said. Gregorio Zarzuela, 58, the owner of Gregory's Market, 12th and Green streets, ran out the front door, turned and fired once at the fleeing robber about 12:30 p.m., investigators said. Zarzuela killed the man, who fell face up onto the sidewalk on the west side of the street, authorities said. Officials had not determined the identity of the dead man; he was checked for identification, but...