Free Republic

The parents don't even know what's going on because it's all at school,' says a fourth grade teacher in an interview. 'The parents question very little and they just assume the teacher knows what they're doing.' A world without textbooks or homework and where getting the wrong answer is celebrated may sound like an elementary student’s dream, but if such a fantasy becomes a reality, it would damage a generation of young minds. That is, however, exactly what is happening in many public elementary schools.Recently, I spoke with a fourth-grade teacher from the midwest, who shared her experience witnessing the...

Biden promises he will: “Double the number of psychologists, guidance counselors, nurses, social workers, and other health professionals in our schools so our kids get the mental health care they need.”

I know, I know, you don’t want to think about all the bad public schools out there. Nothing to do with you, right?? Wrong. The effects are oozing through the society. You are in danger. Want safety? Here are three threats you have to overcome: 1) THE EDUCATION ESTABLISHMENT CAN’T BE TRUSTED. Almost a century ago, they took a wrong turn, and went down a road marked SOCIAL ENGINEERING. The problem for everybody else is that these ideologues hope to wreck the society we’ve got, so they can build the collectivized world they dream about. (The honest term would be...

Mayor Bill de Blasio charged Friday that the city’s specialized high schools practice “massive segregation” as the controversy grows over admissions criteria to the elite institutions. “That’s why we’re doing something bold here, and we’re saying we’re not going to live by this old system that has perpetuated massive segregation — not just segregation, massive segregation,” de Blasio said on WNYC radio.

I think it's a fair suspicion that our Education Establishment lie much too often. If not that, their ideas are narrow, their horizons limited. Most children, they seem to believe, are mud, lacking any special gifts. Last week I met a different kind of educator, a Roman named Quintilian, 35-100 AD. (He and Cicero, 106-63 BC, have long been considered the two great masters of oratory, language, and education.) All it took was a few quotes and I knew that Marcus Fabius Quintilianus was brilliant, big-minded, and bold. If we had a dozen guys like this, the ed games are...

(Summary: In many ways, public schools seem deliberately organized to diminish intellect, not to enlarge it.)An acquaintance sent this note: “My sister tells of teaching math to college freshmen. The question was: If X plus 5 = 10, what is the value of X? It took her an entire week to get the kids to finally say ‘5.’ So the following Monday, just on a hunch, she gave them another problem: If Y plus 5 = 10, what is the value of Y? And no one could answer!” Remember, these students have been admitted to a community college. Presumably, many...

The state of Texas has dropped a math curriculum that is mandated for use in New York City schools, saying it was leaving public school graduates unprepared for college. The curriculum, called Everyday Mathematics, became the standard for elementary students in New York City when Mayor Bloomberg took control of the public schools in 2003. About three million students across the country now use the program, including students in 28 Texas school districts, and industry estimates show it holds the greatest market share of any lower-grade math textbook, nearly 20%. But Texas officials said districts from Dallas to El Paso...