Free Republic

The Left has its own Da Vinci Code, a secret woven into the fabric of its power, shrouded by layers of intrigue, and defended to the death by secret societies pledged to its eternal preservation. Here it is, exposed: Science = TruthPhilosophy = Opinion And it’s as wrong today as it was in Plato’s day. If the fictional Robert Langdon stumbled onto the Church’s hidden legend in Dan Brown’s novel, then all-too-real associate professor of philosophy Justin McBrayer, has vitiated the Left’s Necronomicon in his New York Times piece, “Why Our Children Don’t Think There Are Moral Facts.” As a...

Earlier this school year, a sixth-grader in the gifted-and-talented program at Bedford Middle School in Bedford, Virginia was suspended for one year after an assistant principal found something that looked like a marijuana leaf in his backpack. The student, the 11-year-old son of two school teachers, had to enroll in the district's alternative education program and be homeschooled. He was evaluated by a psychiatrist for substance abuse problems, and charged with marijuana possession in juvenile court. In the months since September, he's become withdrawn, depressed, and he suffers from panic attacks. He is worried his life is over, according to...

A kindergarten teacher from Miami has been charged with aggravated child abuse after police say he dug his nails into a girl's hand and leg just to see her cry. Frederick Mena, 25, was arrested earlier this month in connection to the sickening incident that allegedly took place March 5 at Silver Bluff Elementary School in Coconut Grove. According to an arrest report, Mena was teaching math to a kindergarten class when the victim, a young girl, became stymied by the material. In his frustration, according to the Miami Dade School Police, Mena dug his fingernails deeply into the child's...

The superintendent of the Watchung Hills Regional High School District in New Jersey has confirmed that she sent an email to fellow superintendents Tuesday about her concern that education publishing giant Pearson is “monitoring” children’s social media accounts for possible leaks about the Common Core-aligned PARCC tests.

The California Board of Education has suspended the state’s school accountability system for one year to give teachers and students time to adjust to new standardized tests aligned with the Common Core standards. The board voted at a Wednesday meeting in Sacramento not to produce an Academic Performance Index for the 2014-15 school year. The index uses student results on statewide tests to rank schools and to identify those that need improvement. …

The Common Core testing standards, not passed through state legislatures and forced upon schoolchildren without parental consultation or consent, are obviously a subject of much debate.An Arkansas mom encapsulated just how brazen the manner of implementing these standards was when she confronted the Arkansas State Board of Education and questioned how well the testing was preparing kids for college.The mother, Karen Lamoreaux, represented fellow educators and a total of 1,100 people by her count, when she spoke before the board in December 2013. She laid out a case of why the standards were so ill-conceived, and at one point elucidated just how absurd it is to teach around...

While a 12-year-old student recorded with her cell phone, her teacher delivered a nearly 7-minute profanity-laced lecture. (snip) Diana says she took the recording to the principal Tuesday morning, but wasn’t satisfied with the reaction. “She asked me to delete the video, not to have the video in my phone, not to do anything with it,” said Diana. But Diana didn’t delete it.

A former substitute teacher in Ohio has been sentenced to 90 days in jail after she was found guilty of showing students a graphic horror movie during class. Sheila Kearns, 58, was convicted in January of four counts of disseminating matter harmful to juveniles, The Columbus Dispatch reported. The judge reportedly placed her on probation for three years but made the jail time a condition of her probation. Ms. Kearns apologized in court, saying she was aware of “The ABCs of Death’s” content but hadn’t actually watched it prior to showing it during five separate Spanish classes at Columbus’ East...

DUBLIN, March 4, 2015 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The government needs to protect children from the religious views of their own parents, according to popular atheist writer Richard Dawkins.His speaking partner went further, comparing parents instilling their religious views in their children could be compared to denying them medical treatment.In an interview prior to a speech at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, last week, Dawkins told the media that parents have too much influence in their children's education, especially when it comes to religion.“There is a balancing act and you have to balance the rights of parents and the rights of children,...

Students in one class at South Windsor High School were subjected to a poem that their superintendent and some parents call “highly inappropriate” material. The poem contains language that describes sexual acts. The teacher, whose name has not been released, read the Allen Ginsberg poem “Please Master” aloud in an English class for high school students. That poem was written in 1968. He had another poem banned in the 1950s for obscenity. Parents were shocked when they heard and read the material for themselves. “I don’t understand how that actually got into a high school class,” said one parent who...

Source: TopMastersInEducation.com

What would you say if you found out that our public schools were teaching children that it is not true that it’s wrong to kill people for fun or cheat on tests? Would you be surprised? I was. As a philosopher, I already knew that many college-aged students don’t believe in moral facts. While there are no national surveys quantifying this phenomenon, philosophy professors with whom I have spoken suggest that the overwhelming majority of college freshmen in their classrooms view moral claims as mere opinions that are not true or are true only relative to a culture. What I...

There are as many reasons to homeschool as there are reasons to distrust the public school system. According to The Hechinger Report, African-American families have started to embrace homeschooling and now make up 10 percent of the homeschooling population. Many teach their children at home to protect them from racism, and also, as one scholar says, schools’ lower standards for black students. More:

The principal of Romeo High School has called an outraged father to apologize about a controversial homework assignment. The 9th grade biology worksheet sent home with students this week featured questions about a mother trying to determine the identity of her baby’s father. Possible answers included: the cable guy, the mailman, the cab driver, the bartender and the guy at the club.

A Liberty Blitzkrieg reader who is a resident of Naples, Florida recently sent me a note highlighting a video in which he, and several other concerned parents, were reprimanded and treated like little children in a School Board Workshop as a result of them expressing concerns about school curriculum.In order to give you some background on the issue, see the Letter to the Editor he wrote to the Naples Daily News on 1/28 to say what he was prevented from saying at the 1/20 School Board Workshop. Letter reprinted below: Patton the causeThe controversy behind the recent parents’ review of school textbooks lays squarely at...

KOIN TV on Tuesday did a follow-up story on their November 18, 2014, investigative report that exposed shocking details about the Adolescent Sexuality Conference (ASC) held in Seaside, Oregon. Since the November 2014 report, the head of the Oregon Department of Education sent a letter in December 2014 to Oregon school superintendents that claimed “the content delivered by the presenters at the 2014 Adolescent Sexuality Conference was appropriate.” KOIN literally had to chase down Deputy Superintendent of Public Instruction Rob Saxton in the state Capitol building to confront him about that.

FRANKFORT – A bill which would have banned transgender students from using school restrooms that don’t correspond to their anatomical sex failed to receive enough votes to get out of the Senate Committee on Education Thursday. Senate Bill 76, known as the “Kentucky Student Privacy Act”, sponsored by Sen. C. B. Embry Jr., R-Morgantown, would have required students to use restrooms, locker rooms and showers of the sex that they were born. In addition, the bill would allow students to sue the school for $2,500 if they encounter a person of the opposite biological sex in the bathroom or locker...

ANKENY, Iowa —The Ankeny School Board voted unanimously Monday to accept the resignation of a teacher who police said was intoxicated and had been in her classroom. The vote was made Monday evening. Police said they were called to East Elementary School at 710 SE 3rd St. at 2 p.m. after receiving a report that a teacher was observed with a can of beer in her classroom. Police said the teacher was taken into custody after testing positive during a preliminary breath test. A bag in her classroom had two empty cans of beer and four additional full cans of...

MONESSEN, Pa —At least five students at a Westmoreland County middle school were given word puzzles based on the erotic novel and movie "Fifty Shades of Grey" this week, and school district officials said they are investigating how it happened. James Carter said the word search, filled with explicit sexual terms, was passed out Monday to his son and other students in his eighth-grade class at Monessen Middle School. "I asked my son who passed it out, and he said the teacher passed it out," Carter told said. "I don't think this is what they should be doing in the...

Middle school students in Monessen School District in Pennsylvania were given “Fifty Shades of Grey” puzzles to work on for an assignment. The puzzles included terms like spanking, bondage, submissive and leather cuffs. WKRG reported: Parents in a Pennsylvania school district are turning 50 shades of red over word search puzzles given to middle school students based on an erotic novel and movie. The students in Monessen were given puzzles based on “Fifty Shades of Grey” that contained terms including “spanking,” ”submissive,” ”leather cuffs” and “bondage.” Other words on the list were more explicit.