Free Republic

There is outrage among the chattering class over Assad’s use of toxic chemicals, and a supine public is sullenly acquiescing. The United States is about to start its 3rd war in the area. One cannot easily discern coherence as to our interests/policy in Syria from the “wizards” currently pretending to be in charge in DC, a familiar state of affairs, unfortunately. Syria is a mess and one imagines history will show that this administration contributed to it through vacillation and late starting “covert” weapons supply. The Assad father/son tag team is truly evil and guilty of most of the allegations...

Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog 49 things that defenders of government run schools don’t want you to know 1) The United States is tied for first place with Switzerland when it comes to annual spending per student on its public schools. However, this has never stopped liberals from making the false claim that U.S. public schools are “underfunded.”2) Education majors have the lowest SAT scores of any college major.3) Public schools teach math and science much better when the teachers don’t have a degree in education.4) When Barack Obama lived in Chicago, he refused to allow his children to attend Chicago’s...

A new cornerstone piece on public education by Allison Benedikton on Slate.com titled, "If You Send Your Kid to Private School, You Are a Bad Person," was shocking but consistent and clearly revealed that liberals value the word “education,” as long as the word “public,” precedes it. According to the author, public schools continue to fail because parents are sending their children to private schools, instead of public schools. Parents who spend their hard earned money to send their children to private schools are in fact destroying the fabric of America’s public education: which is immoral. For liberals, abortion is...

(CNSNews.com) - The Chicago Public Schools this year are mandating that the district’s kindergarten classes include sex education, fulfilling a proposal President Barack Obama supported in 2003 when he served in the Illinois state senate and later defended when he ran for president in the 2008 election cycle. At a Planned Parenthood convention at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Washington, D.C., on July 17, 2007, a teenage girl who said she worked as a sex-education “peer educator” in the D.C. public schools asked then-U.S. Sen. Obama what he would do to encourage the teaching of “medically accurate, age-appropriate, and responsible sex...

Detroit Teachers Moonlight As ‘Sugar Babies’ To Offset Wage Cuts DETROIT (WWJ) - It’s back-to-school season and many Detroit teachers are struggling in the wake of budget cuts and overcrowded classrooms. According to the National School Supply and Equipment Association, the average teacher spent at least $485 on school supplies for their classroom last year. So, what are some Detroit women doing to offset their struggles in the classroom? Well, they’re becoming “sugar babies” of course — seeking financial assistance from wealthy men online. In the Detroit School District alone, 201 teachers are moonlighting as sugar babies to offset wage...

This is a story that SCREAMS for attention. In Michigan a family has been, and continues to be, brutalized by a systemic rot within the school system. A rot that perpetrates, and unbelievably as it sounds, excuses CHILD RAPE – despite the community outrage. This just came onto our radar screen. However, a cursory review shows this storyline has a similar disposition to the Penn State, Sandusky scandal. The Janczewski’s son was brutally raped over a period exceeding three years (2006-2009) by his middle school math teacher, Neal Erickson. Years later, in 2012, an anonymous tipster alerted authorities to video...

I have been teaching for over twenty years. Generally, I have been given either no curriculum or curriculum that was focused on skills, not specific texts. I would have to get those skills taught in whatever way I wanted to get there. Sometimes I was given more direction and that direction was generally pretty good including texts, key terms, supplemental stories, and suggested writing assignments. These directions were created at a school level by the teachers in the school. I helped write some myself. Mostly, I have had a lot of freedom in how I could achieve the learning goals....

At least one mother told KCAL9′s Tom Wait she was upset after hearing that her 7-year-old daughter was allegedly forced to kneel before Carter. “She says that she has to drop down on one knee with her hands at her side, wait for the principal to come out, lift his arms and tell them to go to class,” said the mom. “I feel that the principal wants to be like a king, and we don’t have kings in America,” she added. District officials said Carter will schedule a future meeting with parents to plan different safety options on campus.

A few weeks ago in Part 1, I finished by discussing how Thomas Jefferson distinguished the U.S. from other countries in asking, "What but education has advanced us beyond the condition of our indigenous neighbors?" But is today's public education system what he and other Founding Fathers were imagining it could be back then? The answer is: Yes and no. Yes, Jefferson foresaw that public education would teach a broad range of basics. But no, he didn't imagine that academia would be run by the federal government or that it would turn into limited indoctrination camps for political correctness and...

There is very little meaning in things simply given away. America’s public education system has become the quintessence of that idea -- a “free” system that produces unprepared and overly entitled youths ill-equipped to advance America's future. High-minded progressives see public education as something to be protected from private competition and the ravages of more innovative systems at home and abroad. I spared teachers from my ire of my last column, but they are not without fault. For the most part, though, teachers are superseded by education reformers, especially on the right. In public education, teachers are rarely specialists in...

ROSE CITY, Mich. – August 19 is the crucial day.At 7 p.m. in the Ogemaw Heights High School auditorium, the Rose City community will learn the fate of seven West Branch-Rose City teachers who recently wrote letters in support of a colleague convicted of molesting a young student.John and Lori Janczewski, the victim’s parents, want the teachers fired. They also want school board member Michael Eagan – who sat with the family of convicted child molester Neal Erickson during his sentencing – recalled from office.“We had been quiet … and sat back and said nothing,” John Janczewski said of the...

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, the Republican nominee for this year's gubernatorial race, outlined a comprehensive education reform plan during a campaign stop today. Cuccinelli aims to create an easier process for opening charter schools, extend tax credits that send low-income preschoolers to private schools, allow parents to close failing schools by majority petition, expand virtual schooling, and improve curriculum and testing through a new panel. Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II unveiled a 12-point education plan on Tuesday that would push for charter schools, offer voucher-like scholarships for preschoolers and empower a majority of parents to close down, convert...

The “Student/Parent/Principal Contract For Eliminating Guns and Weapons at School” was sent as part of the district’s registration packet for the 2013-2014 school year. Under the contract, parents must agree to teach “…including by personal example, my teenager about the dangers and consequences of the misuse of guns and weapons and I will keep any guns and all weapons under lock and away from school grounds and away from my children.”

Gabriel Lugo is president of the faculty senate at UNC-Wilmington. He's generally a nice fellow with a good sense of humor. But, unfortunately, on August 9th, he sent out a wildly unprofessional memo to the entire university faculty. His memo lends credence to my concern that the UNC system has become little more than a political lobby for the Democratic legislative agenda. Thus I will soon propose that we rename our school DNC-Wilmington to reflect the fact that it is an institution committed to politics rather than honest intellectual inquiry. In a section of his memo allegedly updating them on...

One can't imagine the fear in the hearts of the parents of those nine black students who walked past shouting placard-carrying mobs as they entered Little Rock Central High School in 1957. Each day, they were greeted with angry shouts of "Two, four, six, eight, we don't want to integrate." In some rural and urban areas, during the school desegregation era, parents escorted their 5- and 6-year-old children past crowds shouting threats and screaming racial epithets. Often there were Ku Klux Klan marches and cross burnings. Much of this protest was in the South, but Northern cities were by no...

In an interview with the Guardian published Saturday, Damon revealed that he had just moved to Los Angeles from New York, but that he didn't "have a choice" when it came to putting his four daughters into private schools. The multi-millionaire did say that it was "a major moral dilemma" and then made the bizarre excuse that the public schools aren't "progressive" enough. This would probably mark the first time anyone has ever complained that America's public schools, especially in Los Angeles, aren't left-wing enough.

Yes, definitely. But hear me out. Every homeschooling parent knows about the “S” word—socialization. We’ve all had conversations with concerned relatives who wonder if our kids are being properly socialized. Read any article about homeschooling in a mainstream media source and inevitably, the comments section will fill up with concerns about it. Never mind that we also talk about socializing puppies or that it’s something we do at after-work Happy Hours, and that children who are caught socializing too much in school are reprimanded. People who don’t know anything about the homeschooling family down the street have “grave concerns” about...

The following was a difficult read because it’s also what liberal blacks call “dirty laundry”: bad stuff about black folk never to be said around whites. The essay was posted on Craigslist and it’s the kind of truth that often is taken back out of PC fear…. Essay by a teacher in a black high school *This is a repost from the rants and raves section from the Mobile, Alabama craigslist.* The truth is usually a tough thing to accept, so I understand if this is flagged. It would be a cowardly thing to do, but I understand it. Some...

Educators boogie to 'When it's over you ain't gon need ya vibrator' (WARNING: This story includes a video and rap song lyrics of a sexually explicit nature and may offend some readers.) At its 2013 national convention in Atlanta last week, the National Education Association encouraged teachers to dance to a sexually explicit rap song that featured the “N”-word and declared, “When it’s over you ain’t gon need ya vibrator.” The NEA, a nationwide labor union that represents public school teachers, played the song titled, “Wobble,” by V.I.C. at its “Raise Your Hand” conference – which was publicized as an...

As if more evidence were needed about the tragedy of black education, Rachel Jeantel, a witness for the prosecution in the George Zimmerman murder trial, put a face on it for the nation to see. Some of that evidence unfolded when Zimmerman’s defense attorney asked 19-year-old Jeantel to read a letter she allegedly had written to Trayvon Martin’s mother. She responded that she doesn’t read cursive, and that’s in addition to her poor grammar, syntax and communication skills. Jeantel is a senior at Miami Norland Senior High School. How in the world did she manage to become a 12th-grader without...