Free Republic

Sixty years ago, Benjamin Bloom came up with what he said was a superior way to categorize educational goals and activities. The Taxonomy was famous for reducing everything to six steps: remembering; understanding; applying; analyzing; evaluating; creating. Note that "remembering" (or "knowing") is the first and LOWEST step. Bloom concocted this taxonomy to describe education at the college level. College professors, however, ignored the Taxonomy. Meanwhile, the people in charge of our public schools put this thing on a pedestal. Why? Because the Taxonomy scorned what had always been considered the most important step: knowing information. Bloom and his Taxonomy...

A former porn star known as "Dave Pounder" plans to pound the pavement in hopes of getting elected to the Palm Beach County School Board. And yes, sex education is a major platform for this Boca Raton resident, whose real name is David Mech.

According to the latest international rating of education in 65 countries, American public schools are in a free fall. The overall rank of the U.S. is 29th in the world — behind the Slovak Republic, Russia, and Vietnam. Asia dominates the top 10. Shanghai, China, is the international leader, followed by Singapore, Hong Kong, Taipei, South Korea and Macao. Including Taipei, the capital of Taiwan, four of the top six are Chinese. These are some of the results of the educational research division of the Organization of European Cooperation and Development (OECD) called the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA),...

[For all teachers and parents]-- Malkin Dare, a lifelong teacher and education reformer, is the founder of the Society for Quality Education in Ontario. She is a big voice for sane education in Canada and throughout the world. Dare summarized her educational philosophy in an article titled “Ten Keys to Success: Fundamental Principles of Teaching.” That article is condensed here to the main points. Please, parents and teachers, read this material and discuss it. ---------------------- 1. Almost all students can learn: Obviously, there are a few students who, because of a severe disability, are prevented from learning certain things. For...

A college education historically has been the route to a better-paying job and a satisfying career. But currently, more than half of college graduates are “underemployed” in jobs that don’t require a college degree. Why the growing disconnect? Certainly, the main reason is our economy’s slow recovery. But I believe another reason is the lack of substantive learning in many students’ college studies. And while not unique in this regard, the failure to prepare students to adequately perform in degree-required jobs is evident in the undergraduate curriculum at the University of Minnesota. Every year Vascular Solutions hires recent college graduates...

I can't send my kids to public school.  This is a national shame. Both I and my wife are the products of public school.  I still remember a few of my high school teachers who encouraged me, and taught me more about life than just the curriculum in the classroom.  My kids won't be going to public school though. It's not about the teachers.  Most teachers work hard, care deeply about their students, and do their best to educate our kids.  By educate, I mean not just teach the material, but help our kids understand what learning is, and help...

Video is only 3:15 minutes long. A short graphic presentation of the nine big flaws in public schools. Suppose someone is asking the question, well, what can we do, where do we start? Here's a list of nine places to start. ---------------------------------------------- Personally I like trying to radically simplify things. That is especially appropriate in education. What these professors spend their time doing is creating so much confusion, disinformation, propaganda, alibis, excuses, lies, etc., etc., etc., finally no ordinary citizen knows what to think about the subject anymore. And that's how the Education Establishment wins. At some point you have...

Check out this video and feel your head spin like Linda Blair as you watch the teacher go into a very, very complicated and convoluted method (algorithm?) to solve the very, very simple subtraction problem 32 – 12 = 20. Source.

There is growing evidence that charter schools are empowering parents, pioneering fresh teaching methods, encouraging state and local innovation and help students escape underperforming schools.

In the last year there have been a lot of conservative rumblings against the new progressive education agenda called Common Core. This is yet another in a long line of new progressive initiatives since they created modern government education a century ago. The last was Outcome Based Education, which as usual failed to produce increased learning or test scores unless the tests were dumbed down. You say that it was a failure, the progressive left views this a success. The goal of American government education has never been about learning, it’s been about indoctrination. It’s about separating the next generation...

Have you had enough of the testing tyranny? Join the club. To be clear: I'm not against all standardized academic tests. My kids excel on tests. The problem is that there are too damned many of these top-down assessments, measuring who knows what, using our children as guinea pigs and cash cows. College-bound students in Orange County, Fla., for example, now take a total of 234 standardized diagnostic, benchmark and achievement tests from kindergarten through 12th grade. Reading instructor Brian Trutschel calculated that a typical 10th-grade English class will be disrupted 65 out of 180 school days this year...

In a Breitbart column insisting that Ronald Reagan was not as assertive as commonly believed on military and foreign policy issues, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) mentions, in passing, “I met Ronald Reagan as a teenager when my father was a Reagan delegate in 1976.” . But his father, Ron Paul, is hardly a Reaganite today. Indeed, he is now claiming that Crimea has a right to leave Ukraine and join Russia, and that U.S. sanctions against the Russian regime are “criminal.” “That’s just people looking to start a war,” Paul said. “This is criminal, it’s stealing and will just aggravate...

One of the fascinating things about journalism is looking at the factual data that both sides of a controversy agree on and finding that the facts support the critics’ viewpoints. For example, the Thomas Fordham Institute has been, more or less, supportive of the Obama Administration’s Common Core education reforms. Nevertheless, in their progress report on it, the relatively right-of-center think tank paints a rather dismal picture of CC2014: “Teachers and principals are the primary faces and voices of the Common Core standards in their communities; “Implementation works best when district and school leaders lock onto the Common Core standards...

These kids should learn write from wrong. Earlier this month, The Post exposed a scheme at Manhattan’s Murry Bergtraum HS for Business Careers in which failing students could get full credit without attending class, but instead watch video lessons and take tests online. One social-studies teacher had a roster of 475 students in all grades and subjects. Red-faced administrators encouraged a student letter-writing campaign to attack The Post and defend its “blended learning” program. Eighteen kids e-mailed to argue that their alma mater got a bad rap. Almost every letter was filled with spelling, grammar and punctuation errors.

Not all at once, by some surgical procedure. No, this will be a slow, subtle process, taking place over years. Every step will be conducted with utmost seriousness. Scientific validity will be claimed. Endless research will be constantly referenced. If there is little progress or outright failure, teachers always seem amazed, as if such a thing had never happened before. Principals explain that the school is doing everything it can, if only parents would help in this delicate training. Children and families will be told with absolute confidence: we use the best methods here and our students learn to be...

A school hosted a congratulatory event for its straight-A students, which would not normally be a controversial event… but the America we live in has changed. No longer do we push our children for excellence… now we make excuses for mediocrity.

“I trudged the several blocks home from school, satchel in hand. It was a beautiful, golden afternoon, and I was ready for some adventure. I had a little homework, but that could wait until after supper. My parents knew that kids needed time to play and there was only so much daylight left. My best friend and I spent the afternoon exploring in the nearby woods and seeking out “evil” boys to annoy. We got home in time for supper and had plenty of time to finish our homework before bed. I don’t remember ever being stressed about tests and...

The "propaganda of the deed" or propagandas by deed have traditionally been an anarchist tool - and for violent purposes....... or have they? That's what we have been told for a long time, but why can't other activities by various statist oriented groups also be deeds intended to make a point - even non violently? I think they are and I think they have. In the 1920's, the New York State Legislature put together a joint committee to investigate seditious activities, and the result of all this was a work titled "Revolutionary Radicalism". I actually think this does a disservice,...

The Common Core gold rush is on. Apple, Pearson, Google, Microsoft and Amplify are all cashing in on the federal standards/testing/textbook racket. But the EduTech boondoggle is no boon for students. It's more squandered tax dollars down the public school drain. Even more worrisome: The stampede is widening a dangerous path toward invasive data mining. According to the Silicon Valley Business Journal, the ed tech sector "is expected to more than double in size to $13.4 billion by 2017." That explosive growth is fueled by Common Core's top-down digital learning and testing mandates. So: Cui bono? In North Carolina, the...

School officials at a public elementary school in Chicago are ordering teachers to sign students up for “designated restroom times” when entire, overcrowded classes of little kids must use the bathroom each day. The rationale for the draconian pee policy is to improve the school’s dreadful results on Common Core-related standardized tests. An anonymous teacher at the unidentified pre-K-8 forwarded a memo concerning the policy to Anthony Cody of Education Week. The memo reportedly went out to all faculty members at the school last week. “Welcome back and Happy New Year!” the memo reads. “In order to maximize student learning...