Although homeschool anecdotes are a dime a dozen, hardcore statistics on this emerging education trend are often few and far between.
But on Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Education released the latest official numbers on homeschooling in America. Not surprisingly, they continue to rise. Continue reading
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (WCMH) – Should students get credit for work not handed in?
One Florida teacher said no, and took a stand, and now she’s been fired for that move. Continue reading
…and that’s showing up in their friendships
I burst out laughing the other day while reading a friend’s Facebook status. He explained that he and his two grade school sons were watching Anne of Green Gables when they came to the part where Anne and Diana have a conversation while standing on a cliff overlooking the sea. The youngest son suddenly blurted out, “Anne better watch out, Diana might push her off the cliff.” Continue reading
Image Credit: Pexels/Mohamed Abdelgaffar
A few years ago, I took a summer job working at a local school’s childcare program. I was placed with a group of students grades four through eight. I had a great experience, but I will admit it was not easy. Some of the children had me positively pulling out my hair. I’m not alone in this – teachers, parents, and childcare providers across the board are increasingly concerned about children misbehaving. Continue reading
Several local members of a Confederate veterans group say public schools are not properly educating students on Civil War history, and the group wants that to change.
The Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) approached the Catawba County Board of Education on Monday to ask why high school bands did not take part in the Soldiers Reunion Parade. That conversation evolved into a discussion of how the Civil War is taught in schools. Continue reading
Question: If you could go back in time and spend one hour in conversation with 10 people – each one separately and privately – whom would you choose?
My list isn’t exactly the same from one day to the next, but at least a couple of the same names are always on it, without fail. One of them is Marcus Tullius Cicero. He was the greatest citizen of the greatest ancient civilization, Rome. He was its most eloquent orator and its most distinguished man of letters. He was elected to its highest office as well as most of the lesser ones that were of any importance. More than anyone else, Cicero introduced to Rome the best ideas of the Greeks. Continue reading
Gen. Robert E. Lee
Robert E. Lee remains one of the most polarizing figures of the Civil War (or War Between the States). Debates and opinions abound in newspapers, books, and social media as to whether Lee is a person to be admired or condemned. Many of the anti-Lee arguments center on his resignation from the U.S. Army to fight for the Confederacy, an act many view as an inexcusable violation of his oath as a West Point graduate and army officer.
Along those lines, surely an exemplary officer and general like Dwight D. Eisenhower would also regard Lee as a traitor, would he not? Basically, that was the question asked of then President Eisenhower in August 1960. During the Republican National Convention of that year, Eisenhower mentioned that he kept a picture of Robert E. Lee in his office. That prompted a dentist from New York to send the following letter to the White House: Continue reading
Since No Child Left Behind first rumbled onto the scene, the use of a Big Standardized Test to drive accountability and measure success has been a fundamental piece of education reform. But recently, some education reform stalwarts are beginning to express doubts.
This may not be the key to a better tomorrow. (Getty Royalty Free)
There are plenty of reasons to doubt the validity of the Big Standardized Test, be it PARCC or SBA or whatever your state is using these days. After almost two decades of its use, we’ve raised an entire generation of students around the notion of test-based accountability, and yet the fruits of that seem…. well, elusive. Where are the waves of students now arriving on college campuses super-prepared? Where are the businesses proclaiming that today’s grads are the most awesome in history? Where is the increase in citizens with great-paying jobs? Where are any visible signs that the test-based accountability system has worked? Continue reading
The General Lee statue at the heart of the Charlottesville riots. | Wikimedia Commons
At Hillsdale, the beginning of each semester is typically characterized by calculating the minimum amount of sleep required to function, stressing over the looming workload ahead, and raving over the prospect of reading Dante or Virgil with their favorite professors. But not for students at the University of North Carolina, who, on Aug. 20, seized their last night of freedom to help topple Silent Sam, a confederate statue erected on UNC’s Chapel Hill campus. Continue reading
Whatever historians might claim, Andrew Jackson feared and despised imperialism as the inevitable death of the republic. He cherished expansion as normal, but he considered imperialism a perversion of expansion and republicanism. To our modern ears, this might sound like a very fine distinction, but to Jackson and the frontier settlers of his day, the distinction proved immense. Equally important, Jackson harbored suspicions about the United States employing a standing army throughout the entirety of his adult life. When a choice must be made, he defended the right of militias against standing armies. Continue reading
Stress levels are sky-rocketing among every age group, and students adjusting to their first year of college may be particularly vulnerable.
All around the world, young adults making their first foray into college and the real world are struggling with depression, anxiety and other mental health disorders
Schools have taken steps to meet the psychological needs of their student body, but a far smaller fraction of the students utilize on-campus counseling services, but that hasn’t curbed rising rates of mental health disorders among students around the world, according to the new Columbia University study. Continue reading
How San Antonio handles the Alamo Plaza redevelopment will say a lot about what kind of city it wants to become.
San Antonio may have been founded in 1718, but it was a thirteen-day siege in 1836 that gave the city its second name: the Alamo City.
More than 1.5 million people visit the Alamo every year, and far too many leave underwhelmed. There’s a lack of interpretive signage, no visitors center, and no presentation of the larger battlefield and the events that unfolded there. Instead, the Alamo is under siege once again, this time by commerce and schlock. The plaza has all the gravitas of a saloon, with noisy, carnival-like surroundings that include an Odditorium, Haunted Adventure, Guinness World Records Museum, and Tomb Rider 3D, all courtesy of Ripley’s Believe It or Not. All that’s missing is a midway and corny dogs. Continue reading
The earth’s about to be destroyed, and you’ve got a spaceship that can carry people to another planet. The problem is, you can only take eight passengers and you’ve got a list of twelve. Four will have to be left behind to die. Which eight do you take?
This inane scenario was recently a classroom “lesson” at a middle school in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. Somehow it’s supposed to “educate” children and prepare them for adult life.
Meanwhile, down in Atlanta, the principal of a charter school decided the Pledge of Allegiance ought to be dropped, and replaced by some kind of “oath” to the “global society”, whatever the devil that is.
Your school tax dollars at work! Continue reading
At the start of the school year teachers and homeschoolers plan out their year, listing fun math projects, great sweeps of history to share, music to sing and stories to tell. As we look ahead to the fall we anticipate the dimming of the light, perhaps an autumn gale or two and weather growing ever colder. This turning of the year is a time to summon the warmth of courage as the cold increases and the light of goodness as the sun grows dimmer.
Here is a story that I wrote a few years ago for Martinmas, a November festival of light and goodness celebrated in Waldorf Schools. It’s called The Children of the Light and it’s a back to school gift for anyone interested in it. It is a story about a family that tends a lighthouse and the goodness of children at a challenging time. Continue reading
Now it has begun–the total censorship of conservative, pro-Southern, patriotic sites off the internet. Trump’s comments about censorship notwithstanding, the Deep State has begun a purge on the internet of anything they don’t agree with. They totally ignore Trump’s comments about checking into it if censorship prevails. Maybe they are really not afraid of what he can or will do. That fact alone should tell you something. You have to wonder what their plans for Trump are (nothing good, that’s for sure!) in the days preceding the mid-terms.
Alex Jones has been banned off lots of places in the internet, Twitter among them, but they can’t ban me off Twitter because I don’t use it. However, they are in the process of seeking to render my blog spots all but useless. I don’t know how many of you will receive this, probably not all on my list, but here goes anyway. Maybe some who do get it can pass it on to their lists. Continue reading
Harper’s Magazine, 1933 ~ Glancing out of the window, I can see the subject–and eventual victim–of this inquiry, dangerously perched in the crotch of an old chestnut tree, about fifteen feet above the ground. Should I rush out and tell him to get down? Or should I let him be, hoping that he won’t climb any higher, or, if he does climb any higher, hoping that he will not fall?
It is probably all right, so I shall not bother him. Tree climbing is one of the things he has learned all by himself. There aren’t many things he will have the fun of learning all by himself. Most of the things he is going to learn will be hammered into him–Latin and history and grammar and mathematics up to the binomial theorem.
I’m not worried about this progress up the ladder from high school or boarding school to college and from college to law school or medical school. It seems incredible that the young biped now perched in the chestnut tree will someday, without stupendous effort on my part or on his, eventually graduate from college or even become a Ph.D.–but he will almost certainly. The strictly educational side of his life, once he gets his hands firmly on the lowest rung of that ancient ladder, will take care of itself. Continue reading
It has been forty four years ago this month, if my timeline is correct, that government (public) schools reopened in Kanawha County, West Virginia to a very slim group of students. Most of the students were kept at home by parents who had major (and understandable) problems with the textbooks their kids were supposed to use that year and they were not about to subject their kids to what many of them felt were pornographic texts.
I’ve seen copies of what was in some of the books. The parents were right.
This whole situation set off a major struggle over who really controlled what passes for public education in this country–and just to give you a subtle hint–it ain’t the parents. Even with Trump’s new education secretary, it still ain’t the parents. A public school system run by the state will never be under the control of the parents, no matter what you may hear at the parent-teacher meetings. Continue reading
Restricting teens’ rights is causing massive mental health issues and the likely cause of the surge in teen suicide
A woman is facing 30 days in jail because her son missed too many days of school. His 82% attendance record wasn’t enough to keep her out of court.
Just let it sink in that you can be put in a cage if the state doesn’t have control over your child for a certain number of days each year. Continue reading
The report recommends that pediatricians take a more active role in explaining to parents the value of childhood play.
Kids need to play. It seems like an obvious statement, as central to childhood as eating peanut butter-and-jelly sandwiches and chasing fireflies. For generations, parents have known that a play-filled childhood is essential for healthy physical and mental development. They didn’t need to read the latest research findings on play. They didn’t need experts to tell them it’s important. They just knew it. Kids are designed by nature to play, and parents have generally let them. Continue reading
The Stamp Act, pamphlet, published in London, 1765. (Gilder Lehrman Collection)
When do you think the American Revolution began? Was it with the signing of the Declaration of Independence; was it with the opening skirmish at Lexington and Concord? I think it became inevitability the moment the Stamp Act was passed in 1765. This one small tax on printed goods was the first in a long train of events which culminated in the Colonies deciding they didn’t want to be governed by British rule anymore.
Therefore, if the Stamp Act was the opening act of the American Revolution, what would you say was the opening act of the so-called Civil War? I may be alone in thinking this, but I think that the implementation of the plan for a government, as outlined by the Constitution, was the first of many events that eventually led to the South seeking its independence from the system of government they had helped bring to life just 70 some odd years earlier. I’ll get to that in more detail in a moment, but for the time being I’d like to discuss another issue that is of concern to me. Continue reading