Free Republic

(D)escriptions, written by Twin Cities area high school teachers, of how their schools teach literature classes. This one comes from Edina High School, which was once known as an excellent institution: Acceptance and inter-cultural understanding can be fostered through the use of powerful texts, discussion, analysis, and exploration in the classroom. An English curriculum grounded in social justice rests on a belief based in equity—that each person should have access to resources regardless of race, gender, ability, age, socio-economic status, or sexual orientation.

How many times do I have to write about the problems discovered in Common Core teaching? This time it deals with Pearson Education, one of the leading companies that helps develop and train Common Core teaching. According to their website: “As the leading education services company, Pearson is serious about evolving how the world learns. We apply our deep education experience and research, invest in innovative technologies, and promote collaboration throughout the education ecosystem. Real change is our commitment and its results are delivered through connecting capabilities to create actionable, scalable solutions that improve access, affordability, and achievement.” [Emphasis mine]...

Over twenty years ago, I had an intermittent conversation about homosexuality with an gay man at work. Although he persistently brought up the subject, he would periodically fly into a rage and call me a bigot when I disagreed with him. That man went on to become a key homosexual organizer in my city. Five years ago I wrote a letter to the editor of my newspaper concerning how the paper was becoming an organ of gay advocacy. I forwarded the letter to a group who received regular mailings from me. One man responded and disclosed himself as a gay....

Brainwashing Children to 'Suppress' Design Intuition by Randy J. Guliuzza, P.E., M.D. * The Wall Street Journal praised psychological research on kindergarteners that demonstrates how a picture-rich storybook could replace children’s intuitive inferences of design with Darwinian natural selection.1 Is this a good way to apply child psychology? Boston University psychologist Deborah Kelemen has led the latest National Science Foundation funded research to help teach evolution. Her technical report appears in the journal Psychological Science. The aim of her research was to intentionally “suppress” children’s “commonsense ways,” and to “explain why animals have functional traits and show signs of apparent...

What would you think if your 8-year-old came home and told you that “white privilege is something that white people have, meaning they have an advantage in a lot of things and they can get a job more easily”? You would have heard that at the recent 15th annual White Privilege Conference in Madison, Wisconsin, attended by 2,500 public-school teachers, administrators and students from across the nation (http://tinyurl.com/lkoqj9b). The average parent has no idea of the devious indoctrination going on in classrooms in many public schools. What follows are some of the lessons of the conference. In one of the...

It was reading, writing and religious brainwashing at this top Connecticut high school. Staffers at Avon High indoctrinated three once-happy girls into a death-obsessed religious cult that had them speaking in tongues and acting like zombies, a federal civil rights lawsuit filed by their parents charges. Three Spanish teachers and a guidance counselor “taught students to believe in superstition, magic and a non-scientific, anti-intellectual world view,” the suit says. “They lost their humor and their empathy. They began speaking in a bizarre new language. They became unable to think critically or independently. They became dependent on the school teachers and...

“Of course school is the most political, because that’s where the progressive agenda is coming out the strongest and the hardest,” said Sorbo. Sorbo said she was hesitant to reveal her faith or political beliefs publicly because of possible backlash and negative reaction from Hollywood. But she could not remain silent on education. “You people who send your kids to school, you have no idea what the schools are doing to their fresh little brains, in brainwashing them into this progressive, liberal—it’s antithetical to America, the agenda that they’re being indoctrinated with,” Sorbo said.

School students should be given a “European Union education” in the classroom to tackle “ignorance” and growing public Euro-skepticism, according to an election manifesto signed by Angela Merkel and eight other of Europe's leaders. The European People’s Party (EPP), the EU’s biggest political grouping, is convinced such a program would improve the public image of Brussels, which has never been lower. Its manifesto for May’s European elections calls for the introduction of “EU education in schools across Europe in order to prepare the next generation for future challenges and to nurture a European approach”. […] Rather than scaling back the...

Kathleen Sebelius: No job loss under Obamacare By: Lindsay Kalter February 18, 2014 07:40 AM EST Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius says there is “absolutely no evidence” that the Affordable Care Act will drive down employment, despite a report from the Congressional Budget Office released Feb. 4 predicting fewer people would be working. “There is absolutely no evidence, and every economist will tell you this, that there is any job-loss related to the Affordable Care Act,” Sebelius told reporters in Orlando, Fla., on Monday. “Part-time physicians are actually down since 2010, not up. The number of full-time workers...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n02qgqtpRKY

This past election season, I tried an experiment with the twelve 6th-graders in my history class: I challenged them to develop a fictional candidate and persuade the rest of us to vote for him by creating a commercial. My hidden agenda was to find out which of the kids' political positions were influenced by their parents and whether, if given the opportunity to evaluate their positions from scratch, they might choose differently. The students were ready -- dare I say waiting -- for it. See, our school happens to be in Hyde Park, that ivy-covered, venerated neighborhood otherwise known as...

By MICHAEL R. BLOOD and SANDY COHEN 2 hours ago LOS ANGELES (AP) — The health care overhaul might get a Hollywood rewrite. The California Endowment, a private foundation that is spending millions to promote President Barack Obama's signature law, recently provided a $500,000 grant to ensure TV writers and producers have information about the Affordable Care Act that can be stitched into plot lines watched by millions. he aim is to produce compelling prime-time narratives that encourage Americans to enroll, especially the young and healthy, Hispanics and other key demographic groups needed to make the overhaul a success. "We...

Philadelphia city council members have approved a resolution that calls for socialist historian Howard Zinn’s book “A People’s History of the United States” to be taught in public high schools. The resolution was backed by council members Jim Kenny and Jannie Blackwell, who believe that Zinn’s far-left socialist vision of American history is currently missing from high school textbooks. “Howard Zinn’s ‘A People’s History of the United States’ emphasizes the role of working people, women, people of color, and organized social movements in shaping history; not simply the version retold by those powerful enough to ensure history remembers their actions...

So here I am sitting watching the History channel, instead of NFL and they are talking about the mystery of 3, the ancient Egyptians, monoliths, and different dimensions. Out of nowhere they make a leap to a discussion of the White House and President 0bama authorizing the Brain Initiative. So I am a little more than caught off guard. Being the curious sort I immediately jump on my computer to look up this 'initiative,' and why our government would be so interested in our brains. Much to my surprise the website comes up on the first try and initially looks...

I’m sure glad our Kern County (Cal) Superintendent of Schools thinks Common Core is cool. I just don’t buy the line about all the decisions being made locally or that children can be okay with wrong answers. Until they know the basics – including knowing how to write cursive – an excellent exercise in character building and left-right brain interaction – they need time to grow straight and true as children should. The other evening, I helped a 4th grader with a 4 equation, 4 unknown math problem designed to determine if “a” was a larger or smaller number than...

MADISON — Some kindergartners, first-graders and second-graders in Madison public schools are apparently preparing for futures in either political cartooning or time on a psychiatrist’s couch. Kati Walsh, an elementary art teacher at the Madison Metropolitan School District in July posted some of her students’ drawings of Gov. Scott Walker in jail. Walsh suggests her young Rembrandts’ ideas for their sketches popped up out of thin air. “One student said something to the effect of ‘Scott Walker wants to close all the public schools’… So the rest of the class started drawing their own cartoons and they turned very political....

If you come from a broken or dysfunctional family, or bad neighborhood, how enticing and deceptive this indoctrination is… Via The Blaze: Fourth-grade students in Illinois are learning that “government is like a nation’s family” because it sets rules and takes care of needs such as health care and education. So says a worksheet for social studies homework that was distributed to students at East Prairie School in Skokie, Ill, complete with a drawing of Uncle Sam cradling a baby that represents the citizens. Students are then prompted to answer 10 questions comparing government and families, including how their family...

Prepping US Armed Forces to cope with extremists doesn't sound bad until you discover that an example of the type of extremists our troops may have to suppress are people who oppose taxes or tyranny. According to the Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute training guide, America's Founding Fathers were “extremists who unjustly opposed legitimate ruling authorities.” The training guide says that “In U.S. history, there are many examples of extremist ideologies and movements. The colonists who sought to free themselves from British rule and the Confederate states who sought to secede from the Northern states are just two examples. The...

Note: Videos and photos included. SNIPPET: "In 1967, at the Cubberley High School in Palo Alto, California, World History teacher Ron Jones was asked about the Holocaust by a student. "Could it happen here?". According to the press release accompanying the latest retelling of the events that followed, "Jones came up with an unusual answer. He decided to have a two week experiment in dictatorship. His idea was to explain fascism to his class through a game, nothing more. He never intended what resulted, where his class would be turned into a Fascist environment. Where students gave up their freedom...