Free Republic

If the Chicago social-studies teacher Gregory Michie waits for a textbook to teach his students about the Black Lives Matter movement, the first seventh-graders to hear the lesson won’t be born for another seven years. Despite the historical implications of that movement, bureaucratic timelines all but quash any possibility that students might learn about today’s events from an actual history textbook in the near future. According to Anthony Pellegrino, an assistant professor of education at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, many school districts receive new books on a seven-year cycle. However, in some states, schools don’t receive new books for 10...

Are public schools becoming more and more like prisons? That’s what the documentary “The War on Kids” says. Based on interviews with educators, medical professionals, students and sociologists, the documentary, which received a limited film festival run in 2009 and is being released this week on the Documentary Channel, paints the picture of an increasingly authoritarian and paranoid school system that is failing its students, stripping them of their civil liberties and constitutional rights. “Kids have no voice. Everyone pretends to care, but it is never true, and it’s the children who are being blamed for all the failings in...