“War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength.” ~ George Orwell, 1984

There are a great many things that people take for granted. For instance, people flip a switch and expect the lights to come on, or turn on the tap and see water coming out of the spout. People also expect to go to the grocery store and see row after row of goods to purchase. There are a lot of things people take for granted, but if I were to ask people what it is that they take for granted I’m betting that I wouldn’t hear anyone say books. Continue reading →

Let’s use this opportunity to address some of the chronic ones we’re seeing in government-supplied K-12 schooling.

There’s no doubt that the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted childhood education. In many countries, kids have physically returned to school. In others, schools were never closed. Yet in the United States, many public schools have been closed since March, yielding disastrous results for millions of kids. While scientific data say it’s safe to bring them back, incentives in the school systems are such that many kids continue to be locked up at home rather than receiving a proper education.

A school’s main role is to educate children. They can feed low-income children and supply day care for working parents, but these benefits are secondary to providing a quality education to all enrolled children. Continue reading →

No my friends… contrary to what the image shows… this is NOT a rewrite of the old 1986 Rodney Dangerfield movie.

I have discovered manuscripts which I had begun to prepare some years ago for the publication of my third book of the series, AMERICA: The Grand Illusion. I chose to no longer publish the series of books, as I felt that what we had to share was greater used by those who I was privileged to serve here – at the Metropolis Café. Many of the new historical posts can be found in the category of Mr. Adair’s Classroom, but also you will find the links with brief introduction through Words & Deeds, within their respective date categories.

…and so we begin to add to our library once more.

When I was a kid growing up in the Soviet Union, it was essentially forbidden to make a better life for yourself.

You couldn’t just decide to go back to school, start a business, or switch careers to a thriving new industry, and it didn’t matter how hard you worked – you were most likely NEVER going to be promoted. All the top jobs in the Soviet Union were reserved for party loyalists. Continue reading →

A DC-area school board votes to rename schools named for Thomas Jefferson and George Mason.

In the Washington, DC, suburb of Falls Church, Virginia, the local school board recently unanimously voted to rename Thomas Jefferson Elementary School and George Mason High School because of what have become all too frequent “woke” considerations. As one board member explained, “Our schools must be places where all students, staff, and community members feel safe, supported, and inspired.” The board member forgot to mention that such sentiments apply to everyone except those who hold conservative views on free speech and love this nation, but we digress. The names of two men whose incredible contributions to human history included crafting the founding documents of the greatest nation on earth but who also owned slaves clearly don’t comport with the sensibilities of modern social justice warriors. Continue reading →

You can’t see it but it’s everywhere. WiFi connects computers to the internet, no cords required. Now kids are using it in wireless classrooms across the country. But is it an invisible danger? Carolyn Jarvis investigates why some parents say wifi in schools is making our kids sick…

…and yet with Homeschooling – forced (Corona-19) or otherwise – our children are all affected – as are we. ~ Ed.

Teacher’s, Parents and Students… WAKE UP!

The delusional madness of forcing children to wear face masks blatantly ignores expert warnings: “The child needs the brain to learn, and the brain needs oxygen to function. We don’t need a clinical study for that. This is simple, indisputable physiology.”

This well-known German neurologist and neurophysiologist, Dr. Margarite Griesz-Brisson, warns of a tsunami of dementia years down the road because of oxygen deprivation from wearing masks today. Are you willing to risk your brain to scientifically unfounded, politically-motivated mandates. ~ Editor

Dr. Margarite Griesz-Brisson MD, PhD is a Consultant Neurologist and Neurophysiologist with a PhD in Pharmacology, with special interest in neurotoxicology, environmental medicine, neuroregeneration and neuroplasticity. This is what she has to say about facemasks and their effects on our brains:

“The reinhalation of our exhaled air will without a doubt create oxygen deficiency and a flooding of carbon dioxide. We know that the human brain is very sensitive to oxygen deprivation. There are nerve cells for example in the hippocampus that can’t be longer than 3 minutes without oxygen – they cannot survive. Read full story…

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 →