Free Republic

“Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons?” – Michel Foucault Once upon a time in America, parents breathed a sigh of relief when their kids went back to school after a summer’s hiatus, content in the knowledge that for a good portion of the day their kids would be gainfully occupied, out of harm’s way and out of trouble. Those were the good old days, before school shootings became a part of our national lexicon and schools, aiming for greater security, transformed themselves into quasi-prisons, complete with surveillance cameras, metal detectors, police patrols,...

In America, a good education is available everywhereThese days, it seems like everything is made into a political football. Perhaps the one thing we can agree upon is the importance of education for everyone. Currently in the United States, approximately 30 percent of the people who enter high school do not graduate. This was considerably less of a problem during the agricultural age or the industrial age, when all one needed to be successful financially was a strong back and a willingness to work. Now that we have advanced to the technological-information age, education has assumed paramount importance for success...

Learning, and thinking, are deeply social activities. This is not the traditional view (Rodin's iconic sculpture, "The Thinker," is conspicuously alone in his chin-on-fist musings), but it's the view that is emerging out of several decades of social science research. Our minds often work best in interaction with other people's minds, and there are particular kinds of relationships that are especially good at evoking our intelligence. One is the master-apprentice relationship, which I wrote about here. Another, of course, is the teacher-student relationship—but today I want to talk about the benefits of this relationship for the teacher. For thousands of...

One bizarre aspect of any discussion about public education is that everybody tiptoes around the real reason why the schools are mediocre. We spend billions of dollars. Millions of people work in this area. The whole country embraces public education. So why do we have low literacy rates, widespread ignorance among ordinary citizens about simple things, etc., etc.?? The people in charge can’t be trying to do a good job. Put another way, whatever it is these people mean by “education” is not what most parents want for their kids. John Dewey and everybody else in charge of public education...

Colleges around the country should be worried. The quality of online courses is catching up fast. Depending on whom you talk to, massively open online courses (MOOCs) will upend and democratize higher education, or are half-baked approximations of lectures that can never equal the classroom. Kevin Carey, the director of the Education Policy Program at the New America Foundation put it to the test, spending four months taking two MOOCs, from start to finish. One, a Coursera Introduction to Philosophy was everything critics dislike, he says. Too brief, and with none of the problem sets, essays, or tests that make...

LANSING — Teachers couldn't blame the weather or inability to get the day off from work as excuses for the underwhelming turnout for what was billed as a "huge grassroots rally" for traditional public schools in Lansing Wednesday. Notice of the rally was posted on Facebook and progressive blogs, and notices were sent to 8,000 teachers and public education supporters, according to one organizer. Before the rally, 751 people said on Facebook that they would attend, and a popular liberal blog said turnout would be "huge," but a headcount put the figure at about 500 people. The crowd barely filled...

Some in the post-modern snobby, secular academy view these Christian faith-based perspectives as not being academically respectable. They hold to a rigid, narrow dogmatic “establishment of unbelief” (Marsden). Our faculty members, by contrast, think it is intellectually dishonest and stultifying to examine the large questions of truth, beauty, evil, community, the physical world and the human mind as though Christian religious ideas have nothing to say about them. So faith is foundational to everything we do here on this campus. My old friend the late Russell Kirk use to put it this way—As he watched students lining up, as they...

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...

My wife wants to sign up my grandson for the ABC Disney website. Does anyone have any experience with this toddler Learning website? The website says it was developed by “Learning Professionals and Teachers” Such claims do not necessary inspire my confidence.

Unions such as Education Minnesota represent the greatest barrier to improving teacher quality. Teachers unions such as Education Minnesota consistently promote practices that undermine excellence in the classroom. Education Minnesota is the second best funded lobbying force in the state, eclipsed only by the National Rifle Association. Having aided the election of Gov. Mark Dayton and a DFL-controlled Legislature, Education Minnesota is vigorously calling in its chips. With Dayton and Education Commissioner Brenda Cassellius as its agents, Education Minnesota has been hugely successful in disassembling the previous system of school accountability. Cassellius sought waivers from requirements that were effectively identifying...

Leaving aside the NSA snooping, which is apparently legal (if worrisome), it is easy to view the three scandals rocking the Obama administration -- Benghazi, IRS, and Department of Justice -- as disconnected instances of the abuse of power. But this is not necessarily so. Although apparently unrelated to each other in their planning and execution, the three controversies exhibit a shared sensibility -- and possess a common root. Each reflects a cardinal tenet of the powerfully reinforced brand of left-liberalism inculcated on university campuses in this country. {SNIP} The administration’s misleading of the public reflects a teaching that is...

The state's regional Education Service Centers no will longer issue lesson plans - and will forbid their use after Aug. 31 - for a popular online curriculum system that became a lightning rod for conservatives who criticized it as anti-American, legislators announced Monday. The move is expected to leave school districts across the state, including some in the greater Houston area, scrambling to replace CSCOPE, as the program is called, before the start of next school year.

When I mention online learning to my colleagues at Wesleyan University, most respond initially with skepticism. But based on my experience, I know that real learning can take place on the Web. I am currently teaching a massive online open course, or MOOC, on Coursera. Most MOOCs have great attrition, and mine is no exception: There were almost 30,000 students registered at the start, yet 4,000 remain active as we near the end of the semester. Unlike most MOOCs, which focus on science, technology, engineering and mathematics, mine is a classic humanities course. "The Modern and the Postmodern" starts off...

A Philadelphia mother wants her son’s high school teacher fired after he bought the teen the novel Fifty Shades of Grey for in-class reading. Maya Ladson says she was shocked to find a copy of the racy read in her 14-year-old’s book bag back on March 9. That shock turned to outrage when she found out how he got the book. “The minute I found out about it, it raised concern,” the mother told NBC10.com Thursday. “This is not OK to me. This is major.” Ladson's son, who is a 9th grade student at Eastern University Academy Charter School in...

More than 200 Wisconsin teachers and school administrators traveled to Green Bay last week to attend CREATE Wisconsin’s 2013 state conference. EAGnews decided to join them, to get a first-hand look at what the program, sponsored by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, is all about. State officials contend the CREATE program is nothing more than an effort to help teachers better understand and serve minority students. But as EAGnews previously reported, CREATE appears to have a much more broad and progressive agenda than simply working to close the achievement gap between students of color and their white counterparts. Many...

ALBANY, N.Y. - An Albany, New York high school English teacher who asked students to imagine they were Nazis and give reasons why Jews were evil may be disciplined, a school district spokesman said on Friday. Superintendent Marguerite Vanden Wyngaard was expected to personally apologize on Friday to families of Albany High School students who were given the writing assignment, said Ron Lesko, a spokesman for the district. Vanden Wyngaard issued an apology in the press on Thursday night after a local newspaper reporter showed school officials the assignment, which had been published on the paper’s website. Lesko confirmed that...

New national standards prod schools to return to content-based education.The biggest new thing in American public education these days is a two-volume, 230-page, written-by-committee document called the Common Core State Standards. Forty-five states have pledged to the federal government that they will adopt the standards—which specify the math and English skills that students must attain in each grade from kindergarten to the end of high school—within the next several years. Some of these states genuinely believe that doing so will make more of their students ready for college and careers. Others are on board primarily because the Obama administration has...

New Teaching Standards Delve More Deeply Into Climate Change Under proposed new national science standards, students would learn concepts more thoroughly, including how human activity is driving global warming. By Teresa Watanabe April 9, 2013 The politically touchy topic of climate change will be taught more deeply to students under proposed new national science standards released Tuesday. The Next Generation Science Standards, developed over the last 18 months by California and 25 other states in conjunction with several scientific organizations, represent the first national effort since 1996 to transform the way science is taught in thousands of classrooms. The multi-state...

I just heard another Republican politico, a state senator here in Georgia, at a meeting, claim that Common Core is not a federalized education curriculum, but a “state-led” education reform initiative. He could have been reading from a press release sent by the Obama Department of Education. In reality, Common Core was attached to millions of dollars in stimulus funds that were dangled by the feds before the states in a contest called “Race to the Top” during the 2009 economic crisis. The attached Common Core standards were not even written when states signed up. Writing the standards and attached...

Yeah, yeah. I know a lot of people have a problem with Glenn Beck. To be honest, I do too, sometimes.But this is something worth listening to. He lays out how we are being intentionally distracted in order to slip the truly insidious agenda contained within the stimulus packages, Common Core and other Progressive initiatives.