Free Republic

A group representing 5,000 U.S. professors has endorsed an academic boycott of Israeli colleges and universities. The American Studies Association says it voted for the boycott "as an ethical stance." "It represents a principle of solidarity with scholars and students deprived of their academic freedom and an aspiration to enlarge that freedom for all, including Palestinians," a Dec. 4 statement said. According to The New York Times, which reported the boycott Monday, the action — the first time the group has called for an academic boycott of any nation's universities — makes the group the largest of its kind to...

He was bullied for his outspoken opinions and didn't care much for Republicans. Karl Pierson, 18, who stormed his Colorado high school brandishing a shotgun and bearing hatred for his debate coach, critically injured a 15-year-old fellow student before shooting himself to death Friday afternoon as he was cornered by heavily armed police. "He had very strong beliefs about gun laws and stuff," said junior Abbey Skoda, who shared a class with Pierson during her freshmen year, The Denver Post reported. "I also heard he was bullied a lot." After undergoing surgery Friday, the injured girl was listed in critical,...

The media are currently filled with reports of students in the U.S. scoring poorly on international tests. The Program for International Student Assessment, which compares 15-year-olds in most industrialized countries, reports that American students dropped from 25th to 31st in math, 11th to 21st in reading and 20th to 24th in science. The solution consistently offered for these low rankings is to spend more money on schooling. But numerous studies examining the billions of dollars we've spent on education in the last decade show that money has not improved the performance of U.S. students, and higher-scoring foreign countries spend far...

(Update: Adding more on opposition to Core, where Duncan spoke) U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan told a group of state schools superintendents Friday that he found it “fascinating” that some of the opposition to the Common Core State Standards has come from “white suburban moms who — all of a sudden — their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were and their school isn’t quite as good as they thought they were.” Yes, he really said that. But he has said similar things before. What, exactly, is he talking about? In his cheerleading for the controversial Common Core...

Schools: Opposition is rising to new national education standards pushed on public schools. They have turned schools into re-education camps for liberalism, with political statements masquerading as English lessons. If one had to include one speech by President Ronald Reagan as recommended reading in a national standardized curriculum it might be the one in which he stood in front of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin and said, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" One might pick Reagan's first inaugural address when he said, "Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." Or even his 1964 "A...

Josh Barry, of Camp Hill, Penn., wants to know why the president of the local teacher’s union thinks he’s a neo-Nazi after he complained about a classroom assignment that he believed to be biased. “I’m Jewish and my wife is half-black, half-white,” Barry told me in a telephone interview. “I am the furthest thing from a neo-Nazi.” Last week, his daughter’s eighth grade American History class at East Pennsboro Middle School was asked to analyze a New York Times story about the recent government shutdown. Barry, who said he is a registered independent, read the story and then read a...

It's exactly what critics of the Common Core school curriculum warned about: Partisan political statements masquerading as English lessons finding their way into elementary school classrooms. Teaching materials aligned with the controversial national educational standards ask fifth-graders to edit such sentences as “(The president) makes sure the laws of the country are fair,” “The wants of an individual are less important than the well-being of the nation” and “the commands of government officials must be obeyed by all.” The sentences, which appear in worksheets published by New Jersey-based Pearson Education, are presented not only for their substance, but also to...

There is a phenomenon that is rarely commented on but which is as common as it is significant. For at least two generations, countless conservative parents have seen their adult children reject their core values. I have met these parents throughout America. I have spoken with them in person and on my radio show. Many have confided to me -- usually with a resigned sadness -- that one or more of their children has adopted left-wing social, moral and political beliefs. A particularly dramatic recent example was a pastor who told me that he has three sons, all of whom...

<p>NEW YORK (AP) Actors Jonah Hill, Jamie Lee Curtis and Kristen Bell are among a batch of celebrities donning Russian-language "Love Conquers Hate" T-shirts to show support for gays in Russia alarmed by a new law banning pro-gay "propaganda."</p> <p>It's part of an initiative launched Monday by the Human Rights Campaign, the largest U.S. gay-rights group.</p>

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...

Here’s another bizarre school assignment to add to the pile, courtesy of Wisconsin-based talk show host Vicki McKenna. Students are asked to work in groups to choose seven people to save from a shipwreck. To help in their decision, they are given some rudimentary information about each passenger, such as race and religious views. Mr. Blake, for example, is a Mormon who “sympathizes with anti-black views,” while Mr. Newton is a “black power advocated” [sic] who is “suspected of homosexual activity.” You can see the educational value, especially when you take into account Father Frans, a priest who is “often...

Los Angeles public schools are encouraging teachers and staff to wear badges that identify them as “LGBT allies” and supporters of the pro-gay movement. Superintendent John Deasy kicked off the effort Thursday, which he said was necessary to prevent gay kids from being bullied. “We want all our youth and staff to know that it is safe to be you in LAUSD,” said Deasy in a statement to the Los Angeles Times. The move is part of the L.A. Gay and Lesbian Center’s “Out for Safe Schools” initiative. The front sides of the badges have the word “ally” written on...

“Number sense,” courtesy of Common Core? We don’t know the source of that math problem, but based on what we’ve seen elsewhere, it has all the hallmarks of Common Core math. Now try your hand at this third-grade math problem, also reportedly from a Common Core lesson: Common Core: It’s For the Children™.

An Oregon-based ad agency has been generating national attention for its ads promoting Cover Oregon, The Beaver State’s the version of an Obamacare health insurance marketplace. The generally pointless ads cost taxpayers $3 million, reports Fox News. They feature ostensibly catchy musical numbers and have sort of a hipster, granola, outdoorsy vibe. They offer no clue what they are about until the very end, when the words “Cover Oregon” appear on the screen along with a website. One version of the ad also bothers to list a phone number. Now, North, the Portland-based agency, wants high school marching bands to...

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....

A Texas high school is using a textbook that changes the wording of the Second Amendment to weaken gun rights.The Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States reads: “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”But at Guyer High School in Denton, Texas, an Advanced Placement U.S. History textbook has rewritten the Second Amendment as: “The people have a right to keep and bear arms in a state militia.”The AP version of the Second Amendment may be easier for...

Middle and high school students in San Diego, California will be encouraged to vent their frustration that the world lacks justice when they return to school and participate in the “Trayvon Martin dialogues” this fall. The board of San Diego Unified Schools unanimously approved a proposal recently to establish classroom forums to discuss the death of Trayvon Martin, a black teenager who was shot during an altercation with a Hispanic man, George Zimmerman, in Florida last year. A jury recently acquitted Zimmerman, who claimed that Martin struck first and shot him in self-defense. The sponsors of San Diego’s Trayvon Martin...

California Senate Bill 131, which is ostensibly about protecting victims of child sex abuse, forces private schools to defend claims of sexual abuse as far back as 40 years ago, but exempts public schools from such claims. Because of the Democratic super-majorities in both houses of California, there is no way to stop the passage of the bill. As Valerie Schmalz wrote in Catholic San Francisco: The California state Senate narrowly approved a waiver of the statute of limitations for child sex abuse damage lawsuits – a bill that could have a devastating effect on nonprofits including Catholic Charities and...

The Los Angeles Unified School District has a graduation rate of 66% well below the national average of 78.2%. Despite this, the LA school district is going to spend nearly a million dollars training kids to promote Obamacare. Heartland.org reported, via Human Events: The Los Angeles Unified School District will use a state grant to train teens to promote ObamaCare to family members. Covered California, the state’s health insurance exchange, announced grants of $37 million on May 14 to promote the nationally unpopular law. LAUSD will receive $990,000. The district listed as a primary outcome for its project, “Teens trained...

A North Carolina teacher is brain-washing students telling them Republican policies are hurting schools.EAG News reported: It appears that one North Carolina teacher is getting into the spirit of the new Common Core learning standards that promote the use of “informational” texts in the classroom. According to the StopCommonCoreNC.com, a fourth-grade teacher with Henderson County Public Schools gave students a brief reading assignment, titled “Raleigh’s Educational Plan.”(continued)