Free Republic

“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be,” quipped Thomas Jefferson, one of the principal advocates for then-controversial public education. The American public school system was born, not from the need for a highly-trained workforce, but from this seed of purpose. Man may be born with natural rights, but it takes education to teach him to be a responsible, self-governing citizen of a republic. By this fundamental measure, America’s public system, even before the virus upended schools across the nation, is a dismal failure. Out...

Teach About Marxism’s Evils We cannot allow another generation to emerge from our schools so ignorant of communism's horrors that they see no problem in courting, dabbling with, or even passively accepting one of history’s most noxious ideologies.
 My child’s Catholic school sent home a letter to parents this week recommending “conversations about white privilege” to encourage “compassionate hearts and confident minds.” Regurgitating the radical-left bile that fuels the fires of resentment and division will not enrich students emotionally or intellectually. Instead, Catholic schools should teach students about the evils of Marxism.Marxist apostles are orchestrating the chaos and violence plaguing...

Rather than risk another year of subpar education for your children, this fall may be the time to make a move to real homeschooling. Thanks to the coronavirus, millions of American parents have spent the last two months overseeing their children’s education from home. That experience, however, was a far cry from homeschooling, as governments merely co-opted mom and dad to execute public school curricula and schedules. True homeschooling boasts flexibility, creativity, and real education—not the social-engineering and feel-good assignments handed out in most public schools.Now so-called experts, such as Michael Chertoff, who is advising D.C.’s Mayor Muriel Bowser on...

SECONDARY school pupils are told that Winston Churchill was a “war criminal” and “a blundering reactionary” in a teaching tutorial shared by thousands of teachers. It is also claimed the wartime leader’s speeches were “poorly received”, he was “drunk” during his “finest hour” message and Bob Geldof is more important to our history. The lesson plan, Winston Churchill: Hero or War Criminal?” appears on the website of global education company Tes. Using halos and red devils’ horns as bullet points, the lesson contains a potted history of the career of what it calls “an intensely controversial figure”. Part of it...

Suffering from self-inflicted wounds, the University of Tulsa is sick and getting sicker. This is a case study in how “progressive” academic leadership can wreck a once-excellent university. Last April 11, the university’s administration rolled out “True Commitment,” a radical restructuring that gutted the liberal arts, raised course loads, dissolved academic departments, and effectively turned the university into a technical and vocational school. I wrote about the turmoil that caused in this article for the Martin Center, but I’ll recap the events below. A campaign of opposition to the restructuring formed immediately, sparked by the circulation of an article that...

Garden State Equality claims its curriculum is for the good and safety of vulnerable children. Its teachings, however, result in the exact opposite. A little more than a year ago, the New Jersey Legislature passed, and Gov. Phil Murphy signed, a law mandating the teaching of LGBT subject matter in public school curriculum, beginning in 2020-21.In response to the law, the activist group Garden State Equality has prepared a curriculum, currently piloted in 12 New Jersey schools and planned to be employed statewide in the fall. This is consistent with Murphy’s vision. At Garden State Equality’s 2019 Ball, he said,...

The leftist propaganda taught in schools is no accident. It is the logical conclusion of the prevalent educational philosophy that favors skills over content and engagement over rigor. School choice is finally having its moment in the national conversation, to the joy of those interested in school reform. While some states have adopted various school choice initiatives in small doses, most have not. This may change after President Donald Trump publicly brought up school choice in his recent State of the Union address, and Republican lawmakers have introduced a series of bills that would increase federal funding for vouchers.If school...

For those who enjoy a good puzzle, K-12 education is more intellectually entertaining than most people imagine. Classrooms are full of convoluted theories and mystifying methods. Probably the teachers themselves can't explain the reasoning behind approaches that are used almost universally in American public schools. Chat with friends who are smart and successful. Try to find even one who can explain Sight-Words, Prior Knowledge, Multiculturalism, Constructivism, Reform Math, or Common Core Math. Why are Geography, History, and Science so often slighted? What justifies the hostility toward memorization and academic content? Can anyone understand the paradox of most students getting A...

If utopian tyrants whose vision for the world encompasses only theirs are continued to be allowed, like locusts, to devour every institution in their path, there won’t be even one left to provide an alternative worldview to anyone enlightened enough to seek it.Recently, at a weekly neighborhood Bible study, I was surprised to hear a friend describe a letter sent to a church that hosts a Christ-centered program she uses to homeschool her kids called “Classical Conversations” (CC). The unsigned letter threatened the church with loss of their non-profit status for hosting a for-profit company. When the woman, a...

As education goes, so goes nearly everything else: politics, culture, and social cohesion. And those who form the minds of teachers—who, in turn, instruct young minds—arguably wield even greater influence. It is unsurprising, then, that schools of education, where teachers receive their training, are at the epicenter of ongoing ideological battles. As the Martin Center’s Jay Schalin pointed out in his report released earlier this year, schools of education were politicized from their founding, but have become even more so over the years. Schools of education have particularly become the home of critical theorists—who aim to radically alter society according...

The NY Times’ 1619 Project was a sprawling effort earlier this year to convince Americans that slavery was part of the DNA of America. Made up of various pieces by different authors, the 1619 Project seemed to promote an idea that matched current far left sentiment about the importance of identity with an underlying anti-capitalism. The Times is now promoting the Project for inclusion in high school curricula, so it’s likely it will be with us for some time. But where did all of this material come from?One site has done some important work looking into the Times’ Project...

I live in Fairfax County, Virginia, which has the 10th-largest public school district in the nation, but I never focused on our public schools. My kids go to Catholic schools, and that was the center of our universe. I never focused, that is, until I heard that the Fairfax County School Board voted to let boys into the girls’ bathrooms. The vote was 10-1. Was there only one sane person on the Fairfax County School Board? I had to find out. So I began attending school board meetings. And there I saw moms and dads begging the school board to...

This is the opposite of what we were told would happen with trillions of taxpayer dollars and an entire generation of children who deserve not to have been guinea pigs in a failed national experiment. For the third time in a row since Common Core was fully phased in nationwide, U.S. student test scores on the nation’s broadest and most respected test have dropped, a reversal of an upward trend between 1990 and 2015. Further, the class of 2019, the first to experience all four high school years under Common Core, is the worst-prepared for college in 15 years, according...

A couple of years ago, a retired teacher who stays in close touch with history teachers across Texas told me something disturbing. Like most states, Texas has standardized testing. Unlike most states, Texas requires public school students to study Texas history in the 4th and 7th grades. Texas history is red in tooth and claw and full of big personalities and big ideas. Standardized testing is forcing teachers to drop about half of the second semester of Texas history to focus on U.S. history -- not to deepen students' understanding of American history, but to teach to the standardized tests....

The Supreme Court on Tuesday rebuffed an appeal from a Christian former high school student who argued coursework on Islam at her Maryland school violated her First Amendment rights. The dispute involves Caleigh Wood, a student at La Plata High School in Charles County, Maryland, who enrolled in a state-mandated World History course during the 2014-2015 school year. As part of the class, the then-junior was required to complete coursework on “The Muslim World,” in which she learned about Islam. Wood took issue with two parts of the class: a PowerPoint presentation that said most Muslims’ faith “is stronger than...

Outrage in Jewish, pro-Israel community after CALIFORNIA activists hijack curriculum The state of California has introduced "blatantly anti-Semitic and anti-Israel" lessons into its official high school curriculum, drawing outrage and concern in the state's Jewish and pro-Israel communities, according to multiple sources involved in the controversy. The California Department of Education is facing backlash after permitting a host of anti-Israel activists to build a statewide educational curriculum that demonizes the Jewish state and is said to be fostering hatred of Jewish and Israeli-American students, sources said. Already, 83 pro-Israel and anti-discrimination organizations have petitioned the state's education department to reform...

California is rolling out a new “Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum,” and “It’s as bad as you imagine,” writes Williamson M. Evers in his latest Wall Street Journal opinion column. Evers, a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, explains that: The document is filled with fashionable academic jargon like “positionalities,” “hybridities,” “nepantlas” and “misogynoir.” It includes faddish social-science lingo like “cis-heteropatriarchy” that may make sense to radical university professors and activists but doesn’t mean much to the regular folks who send their children to California’s public schools. It is difficult to comprehend the depth and breadth of the ideological bias...

Using the high cost of a college education as cover, Donald Trump and senior advisor/daughter Ivanka released the Proposals to Reform the Higher Education Act. As is always the case whenever Washington uses the word “reform,” the result will be bigger government, more spending, and less liberty. “We need to modernize our higher education system to make it affordable, flexible, and more outcome oriented so that all Americans, young and old, can learn the skills they need to secure and retain good-paying jobs,” Ivanka stated in a call with reporters. Sounds noble, doesn’t it? Did you notice the absence of...

FOR THOSE IN ARIZONA: I invite you to come out on January 14-16 to the filming of 15 live "lessons" in U.S. history as I teach "A Patriot's History of the United States" from Columbus to Reconstruction for the March launch of my new website, "The Wild World of History." We need 8-10 "students" in each "class." Each session will last about 1 hour. You are welcome to attend one, or all with your children/students, or just for fun. The sessions will begin about 8:30 a.m, then about 9:30, 10:30, break for lunch, 1:00 and 2:00. We do not have...

Anti-Caucasian, anti-male, anti-Christian and 'Unconscious Bias' curriculum Los Angeles attorney Eric Early, working with a group of Santa Barbara parents and teachers over anti-Caucasian, anti-male, anti-Christian and ‘Unconscious Bias’ curriculum, filed a complaint Monday evening in the United States District Court for the Central District of California on behalf of Fair Education Santa Barbara against the Santa Barbara Unified School District and JUST Communities Central Coast.