Illustration by Britt Spencer

Sometimes we know what a novel’s last line will be from the beginning, we just don’t know that we knew. It’s a trick readers of Less – a recent comic novel of lost love and world travel by Andrew Sean Greer – will recall: Less’s last line is “Less!” Right Ho, Jeeves would end on the line, “Right ho, Jeeves,” if Jeeves didn’t then reply, “Very good, sir.” Trollope’s Can You Forgive Her? occupies its last lines with that titular concern—hoping that, all told, we can. And in the last line of Rabbit, Run Rabbit Angstrom (you guessed it) runs: “out of a kind of sweet panic growing lighter and quicker and quieter, he runs. Ah: runs. Runs.”

Last lines of novels may leave you with no idea of what’s next — or they may simply act as though there’s no end in sight. Some even seem to say something new with every rereading. Continue reading →

November 20, 2020 ~ Are you ready for this week’s absurdity? Here’s our Friday roll-up of the most ridiculous stories from around the world that are threats to your liberty, risks to your prosperity… and on occasion, inspiring poetic justice.

ACLU and Professor Team Up to Encourage Book Burnings

Abigail Shrier has committed the ultimate sin: she has a different opinion than the woke mob. And that is an unforgivable transgression. Continue reading →

With great dismay, I read the article on KTAR radio’s website by reporter Griselda Zetino on Oct. 26 entitled, “Drop in Arizona students enrolled in kindergarten raises concerns.”

As the superintendent of the Pendergast School District located in the West Valley cities of Avondale, Glendale and Phoenix, we, as educators, believe kindergarten is essential for our scholars to succeed. It is the foundation and lays the groundwork for a successful path to a quality educational experience for years to come.

Our school board and administration have provided full-day kindergarten in all of our 12 schools, paid for through our budget override. Since the state only funds half-day kindergarten, districts like ours need to find additional funding, and we are fortunate our community has supported this effort that has paid huge dividends. Continue reading →

Personalizing learning to kids’ unique academic needs and personal interests is a tough nut to crack, and that is especially the case within the confines of a Zoom square. That is one of the big takeaways from a recent national survey by the EdWeek Research Center.

Personalized learning, accelerated by advances in technology and new teaching approaches, has been gaining steam – and attracting criticism – for years. Just a year ago, nearly three-quarters of teachers had a favorable or neutral take on the strategy, according to EdWeek Research Center data, while critics continued to hammer the approach for overusing technology. Continue reading →

Institutions that shape public policy should beware of discrimination against traditional Christians.

Today’s culture wars have disturbing historical precedents, both in the U.S. and abroad, reflecting fundamentally contrasting approaches to managing the tradeoffs between unity and diversity and to the very role of the nation-state in a free society. This explains the recent uproar over Harvard Law professor Elizabeth Bartholet’s already influential 2020 Arizona Law Review article “Homeschooling: Parent rights absolutism vs. child rights to education and protection.” There she essentially advocates outlawing homeschooling, characterizing it as threatening both individual children and national unity, since homeschooling parents dare to impose their faiths on their children. Continue reading →

There’s been a lot of talk recently about the reading crisis in U.S. schools. Careful reporting has pinpointed a common problem: Many newly-trained and veteran teachers are not aware of the latest research on early reading instruction or comprehension. In 2016, NCTQ reviewed the syllabi of 820 teacher preparation programs across the country and found that only 39 percent of programs were teaching the basics of effective reading instruction. Four years later that number of programs has risen to 51 percent. While this signals a positive trend in adopting evidence-informed reading instruction, the fact remains that 49 percent of incoming teachers do not have the tools to effectively teach reading. Continue reading →

Perhaps the most successful myth that has been foisted off on a gullible American citizenry is that the education of our children, from kindergarten through high school, is the responsibility of the government. And implicit in that assumption is that the natural rights and duties of the family over the education of its offspring must in nearly all situations take a back seat, must be diminished and not interfere with the prior and dominant role of the state.

By and large, since the mid–20th century this assumption has been considered undebatable truth. No one, not even the most resolute conservatives, will question its basic veracity and the resulting need to continue funding, to shower with taxpayer dollars what has become the most expansive and most successful conquest of the revolutionary managerial state in its advance to complete control over our society. Continue reading →

We are in uncertain times indeed. Anyone with half a brain who researches their own information knows there are very dangerous paradigms in play that have historically had disastrous consequences and were catalysts to future chaos from their respective points in history. But there are many things going on that have NOT happened before. These are the things that I wish to talk about.

It is common knowledge that establishment media in any form is disinformation, regardless of the platform conveying the message. Let us start with the the birth of a child in today’s age. We are told that we must inject our children with many forms of chemicals because it will keep us safe from disease and sickness, even though it has been proven to have adverse effects. Studies of which are manipulated and distorted through MSM by being politicized to maintain the pharmaceutical profits and controls that the FDA is all to happy to enforce. Continue reading →

This image depicts the most banned books from public libraries and schools in America today.

ALL of those works were mandatory reading and book reports in early 1960’s. ~ Robert E. Lipscomb

“Colored people don’t like Little Black Sambo. Burn it. White people don’t feel good about Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Burn it. Someone’s written a book on tobacco and cancer of the lungs? The cigarette people are weeping? Burn the book. Serenity, Montag. Peace, Montag. Take your fight outside. Better yet, into the incinerator. Funerals are unhappy and pagan? Eliminate them, too. Five minutes after a person is dead he’s on his way to the Big Flue, the Incinerators serviced by helicopters all over the country. Ten minutes after death a man’s a speck of black dust. Let’s not quibble over individuals with memoriams. Forget them. Burn all, burn everything. Fire is bright and fire is clean.” – Ray Bradbury