Free Republic

ABC legal analyst Sunny Hostin told her co-hosts Monday on “The View” that Republicans were “intentionally dumbing down our electorate” to remain in power. Hostin said, “What we’re seeing by the Republican Party, and I give it to them, we’re seeing a long game. We’re seeing that they are dismantling or attempting to dismantle institutions. All of a sudden, the most elite colleges and universities in the world, which, by the way, they all went to, everybody on the Supreme Court went there, Elise Stefanik went there, all the congresspeople went there, Ted Cruz went there. Those schools are not...

The Dumbing Down of America is a bold and provocative message from the late Dr. D. James Kennedy revealing the threats to education in our nation. Scripture Reference: Hebrews 2:1-9 Feature Description: The Bible’s clear that ônly fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.ö But God has largely been removed from public education. Educational leaders are pushing an agenda that’s turning our children from faith in God and His purpose for their lives. Let’s take a look at what that agenda is and the solutions put and to it.

On a regional Mensa forum, I posted analysis of problems in education. To my delight, an indignant parent left her assessment of how bad our schools have become. First-person reports from the trenches are the most reliable intelligence you can get about this murky and unintelligent demimonde:: ----"I read your article and couldn't agree more. I have lived it with my twins for the last 13 years. I nearly cried when we moved from a NYC public school to a school district in an affluent part of NJ only to find out they had the same mind-numbing constructivist Math program...

As John Dewey revolutionized the US education system with Karl Marx’s ideas, dysfunction entered the system. Chalk up another failure at the hands of the Progressive revolution. -- In the Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx demands: “Free education for all children in public schools.” Marx wanted to eliminate unfairness. Presumably, he intended working-class kids to have whatever upper-class children had. In effect, he intended for everyone to attend a good prep school. That is still something that hasn’t yet happened.Enter the Edu-Swamp What went wrong? Why has our Education Establishment betrayed Karl Marx? Rivers of money flow towards public schools. The...

The whole point of American education was preparing people to pursue their interests, and their version of the American Dream. This blueprint has faded. Many kids today don't learn enough to have vivid, inspiring dreams, nor do they master abilities needed to fulfill dreams if they had any. Jimmy Kimmel sent a crew to the street with a map of the world and the challenge, "Point to a country and name it." Many people could not name even one country, even though the USA was in the middle of this map. At Notre Dame, Professor Patrick Deneen concluded that many...

Some of my articles generate lots of comments from angry parents who had to fight with an unresponsive school system year after year. People not familiar with how bad K-12 has become might find these comments both revealing and scary. They tell the truth about K-12, a truth-in-the-trenches you won’t find in our media. (Sad to say, our media seem to feel it’s their job to wrap academic decline in a protective silence. Shhhh, Don’t Disturb The Saboteurs!) Here are comments left on an article about reading: “I had the Sisters of Mercy. Everyone read at least at grade level...

A mother in Chicago wrote for help: “Dear Abby: All of my grown children are underachievers. When contemporaries talk about their children getting jobs, getting married, having kids, going on vacation, buying a house/car, I have nothing to contribute. My children do not have lives; they work low-paying jobs and scrape by. Worse, they have no ambition to do better.” Dear Abby responded with little insight: “Your children are adults. If they were motivated, they would be doing more with their lives than scraping by. Be glad they are independent and have good relationships with each other—it’s a plus, and...

The bad news is that John Dewey’s “progressives” are winning big. They mobilized every educational front group and every pedagogical gimmick to achieve the goal of controlling what goes on in the schools, as a way of achieving a fundamental transformation of America, to coin a phrase. The educational front groups include the National Council of Teachers of Math, the Common Core Consortium, National Education Association, International Reading Association, National Science Foundation, the Department of Education, and many more. Their favorite pedagogical gimmicks include Whole Language, Reform Math, Balanced Literacy, Constructivism, Project-Based Learning, Cooperative Learning, 21st-Century Skills, and many more....

Wall Street Journal misses implications of its own story. ---This is an important post if you teach in a school where Ritalin is often prescribed. Or if you have children who are taking Ritalin.---The Wall Street Journal recently published an article about whether Ritalin works. I believe they missed the main point. Ritalin works if by that you mean it calms children down. Ritalin does not work if by that you mean they will automatically become better students, or that their underlying problems will be solved. The tendency in the schools is to act as though anxiety is a primary...

This video was originally created to be part of an art exhibit for Exposed the Art Project

A teacher in New Jersey sent me a letter which will tell you, in a few minutes, more than you can stand to know about the idiocy loose in the public schools:----- “I am an ESL teacher for 29 years. This school year, I was asked by my principal to ‘push in’ to the classrooms where my students were, instead of pulling them out for regular ESL classes. Although I wasn't very happy about doing this, I learned a lot from this experience... They are teaching reading using the whole language approach. This method was introduced into my school system...

A classified ad I ran on FastPitch: "Here Is the exciting truth: the human brain loves to acquire new information. Imagine the misery of human brains stuck in public schools where the curriculum is in effect a war on content, and the reigning educational philosophy states that children must be protected from knowledge. Don't let your child be a victim of the Ignorance Engineers. With regard to ignorance, it’s time to go cold turkey. No more ignorance! From this point on, learning is king, and knowledge is the whole point. A simple one-step recovery program is available free for all...

"Never Mind The Barbarians Outside The Gates. What About The Ones Inside?? Ever since history began, there were always bad guys trying to smash through the gates. Sometimes the barbarians had a bigger army or greater cunning; but by common agreement “barbarians” are always the less civilized, the less educated. They were the outsiders, rude and crude, trying to pull down temples of wisdom they did not value or understand. Goths and Vandals, Visigoths and Huns, Mongols and Vikings--they showed up on your borders and you knew hell was upon you. In the 20th century, the West viewed the Communists...

Enlightening/Frightening Video from Sr. Policy Adviser on Education under Ronald Reagan - Could this be the real reason Hillary Clinton wants to get 4 yr. olds into the hands of Government Schools? Creepy Agenda

Always look on the bright side... By Alexis Akwagyiram BBC News Robbie's Angels, Sinatra's My Way and Queen's Who Wants to Live Forever are among the top choices of songs played at funerals. Putting aside what it says about the nation's musical tastes, is this the dumbing down of death? And it's whispered that soon,if we all call the tuneThen the piper will lead us to reasonAnd a new day will dawnfor those who stand longAnd the forest will echo with laughter Followers of those hell-raising 70s stadium rockers Led Zeppelin will recognise these words as the lyrics to the...

Anoka-Hennepin high school teachers are giving a thumbs-down to a new policy that requires them to submit any PG-13 or unrated films to the school district for review before they can be used. Documentaries are exempt, and R-rated films have required approval for a decade.

Study Reveals Five Decades of 'Dumbing Down' in American Education By Jim Brown and Jody BrownAgapePress - January 3, 2003 A new poll finds that American college seniors today are just slightly more knowledgeable than high-school graduates of half a century ago. The Zogby study was commissioned by the National Association of Scholars (NAS), one of the nation's foremost advocates of reform in higher education. The study reveals that current college seniors did better than 1950 high-school grads on questions relating to literature, music and, to some extent, science. On questions relating to geography, both averaged about the same. But...

Just heard on Paul Harvey. Palm Beach County has decided that PB high school students would receive a passing grade in history if they can answer just 23 questions out of 100 correctly. The downward spiral quickens.