Author Archives: Jeffrey

It Takes a Village to Take Your Child!

Time to sharpen the pitchforks.

Hillary Clinton’s 1996 groomer handbook It Takes a Village made the case that parents can’t do it alone; you need an active and involved community to raise your children for with you. “We all depend on other adults whom we know – from teachers to doctors to neighbors to pastors – and on those whom we may not – from police to firefighters to employers to media producers [!] to political leaders – to help us inform, support, or protect our children.”

Increasingly, however, the only danger the Village wants to protect your own kids from is YOU. Continue reading

America’s Adderall shortage deepens…

Now a SEVENTH company warns it’s running out of ADHD drug after sales rocketed during COVID

WARNING: The purpose of this post – is NOT to promote Adderall or any drug at all – but there were reasons that these drugs were given to our students as far back as the 1960’s. Back in those days, students were beginning to be labelled for not showing enough interest in what and how edjoocachun was being conducted… many students were showing signs of boredom and hence were being labelled as ADHD – Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Back in the day – schools were being awarded funding of about $450.00 per month – PER student – to label students as such – and the public school system was then able to hire “Special” counselors to deal with those type children. Do you believe that things have changed in America?

In my case, I became so ‘bored’ that by the end of the third week of my Senior year of High School – I walked out and chose to join the military. WHY? Because – yes – I had become so bored with the early days of the baby-sitting mentality. It was becoming ‘mind-control‘ and there was no longer a challenge in the form that many of my mentor’s had spent so many years teaching us. Mrs. King, Mrs. Otis (she was HOT) – and my main mentor – the teacher whom this site has been dedicated to – Donald Adair.

If the system is trying to con your students into more drugs – get them OUT – NOW! ~ Jeffrey Bennett, Editor
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ACT test scores drop to lowest in 30 years

PHOENIX — Scores on the ACT college admissions test by this year’s high school graduates hit their lowest point in more than 30 years.

The class of 2022’s average ACT composite score was 19.8 out of 36, marking the first time since 1991 that the average score was below 20. What’s more, an increasing number of high school students failed to meet any of the subject-area benchmarks set by the ACT — showing a decline in preparedness for college-level coursework. Continue reading

‘There’s only so far I can take them’

Why teachers give up on struggling students who don’t do their homework

Exhausted and tired female student studying outdoor.

Whenever “Gina,” a fifth grader at a suburban public school on the East Coast, did her math homework, she never had to worry about whether she could get help from her mom.

“I help her a lot with homework,” Gina’s mother, a married, mid-level manager for a health care company, explained to us during an interview for a study we did about how teachers view students who complete their homework versus those who do not. Continue reading

Confederate States of America – Message to Congress April 29, 1861 (Ratification of the Constitution)

MONTGOMERY, April 29, 1861

Gentlemen of the Congress: It is my pleasing duty to announce to you that the Constitution framed for the establishment of a permanent Government for the Confederate States has been ratified by conventions in each of those States to which it was re-ferred. To inaugurate the Government in its full proportions and upon its own substantial basis of the popular will, it only remains that elections should be held for the designation of the officers to administer it. There is every reason to believe that at no distant day other States, identified in political principles and community of interests with those which you represent, will join this Confederacy, giving to its typical constellation increased splendor, to its Government of free, equal, and sovereign States a wider sphere of usefulness, and to the friends of constitutional liberty a greater security for its harmonious and perpetual existence. It was not, however, for the purpose of making this announcement that I have deemed it my duty to convoke you at an earlier day than that fixed by yourselves for your meeting. The declaration of war made against this Confederacy by Abraham Lincoln, the President of the United States, in his proclamation issued on the 15th day of the present month, rendered it necessary, in my judgment, that you should convene at the earliest practicable moment to devise the measures necessary for the defense of the country. Continue reading

4 Unique Ideas for Educators Looking to Break Their Classroom Out of the Box

There are STILL some Teachers who give a damn! ~ Editor

It’s every teacher’s dream to implement a lesson plan that makes their students truly excited to learn. But in the busy life of an educator, it isn’t always easy to come up with fresh ideas that both engage and educate. If you feel like you’re in a teaching rut, you’re not alone. Here are a few ideas for shaking up your curriculum.

TAKE IT OUTSIDE
When kids are stuck inside for hours on end, just about everything gets to feel monotonous. Give them a different change of pace by taking your classroom outside. You can choose a lesson plan devoted to the outdoors, or simply adapt an existing lesson. For example if you’re an English teacher, have an outdoor reading session. In addition to the book you’re studying, students can practice reading aloud and learn to project their voices. Alternatively, science teachers can take students out during a windy day to discuss and experiment with the way sound travels, and how it can be affected by outside factors. Continue reading

The Triumphant Foreign Policy of Warren G. Harding

“I find a hundred thousand sorrows touching my heart, and there is a ringing in my ears, like an admonition eternal, an insistent call, ‘It must not be again! It must not be again!'” said a tearful President Warren G. Harding in May 1921, as 5,212 wooden caskets with the remains of American servicemen from France arrived on the docks in Hoboken, New Jersey.

Warren Gamaliel Harding was a kind and generous man with a heart, a president who loved people, adored animals, and hated violence, bloodshed, and war. Yet he is often ridiculed as America’s worst president by the nation’s “scholars.” Despite these erroneous opinions, he was a president of great achievements. He reversed a severe economic depression in short order, restored the nation’s domestic tranquility, pardoned war dissenters, and called for equality for black Americans. But perhaps his most overlooked achievements were in foreign affairs. Continue reading

Sjursen: Whose Empire?

The past is prologue. The stories we tell about ourselves and our forebears inform the sort of country we think we are and help determine public policy. As our previous president promised to “Make America great again,” this moment is an appropriate time to reconsider our past, look back at various eras of United States history and re-evaluate America’s origins. When, exactly, were we “great”?

“The Death of General Wolfe” (1770) by Benjamin West. In this scene from the French and Indian War, the artist—a colonist—depicts in the sky the light of British conquest overcoming the dark clouds of French rule in Canada.

If Americans have heard of the Seven Years’ War – a truly global struggle – it is most certainly under the title “The French and Indian War” (1754-1763). Popular images of the conflict are likely to stem from the 1992 movie “The Last of the Mohicans,” starring Daniel Day-Lewis. When Americans think of this war at all, or discuss it in school, they generally situate the central theater of the conflict in the northeast of North America. Yes, the savage Indians and their deceitful French allies were beaten back along the wooded frontier, allowing pacific English – soon to be American – farmers to live in peace. Ending in 1763, and saddling Britain with debt, the French and Indian War is often remembered as but a prelude to a coming colonial revolt over excessive taxation. Perhaps it was, but not in a direct, linear sense. Nothing historical is preordained. Chance and contingency ensure as much. Continue reading

Panel advises removal of Confederate statue at Arlington

If our national cannot memorialize fallen soldiers (Americans) in a cemetery, then where?

WASHINGTON (AP) — An independent commission is recommending that the Confederate Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery be dismantled and taken down, as part of its final report to Congress on the renaming of military bases and assets that commemorate the Confederacy.

Panel members on Tuesday rolled out the final list of ships, base roads, buildings and other items that they said should be renamed. But unlike the commission’s recommendations earlier this year laying out new names for nine Army bases, there were no suggested names for the roughly 1,100 assets across the military that bear Confederate names.

Retired Army Brig. Gen. Ty Seidule, vice-chair of the commission, said the final cost for all of its renaming recommendations will be $62,450,030. The total for the latest changes announced Tuesday is $40,957,729, and is included in that amount. Continue reading

Considering History: The Filibuster Has Long Been Used to Protect Power

While the filibuster started as a measure to protect the voices of a minority, more recently it has been used in quite literally the opposite way: to protect entrenched and powerful forces.

The most famous filibuster in American history is a fictional one. In Frank Capra’s 1939 film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Jimmy Stewart is Senator Jefferson Smith, a Washington outsider who has unwittingly been used and then betrayed by his late father’s friend, the powerful and corrupt Senator Joseph Paine (Claude Rains). In the stirring climax, Senator Smith filibusters for more than a full day, to the point of absolute exhaustion, in order to stand up for himself and challenge Paine’s crooked plans. Smith’s filibuster is a tribute to American ideals, but even more than that it represents an idealized vision of the filibuster itself, as a way in which the little guy can resist and eventually triumph over the Senate and U.S. government’s most powerful forces. Continue reading

Things To Dispense With For Educational Freedom

I can recall, thinking back years ago now, that my friend and Mentor. Pastor Ennio Cugini, had talked about what needed to be done to ensure real educational freedom in this country. He mentioned two specific things I still remember. He said that you needed to get rid of compulsory attendance laws in the various states. At one point, years ago, the state of Mississippi had done that, but somewhere along the line that got changed so that Mississippi became just like the other states.

I had never heard of anyone else that advocated that except Pastor Cugini. He was ahead of his time, as he was on many other issues. It was and still is a fact that the majority of the property tax in most states goes to find the public schools. Continue reading

Were the Colonists Patriots or Insurgents?

A British depiction of Bostonians tarring and feathering a British customs officer, John Malcolm, several weeks after the Boston Tea Party. The drawing was made by Philip Dawe in late 1774.

Who shall write the history of the American Revolution?” John Adams once asked. “Who can write it? Who will ever be able to write it?”

“Nobody,” Thomas Jefferson replied. “The life and soul of history must forever remain unknown.”
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Winter ~ The Rise and Fall of Vibes-Based Literacy

Is a controversial curriculum, entrenched in New York City’s public schools for two decades, finally coming undone?

Illustration by Kiel Danger Mutschelknaus

In the first spring of the pandemic, as families across the country were acclimating to remote learning and countless other upheavals, I sat down on the living-room sofa with my daughter, who was in kindergarten, to go over a daily item on her academic schedule called Reading Workshop. She had selected a beginner-level book about the alliterative habitués of a back-yard garden: birds and butterflies, cats and caterpillars. Her decoding skills, at that stage, were limited to the starting letter of each word, and all else was hurried guesswork – pointing at “butterfly,” she might ask, “Bird?” and start to turn the page. I coaxed her to look at how the letters worked together, to sound them out, starting by taking apart the first few phonemes: bh-uh-tih, butt. She didn’t appear to be familiar with this approach. She seemed to find it frankly outrageous. Continue reading

The most interesting woman that ever lived…

An international object of desire, Mata Hari was a dancer, a spy, and everyone who knows about her casts her in a different light. She’s been described as a courtesan, a feminist, an espionage wannabe, and a victim of the military’s need to create an enemy. Regardless of how she was seen at the time, Mata Hari had a need to live a life constantly on fire. She threw herself towards excitement, which was her undoing in the end. Ted Brandsen, the choreographer and the director of the National Ballet explained:

What fascinated us is the story of a woman with an incredible lust for life and a powerful instinct to survive, and to reinvent herself and to transform herself. She had a lot of horrible things happen to her and she managed to somehow give a spin to it and find her way out.
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Hornberger: The CIA Versus the Kennedys

Owing to the many federal records that have been released over the years relating to the Kennedy assassination, especially through the efforts of the Assassination Records Review Board in the 1990s, many Americans are now aware of the war that was being waged between President Kennedy and the CIA throughout his presidency. The details of this war are set forth in FFF’s book JFK’s War with the National Security Establishment: Why Kennedy Was Assassinated by Douglas Horne.

In an interview conducted by Former Congressman Ron Paul and his colleague Dan McAdams, Robert Kennedy Jr., which focused in part on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, who was Kennedy Jr.’s uncle and revealed a fascinating aspect of this war with which I was unfamiliar. He stated that the deep animosity that the CIA had for the Kennedy family actually stretched back to something the family patriarch, Joseph P. Kennedy, did in the 1950s that incurred the wrath of Allen Dulles, the head of the CIA. Continue reading

GOOD NEWS TODAY: Parents Are Dropping Kids Out of Public School

After two years of lockdowns, masking, and related wrongs, many parents are awakening to the prospect of school choice.

It’s that time of year again… as families return from vacations, they start thinking about sending their kids back to school (if they’re not back already). But in the post-pandemic era, there’s an increasing likelihood that some parents aren’t sending their children back to the same school. In particular, data suggest that many parents have had enough with public school education altogether.

“In the past two years, a mass exodus of over 1.2 million students has left the public school system as parents seek alternative education routes, such as public charter schools, private schools, and homeschooling,” writes Marjorie Jackson at The Daily Signal. Jackson adds that some parents “believed the school’s handling of the pandemic was unsatisfactory, due to lockdowns, which inconvenienced many families, as well as masking and vaccination policies. Others were unhappy after taking a closer look at their local public school curriculum and wanted more say in what their children were learning.” Continue reading

August 26,1794: George Washington writes to Henry Lee

The Founding of the united States: On THIS day in history…

President George Washington writes to Henry “Light Horse Harry” Lee, Virginia’s governor and a former general, regarding the Whiskey Rebellion, an insurrection that was the first great test of Washington’s authority as president of the United States. In the letter, Washington declared that he had no choice but to act to subdue the “insurgents,” fearing they would otherwise “shake the government to its foundation. Continue reading

Public School Parents Are Voting With Their Feet

In the post-COVID era, parents are increasingly taking their kids out of the school systems that damaged them.

It will take many years to understand the scope and unwind the damage that COVID wrought on our youngest generation, today’s schoolchildren. No, not the damage caused by the disease itself. Kids have proven remarkably resilient to it — far more so than adults. No, the damage we’re talking about is that which was done to our children by the educational bureaucracy that supposedly has their best interests at heart. Continue reading

Loudon: Twenty Reasons why Children Need to Learn…

…Discipline, Thinking Skills, Motivation, and Get Good Grades in School

Parents, Grandparents, and teachers should do everything they can to inspire and teach children to exercise their brains and get good grades in school. There are many reasons why children need help and inspiration to be taught thinking exercises, creativity, curiosity, and learning. There is an increasing need to face the increasing obstacles that will need to be overcome as they get older. Many parents, grandparents, and schools are lacking in preparing children for the many thinking and learning skills that create a curious and mentally active mind. A big challenge awaits them as they face technology and political problems as they got older.

The U.S. is not keeping up with the learning knowledge of other nations. Education is the key to motivation, learning skills, and technology which creates a higher education and greater paths that they can choose from in their future. Continue reading