Mary McCarthy and Lillian Hellman, both famous literary left-wingers, had a famous feud. McCarthy dared to proclaim that Hellman was a Truly Big Liar.
When Dick Cavett asked (in 1979) what was so “dishonest” about Hellman, McCarthy snapped, “Everything. I once said in an interview that every word she writes is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the.'”
These entertaining charges make more sense when we consider that Lillian Hellman was “an ardent leftist,” according to leftist PBS. Continue reading
Some years back, I decided I had to quit the teaching profession to which I had dedicated half my life. The modern academy, I felt, was so far gone that restoration was no longer possible. Indeed, I now believe that complete collapse is the only hope for the future, but as Woody Allen said about death, I’d rather not be there when it happens.
Three reasons determined my course of action. For one thing, administration had come to deal less with academic issues and more with rules of conduct and punitive codes of behavior, as if it were a policing body rather than an arm of the teaching profession. Continue reading
“A nation that is ignorant of its past, is a nation that is ripe for deception and manipulation. Therefore, it is not what happened, but rather what people believe happened which determines the present actions of a nation.” (From the DVD Warriors of Honor)
I know I’ve repeated this quote before, but I’m going to keep repeating it until people take it to heart. In 1822 James Madison wrote the following in a letter to W.T. Barry, “Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.” However, knowledge alone is not enough if it is not put to use. Is it enough to know that fire is hot if you do not utilize that knowledge by not putting your hand into a fire? As von Goethe said, “Knowing is not enough, we must apply.” Continue reading
“44% of Millennials would prefer to live under a socialist system than a capitalist one. This is more than a little puzzling at a time when socialism has proved a catastrophic failure in its remaining strongholds in Venezuela, North Korea and Cuba.“
The notion of academic rigor has fallen on evil times. In a typical instance of continuing epistemic degradation, Donna Riley, of Purdue University’s School of Engineering Education, insists that rigor must be eliminated since rigor is a “dirty deed” fraught with “exclusionary implications for marginalized groups and marginalized ways of knowing.” It matters little, apparently, if our bridges collapse so long as “men of color and women, students with disabilities, LGBTQ+ people, first-generation and low-income students” are welcomed into the new holistic community defined by “other ways of knowing” – whatever these may be. Similarly, Rochelle Gutierrez, of the University of Illinois, fears that algebra, geometry, and math perpetuate white male privilege and discriminate against minorities. Indeed, minority under-performance is often disguised as a form of “mismatching” – that is, the fault lies with the institution for being beyond the student’s intellectual means. Clearly, the dire situation we are in can only deteriorate as the concept of excellence bites the dust and students are deliberately coaxed into pre-planned intellectual darkness. Continue reading
Will the growing demand for multilingual early-childhood programs push out the students these programs were designed to serve?
Lucy Nicholson ~ Reuters
Stephanie Lugardo’s second-grade classroom at Academia Antonia Alonso in Wilmington, Delaware, is bubbling. Students chatter with one another as they work, smiling and joking and wiggling in and out of their chairs. Sure—it’s an elementary-school classroom. It’s expected to exude the earnest joy of children growing into themselves. But this one is different. Smiles break out on an array of faces, and the chatter spills out in English and Spanish.
Continue reading
I have been in school for more than 40 years. First preschool, kindergarten, elementary school, junior high, and high school. Then a bachelor’s degree at UC Berkeley, followed by a doctoral program at Princeton. The next step was what you could call my first “real” job—as an economics professor at George Mason University.
Thanks to tenure, I have a dream job for life. Personally, I have no reason to lash out at our system of higher education. Yet a lifetime of experience, plus a quarter century of reading and reflection, has convinced me that it is a big waste of time and money. When politicians vow to send more Americans to college, I can’t help gasping, “Why? You want us to waste even more?” Continue reading
America is known as the “land of the free.”
Yet, technically, it forces its children to receive some type of formal education.
Compulsory education laws have been a part of the American Republic for a little over 150 years (they also existed in some Puritan settlements in colonial America). In all states, children between the ages of 6-17 (which varies by state) who have not been enrolled in a private school or completed the necessary paperwork and requirements to homeschool must be enrolled in a public school. Continue reading
Publisher’s NOTE: The following column relates to the High school that my wife teaches for. She has not stopped working since retirement six years ago – or is it seven now? She ris more than familiar with the subject a matter and personal at the heart of what you are about to read. Arizona has a tremendous shortage of teachers – for reasons we have stated here before – maybe the following is part of the answer. ~ J.B.
Adrianne Penullar, photo by Derek Hall
As students file in to Adrianne Penullar’s general chemistry class at Westview High School, their first task is relinquishing their phones. Continue reading
Many millennials embrace Marxism. So do their parents and grandparents
Karl Marx
From the millennials’ abilities will supposedly flow the wherewithal to fund “needs”: their elders‘ entitlements, debt, and ever-expanding blob of a government. Horror of horrors, polls and studies indicate that many millennials are embracing Marxism: they want somebody to fund their “needs”! Where did they learn this nonsense?
It must be those left-wing, snowflake sanctuary, social justice warrior haven, gender-bending colleges and their washed up Marxist professors. This is America, where everyone stands on their own two feet. That’s not how they were reared! Continue reading
Empty Classroom In Elementary School. (Photo By: Education Images/UIG via Getty Images)
Teachers in traditional district schools are three times as likely to be chronically absent from the classroom as those in charter schools, meaning they are gone for more than 10 days in a typical 180-day school year, a new research paper has found. Continue reading
Evergreen State College’s outcast professors Heather Heying and Bret Weinstein describe how postmodern leftist intolerance is killing higher education.
At colleges and universities all over the country, students are protesting in increasingly virulent and sometimes violent ways. They demand safe spaces and trigger warnings, shouting down those with whom they disagree. It has become rote for outsiders to claim that the inmates are running the asylum; that this is analogous to Mao’s Red Guard, Germany’s brown shirts, the French Revolution’s Jacobins; and, when those being attacked are politically “left” themselves, that the Left is eating its own. These stories seem to validate every fantasy the Right ever had about the Left.
As two professors who recently resigned from positions at a college we loved, and who have always been on the progressive-left end of the political spectrum, we can say that, while none of those characterizations is exactly right, there is truth in each of them. (Continue to Full article >>>)
As the United States Constitution continues to become nothing more than a dated piece of paper in the eyes of the left, the federal government continues to grow, spreading like a plague and infecting virtually every institution in American society. Sadly, America’s education system is no exception.
The liberal state of California recently passed a law requiring trade schools to deny admission to students that have not completed high school or a state-approved equivalent, meaning that the government ultimately has the final say over what young people learn and what they don’t learn. Continue reading
Thomas Jefferson declared: “The government you elect is the government you deserve.” Wouldn’t the same go for a school system? If you select it, you must deserve it.
Plato said an early version of what would later be attributed to Edmund Burke: “The penalty good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.” Albert Einstein put it this way: “The world is in greater peril from those who tolerate or encourage evil than from those who actually commit it.”
In education, we have a startling amount of tolerating and encouraging. Continue reading
Publisher’s NOTE: The following was published by the New York Times on November 27, 2017 – hence some of the information herein is dated, but the circumstances and issues still stand. ~ J.B.
Shopping for school supplies in Burbank, Calif., in August. The House tax bill would eliminate a deduction for teachers who buy their own school supplies, while the Senate version would double it. – Credit Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg
November 27, 2017 ~ For Carrie Uffelman Brake, planning for next school year begins before the current one ends.
The shopping starts as early as April, when she gets the list of students who will be in her third grade classroom in rural Tennessee the following fall. If boys outnumber girls, she will need extra toys to keep hyperactive hands busy. If it is a group of struggling readers, she will need double the number of books. Continue reading
Publisher’s NOTE: The ‘West Valley’ is incorporate of the western suburbs of Phoenix, Arizona. As we have previously published, Arizona is one of the states in this country, that has an intense shortage of teachers – but we are not the only state. What you are about to read is a more intense extension of the problem. ~ J.B.
West Valley View photo by Jordan Christopher
When Liza Lawson began teaching at La Joya Community High School in 2007, she was aware of the struggles new teachers typically faced.
She was prepared for the 85-hour work weeks, large class sizes and weekends spent tutoring or planning lessons. The burnout didn’t set in until years later. Continue reading
Jerry’s Kids
California has so much to be proud of, its legislators and Governor have worked hard to achieve… Continue reading
Lil Johnny can’t read…
At one elementary school in California, 96 percent of the students are not proficient in either English or math. How is that even possible? Unfortunately, the more the federal government gets involved in education, the worse it seems to get. At one time the United States had the greatest system of public education on the entire planet, but these days we only seem to make headlines when news comes out about how poorly we are doing. This has been a hot button issue for me for a long time, but even I was surprised when I learned that the state of California is actually being sued because so few of their public school children can read… Continue reading
Laura M. Nicolae
Laura M. Nicolae, a student at Harvard studying math, shared the story of her father in the college newspaper… and it was powerful.
Laura M. Nicolae has a message for her fellow students at Harvard: think twice before embracing communism!
Nicolae, an applied mathematics major in the ’20 class, recently shared in the Crimson the story of how her father arrived in the United States. And it’s harrowing stuff: Continue reading
Letting children stay up just a little longer ‘could damage school performance‘
Most parents have faced a grumpy child who refuses to go to bed.
But letting them stay up just a bit longer could damage their performance at school, says an expert on child development.
Parents should stick to one fixed time, because their child’s reading and maths could suffer, warns Dr Yvonne Kelly from University College London.
She told the World Sleep Society that seven-year-old girls and three-year-olds of both sexes perform less well in tests if they do not have a regular bedtime. Continue reading