The Republican-led House voted to pass its Parents’ Bill of Rights on Friday with zero Democrat votes after Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called it ‘fascist.’ The controversial bill, which gives parents a stronger role in what’s taught in public schools, is not expected to be taken up by the Democratic-majority Senate.
Critics denounce the legislation saying it has led to book bans, restrictions aimed at transgender students and unhinged board meetings nationwide. Continue reading
Depressed boy sitting on floor & holding his head. Frustrated with exam pressure.
Articles about the horrible quality (on purpose) of what passes for education in public schools have become so prevalent that people now tend to take this inferior education for granted and so are tempted to just ignore it.
We recently were informed that some schools are now ending their honors programs so they can promote “equity” (racism). It seems that lots of the white kids do well in the honors programs so that now must cease and we must begin to enforce a stultifying conformity, a “one size fits all” program they have mislabeled as “equity,” The concept of “equity” has trumped any idea of real education–but, then, real education has not existed in public schools for generations anyway. Continue reading
A Louisville, Ky., classroom sits empty in January 2022, during a COVID surge driven by the omicron variant. Students lost the routine of going to school during the pandemic, and now many are struggling to get back in the habit. ~ Jon Cherry/Getty Images
When this school year began, Issac Moreno just couldn’t get himself to go. During the pandemic, he’d gotten used to learning from his family’s home in Los Angeles. Then, last fall, he started junior high, five days a week, in person.
“It was a lot,” he says. Continue reading
Last week, students at small Christian college in Kentucky gathered for their regular Wednesday chapel service. Ten days later, it has not ended. People from around the country and the world continue to join in. No matter your religion or lack thereof, THIS is an exceptional happening. More exceptional even, is that this spirit has spread to other colleges and universities. Continue reading
There is no substitute for consistent interaction between a little one and his or her mom and dad. The two greatest gifts parents can give their kids are the knowledge of Jesus Christ and their time.
Any tool can be misused. A hammer can construct or kill. An electrical wire can give instant light or, if mishandled, bring sudden death.
So it is with computers and televisions. They are valuable and helpful but also potentially dangerous. So, when children use “screens,” parents need to be extra vigilant. One reason is the predatory nature of some of the internet’s more evil components, like pornography or horribly violent images, and the rot that’s on both network and cable TV. Continue reading
Everywhere in education, you see incentives at work. The incentives, though, are so far removed from the actual goals of education that they produce perverse results.
Goodhart’s Law is usually stated, “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” Economics textbooks often use the allegory of a maker of nails, who receives word that his measure of success at producing nails will be based on the number of nails made. He retools his factory, adjusts his resource use, and produces as many nails as possible, even though many are too thin, or small, or bent to use. When his higher-ups decide to measure productivity on the weight of nails, instead, he makes only a few very large nails, too heavy to be used. Once your incentives are aligned in service of a particular metric, in other words, that metric isn’t an objective measure anymore. Continue reading
In the wake of COVID-19, people now overwhelmingly believe that the education system’s broader purpose needs to be rethought. This begins with a shift away from standardized testing, college prep and a one-size-fits-all model and toward personalized curricula, practical skills and subject mastery.
A new Purpose of Education Index survey released by the Massachusetts-based national think tank Populace found a radical shift in the way most of us view education and what our children should be getting out of it. Continue reading
Learning doesn’t have to stop when the school bell rings. Some of the best learning takes place outside of the classroom. So, if your child is struggling with a particular subject, or if you want to expand their knowledge beyond what they’re learning in class, you can do so without spending a lot of money or signing up for extracurricular activities. Continue reading
Washington Crossing the Delaware by Emanuel Leutze
Tyranny will not topple America – not on my watch, and not on yours. We will stay together as George Washington and his worn-out soldiers did 246 years ago on Christmas Day in 1776 when they set out across the frozen Delaware River to fight for freedom. Victory or death were the options that lay ahead for them on that frigid winter day. Continue reading
When Frances E. Anderson saw the latest math scores for America’s fourth- and eighth-graders, she was hardly surprised that they had dropped. Until recently – including the period of remote instruction during the pandemic – Anderson taught high school math to students at all levels.“ Now she is a researcher seeking to change how people understand children’s math ability. In the following Q&A, Anderson explains what makes some kids “good” at math and what it will take to catch up those who have fallen behind.
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A long long time ago, I can still remember…
And the three men I admire mostThe Father, Son, and the Holy GhostThey caught the last train for the coastThe day the music died…
Most fairy tales begin with the following words; ‘Once upon a time…’ or ‘A long, long time ago…’ Even Hollywood has followed in that tradition, with movies like Star Wars beginning with the screen crawl that reads, “A long time ago, in a galaxy far away…” Although this tale does not begin in the outer reaches of the galaxy, it does begin a long time ago; in 1776 to be exact. Continue reading
“All the time – such is the tragi-comedy of our situationwe continue to clamour for those very qualities we are rendering impossible… In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise.. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.” ~ C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man
There will come a time in the not-so-distant future when the very act of thinking for ourselves is not just outlawed but unthinkable. Continue reading
An even mix of proponents and opponents to teaching Critical Race Theory are in attendance as the Placentia Yorba Linda School Board discusses a proposed resolution to ban it from being taught in schools. November 2021 Robert Gauthier-Los Angeles Times
As kids return to school, the focus on math, science, and reading has been sidelined by campaigns mounted in the name of “parents’ rights.” Advocates are demanding that books be banned from curricula and school libraries, targeting teachers and administrators based on viewpoints, and fighting for control of education boards. There is no question that parents deserve a say in shaping their children’s educations; they have moral and legal responsibility for their children, and the freedom to make fundamental decisions for their families. But the rallying cry of “parents’ rights” is being wielded to do far more than give parents their rightful voice. It is turning public schools into political battlegrounds, fracturing communities, and diverting time and energy away from teaching and learning. Continue reading
The average American child fell behind in math by six months due to COVID school closures, with students in the nation’s poorest areas behind two-and-a-half years. Continue reading
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
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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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
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
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
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