Free Republic

Nearly half of American history teachers believe it is less important that their students understand the common history, ideas, rights, and responsibilities that tie the country together as Americans than that they learn to celebrate the unique identities and experiences of its different ethnic, religious, and immigrant groups. Advocates of radical "social-justice" multiculturalism in many university schools of education -- the places where most K-12 teachers are trained -- continue to oppose assimilation with a common culture while instead seeking to radically transform an "oppressive" America. A new survey of public high-school social-studies teachers done for the American Enterprise Institute...

Concern over a new hip-hop curriculum that refers to the founding fathers as "old dead white men” has delayed the program's rollout for at-risk students, Oklahoma City Public Schools Superintendent Karl Springer said. "We're making sure that whatever we do, first, we do no harm,” Springer said. "The science behind the concept is wonderful. There may be some things, though, that are inappropriate that we need to be careful about.” Known as Flocabulary, the program is a music-based educational tool that uses raps, rhythms and rhymes to help students learn and memorize everything from vocabulary and English to math and...

The American universities, or at least a number of departments within them, became like GM long before GM became like GM. The Economist recently asked what it calls a “mischievous” question: Are the vaunted American universities going the way of GM? It’s a serious question, but The Economist’s sense of timing leaves something to be desired, just like when the magazine predicted the housing collapse in San Francisco five years too soon. This time, The Economist is years late. The American universities, or at least a number of departments within them, became like GM long before GM became like GM.The...

Every September, millions of parents try a kind of psychological witchcraft, to transform their summer-glazed campers into fall students, their video-bugs into bookworms. Advice is cheap and all too familiar: Clear a quiet work space. Stick to a homework schedule. Set goals. Set boundaries. Do not bribe (except in emergencies). And check out the classroom. Does Junior’s learning style match the new teacher’s approach? Or the school’s philosophy? Maybe the child isn’t “a good fit” for the school. Such theories have developed in part because of sketchy education research that doesn’t offer clear guidance. Student traits and teaching styles surely...

SAN FRANCISCO — It’s 1 p.m. on a Thursday and Dianne Bates, 40, juggles three screens. She listens to a few songs on her iPod, then taps out a quick e-mail on her iPhone and turns her attention to the high-definition television. Just another day at the gym. As Ms. Bates multitasks, she is also churning her legs in fast loops on an elliptical machine in a downtown fitness center. She is in good company. In gyms and elsewhere, people use phones and other electronic devices to get work done — and as a reliable antidote to boredom. Cellphones, which...

"Years ago I wrote a sci-fi story in which disease wiped out the thousands of people living in a huge space station. All the technology continued on autopilot; sensors, missiles, and robots perfectly defended the space station. Humans approaching the station were attacked as enemy invaders.  The station became a type of doomsday machine. All the inhabitants had been killed. New arrivals would be killed. I certainly wasn’t thinking about our public schools at that time but now I see a creepy similarity between what happened to that space station and what happened to this country’s Education Establishment. Both are...

A mother in Oregon left some provocative comments on an article I posted about dumbing-down. She didn’t like what was going on in her local school; neither did her children apparently. They were evolving ways to deal with this problem. Maybe there are ideas here that others can use. People seem to assume there are two roads: homeschooling (which isn’t practical for millions of parents); or living with the nonsense (which is killing the country). This mother’s “third way” was talking to her kids, explaining things, openly sharing her concerns, trying to undo damage as fast as it happens. These...

Summary: The Education Commissars have long used TV as a whipping boy, an all-purpose excuse for their own incompetence. Consider the irony. More and more, television is the country's real educator. Public schools get dumber. But the History Channel, etc. know how to teach, and they want to teach. Who could have predicted it? Television rescues us from our Education Establishment! Of course, the point of mentioning this is to shame these fairly shameless people into doing a better job.

This sad letter from an elementary school teacher provides a quick look at what the public schools are doing to the country: “...I was told today at a job interview that, even though I get great results with my students, they would rather hire someone who already believed in Constructivism and Cooperative Learning....My kindergarten students can dissect a sentence like a second grader, and I am very proud of that. Still, I get marked down and ridiculed on my evaluations. My superiors complain that I need to have my students in cooperative groups (useless chatter), in learning stations (playing with...

"Retreat from Learning--Why Teachers Can't Teach / A Case History" was published in 1955. Following review tells volumes about how schools got so dumb today.=========== [start review] Another of those excellent, poignant books written during the 1950s to explain why our public schools went to hell. Joan Dunn was smart, tough, loved teaching, loved her kids; but after about three years in the Brooklyn school system, gave up and wrote this first-person account, published in 1955, to explain her exit. Dunn mentions reading in a daily paper about the Korean War. That time, roughly 1953, was the high watermark of...

Like the traditional family, America's school calendar is old-fashioned, says Education Secretary Arne Duncan. "In all seriousness, I think schools should be open 12, 13, 14 hours a day, seven days a week, 11-12 months of the year." Go ahead -- re-read that. I'll wait. Are you convinced yet? Are you finally convinced, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that America is under the leadership of not just left-wingers, but communists. You should no longer be afraid to use that word. Not after this. "The days of telling kids to go home at 2:30 and having mom there are gone,"...

“In all seriousness, I think schools should be open 12, 13, 14 hours a day, seven days a week, 11-12 months of the year,” Duncan said. “This is not just more of the same. There would be a whole variety of after-school programs. Obviously academics would be at the heart of that. But you top it off with dancing, art, drama, music, yearbook, robotics, activities for older siblings and parents, ESL classes.” He continued by explaining that the American school calendar is antiquated and must be modified so that American students can compete at the highest levels internationally.

A recent Boston Globe story reveals the destructive effects that Al Gore and global warming activists are having on American education. According to the story,

Our Education Establishment tends to describe John Dewey as The Greatest Human Who Ever Lived. I've taken to calling him America's Favorite Quack. Truth is, when the Far-Left finds somebody saying what they want said, they will praise that somebody to the skies. Thus, the apotheosis of John Dewey. An essay called "Phooey on John Dewey" provides some perspective:======= "First off, let it be stated that John Dewey was a phenomenally brainy and productive guy. During a long life, he wrote more articles and books than you could read in a year. Indeed, he wrote so much on so many...

New article argues that a lot of modern education is incoherent and not really trying, except for foreign language courses. There, teachers still proceed in a logical and sequential way toward ambitious goals. These practices should be used in all subjects.======= "There is one constant throughout the 20th-century: professors of education came up with ever more exotic schemes for how education should be organized, even as these schemes confused students and destroyed achievement. Each scheme had a catchy name (Open Classroom, Life Adjustment, Multiculturalism, Constructivism) and a phalanx of resistance-is-futile jargon. Somehow the proposals didn’t translate into gains. One might...

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | If every school principal gave this speech at the beginning of the next school year, America would be a better place. To the students and faculty of our high school: I am your new principal, and honored to be so. There is no greater calling than to teach young people. I would like to apprise you of some important changes coming to our school. I am making these changes because I am convinced that most of the ideas that have dominated public education in America have worked against you, against your teachers and against our country. First, this...

Loss of language among the younger population -- that is to say, the ability to formulate and enunciate properly constructed sentences that reflect clear thought -- is growing at a staggering rate in the United States. Even among students whose academic aptitude is well above the national average, my years as an undergraduate business professor show that four out of five will make grave spelling errors in written assignments or exams, and about half that regularly commit grammatical blunders. The ubiquitous confusion between "there" and "their" may still be considered a quaint and negligible fluke that nearly creates a...

My name is Sam Besserman, I'm eleven years old, I live in Beverly Hills, California, and ever since I can remember I have been subjected to political bias in school. The first time I noticed the bias was actually in preschool where the teacher was reading a book about the importance of mothers and the inferiority of fathers. I tried to tell the teacher that dads might be just as important. The teacher responded in a sing-song, "No, listen to me, I'm the teacher." Of course, the girls loved the book and most of the boys hated it, except for...

Anyone who has ever tried to sue a school, change a PTA, join a school board, or in any way to manipulate what a public school was doing, please share your experiences and suggestions. To start the discussion, here are a few options: YAHOO GROUPS: anybody can form a group on Yahoo. I know of a group in Jersey City where parents share notes about teachers, courses, and candidates. This is an easy way to mobilize 100 or 200 people so they’re all on the same page when they deal with the school. PARENT-TEACHER ASSOCIATION: Martin Gross, in his book...

Teacher’s Self-Defense Manual Malcolm A. Kline, June 24, 2010 An interesting flip side of the victimology that permeates public schools is that teachers are frequently expected to play the villain. One self-help expert who literally advises educators to turn the other cheek is Dr. Eric P. Hartwig. “He is experienced and licensed as a Director of Pupil Services, District Administrator and a School Psychologist,” his web site tells us. “Presently, he is the Administrator of Pupil Services for the Marathon County Children with Disabilities Education Board and is the author and principle trainer on the Just-in-Time: Behavioral Initiative Project.” “Dr....