Free Republic

Dennis Prager explains what is the greatest threat that America faces today: “We have not passed on what it means to be an American to this generation.” (see video and partial transcript) [...] I would just add that I -- I have never said this, so I have good credentials to say this now -- it's common for commentators to say every election this is the most important election in American history or in our time.

Front-page headline in my New York Post this morning: 2 + 2 = 5 NY passes students who get wrong answers on tests The accompanying story describes a further dumbing-down of state math tests for kids in grades 3 to 8. Half marks are given for fragments of work; also for wrong answers arrived at via correct methods: “A kid who answers that a 2-foot-long skateboard is 48 inches long gets half-credit for adding 24 and 24 instead of the correct 12 plus 12 . . . ” For us New York parents the only surprise here is that any...

Okay, it took me 3 years but here's what I finally figured out. Not only is Constructivism a mostly useless gimmick but it hurts younger, less educated, and poorer kids the most. Here's a short new article that explains why:------------ "Constructivism versus Minorities and the Poor.... Constructivism is the latest fad burning through American public schools. Here’s a quick definition: children are supposed to invent their own new versions of all knowledge, while teachers (now called facilitators) are supposed to stand back and encourage the process. I’ve been writing for some years about how unrealistic and time-consuming this approach is....

Powerful Failure: How the National Education Association Fails to Use Its Influence for Education is released today by the Association of American Educators. The booklet chronicles the development, growth, and politicization of the largest educators’ union in America, the National Education Association (NEA). Although it started out as a professional association in 1857, the NEA has become a union behemoth that does not represent its members’ beliefs, but rather attempts to reorder the priorities of the United States of America. Powerful Failure highlights a number of policies supported by the NEA that have no relation to education. Federal standards for...

Here is a factoid that will amaze you. Almost 7,000,000 people have reviewed books, etc. on Amazon. Some people go nuts and start reviewing every product that Amazon sells. I stick to serious books about education; and it has taken me several years to reach 50 reviews. For example, I just reviewed a book on New Math and another on censorship in West Virginia. (Such books can be time capsules. You jump back 30 or 40 years, and learn a lot about how we got where we are today.) Amazon has a feature called Listmania, which lets you put together...

The following plea--written 55 years ago and addressed to all the teachers of America--is still solid gold today:------- "You are a grade-school teacher. I know that you are doing a conscientious job, that you work overtime for very little pay, that you love children and are proud of your profession. Aren't you getting tired of being attacked and criticized all the time? Every second mother who comes in to talk to you tells you that she is dissatisfied, that her child doesn't seem to learn anything, that you should do your job in a different way, that you don't know...

It has been the dirty little secret of higher education for decades: Tens of thousands of college students can't do the work.Developmental education — reteaching basic skills in reading, writing and math — is a $200 million-a-year problem in Texas, funded by taxpayers, colleges and the students themselves. Private groups also spend millions of dollars on the issue.But relatively few students who need the classes go on to earn a degree, raising questions about whether money spent on developmental education is a wise investment. “It's all about efficiency,” said Jim Pinkard, a program director at the Texas Higher Education Coordinating...

Some students in remedial courses are older workers trying to jump-start a new career. But a sizable amount are recent graduates who performed well in high school...nearly four out of five remedial students had a high school GPA of 3.0 or higher. The price of providing remedial training is costly. The Alliance for Excellent Education estimates the nation loses $3.7 billion a year because students are not learning basic needed skills, including $1.4 billion to provide remedial education for students who have recently completed high school. "From taxpayers' standpoint, remediation is paying for the same education twice," Students who need...

Samuel Blumenfeld is one of the country's few great educators. His book of essays explains just about every aspect of our problems. Highly recommended. ---------------------------------------- "Concerned About Education? Read this! (Review is for "The Victims of Dick and Jane"): --------------- I urge everyone to read at least one book by Samuel Blumenfeld; and this may be the best place to start. There are 18 essays, mostly written in the 1980s and 1990s. You can read them in any order. You will find that this book is an excellent guide to the treacheries and nonsense everywhere evident in education. Blumenfeld is...

The Texas Curriculum Massacre What a conservative rewriting of history tells us about how Texans view the world, which is, for them, Texas. Texas Stands Alone 165 years after it joined the U.S., Texas remains forever ruggedly individualistic By Evan Smith | NEWSWEEK Published Apr 16, 2010 From the magazine issue dated Apr 26, 2010 Given the redness of my home state of Texas at the moment—more crimson than rosé—you'd be forgiven for dismissing the recent headline-making flap over revisions to our high-school social-studies curriculum as pure politics. A near majority of the duly elected 15 members of the State...

Are teachers unions to blame for failing schools? This was the question debated last week on NPR's Intelligence Squared. At the beginning of the debate, less than half the audience believed teachers unions should be faulted for poor-performing schools, but by the close of the program, an astonishing 68 percent believed school employee unions contributed to the problem.

Last week I posted background on FreeRepublic about a column published elsewhere titled “Education as Neurotoxin.” This column tries to explain why the US has 50 million functional illiterates and 1 million dyslexics. Were these people born this way? Or had bad education methods produced the impairments? Someone left a half-dozen irate comments insisting I was “delusional,” “illogical,” “irrational,” “nonsensical,” etc. I’m not sure which part offended him most, 1) that sight-words cause mental problems; 2) or that the far-left could knowingly promote the use of destructive educational methods. This commenter embraced the Dolch Dogma that kids must memorize 300...

The US is said to have 50,000,000 functional illiterates. Why? Explaining this is VERY difficult. My cynical view is that the professors of education came up with bogus theories, and then wrapped them inside many layers of sophistry and deception. To the point where even intelligent people could make little sense of the problem or what to do next...I’ve put a dozen graphic videos on YouTube that try to explain the craziness that is reading. Of course, homeschoolers know most of the problems. It’s the rest of the country we need to inform. The newest video (link) does a pretty...

I struggled with whether or not to discuss this topic. Our Haitian neighbors are suffering tremendously. I am extremely proud and thank God that we, America, were first on the scene, doing what we always do: come to the rescue of people in need. I questioned, "Lloyd, are you making much ado about nothing?" Well, you be the judge. I am confident that Indianapolis Colts football player Pierre Garçon meant no disrespect to the USA when he waved the Haitian flag after the Colts' victory over the Jets in the AFC championship game. However, I must confess that it rubbed...

Raleigh, N.C. — A new proposal for the history curriculum in North Carolina public schools is causing uproar. Among the biggest concerns is covering U.S. history only from 1877 to the present in the 11th grade. “There's nothing on the Confederacy, nothing on Robert E. Lee, nothing on Abraham Lincoln, nothing on any battle, nothing on reconstruction, nothing on the causes of the war, nothing on slavery. Nothing on slavery anywhere in the curriculum,” said Dr. Holly Brewer, associate professor of Early American History at North Carolina State University. Brewer opposes the curriculum change and says students would not learn...

The proposal to put the science-lab cuts on the table was approved recently by Berkeley High's School Governance Council, a body of teachers, parents, and students who oversee a plan to change the structure of the high school to address Berkeley's dismal racial achievement gap, where white students are doing far better than the state average while black and Latino students are doing worse.The full plan to close the racial achievement gap by altering the structure of the high school is known as the High School Redesign. It will come before the Berkeley School Board as an information item at...

IT WAS the kind of student conference I hate. “I’ll do better,’’ my student told me, leaning forward in his chair. “I know I’ve gotten behind this semester, but I’m going to turn things around. Would it be OK if I finished all my uncompleted work by Monday?’’ I sat silent for a moment. “Yes. But it’s important that you catch up completely this weekend, so that you’re not just perpetually behind.’’ A few weeks later, I would conduct a nearly identical conversation with two other students. And, again, there would be no tangible result: No make-up papers. No change...

To boost the economy out of the recession, President Obama has chosen to spend an additional $100 billion on public schooling over the next two years. His education secretary, Arne Duncan, is touring the nation to promote this education "stimulus." However well-intentioned, their effort isn't just futile; it's also counterproductive. Far from being an engine of wealth creation, the education system is bleeding the economy to death. The U.S. spends 2.3 times as much per pupil in real, inflation-adjusted dollars as it spent in 1970, but the return on this ballooning investment has been less than nothing. Student achievement at...

I AM often asked to talk at schools and almost always ask students three questions about a film that lies about the "stolen generations". First: "How many of you have been shown Rabbit-Proof Fence?" Answer: every one. Second: "Have you been shown the movie as a great piece of film-making, or as a history lesson?" Answer: in every case as history. You know, like you learn America's history from John Wayne movies. And third: "How many of you have checked whether the film is actually true, by, say, reading the book on which it's based?" Answer: of thousands of students,...

There is no evidence supporting auditory and visual learning, psychologists sayAre you a verbal learner or a visual learner? Chances are, you've pegged yourself or your children as either one or the other and rely on study techniques that suit your individual learning needs. And you're not alone— for more than 30 years, the notion that teaching methods should match a student's particular learning style has exerted a powerful influence on education. The long-standing popularity of the learning styles movement has in turn created a thriving commercial market amongst researchers, educators, and the general public. The wide appeal of the...