(Pixabay)
The 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress, better known as the Nation’s Report Card, came out in January, and student reading scores slipped once again. About 40% of fourth-graders and 33% of eighth-graders scored below the test’s basic level. Although states like Alabama provided bright spots in this grim picture with improvement in reading and math, the continued overall decline in test scores is bad news for our country and its future. Continue reading
During World War II, Della Raney became the first Black nurse to enter the Army Nurse Corps since World War I. (Wikimedia Commons)
In 1940, under growing social and political pressure, President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized the enlistment of Black aviators in the Army Air Corps. From 1941 until 1946, about 1,000 men were trained as Tuskegee pilots and 16,000 graduated as ground crew. While an impressive number for the time and circumstances, there were also many others at the Tuskegee Army Air Field (TAAF) training, teaching, learning and working to defeat fascism overseas.
When the Army Air Corps launched a pathway for Black men to serve in the air, it did so through a separate, segregated support infrastructure, which included separate, segregated health care. Only Black medical staff could treat Black service members and civilians, and that created quite a problem: There simply weren’t any Black nurses in the Army. Continue reading
If asked that question, many would likely reply – somewhat indignantly even – “He goes to a good school. He gets good grades. Of course he’s well educated!”
But well-educated is not the same as well-schooled. And sadly, most of what we call education today is actually schooling, a fact former New York Teacher of the Year John Taylor Gatto did his best to draw attention to in the years before his death in 2018. Continue reading
Rhymes remain engraved in the mind, even when many other memories are gone. Biba Kayewich
It would seem logical to begin an essay on nursery rhymes with childhood. But I want to begin instead with old age – or, to be more precise, the link between childhood and old age.
My wife’s grandmother recently passed away. A few days before her passing, my wife and 2-year-old daughter were visiting her and my wife’s mother, and somehow they came to the subject of traditional nursery rhymes. We’d been teaching some to my daughter. My little girl began to prattle away, reciting several rhymes for her grandmother and great-grandmother.
Then something remarkable happened… Continue reading
Two more states recently enacted universal school choice laws, which means parents there no longer are limited to sending their children to schools within their district.
In mid-February, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee signed into law a universal private school voucher bill. Now, in subsequent weeks, both Idaho and Wyoming have adopted universal school choice, becoming the 14th and 15th states (respectively) to do so. Continue reading
May 25, 1958 edition of Arthur Radebaugh’s Sunday comic, Closer Than We Think. (Image credit: llustration by Julia Wytrazek / Getty Images)
Your brain on screens is not the same as your brain on books. Neuroscience now shows that when we swap pages for pixels, it’s not just a convenient change of format – we are altering how our brains process and retain information, with significant implications for readers of all ages.
Children with just one book at home are nearly twice as likely to meet literacy and numeracy standards as those without, regardless of income, education, or geography. Beyond developing basic literacy, physical books foster crucial parent-child interactions that build social-emotional and cognitive skills. Continue reading
Image Credit: (Flickr-Joe Shlabotnik, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
More and more Americans are learning less and less about the history of their own country.
The latest results from “The Nation’s Report Card” revealed that eighth-grade scores in American history continued to tumble, with fully 40% of these young people failing to meet even basic level standards. A 2024 survey of college students demonstrated equally dismal results, finding that many young men and women graduate from our institutions of higher learning “without even a rudimentary grasp of America’s history and political system.” Continue reading
Rhymes remain engraved in the mind, even when many other memories are gone. – Biba Kayewich
It would seem logical to begin an essay on nursery rhymes with childhood. But I want to begin instead with old age – or, to be more precise, the link between childhood and old age.
My wife’s grandmother recently passed away. A few days before her passing, my wife and 2-year-old daughter were visiting her and my wife’s mother, and somehow they came to the subject of traditional nursery rhymes. We’d been teaching some to my daughter. My little girl began to prattle away, reciting several rhymes for her grandmother and great-grandmother.
Then something remarkable happened. Continue reading
York, the enslaved man who accompanied Lewis and Clark on their history-making expedition, appears in the rightmost canoe in this 1905 painting by Charles Marion Russell. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons
Every summer, millions of Americans flock to the United States’ 63 national parks. Federally protected wilderness areas offer people the chance to explore a wide variety of terrain, from the vibrant canyons of the Southwest to the imposing mountains of the West Coast. Today, these public lands often represent an escape for Americans, 81 percent of whom live in cities. Some may agree with the naturalist John Muir, who believed that “wildness is a necessity” and national parks are “fountains of life.”
When Americans walk through dense forests or descend into gloomy caverns, they might recall explorers of the past who trekked across the country decades before Congress established Yellowstone as the U.S.’s first national park in 1872. Names like Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett and Kit Carson loom large in the popular imagination. But their stories are not the only ones. Continue reading
The following is a commentary which was posted on a column dated February 7, 2025 by a reader to the complete column which I have published on the Federal Observer entitled, The National Assessment of America’s Educational REGRESS. It was written by a retired teacher – but from a personal standpoint – I felt that what you are about to read – was far more POINT BLANK than the column itself. ~ Jeffrey Bennett ~ Editor
1. The teachers unions are strictly unions for the teachers. As a forced member of one of them years ago when I was a teacher you learn very quickly that they are organized to fight for more pay, better benefits, less work and very little accountability for the teachers. They care very little about students and achievement.
2. There are quite a few reasons for the continuing decline of education in America, and too many to write about here, but one of the main reasons is parental involvement and expectations. Too many parents invest little into their kids education and they expect the school to do everything and they have decided that they have nothing to do with their own children’s development. Once again, I could write about my experience in length, but space doesn’t allow it.
3. I left public school and went to private school because I couldn’t with good conscience teach the liberal dogma expected in the classroom. I taught for 29 years in a private Christian school and the expectations in the classroom for teachers, students, admin, and parents was remarkably different.
You ask why private school kids typically score higher on tests and learn at a more aggressive rate, it boils down to those expectations and following through with them.
There are many factors involved, but the unions do little except protect their own at the expense of the students they are expected to teach
William Wallace
February 7, 2025
Between July 1776 and June 1826, Jefferson recorded weather conditions in 19,000 observations across nearly 100 locations. Illustration by Meilan Solly / Images via Wikimedia Commons under public domain and the Jefferson Weather and Climate Records
The Declaration of Independence was off to the press, so Thomas Jefferson spent July 4, 1776, in search of a decent thermometer. By lunchtime, a breeze ruffled the red brick of Philadelphia’s Independence Hall. Rain clouds tumbled in. A southwest wind swung through the streets, setting tavern signs to wheel and squeak, but the skies held. The city’s brutal summer melted into mild. Jefferson, a citizen scientist who tracked the weather wherever he went, grew eager to get a reliable read.
On Second Street, Jefferson nipped into John Sparhawk’s busy London Book-Store. Crowned with a unicorn and mortar logo, the emporium boasted new medicines, literature and “an assortment of curious hardware.” Continue reading
The future will belong to the literate, not the un-literate, and the decline of reading will invariably be corrected by those at the forefront of the educational revolution sweeping America – and that is the rise of classical education.
“Reading by the Sea” (1910), by Vittorio Matteo Corcos
Some years ago I was discussing with a Benedictine abbot the trends he was experiencing among postulants and novices at the abbey. “Two of the most startling things” he observed “is their inability to sit still, and the their inability to curl up with a good book.”
The decline of reading has also been noticed among college educators. This article in The Atlantic reports that college professors are alarmed by the unwillingness and inability of their students to read a book. Continue reading
Introduction ~ Frédéric Bastiat is arguably one of the most important yet forgotten political economists of the eighteenth century. His defense of liberty, natural rights, private property rights, rule of law and justice make him a key figure in the development of classical liberal political thought. The purpose of this article is to analyze Bastiat’s insights into the nature of the rule of law and justice and how the perversion of law has been developed by Government authorities who in his own words, have used the power conferred to them by the electorate, to make use of “legal plunder” in order to pursue a private interests and advance a personal agenda in detriment of the individual in society. Continue reading
Exhausted and tired female student studying outdoors.
Tell most parents about the concept of school choice or Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) and they almost immediately jump on board. The idea of having the financial freedom to choose the education that best suits their children is a dream come true for many families, so it’s no surprise that consistently 70-75% of school parents support the idea.
But there are still a handful of naysayers, particularly those who fear that school choice will drain the public schools of necessary funds. After all, they argue, our country needs public education, and if we don’t have enough money for public schools, that essential component of our nation’s freedom and success will vanish.
The problem is, what many consider public schools today may not be the type of educational institutions that our nation’s founders envisioned. Continue reading
Today’s schools teach only the ugliest parts of US history, turning students off from civic engagement. – Shutterstock
If there’s any doubt about that, consider the following 2024 statewide assessments by the Minnesota Department of Education:
* Half (50.1%) of all public school students struggle to read
* Only 47% of 3rd-grade students are proficient in reading
* Only 52% of 10th-grade students are proficient in reading
* More than half (54%) of all public students are not proficient in math
* A mere 35% of 11th-grade students are proficient in math
There are roughly 870,000 students in Minnesota’s public school system. 435,000 struggle to read while nearly 470,000 are not proficient in math. Continue reading
Fred Rogers, known as Mr. Rogers, was the creator and host of the beloved children’s television show “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.” MovieStillsDB
From 1968 to 2001, tens of millions of Americans, most of them children, watched “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” on television. He enthralled the preschool set, puzzled many adults – was this guy for real? – and was so one-of-kind that comedians such as Eddie Murphy parodied him.
Behind his famous pair of sneakers and cardigan sweater, Fred Rogers (1928–2003) was a man of many talents and gifts. He was a musician and songwriter, composing most of the songs used on his show. Although he never headed up a church, he was an ordained Presbyterian minister and a lifelong reader of the Bible. He studied child psychology and was a pioneer in children’s television. Continue reading
Parents who learn alongside their children often share their enthusiasm as well. (LightField Studios/Shutterstock)
Being present and engaged with our children in everyday life is difficult. Our attention is being pulled in a thousand directions! Especially in the modern digital age, parents face more distractions and more demands on our limited time than ever before. It’s enough for parents to feel like throwing up our hands and giving up. Continue reading
Everything we learned was relevant. I learned how to type on an old school typewriter – by touch – and trained for speed. Carryover… I can type 100 words/minute on my iPad and laptop. This has served me well as technology has evolved. ~ Kelley Havens
Seeing how bad students perform today as a conglomerate, as a boomer, I am dismayed at how studies like math are taught today. Thank goodness My fifth grade teacher taught us mental math, and it’s sad to see a young cashier today manually try to give change when you give $3.27 for a $3.22 charge. Over reliance on technology is not a valid substitute for knowing how to do something and understand what is being done. Computers lead many today with a nose ring. ~ Rick Camacho
(Flickr-Wonder woman0731, CC BY 2.0)
If you’ve made it this far into the year and are still maintaining your New Year’s resolutions, congratulations!
But if you, like most of us, have already failed at these efforts of reform, take heart. There’s still time to make changes, even small ones. And my suggestion for that small change is that you start by choosing one book to read this year. Continue reading
US Philippine War cartoon
The following quote from an article published by Aroop Mukharji on October 1, 2023 in the International Security Journal, provides insight to President William McKinley’s handling of the Philippine Islands and military intervention in the late 1890’s. It reads,
“The meddler’s trap denotes a situation of self-entanglement, whereby a leader inadvertently creates a problem through military intervention, feels they can solve it, and values solving the new problem more because of the initial intervention. The inflated valuation is driven by a cognitive bias called the endowment effect, according to which individuals tend to overvalue goods they feel they own. A military intervention causes a feeling of ownership of the foreign territory, triggering the endowment effect.”
According to a simple definition from dictionary.com, “meddle” means “to involve oneself in a matter without right or invitation; interfere officiously and unwantedly.” Meddling defines many US foreign policy decisions where the “meddler’s trap” begins with President McKinley. Continue reading