Free Republic

If your approach to parenting in our post-sexual revolution hellscape isn’t what Antoine Dodson famously called for, you need to wake up, because they raping everybody out here. A clip of a “Blue’s Clues” song celebrating Masturbation and Genital Amputation Month went viral over the weekend heading into June. “Blue’s Clues” also released an episode in May celebrating LGBT identification. “Blue’s Clues” is a long-running preschool TV show that has played on Nickelodeon Jr. since 1996. “Blue’s Clues became the highest-rated show for preschoolers on American commercial television and was critical to Nickelodeon’s growth,” Wikipedia says. The lyrics of its...

A "transgender toolkit" for public schools in Minnesota advises teachers to call children "scholars" instead of boys and girls.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSo5gzJ1M1s

“We’re looking to create the confidence that when these kids go into predominately white schools that they can bring counter narratives to the school,” said Gore in an interview with King5 News. The two teachers say that that preschool education must go beyond singing songs and reading picture books. Instead, they plan to carry the discussion of race and racism all throughout the course of the children’s time at the preschool. The curriculum will include telling “the stories that are untold” and the earnest teachers will strive to actively change whatever pre-existing biases the children might have.

...After “Sesame Street” was introduced, children living in places where its broadcast could be more readily received saw a 14 percent drop in their likelihood of being behind in school. Levine and Kearney note in their paper that a wide body of previous research has found that Head Start, the pre-kindergarten program for low-income Americans, delivers a similar benefit.The researchers also say those effects probably come from “Sesame Street’s” focus on presenting viewers with an academic curriculum, heavy on reading and math, that would appear to have helped prepare children for school.While it might seem implausible that a TV show...

Parents sending their three- and four-year olds to preschool are facing increasing pressure to use government schools, as secular, elitist educators use government funding as a back door to remove parental choice from pre-school options. Alabama’s First Class program is growing quickly, using federal funds from the popular Head Start program to extend restrictive government regulations to preschools who agree to accept public money.  Hiding under the blanket of “ensuring quality”, these regulations cover every aspect of pre-school education. First Class funding casts a net over preschool programs, supporting those that agree to restrictive government regulations. An extensive list of...

Toddlers show racial bias when picking playmates, a study reveals. They also take account of how fairly others behave. Researchers tested the reaction of white 15-month-olds as toys were distributed.Two white adults divided the toys, one equally and the other unequally. Seventy per cent of the toddlers chose to play with the researcher who distributed the toys fairly. But in a second test, when one researcher favoured a white recipient over an Asian one, they picked the ‘fair’ researcher less often, the journal Frontiers in Psychology reports. And the babies are more likely to help those who share the same...

Even preschoolers are getting suspended from U.S. public schools—and they're disproportionately Black, a trend that continues up through the later grades. Data released March 21 by the Education Department's civil rights arm finds that Black children represent about 18 percent of children enrolled in preschool programs in schools, but almost half of the students were suspended more than once. Six percent of the nation's districts with preschools reported suspending at least one preschool child. Advocates have long said that get-tough suspension and arrest policies in schools have contributed to a "school-to-prison" pipeline that snags minority students, but much of the...

The mother of a kindergarten boy Kansas City received a citation for criminal assault because, police say, she inflicted a vicious beatdown on the boy’s teacher. The pummeling occurred on Thursday night at Truman Elementary School. Simone A. Baker, 24, allegedly entered the school and proceeded directly to the unidentified teacher’s classroom at about 6 p.m., reports The Kansas City Star. She said, “You better not touch my kid again.” She punched the teacher, 49, upside the head five to 10 times. Next, narrates a police report, Baker jerked the teacher out of her chair by the hair. Then, for...

Prop 30: Your Wallet or Your Kids. NO Either approve $36 billion in higher sales and income taxes or else Gov. Brown threatens to shoot the schools. Don't worry, the income taxes are only on the "very wealthy," but it turns out the "very wealthy" include many small businesses filing under sub-chapter S, meaning lower wages, higher prices and fewer jobs. California already has one of the highest overall tax burdens in the country and yet has just approved a budget to spend $8 billion dollars more than it's taking in. Moral of the story: it's the spending stupid. Prop...

November 2012 Statewide Ballot Measures Proposition 30 Initiative Constitutional Amendment 1578. (12-0009) - Final Random Sample Update - 06/20/12 Temporary Taxes to Fund Education. Guaranteed Local Public Safety Funding. Initiative Constitutional Amendment. Qualified: 06/20/12 Proponent: Thomas A. Willis c/o Karen Getman (510) 346-6200 Increases personal income tax on annual earnings over $250,000 for seven years. Increases sales and use tax by ¼ cent for four years. Allocates temporary tax revenues 89 percent to K-12 schools and 11 percent to community colleges. Bars use of funds for administrative costs, but provides local school governing boards discretion to decide, in open meetings...

LOS ANGELES – We’ve always heard that life in California is a bit crazier than most Americans can imagine. But this is ridiculous. A disturbing video has surfaced showing mothers brawling with each other at a recent pre-school graduation in Los Angeles. Children can be heard screaming as angry moms push and shove each other. It’s a pathetic display of parenting and a miserable example for young kids. The anonymous person who shot and posted the video indicated that the video originates from Weemes Elementary school in Los Angeles. She wrote: “This all started because my son’s teacher was so...

Head Start, a preschool program for low-income kids has been a spectacular success, not for kids, but for teachers and teachers' unions. Please consider Miami-Dade County seeks to unload Head Start program, salaries For more than four decades, Miami-Dade County officials have managed Head Start, the storied preschool program for children from low-income families. But the county now wants out — and “generous” salaries are partly to blame. On average, Miami-Dade paid its Head Start teachers $76,860 in salary and fringe benefits in 2011, county records show. That’s about 90 percent higher than the second highest-paying Head Start provider in...

... [A group of university researchers] examined the life paths of almost 12,000 children who had been part of a well-known education experiment in Tennessee in the 1980s. The children are now about 30, well started on their adult lives. On Tuesday, Mr. Chetty presented the findings — not yet peer-reviewed — at an academic conference in Cambridge, Mass. They’re fairly explosive. Just as in other studies, the Tennessee experiment found that some teachers were able to help students learn vastly more than other teachers. And just as in other studies, the effect largely disappeared by junior high, based on...

So what’s the biggest threat to religious liberty? According to J. Brent Walker, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, the answer is found in the strings attached to government funding of religious activity. Earlier this month, during a speech for the Jewish Anti-Defamation League, Walker said, “What the government funds, it always regulates. Government-sponsored religion is always bad for religion. How can we raise a prophetic fist with one hand and take government money with the other?” The truth of Walker’s statement was underscored just last week when the Washington State House of Representatives passed HB...

Initiative Focuses on Early Learning Programs SAM DILLON September 19, 2009 Tucked away in an $87 billion higher education bill that passed the House last week was a broad new federal initiative aimed not at benefiting college students, but at raising quality in the early learning and care programs that serve children from birth through age 5. The initiative, the Early Learning Challenge Fund, would channel $8 billion over eight years to states with plans to improve standards, training and oversight of programs serving infants, toddlers and preschoolers. The Senate is expected to pass similar legislation this fall, giving President...

Tucked away in an $87 billion higher education bill that passed the House last week was a broad new federal initiative aimed not at benefiting college students, but at raising quality in the early learning and care programs that serve children from birth through age 5. The initiative, the Early Learning Challenge Fund, would channel $8 billion over eight years to states with plans to improve standards, training and oversight of programs serving infants, toddlers and preschoolers. The Senate is expected to pass similar legislation this fall, giving President Obama, who proposed the Challenge Fund during the presidential campaign, a...

Did you go to preschool? When I was growing up, few kids did. But now there is a new movement that says every child in America should have a chance to start school before kindergarten -- at taxpayer expense. It's part of President Obama's massive spending plans. His "stimulus" bill includes an Early Learning Challenge Grant to encourage states to "Develop a cutting-edge plan to raise the quality of your early learning programs" (http://tinyurl.com/cv6s23). It's a popular idea. Sixty-seven percent of Americans favor universal pre-K funded by the government. But I doubt that most Americans have thought it through. Mia...

[T]he $10 billion Mr. Obama has pledged for early childhood education would amount to the largest new federal initiative for young children since Head Start began in 1965. Now, Head Start is a $7 billion federal program serving about 900,000 preschoolers. “People are absolutely ecstatic,” said Cornelia Grumman, executive director of the First Five Years Fund, an advocacy group. “Some people seem to think the Great Society is upon us again.” ... Now that new initiatives seem likely, experts are debating how best to improve America’s early childhood system, which they call fantastically fragmented, unconscionably underfinanced and bureaucratically bewildering. Some...

One of the most dramatic changes in American life in the years since World War II involves the way we raise our children. We used to do it ourselves. Now, convinced we have better things to do, many of us leave the job to others. Encouraging this flight from parenthood, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, has proposed what he calls his "Zero to Five" plan. It is a collection of programs aimed at getting the government involved in the raising of your children from the moment they are born. "The first part of my plan...