Free Republic

One of the depressing things about trying to improve US education is that the great majority of the country seems to have given up. Mainly, you can credit the diabolical skills of our Education Establishment. They keep average citizens confused, divided, and overwhelmed by jargon and technical details. The people who should be our natural leaders -– doctors, lawyers, bankers, engineers, business executives-- probably are ashamed to admit they have no idea what anybody in education is talking about. Newspaper editors probably suffer from the same problem. So there is no deep coverage of education in this country, not at...

One of the saddest aspects of American society is how little most people know about education and how little they seem to care. We need to fix this. In fairness, we have to assign a lot of blame to our Education Establishment. They are great at confusing the public and sapping everyone’s spirit. Even the simplest activities are transmuted into murky mysteries. As many parents have found, they cannot understand the explanations provided by the school when children fail. They cannot help their children with even elementary-level homework. Secondly, we have to assign a lot of blame to our media....

[For all teachers and parents]-- Malkin Dare, a lifelong teacher and education reformer, is the founder of the Society for Quality Education in Ontario. She is a big voice for sane education in Canada and throughout the world. Dare summarized her educational philosophy in an article titled “Ten Keys to Success: Fundamental Principles of Teaching.” That article is condensed here to the main points. Please, parents and teachers, read this material and discuss it. ---------------------- 1. Almost all students can learn: Obviously, there are a few students who, because of a severe disability, are prevented from learning certain things. For...

When you look back at New Math (ca. 1965) and Reform Math (ca. 1990), one of the most striking and persistent features was that parents could not understand the homework which their children brought home. Mystified parents were trying to advise mystified children. The parents, presumably the wise members of the society, were helpless to say anything useful when confronted by the weird complexities of “reform” math, which has now been rolled forward into Common Core. Here is a commonplace horror story that can stand in for millions of others: “When Mike and Camille Chudzinski tried to help their son...

Video is only 3:15 minutes long. A short graphic presentation of the nine big flaws in public schools. Suppose someone is asking the question, well, what can we do, where do we start? Here's a list of nine places to start. ---------------------------------------------- Personally I like trying to radically simplify things. That is especially appropriate in education. What these professors spend their time doing is creating so much confusion, disinformation, propaganda, alibis, excuses, lies, etc., etc., etc., finally no ordinary citizen knows what to think about the subject anymore. And that's how the Education Establishment wins. At some point you have...

Thirty years ago, a panel of distinguished experts concluded that US public schools were so bad they could be an enemy attack. The famous Nation at Risk Report stated: "If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.” Thirty years later, nothing has improved. Probably the opposite. (“Nation is at Greater Risk. But everyone pretends not to know why." A new Examiner article explains why our schools don't improve. Link below.) We are celebrating the 30th anniversary of one of...

It's sad to say but seems entirely true: nothing good comes from our Education Establishment. They are all socialists or perhaps fascists. They never think in terms of "let's teach lots of wonderful stuff to kids of all ages." They think only in terms of diluting content. Here is their apparent plan: teach less and teach it badly so kids will dislike the subject forever. (Reform Math proves that point.) Americans really ought to think of their public schools as occupied territory, like France in 1943. We need more Resistance. Killing Common Core is a good start. People are always...