Free Republic

Claims that a California school told students that white people had "no culture" have sparked controversy, with a parent expressing outrage about the alleged incident. The mother of one of the students reported the claims to the San Ramon Valley Unified School District last week, saying that her daughter was taught about white privilege during a choir class and was told by an "equity teacher" that white people have no culture. She added: "During this, the teacher's discussion with the class, she stated that white people had no culture and any culture that they did have was stolen. She gave...

Ongoing work by researchers into how aspartame affects the brain has linked the artificial sweetener with learning and memory deficits in mice. The offspring of male mice that consumed aspartame at levels equivalent to much lower doses than those deemed safe by the U.S. FDA demonstrated spatial learning and memory deficits over the course of a controlled 16-week exposure. The most recent research is an extension of a study which linked aspartame consumption to anxiety in mice, with effects extending up to two generations. "The thing we noticed here, unlike the anxiety (research), this went only one generation. It was...

A new report from the National Opportunity Project reveals that school districts across America – in red and blue states alike – are now considering teachers’ social and political views alongside instructional qualifications during the hiring process. -snip New research makes clear that public school districts nationwide are prioritizing adherence to woke ideologies when determining who can teach our children. Here is what NOP found: Applicants in the Denver Public School system for an elementary art teacher position must: “Lead for racial and educational excellence and work to dismantle systems of oppression and inequity in our community…” In Georgia, City...

In this video I discuss the new grading standards being pushed in Portland Public Schools which would essentially destroy education completely.

A divided Georgia school board upheld a decision to fire a fifth-grade teacher who read a picture book to her students about gender identity amid ongoing discussions nationwide about the content kids are exposed to in the classroom. Katherine Rinderle, who has been employed as a teacher for a decade, read the book My Shadow is Purple to her students at Due West Elementary School in Cobb County in March, prompting complaints from parents. The book uses colors to represent the concept of gender identity, as the main character's shadow is purple, but for others, their shadow is blue or...

TEMECULA, Calif. (AP) — A Southern California school board has voted to approve a social studies curriculum for elementary students, resolving a dispute with Gov. Gavin Newsom over lesson plans that mentioned the state’s first openly gay elected public official.

The refrain across much of the Deep South for decades was “Thank God for Mississippi!” That’s because however abysmally Arkansas or Alabama might perform in national comparisons, they could still bet that they wouldn’t be the worst in America. That spot was often reserved for Mississippi. So it’s extraordinary to travel across this state today and find something dazzling: It is lifting education outcomes and soaring in the national rankings. With an all-out effort over the past decade to get all children to read by the end of third grade and by extensive reliance on research and metrics, Mississippi has...

If someone punches back once after being poked at repeatedly for months and months without consequence, who should get in trouble? Allison Arnall Davis recently went viral after her son Drew received out-of-school suspension for beating up another boy. On Facebook, Allison explains that she's not mad at Drew for doing what he did because the boy Drew beat up has been tormenting him for months. Her son finally fought back against the bully who has been torturing and threatening him while the school has sat back and done nothing. Allison's post has prompted an impassioned discussion about bullying, school...

There are some students who don’t really speak, who don’t really engage, who don’t show signs of confidence in the classroom. But when that particular child finds a special thing and is energized, and talkative, and proud of what they’ve made or what they’ve learned — a teacher knows he or she has made a real difference in that kid’s life. Anja Cleveland works with fourth and fifth graders to construct wood products at Danielsville Elementary School, and she said she’s seeing that happen on a regular basis, the brightness in the eyes, the silent child speaking, the energy that...

I reviewed five of the most commonly used AP U.S. History textbooks that cover all the way through the Trump presidency. Used every day by high school students in college-level history classes, the books all contain anti-Trump editorializing, false narratives, and employ selective editing to leave out significant stories that occurred during the Trump presidency. The books all appear on the College Board’s list of textbooks that meet the AP Course Audit curricular requirements. Nearly all of the textbooks claim “Russian meddling” was responsible for the 2016 election of Donald Trump, despite that narrative being debunked through multiple studies and...

For decades IQs were climbing in the Western World. It was called the “Flynn effect.”Average IQs were defined as 100 in each succeeding iteration of the IQ test, as by definition the average was normed to 100. But if you rescored earlier IQ tests based upon prior norms, the average IQ would have increased by about 15 points or one standard deviation.In other words, if you took an IQ test in 1942 and scored 100, by today’s scoring you would have an IQ of 86.That is, until the past 10 or so years. In the past 10 years, IQs have...

Is the humanities degree going the way of the dodo bird? An article in The New Yorker, “The End of the English Major,” posits as a eulogy for the bustling humanities programs of yesteryear, citing dwindling investment and a generational shift toward science and technology and degrees that can be monetized. Faculty members at the Graduate Center, however, say that while the article is a clarion call, the death of the humanities is exaggerated. The desire and need to study the human past remain strong. Scholars shared their views on the current state and future of the humanities: Tanya Agathocleous,...

California school district is using lesson plans designed by its Black Lives Matter Task Force (BLM) to help teach 7th graders about their implicit bias during Black History Month, according to the curriculum obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation. In an effort to address “issues related to racial justice,” Anaheim Union High School District (AUHSD) requires 7th through 12th grade teachers to use a curriculum created by the schools’ Black Lives Matter Task Force, a coalition dedicated to creating equity for African American students and staff within the district, according to screenshots of the curriculum obtained by the DCNF....

A lovely aphorism holds that education isn’t the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire. But too often, neither are pails filled nor fires lit. One of the most bearish statistics for the future of the United States is this: Two-thirds of fourth graders in the United States are not proficient in reading. Reading may be the most important skill we can give children. It’s the pilot light of that fire. Yet we fail to ignite that pilot light, so today some one in five adults in the United States struggles with basic literacy, and after more...

230,000 children who failed to show up for class when public schools reopened after the pandemic. It’s a tragedy without parallel in American history as many of the no-shows are very young — K through 3rd grade. Critical skills learned in early education were not taught to these kids, who are now hopelessly behind. ... Consider the fact that 65% of American fourth-grade students can barely read. This is a result of a radical shift to a new way of teaching children how to read. What was wrong with the old way? Well, it was old. ... What exactly are...

A student brought cotton balls to Diablo View Middle School allegedly to mock the celebrations of Black History Month, school officials said.

For Tiffany Sorya, the path to becoming a homeschooling tutor to celebrities and other one-percenters was hardly intuitive. During her first years at Portland State University she admits that she was a “horrible” student. But by the time she graduated she had turned things around and was making such high grades that friends would ask, “How did you go from failing O(rganic) Chemistry to acing O Chem?,” she recalls. For fun, she started tutoring friends who needed help. But when the now 36-year-old, first-generation Cambodian American with Instagram-chic style (she has over 306,000 followers) graduated and moved to Los Angeles,...

We should stop teaching history in our schools. The way history is now being taught leads to a racist society, perpetuates white privilege, and overlooks the contributions of women and minorities. I ask school districts to immediately remove history curricula, books, and materials that unfairly communicate history until suitable alternatives are developed. Enslaved people built our young nation and made possible an economy that would throw off the control of the most powerful country then on earth, Great Britain. But, oh, at what a price. According to Bennett Minton in The Washington Post, some schools across the country intend to...

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich insulted a Capitol Hill reporter after the journalist asked him to comment on the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. “What do you think about the January 6 committee,” Scott Wong, a reporter for NBC News who previously worked at The Hill, asked Gingrich during a press scrum at the Capitol on Thursday.

According to the Center of the American Experiment, the changes will impact teacher licensure programs and “require aspiring educators to ‘demonstrate’ ideologically driven content in their coursework to obtain their teaching license.” This goes for educators who end up teaching at private schools, too. -snip- In another section on “planning for instruction,” the draft standards say a teacher should “create opportunities for students to learn about power, privilege, intersectionality, and systemic oppression in the context of various communities and empower learners to be agents of social change to promote equity.”