Free Republic

An all-too-familiar scene was enacted on the campus of Swarthmore College during a meeting on May 4 to discuss demands by student activists for the college to divest itself of its investments in companies that deal in fossil fuels. As a speaker was beginning a presentation to show how many millions of dollars such a disinvestment would cost the college, student activists invaded the meeting, seized the microphone, and shouted down a student who rose in the audience to object. Although there were professors and administrators in the room — including the college president — apparently nobody had the guts...

Liberal Chick is back and completely off her rocker. This time the zany Leftist wants pressure cookers banned in light of the Boston Terrorist Attack. The sad thing is she finds dozens of college students ready to outlaw them as well. Cockle-Doodle-Do!

Students in some Albany High School English classes were asked to participate in the unthinkable this week as part of a persuasive writing assignment. The objective? Prove why Jews are evil and convince the teacher of their loyalty to the Third Reich in five paragraphs or less. “You must argue that Jews are evil, and use solid rationale from government propaganda to convince me of your loyalty to the Third Reich!” read the description on the assignment, which the school superintendent said reflects the kind of sophisticated writing expected of students under the new Common Core standards and was meant...

Tell us what you really think, Oklahoma Rep. Mike Reynolds. Reynolds is making a few enemies after bluntly stating "it's not our job to see that anyone gets an education" in an email exchange between Oklahoma lawmakers. When fellow Rep. James Lockhart emailed colleagues asking them to support a bill that would expand Oklahoma's Promise, a scholarship program for qualified low-income students, Reynolds responded, "It is not the responsibility of me, you, or any constituent in my district to pay for his or any other persons [sic] education …

Telling them how, not what, to think How is it that when a person disagrees politically with a teacher, suddenly said teacher is “indoctrinating” students instead of teaching them? OK, I admit it: I indoctrinated students. I indoctrinated them that their job was being a student. Instead of a check, they got paid every nine weeks with a report card. At the end of four years’ service, they got a “bonus”: a diploma. I indoctrinated them by telling them to consider their “paycheck” an investment account that, once earned, no one could take away from them. I told them a...

Shortly after I did my first TV special on education, "Stupid in America," hundreds of union teachers showed up outside my office to yell at me. They were angry because I said union rules were a big reason American kids don't learn. The union is a big reason kids don't like school and learn less. Union contracts limit flexibility, limit promotion of good teachers, waste money and make it hard for principals to fire even terrible teachers. But I was wrong to imply that the union is the biggest problem. In states with weak unions, K-12 schools stagnate, too. Education...

Last week, I reported on the federal government's massive new student-tracking database, which was created as part of the nationalized Common Core standards scheme. The bad news: GOP "leadership" continues to ignore or, worse, enable this Nanny State racket (hello, Jeb Bush). The good news: An independent grassroots revolt outside the Beltway bubble is swelling. Families are taking their children's academic and privacy matters out of the snoopercrats' grip and into their own hands. You can now download a Common Core opt-out/disclosure form to submit to your school district, courtesy of the Truth In American Education group: http://truthinamericaneducation.com/uncategorized/ccss-parent-opt-out-form/ Parents caught...

Wisconsin Education Officials Want Students to Wear ‘White Privilege’ Wristbands The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction runs several programs that heavily emphasize racial issues in public schools, EAGnews.org has been finding. Some feel that one of those programs – an Americorps operation called VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America) – may go a bit overboard by encouraging white students to wear a white wristband "as a reminder about your (white) privilege.” Geared towards high school students, the program “seeks to build capacity in schools and districts serving low-income families to develop an effective, sustainable, research-based program of family-school-community partnerships,” according...

If students want to pass John Banzhaf’s law class, they’ll have to fight for increased government regulation in the food and beverages industry.Banzhaf, a law professor at George Washington University, will require his students to lobby state and local governments to ban sugary beverages, according to a press release. The release was put out by Banzhaf himself, who summarized the objective as “Undergrads Required to Lobby for Obama Policy.”“Some 200 undergrads will be asked to contact legislators in their home cities, counties, or states asking them to adopt legislation similar to that already adopted in New York City … banning...

In Harvard University’s latest attempt to promote the delegitimization of the state of Israel, Jewish students in freshman and upper class dormitories received mock eviction notices in light of “Israel Apartheid Week”, which is currently being organized on college and university campuses worldwide. The campaign, organized by the Harvard Palestine Solidarity Committee, distributed notices at the beginning of March which read, “We regret to inform you that your suite is scheduled for demolition in the next three days”, a reference to the group’s views regarding Israel’s treatment of the Arab population. The Anti Defamation League (ADL) expressed outrage over the...

An Advanced Placement World Geography teacher at a Texas high school who encouraged students to dress in Islamic clothing also instructed them to refer to the 9-11 hijackers not as terrorists – but as “freedom fighters,” according to students who were in the class. Students at Lumberton High School were also told to stop referring to the Holocaust as Genocide – instead they were told to use the term “ethnic cleansing.” John Valastro, the superintendent of the Lumberton Independent School District, tells me that the teacher did absolutely nothing wrong. “What is more dangerous – fear and ignorance or education...

<p>The Oregon House has voted to extend resident college tuition rates to some young illegal immigrants.</p> <p>The House's 38-18 vote on Friday sends the measure to the Senate. In the last decade, similar legislation has failed twice.</p> <p>The measure would allow students to qualify for in-state tuition at the Oregon's seven public universities if they've attended an Oregon high school for at least three years and lived in the United States for at least five.</p>

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) - Police say hundreds of students brawled at Minneapolis South High School after a food fight got out of control. **SNIP** Minneapolis Police spokesman Sgt. Bill Palmer says 200 to 300 students fought and no weapons were used. He says about a dozen officers were on the scene and used chemical spray to break up the fight.

The University of Wisconsin – Superior (UWS) is sponsoring a campaign that teaches students it is “unfair” to be white, a university spokesperson confirmed to Campus Reform last Wednesday. A poster produced by the Unfair Campaign. The controversial project, named the “Unfair Campaign,” exists to teach students that “systems and institutions are set up for us [whites]” and as such are “unfair.” The campaign’s slogan, as it appears on its official website, is “it’s hard to see racism when you’re White.” The project disseminates its controversial message through an aggressive campaign of online videos, billboards, and lectures. Posters produced by...

More than 200 organizations across the country are staging some 3,600 events to mark this year’s School Choice Week. But many grateful parents have reason to celebrate every week. Just ask Joseph Kelley. A single father living in Washington, D.C., Kelley was shocked when his son Rashawn failed the first grade. Worse, his teachers didn’t even realize that he knew how to read. But rather than work to improve his vocabulary and get him up to grade level, the D.C. Public School System placed Rashawn in special-education classes. Kelley knew his son was smart but wasn’t being well-served by his...

An event this past Wednesday at Loyola University Chicago featuring former Obama administration official Van Jones strayed far from the marketed title of “2013 MLK Celebration,” instead encouraging students to embrace a “new patriotism” and the “ugly-unequal founding” of America. Several students reported that they were compelled by their “environmental sustainability” professor to attend the radical lecture—students who up until that evening told me they had no prior familiarity with Van Jones. One student interviewed said approximately thirty students attended this class.

Editor’s note: The following is the text of a letter written by Leila Beckwith and Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, co-founders of the AMCHA Initiative, to UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi regarding the university’s silence and inaction in the face of anti-Jewish hostility during a recent student protest. As you know, we are faculty members at the University of California, who have been investigating and documenting anti-Jewish bigotry on California public university campuses for the last several years. We are writing to you now to express our serious concern regarding an incident that occurred during a student protest on November 19, 2012, during...

Sixty percent of high school and college students say they plan on owning guns at a later stage in life, an academic study from American University revealed on Monday. According to a brand new study, sixty percent of young Americans plan on purchasing firearms in the future. According to the study, about 40 percent of the American students surveyed said they definitely planned to own firearms once they had established their own households. Another 20 percent said they were “contemplating” owning guns. Those findings were part of a broader study conducted by American University professor Jennifer L. Lawless and Loyola...

It's very likely that kids will find this column to be, like, totally stupid, and will conclude that they can write one sooooo much better. They will declare this on their Twitter feed, sandwiched between the hundreds of photos of themselves making that pursed-lips "duck face," then wait for the "friends" they've never met in person to tell them how hot they look. That's because compared with 30 years ago, more American students think they're above average in writing, leadership, intelligence, drive and social skills, according to a BBC analysis of college freshmen data by psychologist Jean Twenge. A separate...

Alliance Defending Freedom recently settled a lawsuit brought on behalf of Julea Ward, a former graduate student at Eastern Michigan University who was expelled from her counseling program after refusing to violate her religious beliefs. Media reports have unfortunately suggested that Julea’s lawsuit involved her refusal to counsel a client because he identified as gay: this is untrue. Instead, her case involved her religious objection to being forced to provide counseling about sexual relationships outside of marriage, an objection which applies equally to homosexual and heterosexual clients. Her objection is to providing counseling on certain topics, not to counseling any...

BEIJING – A man in northern China has rammed a car loaded with a gas tank and firecrackers into a group of middle school students, injuring 13. The official Xinhua News Agency says the man attempted to set off an explosion after running down 23 students at Fengning No. 1 Middle School in northern China's Hebei province on Monday. The man is in police custody.

DENVER (CBS4) – A woman accused of bringing a gun to a Denver middle school and menacing several students has been formally charged. Lynn Kimbrough with the district attorney’s office said Monica Avila, 34, was charged with four counts of menacing and one count of possession of a weapon on school grounds.

That question was posed in response to a new report from WORLD on Campus about the pornification of American universities. According to WORLD, self-styled “porn scholars” in fields ranging from literature to law “believe in immersing their students in the porn culture. Last year, 50 schools offered courses that included in-depth pornography content.” Students and their parents—many of whom take out massive loans or a second mortgage to cover outrageously inflated tuition—might “be surprised to learn they are paying…to watch, digest and learn to appreciate pornography in college.” As someone three years out of college, the salacious details of the...

I didn't vote for that ...

Sorry, college students. President Obama has cut your access to Pell Grants by 33%; he just forgot to mention it before Election Day.

They call it "teacher jail" - the administrative offices where nearly 300 Los Angeles Unified educators accused of misconduct spend months on end reading, blogging or texting. The cost is enormous: $1.4 million a month in salaries while district and law-enforcement investigations proceed, and $865,000 to hire substitutes to fulfill their classroom duties. Los Angeles Unified officials insist the cost is worth it - the price the district has to pay for years of downplaying or ignoring suspected abuse. That practice exploded into a major scandal in February with revelations of longtime patterns of misconduct by teachers at Telfair Elementary...

SNIPPET: "They are: Soheil Omar Kabir, 34, a Pomona man who is an American citizen from Afghanistan; Ralph Deleon, 23, an Ontario man who was born in the Philippines; Miguel Alejandro Santana Vidriales, 21, an Upland man who was born in Mexico and whose was U.S. citizenship was pending; and Arifeen David Gojali, 21, of Riverside." SNIPPET: "The three men followed the essays of the now-deceased al-Qaida leader Anwar Al-Awlaqi, who led terrorist operations in the Arabian Peninsula." SNIPPET: "Santana and Deleon told the plot to a confidential informant working for the FBI, according to the complaint." SNIPPET: "In order...

Almost 200,000 Chinese students joined North American universities in the last academic year, an increase of 23% from the previous year according to the Institute of International Education, a US nonprofit.The Chinese call them "sea turtles," the lucky few who go abroad—the US often being their first choice—for education, and then return home with better English and a broader cultural perspective to get good jobs with Western companies. (The nickname applies because sea turtles return home to lay eggs for the next generation.)China's education system emphasizes rote learning at the expense of creativity. While Americans are more often taught...

A group of college students chanted “Karl Marx” and “socialism” while celebrating President Obama’s electoral victory in front of the White House late Tuesday night, a video shot by Campus Reform reveals. The raucous group of students chanted “Karl Marx, Karl Marx, Karl Marx,” and cited abortion, socialism, and “Obama phones” as reasons for their support of President Obama’s second term. VIDEO: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=CIk1pY7Yg8U

A new report by the Friedman Foundation shows hiring of administrative and support staff in government schools has grown seven times faster than student enrollment over the last several decades. The group found: “America’s K-12 public education system has experienced tremendous historical growth in employment, according to the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics. Between fiscal year (FY) 1950 and FY 2009, the number of K-12 public school students in the United States increased by 96 percent while the number of full-time equivalent (FTE) school employees grew 386 percent. Public schools grew staffing at a rate four...

Florida Republicans are outraged after a school district allowed a pro-Obama organization to conduct student voter registration drives and deliver speeches to classes – but denied the Romney campaign similar opportunities.

Students boycotting school lunchesPublished: Oct. 6, 2012 at 4:46 PM NEW YORK, Oct. 6 (UPI) -- Many U.S. high school students are protesting new, healthier school lunches, and a professor says it may take a while for students to accept healthier food. The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 required public schools to follow new nutritional guidelines this academic year, providing fruits and vegetables and limiting fat, sodium, and calories, The New York Times reported Friday. "Before, there was no taste and no flavor," said Malik Barrows, a senior at Automotive High School in Brooklyn. "Now there's no taste, no...

Professors say Obama rally requires registration MADISON, Wis. — Three University of Wisconsin-Madison professors say students shouldn’t have to register with the Obama presidential campaign to attend Thursday’s rally. Students are required to supply their phone number and email address to the Obama campaign and click “I’m In” in order to get a free ticket to the president’s appearance at Bascom Hill. Political science professors Donald Downs and Ken Mayer and law professor Ann Althouse sent a letter expressing their concerns to university administrators Wednesday. Vice Chancellor Vince Sweeney says the university was simply trying to provide as much information...

In response to the growing outrage over the one-size-fits-all, top-down lunch menu regulations handed down by Michelle Obama and bureaucrats in Washington, DC, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack offered an incredible response: Let them eat snacks! Translation: no need to evaluate the program that is being met with dissatisfaction from coast-to-coast. We’ll just create another program. ABC News reports: "It's not surprising that some youngsters will in the middle of the day be hungry,” Vilsack told ABC News, responding to the controversy. “I remember my two boys when they came back from school they were always hungry, we always had...

Sacramento County's four largest school districts are among dozens in California that have gotten letters from the state saying they have a disproportionate number of African American students in their special education programs who are designated as emotionally disturbed.... ..."There is a disproportionate number of African American boys. Why that category?" said Diana Blackmon,director of special services for the Washington Unified School District in West Sacramento. "We certainly don't see it with autism,retardation or deafness. That,off the top,leads me to think something more is going on." ....[Diana Blackmon, director of special services for the Washington Unified School District in West...

YJC was conceived of by two American, Jewishly observant Zionists who deal with college-age Jews.Members of the Young Jewish Conservatives on their inaugural Israel trip meet with Jewish Agency Chair Natan Sharansky, December, 2011.Last weekend a core group of conservatives got together to learn, strategize and drum up the vote for their political candidate in the swing state of Pennsylvania. But two characteristics of this group stick out – they are Jewish! And they are young! The twenty-somethings were holed up in a hotel outside Philadelphia, spending a traditional Shabbat – new for some of them – and talking about...

On the first day of the Chicago Teachers Union strike, the union had the gall to use student protesters as props in its fight for bigger raises and better benefits, but less accountability. See EAGnews.org video here. Not surprisingly, at least some of the student protesters had no idea why they were there or what they were protesting. These kids simply look up to their teachers and assume they are right about everything, and the union is willing to exploit their naiveté for its own purposes. One student, when asked what his sign meant, replied that he didn't know and...

Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis walks, talks and barks like a rootsy Occupy Wall Street activist. But this Big Labor loudmouth who's leading the abandonment of nearly 400,000 schoolchildren in the Windy City is just another power-grabbing union fat cat. Instead of academic excellence, she rails about "social justice." Instead of accountability, she fumes about "profits" and curses merit pay. Lewis has marched with the Occu-clowns denouncing capitalism and promoting "socialism (as) the alternative." She raves: "Occupy Wall Street and the whole concept of the 99 percent is an extraordinarily important movement." And she earned praise as a "fist-in-the-air,...

The first people affected by the Canadian government’s decision to close the Iranian embassy in Ottawa were Iranian international students who had come to the capital to renew their visas. Canada announced it would close Iran’s embassy in Ottawa on Friday and asked all embassy staff to leave the country within five days citing, among other reasons, Iran’s “increasing military assistance to (Syria’s) Assad regime.” According to the Citizenship and Immigration Canada, in 2010 (the most recent statistics available) 3,247 international students from Iran were studying at the university level in Canada. .... For international students, some of whom receive...

YOUTH of AMERICA VOTE GOP! Let the GOP stop the bleeding of TRILLIONS of our dollars that are going overseas to _resident 0bama’s Muslim buddies in the Middle East. The GOP will build the pipeline from Canada; modernize existing refineries to increase their safety and output capacity. The GOP will drill for more oil and bring the price of gasoline down or below where it was before _resident 0bama took office. The GOP will extract both oil and natural gas from shale using monern drilling techniques. Think about all the extra money you’ll have for booze, parties, books and tuition....

RUSH: Obama, where was he? He was at the Northern Virginia Community College in Annandale. Let me just give you one sound bite of this. This audio sound bite number 24. I think we can squeeze this in just to set the stage 'cause there's more of this to come. OBAMA: This is not because we want to punish success. I suspect there are a bunch of young people in this gym that are gonna end up being wealthy, and that's good. RUSH: Yeah. OBAMA: But we are gonna have to ask everybody to sacrifice -- and if we're asking...

UNC promises major changes in wake of academic scandalBy Jane Stancill Modified Fri, Aug 31, 2012 11:59 AM CHAPEL HILL -- UNC-Chapel Hill leaders on Thursday promised different ways of doing business to prevent academic misconduct related to student athletes, including a new name for the beleaguered African and Afro-American Studies department. Some of the changes had already been announced; other initiatives were new. But the goal was clear — deans, faculty members, department heads and Athletic Director Bubba Cunningham lined up to convince a UNC Board of Governors review panel that they would do whatever it takes to recover...

What happens when progressives run government schools? They judge teachers based upon their own socio-political values. They don’t care if Billy or Suzie can read or write very well. But they want to make sure the kids are aware of all the social injustice plaguing the United States of America. That’s the only possible explanation for Denver Public Schools’ new teacher evaluation system . The system will rate teachers as “distinguished” – the highest rating – when they (among other things): Encourage students to “challenge and question the dominant culture.” Encourage students to take social action to change/ improve society...

Parents' outrage after popular drama teacher handed out SEX SURVEY to high school students on first day of classBy Snejana Farberov UPDATED: 11:45 EST, 30 August 2012 **SNIP The two-page survey starts out with innocuous questions like ‘Do you consider yourself and extrovert or introvert?’ But towards the end of the questionnaire comes the five-question section labelled ‘sex.’ Among the racy questions the students were asked to answer were: ‘What form of seduction do you like the most?’ and ‘What's the most sensual or sexual part about you?’ Davidson County School District Public Information Director Donna Stafford told the Daily...

ELLICOTT CITY, Md. (AP) — A train hauling coal derailed on a bridge in this city’s historic district, killing two college students who had been drinking together and hanging out on the tracks. Nearly two dozen railroad cars flipped over, including some that fell onto vehicles in a parking lot below the bridge, officials said. The students, both 19-year-old women, posted photos and comments from what appeared to be the bridge shortly before the train derailed around midnight Monday, according to Twitter feeds with the same names as the victims.

**BE SURE TO READ THE SAUDI MANIFESTO** Abedin_Affairs_with_Al_Saud_081312 ——————— Well, well, well… In addition to Huma Abedin returning to the United States circa 1996 and landing a job with both Hillary Clinton and the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs (IMMA), she also joined the Muslim Students Association (MSA) Executive Board at George Washington University. The following screen shot is courtesy of Wayback Machine and shows that in 1997, Huma Abedin served on teh MSA Executive Board as the Head of Social Committee. We now know that while Huma was serving on the IMMA Board with al-Qaeda financier Abdullah Omar Naseef,...

This is part of 3 part video series. Stewart Alexander, a Socialist, was brought to Palm Springs High School and he spoke about Socialism and how "positive" it is. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2hgwlkH64Y

A former Bangor Area High School teacher who had sex with a 17-year-old student was sent to prison for five months Friday by a Northampton County judge who said he expected her to be unhappy with his sentence. But then Rachel L. Farrell, 26, surprised Judge Emil Giordano, who had just heard her defense attorney arguing for probation.

Princeton Review is out with their list of the most conservative student bodies on American campuses. The top 10: Hillsdale College, Hillsdale, Michigan Thomas Aquina, Santa Paula, California Texas A&M, College Station, Texas Grove City College, Grove City, Pennsylvania U.S. Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, Colorado University of Dallas, Irving, Texas U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, King's Point, New York Hampden-Sidney College, Hampden-Sydney, Virginia Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah Angelo State University, San Angelo, Texas

Test coordinator accused of ‘ultimate betrayal' of studentsBy D. Aileen Dodd The Atlanta Journal-Constitution 6:37 p.m. Friday, May 11, 2012 A Slater Elementary School teacher allowed her colleagues to cheat as they erased stray marks on 2009 state exam sheets, resulting in the "ultimate betrayal" of students, an Atlanta Public Schools lawyer said at the teacher's termination hearing. The teacher and test coordinator, Vanessa Jackson, denied the allegations, saying she went "beyond my call of duty" in her job. The termination hearing will continue next Friday as the defense presents its case. Atlanta Public Schools officials said Jackson was responsible...