~ Introduction ~
What is most interesting about the following column is – that this is NOT about the U.S.A. So isn’t it interesting that there are those in the U.K. that also get it. Enjoy the lesson my friends. ~ Jeffrey Bennett, Editor
Many parents like Susanne Willdig have chosen to home school their children
The number of parents choosing to home educate their children is increasing in the West, figures show. 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
Republican lawmakers in Indiana are taking steps to ensure that kids who can’t read well don’t advance prematurely to the next grade.
The state’s literacy rates have been on the decline since the 2014-15 school year, with a six-point fall between the 2018-19 and 2020-21 school years. Micah Clark, director of the American Family Association in Indiana, says the COVID crisis “really highlighted how kids have fallen behind.” Continue reading
In 1933, a group on businessmen conspired to unseat President Roosevelt and overthrow the government. One man stopped them…
Still from Universal newsreel footage of Smedley Butler describing his 1934 congressional committee testimony (Wikimedia Commons)
Toward the climax of director and screenwriter David O. Russell’s new historical drama Amsterdam (2022), Dr. Burt Berendsen (Christian Bale) narrates a line that is not only central to the film’s plot and themes, but also one of the most telling quotes in recent American film history. Burt and his friends have begun to uncover the shadowy and sinister plan at the film’s center, a plan by powerful moneyed figures to overthrow the president of the United States and replace him with an unelected dictator. And Burt asks both himself and the audience, in the voiceover narration to which the film returns frequently, “What’s more un-American than a dictatorship built by American business?”
Continue reading
Most young folks today think that everything that happened before they were born is ancient history, and therefore, totally irrelevant. Hopefully, as they grow in age and maturity they will shed this truncated worldview and grasp the fact that the past has a large influence on the future. I have noted, over the years, that if our view of the past is faulty, then our vision for the future will be also, Most historians today give our young people a faulty view of the past because it is one they were taught themselves. Continue reading
Several days ago, I was handed a pile of old schoolwork and curriculum found in paperwork and memorabilia from my grandmother. Sifting through the stack, I soon pulled out several booklets labeled “Minnesota State Board Questions Certified.” Yellowed with age and somewhat dog-eared, they appear to be workbooks with which students could prepare for their yearly school exams.
I grabbed the one labeled “Introduction to Social Science” from 1945, the year my grandma was 17 and likely a senior in high school, and paged through it. Judging from the cover, it appears she was a scribbler like me, doodling by writing her name and some shorthand. Judging from the inside, students like her had to know their lessons well in order to pass their exams… Continue reading
In a trend that began with the pandemic, data shows ongoing school enrollment issues, and thousands of public schools nationwide are at risk of closing. According to the Department of Education , in 2023, 1.8 million fewer students enrolled in public schools nationwide compared to 2019.
Less students means less funding for schools, and with federal relief funding dwindling, schools are closing.
Jackson, Mississippi, has seen 11 schools close their doors, some of which have experienced a 30% drop in enrollment since 2018. That trend is not exclusive to Mississippi. Continue reading
Joe Black – when I knew him. ~ J.B.
I hadn’t seen Joe for about two and a half months and wondered why. Now I know the answer as to why.
I acquired my private mail box on Shea Boulevard in 1996 and while most of the folks remained private for one reason or another, I was soon introduced to Joe Black – for the second time in my life.
The first was in 1955, when I was seven years old and was just learning about the national pastime. I spent summers in Eagle, Wisconsin – I was a Milwaukee Braves fan – County Stadium was my ‘home away from home’. Joe Black left the Brooklyn Dodgers that year and signed on with the Cincinnati Red Legs – and brought with him quite a legacy – the first black pitcher to bring his team a pennant. Joe spent the rest of his life bringing the winning pennant home to whatever endeavor he tackled.
I never broke bread with the man – but we broke the silence of two people with little in common – and I never asked him for his autograph. May you rest in peace sweet man.
Legendary Brooklyn Dodgers pitcher Joe Black died of prostate cancer Friday morning at the age of 78, passing away at an aftercare facility in Scottsdale.
“At moments like this, when we’re worrying about other things within the game, it really doesn’t mean too much,” Commissioner Bud Selig said. “I’ve known Joe Black a long time. He loved the game and was so willing to always be helpful. He was one of those rare individuals who was willing to give of himself unconditionally. You just don’t find people like that, especially in professional sports.” Continue reading
Here’s something you won’t read about in the US history books. The first legal slave owner in America was black and he owned white slaves.
Anthony Johnson (BC 1600 – 1670) was an Angolan who achieved freedom in the early 17th century Colony of Virginia.
Johnson was captured in his native Angola by an enemy tribe and sold to Arab (Muslim) slave traders. He was eventually sold as an indentured servant to a merchant working for the Virginia Company.
Sometime after 1635, Antonio and Mary gained their freedom from indenture. Antonio changed his name to Anthony Johnson. Continue reading
The great classical scholar Edith Hamilton noted that the ancient Greeks frowned upon their Roman counterparts in regards to education. The former adopted public (government) schooling while the Romans left education to the family in the home. The snooty Greeks thought Romans were backward and unsophisticated. The Romans, of course, conquered the Greeks.
For most of the five centuries of the Republic, Romans were schooled at home where virtues of honor, character, and citizenship were emphasized. Not until the Republic’s last century or so did anything resembling government schooling emerge. Moreover, it was never so centralized, universal, and mandatory as it is in our society today. The English academic and cleric Teresa Morgan, in a 2020 paper titled “Assessment in Roman Education,” writes, “In no stage of its history did Rome ever legally require its people to be educated on any level.” 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
The Baltimore Washington Monument. Emblazoned on the sides are important dates in the Revolutionary War, including December 23, 1783. At the top, Washington resigns his commission.
In Baltimore, Maryland stands one of the first monuments erected to the memory of George Washington. The 180-foot monument was finished in 1829, before the Washington Monument in D.C. was even begun. The impressive stone pillar is topped with a large statue of the General. Unlike most other statues of George Washington, the statue in Baltimore does not depict the Revolutionary War hero on horseback with his sword drawn, or as the First President of the United States. Instead it shows Washington, in his military uniform, simply extending a hand holding a piece of paper. Despite the simplicity of the scene, it is representative of one of the most important moments in the founding of the American nation: Washington resigning his military commission.
On November 1, 1783, Washington learned that the Treaty of Paris had been signed and the Revolutionary War was over. Continue reading
Photo by Jessica Lewison – Unsplash
In recent years, homeschooling has witnessed a remarkable surge in popularity worldwide. In fact, it’s now the fasted growing form of education according to The Washington Post. During covid restrictions, there was a sharp increase in homeschooling, with some states jumping over 108% homeschool enrollment since 2017-2018. There are an estimated 1.9 million to 2.7 million homeschooled students in America today. Continue reading
In a significant development, Let’s Go Washington, a citizen’s action group, has successfully gathered the required signatures for Initiative 2081, aiming to establish Washington state’s first Parental Bill of Rights.
This move has sparked discussions about the potential impact of parental involvement in education and child welfare.
Let’s delve into the key aspects of this initiative. 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.
One of the founders of Moms for Liberty is blaming the infiltration of critical theory into America’s classrooms for the existence of what she considers discriminatory and divisive disciplinary policies.
Public schools in Portland, Oregon, must take certain things into account when they discipline students. Portland Public Schools will now require staff to consider the race, gender identity, and sexual orientation when disciplining a student who gets in trouble.
Fox reports this policy is the result of a collective bargaining agreement between Portland Public Schools and its teachers. The policy says the superintendent or designee will review disciplinary disparities apparent by the race, gender, special education status, etc. Now, repeated disruptive behavior from a student will get addressed with a “support plan.” Continue reading