Free Republic

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...

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2012/07/17/boy-scouts-reaffirm-gay-ban-after-2-year-review/ NEW YORK (AP) — After a confidential two-year review, the Boy Scouts of America on Tuesday emphatically reaffirmed its policy of excluding gays, ruling out any changes despite relentless protest campaigns by some critics. An 11-member special committee, formed discreetly by top Scout leaders in 2010, “came to the conclusion that this policy is absolutely the best policy for the Boy Scouts,” the organization’ national spokesman, Deron Smith, told The Associated Press. Smith said the committee, comprised of professional scout executives and adult volunteers, was unanimous in its conclusion – preserving a long-standing policy that was upheld by the...

Emerging as a force in American education a century ago, social studies was intended to remake the high school. But its greatest effect has been in the elementary grades, where it has replaced an older way of learning that initiated children into their culture with one that seeks instead to integrate them into the social group. The result was a revolution in the way America educates its young. The old learning used the resources of culture to develop the childÂ’s individual potential; social studies, by contrast, seeks to adjust him to the mediocrity of the social pack. Why promote the...

Professors and Social Media Deborah Lambert, May 20, 2010 If you think that today’s professors spend their free time roaming through dusty library stacks, think again. Apparently 80 percent of today’s faculty members “have at least one account with either Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Skype, Linkedin, MySpace, Flickr or GoogleWave,” . . . and nearly 60 percent keep accounts with more than one, and a quarter use at least four, according to InsideHigherEd.com. And that’s just the beginning. The study also showed that over 50 percent used social media as a teaching tool. The survey of just under 1,000 professors said...

School of Future Shock by: Alana Goodman, June 05, 2009 At Philadelphia’s School of the Future (SOF), textbooks have been replaced with laptops and high schoolers are taught core curriculum through technology-based programs like YouTube and instant messenger. SOF is a charter school in the Philadelphia School District serving mostly low-income students, and was created through a 2006 partnership with the Microsoft Corporation. But the school, once hailed as “the next big thing” by National Public Radio, is struggling to live up to these high expectations. SOF’s original goals were to supply each student with a laptop computer that he...

Twitter U by: Deborah Lambert, April 27, 2009 Is Twitter the future of education? If you’re Cole W. Camplese, director of education-technology services at Penn State, University Park, you might be in the “yes” column. The prof apparently prefers to “teach in classrooms with two screens—one to project his slides, and another to project a Twitter stream of notes from students,” said Jeffrey Young in a Chronicle of Higher Education piece. Responding to the claim that this might be distracting, he noted that the “additional layer of communication will make for richer class discussion.” Apparently his hope is that rather...

The Publishable Perishable Professoriat by: Daniel Allen, March 31, 2009 The University: An institution for research and scholarship, or an academy for advanced teaching and learning? The best represent both worlds, but worrying trends indicate that undergraduate students are suffering because teachers must devote their attention to inconsequential research rather than the learning of students in the developmental phase of their education. A study, sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), shows how teachers must focus on research in order to keep their careers, which creates a tradition of neglect toward undergraduates. The study was conducted by Mark Bauerlein of...

Cooperative Chaos by: Deborah Lambert, February 12, 2009 If students’ heads are being filled with mush these days, there’s a reason. In fact, there are many. One of them could be that students are being subjected to trendy educational theories that make no sense and have little value as teaching tools. Take "cooperative learning," for example. In case you’re out of the loop, this is one of the latest educational ideas, also known as “collaborative,” “interactive” or “student-centered” learning. Charlotte Allen reported on www.mindingthecampus.com that it’s all part of the edu-mindspeak known as “constructivism” that “holds that teachers don’t teach...

World-Saving Education Deconstructed by: Lance Nation, October 20, 2008 When beginning a piece by Dr. Stanley Fish one is never quite sure what to expect. His new book Save the World on Your Own Time is no exception. The Davidson-Kahn Distinguished University Professor of Humanities and a Professor of Law at Florida International University, Dr. Fish’s new work takes a controversial stance towards the purpose of higher education: “The core of a college or university experience should be the academic study of the question posed by the various disciplines.” “College and university teachers can (legitimately) do two things,” writes Dr....

No Evaluation Left Behind by: Louisa Tavis, January 24, 2008 The Education Sector’s January 8 panel discussion regarding public education’s inadequate measurement of teacher performance featured an array of leading national experts on the subject, including Chris Cerf of the New York City Department of Education, Robert Rothman of Brown University, and Education Sector's Thomas Toch. The panel was moderated by Elena Silva, a senior policy analyst at Education Sector. The panelists uniformly stressed the beneficial effects that proper teacher evaluation can exert on the conditions of United States public schools. Its focus on the educational enterprise’s core—that is, the...

Some teachers in the Albemarle School District in Virginia are rebelling against their managers' orders to hand out to students as young as kindergarten a promotion for a summer camp that advocates for "Atheists, Freethinkers, Humanists, Brights, or whatever..." A representative of the teachers talked to WND only on condition that a name and school not be used, and said such advertisements provided by the district to hand out to children violate the teachers' religious beliefs. It was the same school district that WND earlier reported was distributing publicity about a "Pagan Christmas ritual" being held in the community.

Columbia President Lee Bollinger has been publicly praising the sacredness of free speech in the wake of the violent melee that last week forced the university to shut down a speech by Minuteman Project founder Jim Gilchrist. Yet while Bollinger talks a good game, it doesn't appear that his own university is listening to him. Columbia's Teachers College - one of our nation's most prestigious education schools - has policies that go beyond telling students what they can or can't say; it tells them even what they are required to believe. At Teachers College, students are required to have a...

Thousands of Connecticut teachers, including some award-winning educators, could face new job reviews because they do not meet U.S. government standards as "highly qualified teachers," federal officials say. The U.S. Department of Education has issued a new monitoring report that throws into question the qualifications of more than 13,000 teachers, about 30 percent of the state's public school teaching force, state officials say. State education officials have vowed to challenge the report's conclusion that many teachers - especially older elementary teachers and those teaching social studies and special education classes - do not meet the criteria established under the federal...

Saudi Arabia has funneled tens of thousands of dollars into the "outreach" programs of Columbia University's Middle East Institute, which until last week was training some of the city's public-school teachers in how to teach students about Middle East politics. Since 2002, the government-owned Saudi Aramco has given the institute annual grants of $15,000 for unspecified outreach activities. The institute's outreach activities have included a 15-week teacher-training course on Middle East politics led by Columbia faculty members and graduate students. In a letter dated April 27, 2004, a scholar of Arab nationalism who took over the Middle East Institute in...

Large numbers of teachers believe themselves incapable of meeting the learning expectations placed on their institutions by the No Child Left Behind Act. Like the characters in "Atlas Shrugged," they find themselves having to deal with problems they did not create within the constraints of a system designed to fail. In order to remain in their chosen profession, those caught in the middle must place blame elsewhere in order to find an "out." Those who refuse to "work within the system" disappear. Mediocrity rises to the top and excellence disappears. Public education has cried "wolf" one too many times, claiming...

...unlike the members of the public education/Democrat political machine, Mayor Williams has a true regard for the supposed objects of the public education debate - the children. For far too long, big government liberals have gotten away with portraying themselves as having concern for the welfare of the children, when what they really seek is an ever-growing budget for the education bureaucracy. "The children" end up merely as fodder to be fed into the system in order to keep its engines running. Worst of all, the budgetary patterns of recent years have established a scheme that essentially guarantees continued academic...