Free Republic

Pick up any paper or magazine, and you’re likely to see a front-page article on college: It costs too much, spawns too much debt is or isn’t worth it. I entered academia 52 years ago as a student of Latin and Greek expecting to enter a placid sector of American life, and now find my chosen profession at the center of a media maelstrom. With college replacing high school as the required ticket for a career, what used to be a quiet corner is now a favorite target of policymakers and pundits. Unfortunately, most commentary on the value of college...

Over the years some high schools have tried to ban things like soda. And yet they are going in another direction. That schools are having questionable sex education programs and on-campus clinics isn’t enough anymore. One high school in Seattle is now implanting intrauterine devices (IUD), as well as other forms of birth control. The IUD is known as a long acting reversible contraception, and may even act as an abortifacient. So, a young teen in Seattle can’t get a coke at her high school, but she can have a device implanted into her uterus, which can unknowingly kill her...

A mother in Spain has started a popular petition against what she views as an excessive amount of homework.The final straw came when Eva Bailen's 10-year-old son started being given up to three hours of homework a day. "If he doesn't finish it, the following day at school he is not allowed out to play," she told BBC Trending. The Spanish mother started a petition on Change.org to ask the government to regulate homework - a call to action that has been echoed thousands of times on Facebook. Bailen has three children - aged 8 and 12 in addition to...

Henricus Martellus, a German cartographer working in Florence in the late 15th century, produced a highly detailed map of the known world. According to experts, there is strong evidence that Christopher Columbus studied this map and that it influenced his thinking before his fateful voyage. Martellus' map arrived at Yale in 1962, the gift of an anonymous donor. Scholars at the time hailed the map's importance and argued that it could provide a missing link to the cartographic record at the dawn of the Age of Discovery. However, five centuries of fading and scuffing had rendered much of the map's...

She finds the nearly nude sort-of rude! Designer Carolina Herrera, best known for her beautiful silhouettes and classic white shirts, ripped the "almost naked" look worn by so many celebrities, including Kim Kardashian, Beyonce, and Jennifer Lopez, recently at red carpet events. Herrera, 76, spoke to the Washington Post about how some of her fellow designers believe "it's so modern to be naked or almost naked" when, in fact, it's counterproductive. "They think it's going to attract younger people if they do those dresses," she reasoned. "No! The almost naked! Oh God!" According to Herrera, stars are doing it for...

Fifty-five top historians have signed an open letter criticizing the College Board’s revamp of its Advanced Placement U.S. history curriculum, in which half a million of the nation’s brightest students enroll each year. It is the final U.S. history class many ever take. The National Association of Scholars, which coordinated the letter, notes: “Lynne Cheney, Bruce Cole, Patrick J. Deneen, Robert George, Leon Kass, Victor Davis Hanson, and Harvey Mansfield signed the letter, among several dozen other prominent scholars.” Their letter says: The College Board’s 2014 Advanced Placement Examination shortchanges students by imposing on them an arid, fragmentary, and misleading...

The First Amendment to the Constitution states: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. The Waco Police Department and other police departments blatantly tried to prevent a peaceful assembly and public officials have slandered the attendees ever since. The majority of the 176 people arrested after the Waco Massacre were arrested because they were wearing motorcycle club indicia, or insignia, and such...

According to data from the College Board forecasted by NerdWallet, the average cost of tuition for kids born in 2015 who attend a private four-year college 18 years from now will be $261,793.For those kids attending a public four-year college, it will be $133,528.No wonder some parents start thinking about paying for college before their children are even born.In its latest report, How America Saves for College 2015, student lender Sallie Mae and market research company Ipsos surveyed nearly 2,000 American parents with at least one child under the age of 18 to find out how families are thinking about...

The culture of political correctness has gotten so bad at college campuses that even bleeding heart liberal comics like Jerry Seinfeld feel out of place. The venerable comedian told ESPN’s Colin Cowherd last week that he avoids performing on college campuses, and has been advised by those who have to stay away. From Entertainment Tonight: Seinfeld says teens and college-aged kids don’t understand what it means to throw around certain politically-correct terms. “They just want to use these words: ‘That’s racist;’ ‘That’s sexist;’ ‘That’s prejudice,’” he said. “They don’t know what the hell they’re talking about.” Tuesday, the Huffington Post published...

By Bruce Deitrick Price The following letter (sent via iPhone) is from Marilyn T., a teacher.  She has worked in the greater New York City area for many years and wants everyone to know how debased and crazy our classrooms have become.  She sums it up this way: “NYC is lost. Totally.” Every American should be keenly concerned about understanding and saving New York City, because your own city is probably using the same bad methods and heading toward the same level of failure.  The letter: Rather than choose what works in our schools, we are often using poorly designed programs in...

The phrase is just one of many that faculty were advised not to use. A University of California faculty leader-training handout instructed professors not to say that “America is the land of opportunity” because that’s a racist, sexist microaggression. According to the handout, called “Tool: Recognizing Microaggressions and the Messages they Send,” the statement “assert[s] that race and gender [do] not play a role in life successes” — despite the fact that saying opportunities exist and saying that opportunities are more easily attainable for some people than others are not mutually exclusive assertions. Other microaggressions listed on the document include...

<p>WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. (AP) — Five members of the mechanical engineering faculty at Purdue University have been chosen to participate in a National Science Foundation diversity training program so they can help recruit African-American students.</p> <p>Eleven African-American students were enrolled in the mechanical engineering program in fall 2014, according to data from the school’s Office of Institutional Research, Assessment and Effectiveness. That’s less than 1 percent of the 1,376 students total, making African Americans the school’s most under-represented minority population.</p>

Miners in northwestern Canada have discovered ice age camel bones whose DNA is forcing scientists to redraw the family tree of the now-extinct species. Grant Zazula, a paleontologist with the Yukon's Department of Tourism and Culture, said three fossils recovered from a gold mine in the Klondike in 2008 are the first western camel bones found in the territory or Alaska in decades. Scientists had believed western camels that once lived in North America were related to llamas and alpacas common to South America, but they now have genetic proof that the animals are more closely tied to the camels...

Asian American students may be at a distinct disadvantage when applying to highly competitive colleges, according to Sara Harberson, a former Ivy League admissions dean. In a recent op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, Harberson — the former associate dean of admissions at the University of Pennsylvania and the former dean of admissions and financial aid at Franklin & Marshall College — writes that there is always a reason for a college applicant's rejection. In many cases, students are denied admission because they don't have a "tag" associated with their application — what Harberson calls "the proverbial golden ticket for...

"And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness."(2 Thess 2:11-12) "And the third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand, The same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the...

Here is a list of great quotes left by Anonymous on a major forum. Use them to start discussions at school and elsewhere. Some of these quotes are scarily appropriate to our present situation in Obama's America. Others show how our founding fathers were thinking 200 years ago. What our public schools now call Critical Thinking is usually neither critical nor thinking. It's blind acceptance of politically correct opinions. Debate. Argue. Discuss. Finally, figure out answers for yourself. --- "That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that...

In a kitchen in rural South Carolina one night, Hunter Bliss told his mother he wanted to apply to university in Germany. Amy Hall chuckled, dismissed it, and told him he could go if he got in. "When he got accepted I burst into tears," says Amy, a single mother. "I was happy but also scared to let him go that far away from home." Across the US parents are preparing for their children to leave the nest this summer, but not many send them 4,800 miles (7,700km) away - or to a continent that no family member has ever...

A major publisher of scholarly medical and science articles has retracted 43 papers because of “fabricated” peer reviews amid signs of a broader fake peer review racket affecting many more publications. As The Washington Post reports, BioMed Central - a well-known publication of peer-reviewed journals - shows a partial list of the retracted articles suggests most of them were written by scholars at universities in China. The Committee on Publication Ethics stated, it "has become aware of systematic, inappropriate attempts to manipulate the peer review processes of several journals... that need to be retracted."Peer review is the vetting process...

As I lay me down to sleep.... I see that the MSM decided that the movement we kicked off was anti gay Marriage. Nothing about genocide. It is puzzling to me as I spent three hours today explaining what this was about. Even more puzzling because I believed government should get out of the marriage game LONG BEFORE our president had his "change of heart". I didn't need one. I believed people should be allowed to make their own choice as they did before government got involved nearly to stop inter racial marriages, before gay marriage 'was cool'. We all...

Yesterday, at a neighbor's house, his 4th grade daughter read something very well and I asked her what grade she was in and complimented her on her reading .....