Free Republic

A federal agency has awarded nearly $1 million in taxpayer funding to three academic institutions to help make undergraduate biology courses more “inclusive” for trans-identifying students, claiming that most courses “inaccurately categorize sex and gender as binary.” The National Science Foundation is an independent federal agency that helps promote science, primarily through grants. According to its website, the agency’s investments account for about 25% of federal support to colleges and universities in the United States for research purposes. As noted author and professor of apologetics at Houston Christian University, Nancy Pearcy, notes on X, "The award abstract claims that 'biology...

As I drove down the lengthy driveway of Mercy Montessori Center, I called my great aunt from Athens, Georgia, whom we lovingly call Aunt Puddien. Aunt Puddien is like another mother to me and I trusted her wisdom. She always introduced me to a relative or friend of the family as the teacher to which they responded with praise and affirmation. To them, loving and teaching our youth was a great honor despite the devaluation educators often experience. As an educator, I work within and around systems that are designed to lock out historically marginalized communities; this is why I...

The lead writer of The New York Times’ anti-American “1619 Project” suffered a meltdown last week when a colleague at her paper offered fair criticism of its revisionist and inaccurate account of history.On Oct. 9, New York Times columnist Bret Stephens published a more than 3,000-word essay outlining the project’s blunders that have led the academics with the National Association of Scholars (NAS) to call on the Pulitzer Prize Board to revoke its award to the project’s chief essayist, Nikole Hannah-Jones.“Journalists are, most often, in the business of writing the first rough draft of history, not trying to have...

Years after Common Core made its debut in many state education systems, the disastrous long-term results of the program are finally being seen. The students’ reading assessment paints a grim picture of educational readiness, with tested fourth and eighth graders failing to best the previous test’s results. This year’s results were only marginally better than those from 1992. The mathematics scores show the most damning results — an upward trend until the year 2015, when the momentum seemed to grind to a halt. Although there were double-digit gains since the ’90s, fourth graders only managed to score a single point...

A spontaneous essay on the nature and evils of extremism, and it's effect on modern politics.

A concerned parent posted a picture of their third grader's common core math homework yesterday. Frustrated, they called the homework "ridiculous." Just how ridiculous? Third graders are now being taught how to multply single digit numbers using six steps. Common Core is the over-complication of simple problems. So, how do you solve 7 times 5? You don't just solve it quickly in your head. You don't count by seven five times. Instead, you are supposed to break five into two smaller numbers. It doesn't explain why you don't break seven down, but students are supposed to instantly know that five...

“Number sense,” courtesy of Common Core? We don’t know the source of that math problem, but based on what we’ve seen elsewhere, it has all the hallmarks of Common Core math. Now try your hand at this third-grade math problem, also reportedly from a Common Core lesson: Common Core: It’s For the Children™.

It is our duty to stop stuff like this. Guyer High School (and obviously several others) are complicit in attempting to condition students to interpret the 2nd Amendment in a clearly opposite manner in which it was intended. The 1st, 3rd, 4th, and 5th are also misinterpreted as several commentators below pointed out. This textbook, currently being used by Guyer High School, is attempting to redefine the Second Amendment to impressionable young minds. Parents, you must speak up and demand action. Investigate your child's history book ASAP, and post more pictures in the comments below. Call your school and demand...

If you’re graduating from college this year, count yourself lucky. Just 56 percent of college students complete four-year degrees within six years, according to a 2011 Harvard Graduate School of Education study. Among the 18 developed countries in the OECD, the U.S. was dead last for the percentage of students who completed college once they started it ― even behind Slovakia. College dropouts tend to be male, and give reasons such as cost, not feeling prepared, and not being able to juggle family, school and jobs, according to the Harvard study. An American Institutes for Research report last year estimated...

Pundits routinely assert there is a cheating epidemic in American education. A few statistics can confirm the extent of the problem. Researchers at the University of Nebraska surveyed students and found that “89 percent said glancing at someone else's answers during a test was cheating, but 87 percent said they'd done that at least once. Also, 94 percent said providing answers to someone during a test was cheating -- but 74 percent admitted to doing it.” » If you like this article, please subscribe to our daily newsletter Our_Cheating_HeartPaying someone else to write your course work is also common, and...

Elementary school curriculum isn't just about the three R's any more. Reading, 'Riting and 'Rithmetic now have to make time for lessons in gender diversity and for nosy questionnaires that lead kids into teen sex and illegal drug usage. Students in all grades at Oakland, California's Redwood Heights Elementary School were given two days of gender diversity lessons designed to teach them that gender is not confined to the "binary concept" of two options. The lessons promoted "gender neutrality," the concept that no distinctions between male and female should be legally allowed. These lessons were taught by an anti-bullying group...

Churchill Not Relevant Enough by: Don Irvine, July 18, 2007 Sir Winston Churchill may have been voted the best Briton ever, but if a national curriculum proposal is approved the former Prime Minister will be relegated to the dust bin of history as he will be removed from a list of figures that secondary school children must learn about in Great Britain. In a move to bring the national curriculum into the 21st century Churchill will no longer be taught and will be replaced with the more relevant topics of as drug and alcohol abuse, climate change (global warming) and...

B grade for pupils who get 83pc wrong By Julie Henry, Education Correspondent (Filed: 16/01/2005) Pupils have been awarded a B grade in a maths GCSE exam despite scoring only 17 per cent, The Telegraph can reveal. The pass marks for the new exam, which was taken last summer by 7,500 children from 65 schools and is due to be introduced nationwide next year, were an all-time low. Pupils sitting GCSE maths last year had to achieve about 40 per cent to get a B grade. But with the new exam, designed by the Cambridge-based exam board OCR, those who...

Introduction to Creationism's Trojan Horse Introduction It used to be obvious that the world was designed by some sort of intelligence. What else could account for fire and rain and lightning and earthquakes? Above all, the wonderful abilities of living things seemed to point to a creator who had a special interest in life. Today we understand most of these things in terms of physical forces acting under impersonal laws.We don’t yet know the most fundamental laws, and we can’t work out the consequences of all the laws we know. The human mind remains extraordinarily difficult to understand, but...

JAVITS CENTER, NEW YORKAs recently as 1996, the Republican-party platform called for the abolition of the Department of Education as an unconstitutional, heavy-handed, and ineffective entity. Eight years later, things have changed. Conservatives in New York this week knew there was trouble once they read the first sentence of the platform on "No Child Left Behind." It read: "Public education is the foundation of civil society." (In comparison to "family," which earned the description of being the "cornerstone.") The second sign of trouble was learning that the subcommittee handling education was chaired by Rep. Phil English (R., Penn.), a key...

Dear Mr. President, I am graduating from college after a fair amount of sacrifice and struggle. I go to Portland State University, a fine institution that has done a lot for me, and I have attempted to do as much as possible for it. When I began, I felt so optimistic about the changes that I was seeing all around me. It was a time of great purpose and I felt a calling to serve my community in a way that I had never felt before. It was an exciting time. Don't get me wrong, Mr. President, I have not...

Have teachers learnt their lesson?By Janet Daley (Filed: 14/04/2004) The National Union of Teachers wants to abolish national school tests. The leader of the National Association of Schoolmasters/Union of Women Teachers believes that Margaret Thatcher is to blame for the bad behaviour of today's children. In an uncertain world, as they say in the car adverts, there are some things that can always be relied on. Not getting the improvements in reading and maths that parents want? Blame it on the tests that reveal the weakness. Discipline problems in the classroom? It must be the fault of Thatcherite materialism....

<p>The parents of a 10-year-old boy suspended from a public school for sexual harassment are shocked and angry that a playground outburst by their son has been given such a distressing and politically charged label.</p> <p>Insisting that the first-year principal at Theodore Judah Elementary School overreacted and used poor judgment, they say they are appealing the suspension and want the "ridiculous" punishment stricken from the boy's record.</p>

<p>The schoolyard bully is a coward cloaked in cruel bravado. A bully usually has little self-confidence and finds solace in belittling others. Sometimes taunting goes beyond words to physical violence. Bullying can't be tolerated anywhere, certainly not in schools.</p> <p>It is both heartening and disappointing that the federal government intends to launch a $3.4 million campaign to rid schools of bullies. Using web sites and commercials, the government hopes to make everyone aware that bullying is a public health threat. Most of us already know that. What's needed is action.</p>

Fellow Freepers, My child has been coming home from school telling me some very disturbing things that are being said by a 7th grade U.S. History teacher. According to other parents that I have spoken with, this is nothing new. No one will step up because of the fear of major repercussions from this teacher and / or other leftist teachers. I have a letter written, but after thinking about having my child be targeted for revenge I did not send it. Some of the things he is spewing to a “captive audience”, who think what is being said is...