Keeping our children entertained and educated indoors can be challenging in today’s fast-paced world. However, with some creativity and simple resources, parents can turn their homes into hubs of learning and fun. Metropolis.Cafe shares some indoor activities to keep your kids entertained, stimulate their minds, and spark their creativity… Continue reading
Get your children OUT of the System – NOW
Currently, more people seem to be waking up to the state of educational institutions. Complaints of indoctrination in schools by both parents and teachers have increased in public debate in recent years, with various discussions relating to topics such as critical race theory and gender ideology.
In addition to political indoctrination, issues such as the drop in reading and math proficiency and policies of prolonged school closures during covid lockdowns have also contributed to this dissatisfaction. As alternatives, more states have passed policies that allow school choice in 2023, and the numbers of children educated through homeschooling grew by more than 60 percent between 2020 and 2022… Continue reading
While digging through a folder of items belonging to my grandmother during her high school years, I came across several copies of Weekly News Review, a periodical full of news items and current events apparently geared toward young students… Continue reading
The scene in classrooms around the country is similar: Kids are on their phones, even when school rules forbid it
The School Boards and the individual schools continue to allow this. Too many parents “demand” that their children be allowed to keep the phones or else, “I can’t get hold of my child if I need them!” All the more reason to take charge and get your children OUT of the SYSTEM. ~ Editor
In California , a high school teacher complains that students watch Netflix on their phones during class. In Maryland, a chemistry teacher says students use gambling apps to place bets during the school day.
Around the country, educators say students routinely send Snapchat messages in class, listen to music and shop online, among countless other examples of how smartphones distract from teaching and learning. Continue reading
A tidal wave of discontent is beginning to wash over American education. DALL-E – Generated by Brandon Busteed
There is a growing discontent with American education. You can sense it swelling like a big wave, evidenced in a mix of troubling stats and trends from waning public perceptions of education to significant declines in enrollment and attendance. Students aren’t just talking about their discontent with education but walking it, too.
Enrollment in U.S. colleges and universities peaked in 2010 and has been on a steady decline since and more than a quarter of students in K-12 schools are now chronically absent. Certainly, many factors are at play here ranging from mental health issues and a pandemic hangover to technological disruption and a series of education policy debacles. But the ultimate culprit of our discontent may be the hardest of all to acknowledge and address. The brutal reality is that education isn’t exciting, engaging or relevant for far too many students. Continue reading
A child practices cursive writing exercises at home. After nearly dying out, cursive is making a comeback in public schools, with more than 20 states requiring it so far. (Wilfredo Lee/The Associated Press)
In 2016, California Democratic state Assemblymember Sharon Quirk-Silva sat with then-California Gov. Jerry Brown at an event where he signed baseball-type cards featuring the image of his dog, Colusa.
But many of the recipients of the cards couldn’t read his cursive signature, Quirk-Silva recalled, much to the Democratic governor’s dismay. “The governor asked me what I did” before becoming a legislator, she remembered. “I said I was a teacher, and he said, ‘You have to bring back cursive writing.’”
After seven years of trying, she finally succeeded. Continue reading
A Georgia teacher’s funeral saw all her loved ones turn up with backpacks filled with school supplies. It was Tammy Waddell’s final wish that those who come to pay their respects to her bring school supplies for needy students. The incredibly moving gesture has gone viral on the internet. Waddell died on June 9, 2018, succumbing to stomach cancer. Continue reading
How well do you remember your school maths? (Getty Images)
For some people, school brings back blissful memories while for others it conjures up painful visions of obscure homework questions night after night. The good news is that those days are over – unless you now have children yourself who want help with their latest homework assignment, of course. Continue reading
Teenagers’ mathematics and reading skills are in an unprecedented decline across dozens of countries and COVID school closures are only partly to be blamed, the OECD said on Tuesday in its latest survey of global learning standards. Continue reading
ARLINGTON, Va. (AP) — A Confederate memorial is to be removed from Arlington National Cemetery in northern Virginia in the coming days, part of the push to remove symbols that commemorate the Confederacy from military-related facilities, a cemetery official said Saturday.
The decision ignores a recent demand from more than 40 Republican congressmen that the Pentagon suspend efforts to dismantle and remove the monument from Arlington cemetery.
We moved to a good school district. The area was growing. Built for families like ours, all of the public schools in the area received “A” or “8/10” ratings. There were two very expensive and very fancy private schools in the area. It was an idyllic place to raise children.
In retrospect, we had a few frustrations with the public schools. Some of the curriculum seemed ridiculous, the math in particular. The apps used to communicate with the teachers were barely functional. It was somewhat difficult to track what the kids were learning, but the teachers had no complaints, so we didn’t make any either.
A mom who refuses to put her kids in school has revealed that she lets her baby play in and eat mud to help build a healthy immune system.
Taylor Moran and her three children, Hudson, five, Thompson, three, and Gus, one, previously hit the headlines after revealing their controversial lifestyle.
The Arkansas-based mom, 32, who doesn’t believe in the traditional schooling system, thinks that classes and homework ‘kills kids’ spirits’ and instead teaches them through exploring.
While she’s received some backlash for ‘unschooling’ her children, the former teacher believes it’s important to let kids be kids, no matter how dangerous that can be.
‘It’s important for them to take on risks like climbing trees, running barefoot or playing in mud,’ said Taylor, who has 73,000 followers on TikTok . Continue reading
More than three years after Covid-19 began, explanations abound for ongoing “learning loss” in schools. But these discussions often miss one of the most obvious explanations: outdated and ineffective instruction.
It’s been repeatedly shown that teacher quality is the primary thing affecting student achievement. Shouldn’t teacher quality be our primary concern? Given how far behind we’ve fallen in teacher quality, you would think so… Continue reading
In Maryland, a group seeks to have sexually explicit books removed from school libraries and is being portrayed as enemies of speech and enlightenment. Meanwhile, in California, parents believe they should be informed if their child shows signs of gender confusion while at school – an argument with which the state disagrees. Continue reading
Many parents choose homeschooling specifically because of the harms they believe are caused by public schooling.
Those of us who have homeschooled for years are accustomed to periodic calls for greater regulation of homeschooling. Whether it’s a Harvard professor or NPR, the hackneyed hollers to regulate homeschoolers remain unconvincing.
Joining the tired chorus is comedian John Oliver, who earlier this week hosted an episode of his “Last Week Tonight” HBO show calling for more homeschool regulation… Continue reading
It may be true, as the late, great Andrew Breitbart famously said, that “politics is downstream of culture.” But both are downstream of education. Nothing is more important to our families or to the future of our country than the moral, social, psychological, and intellectual development of our children.
In that regard, the pandemic lockdowns created quite a conundrum for traditionally conservative and “red-pilled” parents. They were on the front lines of the school reopening movement, demanding that children – who were at virtually no risk from covid – be allowed to attend school in person (and without masks). Yet once the public schools did reopen, those same parents found that their children were being exposed to a level of sexual and political indoctrination never before seen. Continue reading
She was surprised by her classmates’ lack of knowledge about Napoleon Bonaparte while discussing the Hogwarts house the conqueror would belong in.
While some of us loved to study history in school, many found the subject rather boring. Even though it teaches us about the significant impact past events still have on us, several children are not a fan of history. A little girl found this fact very surprising as she discovered that her classmates didn’t know about European history. Continue reading
If I could change one thing about my past teaching, it would be homework. As in, I would never assign it. I’m just not convinced that the positives outweigh the negatives, and I’m not alone. Many teachers (even entire districts) are getting on the no homework train. Not everyone agrees, and some of the most vocal opponents of homework bans are parents. In fact, many parents seem to positively associate homework with teacher and/or school quality. I have school-age kids, and I can understand the discomfort around uprooting tradition.
But since when has “that’s the way we’ve always done it” been a good reason to continue with a practice? Fellow parents, it’s time to take a long, hard look at homework. Continue reading
My wife and I recently met with the principal of the school our daughter attends to discuss her education future.
My daughter, who turns 12 in a few days, wants to go to a different school in the fall, largely because many of her friends – who are a year ahead of her – are graduating to new schools. (And also because her teacher, whom she adored, took a job in a different district.)
When we stepped into the principal’s office, she offered us chairs. She was warm, knowledgeable, and helpful, and I got the feeling she knows my daughter and wants what is best for her. I suspect my daughter will return to the school for one more year, but it’s a conversation we’ll have together. Continue reading
We moved to a good school district. The area was growing. Built for families like ours, all of the public schools in the area received “A” or “8/10” ratings. There were two very expensive and very fancy private schools in the area. It was an idyllic place to raise children.
In retrospect, we had a few frustrations with the public schools. Some of the curriculum seemed ridiculous, the math in particular. The apps used to communicate with the teachers were barely functional. It was somewhat difficult to track what the kids were learning, but the teachers had no complaints, so we didn’t make any either.
In March 2020, the world changed. The entire school experience became a series of apps on a screen. Classes met daily in the morning on Zoom. All of the curriculum was hastily added to Schoology during the initial two-week lockdown. I still want to call it School–ology. We became intimate partners with the printer and scanner. They were necessary to scan and upload completed assignments. Continue reading