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31 March, 2006

States Have More Schools Falling Behind

Even the "fudged" results look bad

More than a quarter of U.S. schools are failing under terms of President Bush's No Child Left Behind law, according to preliminary state-by-state statistics reported to the U.S. Department of Education. At least 24,470 U.S. public schools, or 27 percent of the national total, did not meet the federal requirement for "adequate yearly progress" in 2004-2005. The percentage of failing schools rose by one point from the previous school year. Under the 2002 law, schools that do not make sufficient academic progress face penalties including the eventual replacement of their administrators and teachers.

The results raise doubts about whether the law is working and its results are fairly calculated, said Michael Petrilli, vice president for policy at the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, a Washington-based research group. "Most people thought that at this point in the law, we'd be seeing these numbers go way, way up" as standards toughen, said Petrilli, a former Education Department official who helped implement the law in 2002.

Bush achieved rare bipartisan support to get the No Child Left Behind law passed as part of his first-term agenda. Since then, the law has become a subject of dispute, with Democrats accusing Republicans of providing insufficient money for it. At the same time, there is evidence that states may be manipulating the numbers, Petrilli said. He cited Oklahoma, where the percentage of failing schools dropped to 3 percent from 25 percent a year earlier.

Under the law's "adequate yearly progress" measurements, states are required to show improvement in student test scores in reading and math. If they do not do so for two consecutive years, individual schools must let students transfer to another school. After a third year, schools must pay for tutoring for students from low-income families. Some states have complained that the federal government has not provided enough funding to cover costs such as tutoring.

The 2004-2005 rankings are just "one thing out of many things" that need to be considered when judging schools, said Chad Colby, a spokesman for the Education Department. A set of federal tests, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, gives policymakers another indication of scholastic achievement, Colby said. The true test of the No Child Left Behind law will come in 2013-2014, when schools are required to bring all students to proficiency in math and reading, he said.

The Bush administration has expressed satisfaction with the rate of improvement under No Child Left Behind. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, in testimony last month before the Senate's education committee, cited statistics such as 9-year-olds making more progress in reading over the past five years than in the previous 28 years combined.

The law, however, allows states to adjust both their tests and the formulas by which they calculate "adequate yearly progress," leaving parents and policymakers unable to make definite conclusions about such numbers, analysts including Petrilli said. [You can guess in what direction they "adjust" their standards] "These stats are meaningless in the absence of a common test and common standards," said Diane Ravitch, a New York University professor who was an assistant secretary of education under President George H.W. Bush.

Among individual states, Florida placed last with 72 percent of its schools failing to show enough improvement, while Oklahoma led, according to the Education Department statistics provided to Bloomberg News. Rhode Island ranked second behind Oklahoma with 5 percent failing, with Iowa at 6 percent, Montana at 7 percent and New Hampshire, Tennessee and Wisconsin at 8 percent. At the other end, Hawaii ranked second-worst with 66 percent of its schools failing to improve. Washington, D.C., came in third-worst with 60 percent, followed by Nevada at 56 percent and New Mexico at 53 percent. Different states were required to submit the statistics to the Education Department by March 8. Federal officials plan to verify them and incorporate them into an annual report to Congress later this year, Colby said.

Source



A WHINE FROM CALIFORNIA:

The struggles of two local school districts exemplify the choices educators are making to comply with the federal No Child Left Behind Act, a national study released Tuesday says. The efforts by Grant Joint Union High and Tahoe Truckee Unified school districts to improve student achievement are outlined in a report by the Center on Education Policy, a nonprofit and nonpartisan group based in Washington, D.C. Looking at the federal act's influence on school districts nationwide, the study found that students' scores are rising but that the gains come at great expense.

Instructional time is being diverted from subjects such as social studies, science and art to give low-performing students more exposure to English and math, subjects at the core of NCLB, the report states. Districts are spending money that often isn't reimbursed, as well as valuable time and other resources. Teachers' creativity in the classroom is dampened, [How awful! Teacher creativity OF COURSE matters more than whether kids learn how to read or not] and staff morale sometimes suffers. "The impact of the No Child Left Behind Act continued to broaden and deepen during 2005," Jack Jennings, president of the Center on Education Policy, said in a Washington, D.C., news conference. "Teaching and learning are changing as a result of (the law)."

Some of those changes are embraced, others implemented only out of necessity. As one Tahoe Truckee Unified teacher told report authors about NCLB: "It's been the best bad thing." The report - the center's fourth in a series about the implementation of No Child Left Behind - is based on surveys of 299 school districts spread over all 50 states. Thirty-eight geographically diverse school districts were studied in depth, including Grant and Tahoe Truckee. The two districts were featured as examples of how urban and rural school systems are affected by the law. A Grant spokeswoman said district officials were unavailable for comment Tuesday, and Tahoe Truckee officials could not be reached for comment.

The study concludes that NCLB has had a dramatic effect on what goes on in the classroom. Education has become more "prescriptive," meaning teachers and administrators use data to identify students' weaknesses [More horror!] and implement rigid curricula.

Subjects such as science, social studies [Leftist propaganda] and art are being pushed aside in 71 percent of districts surveyed. In the Grant district, low-performing students are taking as many as three periods of English and/or math. This year, students had the option of taking a one-semester class of both social studies and science. English language learners are enrolled in so-called "block classes" for a double dose of English.

The report states that this method is seen as a necessary evil by some educators. Jack O'Connell, state superintendent of public instruction, said in a statement Tuesday that reading and math are "gateway skills." "If a student does not have these basic skills, it is imperative that schools focus on helping our kids acquire them," he said.

Still, others remain worried about the long-term effects. "When you take away elective classes, I think it's a tragedy," said John Ennis, president of the Grant teachers union. "I want a well-rounded citizen." [Even if he is illiterate]

The study also found that an increasing number of students are testing proficient in English and math on state tests. The report cites increased learning as a factor but also points out that many states have taken advantage of flexibility by U.S. Department of Education in determining what is considered proficient. [Oh Oh!]

The study's third conclusion cites a leveling off of the number of school districts identified as in need of improvement. This finding runs counter to earlier predictions that the number would keep rising over time. In addition, few students eligible for district-funded tutoring - an option provided by the law - use it, and few students transfer to other schools under the school choice option. [Because they are not GIVEN the option]

More here

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here. My home page is here

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30 March, 2006

Parents demand, 'Let our children go'

L.A., Compton districts accused of not allowing transfers mandated by U.S.

How long should parents allow their children to remain trapped in a failed school? Five years? Two years? One year? To ask the question is to know the answer. Loving, caring parents would drive out to the school, rescue their child and drive home without a glance back. Appropriately, when Congress passed the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001, it made clear that every child in America has the right to attend an effective school - now. And, based on that law, two organizations that favor school choice filed administrative complaints Thursday against the Los Angeles Unified and Compton Unified school districts. The complaints demand that the districts provide and publicize transfer options to better-performing schools.

One of the groups, Alliance for School Choice, also asked U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings to cut off federal funds to the districts until they comply with NCLB. In both districts, the patterns of evasion of the NCLB's school-transfer provisions for families trapped in failed schools have been blatant, clearly intentional and the numbers of children allowed to transfer tiny.

In Los Angeles and Compton, test scores are in the dumps, many campuses are plagued by violence, and roughly half the students are dropping out before finishing high school. No one voluntarily enrolls a child in these districts - the kids are there because the schools in these districts are prisons for families who don't have the money for anything else. The families in these districts are overwhelmingly poor and minority, and the huge, uncaring bureaucracies running the districts are exploiting these impoverished minority families who have no place else to go.

While both districts are heavily racially segregated, Compton, which is nearly 100 percent minorities, especially has educational apartheid. In 1963, it was Alabama Gov. George Wallace who stood in the schoolhouse door to block racial integration. Today, it is educrats and teachers union bosses in places like Los Angeles Unified and Compton who block the escape of disadvantaged minorities to a better life.

In both districts, the numbers of children trapped in failing schools so overwhelmingly outnumbers the available openings in high-performing district public schools that simply allowing transfers within the districts can never solve the problem. What will be necessary is some combination of allowing transfers to high-performing public schools outside the districts; allowing existing public schools within the districts to convert to charter schools; and giving students in dysfunctional public schools scholarships to attend private schools.

These options have been shown to produce higher test scores at the same or even lower per-student spending rates, and the prod of competition has been demonstrated to dramatically improve the existing traditional public schools. Of those three options, allowing public schools to convert to charter status will probably work most quickly and help the greatest numbers of students. Charter schools are public schools of choice that are run directly by their local communities and that bypass the stifling bureaucracy of traditional public schools by putting the money directly into the classroom. California's existing charter schools now enroll about 3 percent of our public school students and have been the one shining light in a state notorious for its terrible public schools.

The option of private school scholarships now has precedent in federal law under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which has long given children with disabilities who cannot be adequately served in public schools a scholarship to a private special-education school. The Hurricane Katrina education relief bill, passed in December 2005, also offers displaced families scholarships to private schools.

Whichever of the options are implemented, the time to act is now. When Congress passed No Child Left Behind and said that all children have a right to an education, it made clear that it meant today, not the someday of the educrats' daydreams. We do not have a moment to spare in rescuing those children who so desperately need our help.

Source



Where did All The Students Activists Go?

A good post from Varifrank

C.W. Nevis took his daughter to a protest this weekend and wonders "Where did all the student activists go"?

I've been on college campuses over the past couple of years taking a variety of classes. One of those classes was a German Language class. The instructor was a very nice lady, an older German woman who lived through the war as a child. She was a very good instructor and frankly she was such a good instructor of German that she invigorated my love of the english language, which is a hell of thing for a German Langage instructor to do. She was a genuine nice lady.

She was also quite a free spirit and tended towards a leftist ideology, which is really not unusual on campus. Most of the time she kept politics out of the classroom, but we usually got a small 5 minute lecture during the week on some subject that bothered her.

The students were predictably young, but they also held a secret that they revealed to me and the rest of the class one week after a lecture from the liebe professorin. One week she began a pre-class lecture on the evils of "Depleted Uranium". I listened quietly, being the good observer that I am, as I was more interested in the class reaction than playing verbal tennis with someone who was not going to be turned by my arguments in any account. The class sat quietly and listened, but didnt react to the accusations of horrible crimes against humanity, they just got ready for class and organized themselves for the task at hand, only half listening to the instructor. When she finished her 5 minute lecture, she left the room to pick up some paperwork for that class session.

Then they did it. As soon as the door closed, almost every student stood up and unzipped jackets or pulled off their sweatshirts and vests to reveal something absolutely stunning. 80% of the class was wearing grey t-shirts with one word on the front

ARMY

"Well why didnt you say something"? I said with a laugh to one of the kids, nay, soldiers who were also attending the class with me and about 5 stunned party animals. "Dude we've got work to do. You spend all your time getting angry at nitwits and you miss the whole point of being in school in the first place". The discipline that the service had given to my classmate showed in his professionalism He wasnt angry, he had a job to do, he was there to learn. My classmate had just returned from 2 years overseas duty in Korea and was about to be sent to Germany, and possibly "parts beyond".

After a round of high-fives, they all tucked in their shirts and went back to their previous slacker camoflage, when the instructor came back and started the class all the while seemingly unaware that nearly all of her class were actually reserve or active members of the US Military. So, C.W. -Where did all the student activists go? Apparently they joined the Army.



A BOOK TO NOTE

In case readers here have not seen it, this might be a good time to mention the book, Our School: The Inspiring Story of Two Teachers, One Big Idea and the School That Beat the Odds. It follows the principal, teachers and students at Downtown College Prep, a San Jose charter high school that turns underachievers -- most come from low-income Mexican immigrant families -- into serious students. The charter school’s educational philosophy is: Work your butt off. Students aren’t told they’re wonderful. Teachers tell them they’re capable of improving, which turns out to be true. On California’s Academic Performance Index, which came out last week, Downtown College Prep is a 7 out of 10 compared to all schools, a perfect 10 compared to similar schools. All graduates go on to college; 90 percent remain on track to earn a four-year degree.

While the book discusses the charter school movement as a whole, Our School isn’t written for wonks. Many readers say it’s a page-turner. So far, it has received excellent reviews in the Wall Street Journal, Sacramento Bee, Washington Post, New York Post, Rocky Mountain News, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Publishers Weekly and others.

The book is in some, but not all, book stores and is available through Amazon. After 19 years as a San Jose Mercury News editorial writer and Knight Ridder columnist, Joanne quit in 2001 to write Our School and to start her education blog, joannejacobs.com.

With all the despair about educating "left behind" kids, people need to hear about a school that's making a difference.

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here. My home page is here

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29 March, 2006

MORE ON THE YALE DISGRACE

The BBC calls Malalai Joya the most famous woman in Afghanistan. On Thursday the 27-year-old women's rights activist, a member of the Afghan Parliament, mounted a stage at Yale and turned her fire on the university's decision to admit a former Taliban official as a special student. "All should raise their voice against such criminals," she told a crowd of 200. "It is an unforgivable insult to the Afghan people that he is here. He should face a court of law rather than be at one of your finest universities." The Yale Daily News reported that the large attendance at her speech showed that the former Taliban official "continues to be widely controversial." Last night the Yale College Council, the undergraduate student government, began debating a resolution urging the university's administration not to admit Mr. Hashemi as a regular sophomore in the fall.

Ms. Joya has standing to speak for Afghan women. She ran an underground school for women during the Taliban's rule and today receives frequent death threats after giving speeches in Parliament against "fanatical warlords." She is strongly critical of U.S. support for her country's new government, which she claims is increasingly influenced by warlords, as evidenced by the now-abandoned attempt to try an Afghan named Abdul Rahman for the capital crime of converting to Christianity. "Why has $12 billion in foreign aid not made it to my suffering people?" she asked me during an interview. "Fraud and waste have largely diverted your aid to others."

But it was her criticism of Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi, the 27-year-old Taliban ambassador-at-large turned Yale student, that stuck in the minds of some audience members at a reception afterwards. "Before I was like, who cares if the guy was Taliban or not?" Yigit Dula, a sophomore from Turkey, told the Yale Daily News. "But it means a lot more to [Afghans] to have someone like Hashemi educated at Yale." Aisha Amir, a physician who fled war-torn Afghanistan, told me she sympathized with the difficult choices people had to make to survive under the Taliban, but added that "there are so many more deserving Afghan students who belong in Hashemi's place."

I met one of those students at the reception. Makai Rohbar, an Afghan student whose family legally immigrated to New Haven in 2002, served as Ms. Joya's translator for the evening. After Ms. Joya's speech, I asked Ms. Rohbar what she was studying. She told me she was taking classes in chemistry and biophysics in the hope of someday becoming a physician. I then inquired how long she had been at Yale. She blushed. "I don't go here," she said. "I attend classes at Gateway Community College," also in New Haven. She had never imagined that she could be accepted into Yale or ever find a way to pay for it.

Intrigued, I later called her up to get her full story. She left a refugee camp in Pakistan with her mother, Maroofa, and her four younger siblings in 2002. Like Mr. Hashemi she has only a high school equivalency degree, because schooling in the refugee camp was limited. Her mother can't work and knows only basic English, so she and her sister Rona are the only means of support for the family beyond food stamps and $600 a month in housing assistance from the state. I asked her what her life was like. "It's hard, but certainly better than Pakistan," she told me. "I am very grateful, but I must work 50 hours a week and also go to class. Sometimes, I am so tired I can't attend." She earns $8 an hour as a clerk in a local retail store.

I asked what she thought about Mr. Hashemi attending Yale with the help of a Wyoming foundation and a discount from Yale of 35% to 40% on tuition. "It's like a nightmare that you can't believe when you wake up," she told me. "This is a good country, but I think some people in New Haven are so complacent they don't know what officials like Hashemi did to my people." Asked what part of the Thursday evening event most impressed her, she said it was the film "Afghanistan Unveiled," which was shown just before Ms. Joya spoke. A documentary that aired on PBS in 2004, it is the work of young female Afghan video journalists working with a French director. While acknowledging progress in the capital of Kabul, it depicts the enduring lack of women's rights in many rural provinces. The heart of the film is a searing journey to Bamiyan, a place that made headlines in March 2001, when the Taliban blew up giant 1,500-year-old statues of Buddha there. That month Mr. Hashemi visited me and my colleagues at The Wall Street Journal to launch an impassioned defense of the destruction of the monuments, which had been declared a world heritage site by the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

At the time, no one knew what else the Taliban were doing in Bamiyan beyond blowing up Buddhas. Nearby, the Afghan video journalists found the remnants of the Hazara tribe. One survivor told them the Taliban had "tried to exterminate" the entire tribe, starting with the men. Zainyab, a Hazara woman so thin and wrinkled that her age was indeterminate, was found by video journalist Marie Ayub living in a cave "like an animal." She told the filmmakers that "from hundreds of women here, not one has a husband. From 100 children, maybe just one still has two parents. They bulldozed houses with women and children inside; they cut off women's breasts." But despite the devastation, she hasn't given up hope. "Bring us looms," she tells the filmmakers. "Then we can be paid to weave rugs."

A small effort to help build a modern economy in Afghanistan was launched by Paula Nirschel in 2002, when she founded the Initiative to Educate Afghan Women. Her goal is to match qualified women with at least a GPA of 3.5 or more with U.S. colleges, where they can pursue a degree. The initiative grants all its women full four-year scholarships. They come to college prepared; none need remedial classes. (That's something that can't be said of all U.S. students. Last year, only 52% of entering freshmen in the California State University system passed the English placement test.)

As The Wall Street Journal reported in an editorial Friday, Ms. Nirschel sent a letter to Yale in 2002, asking if it wanted to award a spot in its next entering class to an Afghan woman. Yale declined, as did many other schools. Today, the program enrolls 20 students at 10 universities.

After four weeks of growing controversy, Yale refuses to answer any questions about Mr. Hashemi's case, citing privacy concerns. It continues to defend his admission with a single 144-word statement that raises more questions than it answers.

But a rising tide of alumni and student concern has already compelled Yale's president, Richard Levin, to take some action. Last week, he agreed to a request for a meeting from Natalie Healy, the mother of a Navy SEAL who died in Afghanistan last year after the Taliban blew up his helicopter. She was driving down from her home in New Hampshire and wanted to tell President Levin that Mr. Hashemi's student status is an insult to U.S. soldiers currently fighting the Taliban.

Ms. Healy was tied up in traffic and arrived 15 minutes after Mr. Levin had to leave the office for the day. A Yale public affairs officer heard Ms. Healy's complaint. But a Yale official tells me that Mr. Levin has wrested control of the decision as to whether or not his school's prize diversity catch will be admitted as a sophomore next fall away from the admissions office. He will now make the final call.

While he ponders that choice, he could also dust off Ms. Nirschel's 2002 letter and perhaps reconsider her suggestion that another truly worthy Afghan student be admitted. Ms. Rohbar, the aspiring physician, may be someone he could invite over for a chat. After all, she lives only four miles from his office. On days when she doesn't have homework, she is free after around 6 p.m., when her shift as a clerk ends.

Source



BRITAIN'S ANTI-EDUCATION PUSH GATHERS STEAM

Night classes being phased out so more money can be given to education of the dummies. That more money generally does NOTHING towards educating dummies is not mentioned. Bottom-line: Less education all-round. Those who CAN benefit don't get taught; Those who are unlikely to benefit, do get taught. So neither group learns. Equality!

The cost of evening classes is to double for more than two million people to help to fund job training for low-skilled workers, the Government admitted yesterday. Night classes in everything from flower arranging to foreign languages are expected to close. Leaders of further education colleges estimate that one million places will be lost overall. Ministers believe that night courses should not be the preserve of the middle classes keen on self-improvement. They consider that taxpayers' money would be better spent improving the skills of adults and young people who have left school with few or no qualifications.

However, fees for everyone else will rise sharply over the next four years. State subsidies will be cut from 73 per cent to 50 per cent of the cost of courses by 2010. Individuals or their employers will have to pay the other half. "Colleges are already talking about shutting down in the evenings because of the reduction in adult learning and the focus on younger people," Julian Gravatt, the Association of Colleges' director of funding and development, said. "It will be the end of night school."

People taking "leisure and pleasure" courses that do not lead to qualifications face even bigger increases. Annual funding for "personal and community development learning" will be frozen at 210 million pounds for the next two years. "There will increasingly be an expectation that individuals should pay for this kind of provision where they can afford to do so," a government White Paper said yesterday, setting out a "new economic mission" for colleges.

Ministers promised to abolish course fees from 2007-08 for people aged 19 to 25 who did not have "Level 3" qualifications, equivalent to two A levels. About 45,000 young people will qualify for free tuition. Colleges would be expected to stop many leisure courses to provide increasingly specialised skills tuition. The Association of Colleges said that up to one third of its 3.4 million adult places could be lost as a result of the changes. Up to 70 of England's 380 colleges could close. Some 4.2 million are enrolled at further education colleges, including 850,000 under-18s, 400,000 on welfare benefits and 750,000 on basic literacy and numeracy courses. About 2.3 million adults pay towards the cost of lessons in anything from flower arranging to computer-aided design or the new work-related foundation degrees.

Mr Gravatt said that current government spending projections predicted a loss of 500,000 places by 2008. A further 500,000 could disappear by 2010. "One third of adult places could go. There will be growth in provision for 16 to 19-year-olds and the under-25s. Sixth-form students tend to study for more hours, so we will have fewer people studying for longer," he said. The White Paper said that the State would continue to provide free education for everyone under 19, and would now extend it to people under 25 without the Level 3 qualifications. "But for older adults the arguments are different. The State cannot and should not pay for all education and training for adults."

State funding would cover half the fees wherever people were studying courses "valued by employers". Funding for recreational courses would "depend on local choice about how to use the allocated resources". Ministers said that reform of FE colleges was essential to end "scandalously low" staying-on rates among young people and improve adult job skills if Britain was to compete against the rising economic power of China and India. Britain lagged well behind France and Germany for the proportion of young adults with the Level 3 qualifications considered necessary for productive employment. It was also 24th out of 29 developed nations for the proportion of 16-year-olds in education or training. Ministers have set a target for raising participation rates for 16 to 19-year-olds from 75 per cent to 90 per cent by 2015.

The White Paper threatened tough action to "eliminate failure" by withdrawing funding from weak colleges. One in seven colleges offered "barely satisfactory" standards and would be served formal notices to improve within twelve months. The Learning and Skills Council would end funding for colleges that failed to improve. It would hold competitions to find alternative providers, including private companies, that were capable of taking over their courses.

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here. My home page is here

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28 March, 2006

The Opportunity Cost of Obsolete Beliefs in Academia

(An opportunity cost is the cost of a missed opportunity)

After UCLAprofs.com, a right-wing alumni website, named UCLA Education Professor Peter McLaren "the worst of the worst" last month he responded by calling the website "a reactionary form of McCarthyism." Although UCLAprofs.com is a ranting, mean-spirited site, it is nonetheless absurd to call this "McCarthyism." McCarthy was frightening because he was using the threat of government power to intimidate. Although UCLAprofs.com originally offered students cash for recording professors' lectures, (the offer was rescinded in the face of threatened legal action from UCLA), this is not government intimidation.

One of the great democratic reforms of the 60s were the Open Meetings Acts that made public officials more accountable to the public. UCLAprofs.com, despite the ranting, is yet another positive move forward towards greater transparency and accountability in society. Public universities (and all universities that receive public funding) should be accountable to the public and serve the public good. It seems odd that Leftist enthusiasts for democracy should be hostile to the notion that public servants should be accountable to the people. And government-funded professors are public servants; their activities ought to be scrutinized accordingly.

Because of our obligation to scrutinize the work of public servants, it is therefore unfortunate that only conservative voices are criticizing academia. Although I am a great believer in academic freedom and as culturally liberal as almost anyone in academia, the more distance I gain from academic life the more I am struck by the extent to which all too often academic opinion is obsolete. Listen to McLaren, for instance, describe one of his education courses (in 2003):

"We begin by examining the intrinsically exploitative nature of capitalist society, using some introductory texts and essays by Bertell Ollman, and then tackle the difficult task of reading of Capital, Volume 1, and the labor theory of value. We look at this issue from the perspective from a number of Marxist orientations and I try to present the case that capitalism can't be reformed and still remain capitalism."

I am at first saddened, and then disgusted, at the extent to which McLaren is wasting his students' time. The 20th century was a violent and tragic century because in its early years both the left and the right deserted classical liberalism. We can be optimistic about a 21st century to the extent market democracies spread around the world. Although there are still serious challenges in launching successful market economies in many nations, we need to work together to help those nations succeed in growing market economies. McLaren is not helping this cause.

Oxfam is encouraging global trade to alleviate global poverty. Mohammad Yunus, of Bangladesh, launched a microfinance movement that has made successful entrepreneurs out of millions of women in the developing world. Hernando De Soto, of Peru, has launched a global program to give property rights to squatters around the world and to eliminate the over-regulation that prevents them from becoming successful entrepreneurs. De Soto's work has been described by Bill Clinton as "The most promising anti-poverty initiative in the world." These are heroic movements that deserve our attention and support. And yet when I talked to a recent college graduate last year who had majored in "Globalization," she had not heard of any of these initiatives. It was as if a computer science graduate had not heard of the personal computer: How could this be?

In too many cases professors in the humanities and social sciences (outside economics) are unreconstructed Leftists. Bertell Ollman, whose Marxists texts are used by McLaren, published the following in September 1991:

"Paradoxically enough, the objective conditions for socialism in the USSR are now largely present, but because of the unhappy experience with a regime that called itself `socialist' the subjective conditions are absent . . . on the other hand . . . the Soviet Union might be saved by a socialist revolution in the West as our capitalist economy goes into a tailspin."

Note that September 1991 is two years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and indeed, is in the midst of the collapse of the Soviet Union. This absurdity was published by the American Political Science Association (APSA), the leading organization of academic political scientists. It is odd enough that the APSA considered Ollman's opinions worthy of academic publication at the time; it is odder still that he was given a lifetime achievement award by the APSA in 2001. It is as if the Association for Computing Machinery were to give a lifetime achievement award to a sliderule manufacturer in 2001. And when I read that McLaren is using Ollman's texts in education courses I really have to wonder about his judgment. Wouldn't it be more useful for people in education courses to learn how to help students learn?

It would be one thing if these people were fringe figures. But not only is Ollman an APSA-award winner, McLaren is a global academic superstar for his work in "critical pedagogy," with institutes being named after him in Mexico and Argentina.

As it turns out, I am an expert in a sort of "critical pedagogy" of my own creation. And I would be willing to bet that if 100 registered Democrats in the tech field examined both my work and McLaren's work, upwards of 80% (and quite possibly 100%) would agree that my work would be more helpful to inner city students than is his, much as the work of Yunus and De Soto is more valuable for global development than is thought of Ollman. And yet McLaren is training the next generation of urban educators in America, and I am not.

We need to speak truth to power. And the truth that we need to speak is that the academics who control the publishing of textbooks and curricula, teacher licensure and the education of most journalists, are in many cases out of touch with reality. They continue to live in 1968, a world in which people used sliderules and typewriters and J.K. Gailbraith could claim "the entrepreneur no longer exists in the mature industrial enterprise."

We now live in a dynamic world of tech entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurship, and microentrepreneurship, in which we recognize that decentralized systems beat command and control systems, and in which the entire corpus of Marxist thought is as outdated as a sliderule. People like me are not allowed to create the personal computers of 21st century education because people like Peter McLaren control teacher education and certification on behalf of a belief system that is as obsolete as are the machine tools of mid-20th century sliderule manufacturers. The opportunity cost of allowing the tenured radicals to continue to control academic life may be compared to the opportunity cost of allowing the sliderule manufacturers to have controlled the "calculation" business from 1968 onwards. Think about that critically.

Source



In Search Of Darkness: Found Lots Of It

I don't wholly agree with Fred's points below. I think you can find good and bad to say of all levels of the class system. But he does highlight how little education does for most people these days

The other day I found myself trapped next to the lobotomy box in the house of a friend. The show was one of those dismal productions based on sexual innuendo, the sort that I would have found titillating when I was eleven. The format was not complex. Neither, I suspect, was the audience. Several shapeless young couples sat together. The host asked them seriatim such questions as, "Other than your wife, who did you last take a shower with?" or "What part of your anatomy does your husband most like to kiss?" The studio audience invariably moaned, "Oooooooooooooooooh!" like third-graders who have heard a bad word. The couples themselves giggled with delicious embarrassment, also in the manner of dimwitted children.

I happily imagined sending them to some barely heard-of tribe in the Amazon Basin for use in human sacrifice. Almost human. Something involving army ants would have done nicely. The sexual reference didn't offend me. I have misspent more hours in third-world skin bars than those people had aggregate brain cells, which means at least three skin bars. I've seen raunchy sex shows to the point of boredom, and am not real shockable. Pornography doesn't upset me. If I had to choose whether my kids watched Dory Does Dallas, or Oprah, I might go with Dory.

No, it was the infantilism, the snickering, low-IQ tastelessness of a class of people who have no class. These, with their childish prurience and slum-dweller's aversion to civilized existence, now dominate American culture. Anyone who points out that they are crass finds himself attacked as elitist-which, since elitism simply means the view that the better is preferable to the worse, all people should be.

We are not supposed to use phrases like "the lower orders," which is the best of reasons for using them. Yet the lower orders exist. Their members are not necessarily poor, and the poor are not necessarily members. Nor is the level of schooling a reliable indicator of loutdom. Nor is intelligence or race a particularly good marker. One may be a moral moron without being unable to tie one's shoes. Rather the lower orders consist of people who think fart jokes uproarious.

How did we get here? Probably Henry Ford bears responsibility. He paid workers on his assembly lines a good wage. This was as culturally deplorable as it was economically admirable. Before, the unwashed had lacked the money to impose their tastes, or lack of them, on the society. The moneyed classes of the time may have been reprehensible or contemptible in various ways, but they minded their manners-if only because it set them apart from the lower orders, perhaps, yet it worked. The middle class likewise eschewed bathroom humor except in such venues as locker rooms, probably for the same reasons. Still, they knew what "distasteful" meant.

But as the peasantry and proletariat gained economic power, inevitably they also asserted dominance over the arts, or entertainment as the arts came to be under their sway, as well as schooling and the nature of acceptable discourse. If millions of people who can afford SUVs want scatological humor, television will accommodate them. Since all watch the same television, no class of people will escape the sex-and-sewage format. This happened. Today the cultivated can no longer insulate themselves from the rabble.

The fear of social inferiority always concerns the peasantariat: "You ain't no gooder'n me." Until the sudden florescence of pay packets occurred, the lower orders had either accepted that they were the lower orders, however resentfully, or tried to rise. They might learn to speak good English, read widely, and cultivate good manners. Or they might not. If they did, it was likely to work, since in America those who behave and speak like gentlefolk (another inadmissible word) will usually be accepted as such. In either case, they did not impose their barbarousness on others.

Ah, but with their new-found and enormous purchasing power, they discovered that they could do more than compel the production of skateboards, trashy television, and awful music. They could make boorish childishness and ignorance into actual virtues. And did. Thus wretched grammar is now a sign of "authenticity," whatever that might mean, rather than of defective studies. Thus the solemnity with which rap "music" is taken. Briefly the sound of the black ghetto, it is now around the world the heraldic emblem of the angry unwashed. Thus the degradation of the schools: It is easier to declare oneself educated than to actually become so, and the half-literate now had the power to have themselves so declared.

With the debasement of society came a simultaneous, though not necessarily related, extension of childhood and adolescence. In the remote prehistorical past, which for most today means anything before 1900, the young assumed responsibility early. It wasn't a moral question, but a practical one. If the plowing didn't get done, the family didn't eat. By the age of eighteen, a boy was likely to carry a man's burdens.

Today, no. Now a combination of the enstupidation of the schools, the inflation of grades, and the threat of class-action suits by the parents of failing students means that an adolescent can graduate without assuming any burden whatsoever. Indeed escaping schooling is easier than finding it. Countless colleges will accept almost anyone and graduate almost anyone. Chores do not exist. Sex and drugs are everywhere available. Few things have obvious consequences.

The result is a cocoon of childhood that stretches on almost as long as one wants it to. I encounter adults in their mid-twenties who cannot be relied upon to show up at an appointed time, who do not read, who judge a professor by whether he makes the material "fun," who have no idea where they want to go in life. It is not grownup behavior.

I wonder whether a democracy can ever prosper without declining fast into tasteless decadence. Half of the population is of intelligence below the average, this being the nature of a symmetric distribution. Another goodly number aren't much better. Once they discover that together they can both sanctify and very nearly require bad behavior and low tastes, will they not do so? With control of the media goes control of the culture. Such is the power of the market.

Thus staged television shows in which fat couples shriek obscenities at each other over discovered infidelities, adipose couplings of no significance yet so absorbing to an audience both puerile and uncouth-but, I suppose, authentic.

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here. My home page is here

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27 March, 2006

ANOTHER VICIOUS CAMPUS TRIBUNAL

On Oct. 28, 2005, a rape allegedly occurred at William & Mary after a wild sorority party at Delta Delta Delta. Deepening controversy surrounds the alleged rape. On Oct. 30, a male student, who was publicly named as the accused by the university administration, was arraigned on rape charges. On Jan. 4, 2006, all charges were dropped. The accused is currently seeking to expunge his police record. He has filed a civil suit seeking $5.55 million in damages from his accuser. His accuser has filed a Grounds of Defense with the court.

In the intervening months, a judicial hearing at William & Mary led to the male student's expulsion. The expulsion is part of a deepening campus schism over W&M's judicial system and how criminal accusations should be handled by the administration. The stakes are high. If a black mark of "rapist" remains in a student's permanent files, his academic future and career options could be devastated.

The two incidents at Harvard and W&M dramatize the power PC still exerts wherever it has managed to embed itself into the policies and mechanisms along which academia functions. Summers was rendered ineffectual because, for decades, an intimidated academia handed gender feminists an almost blank check on policymaking. Summers' sin was to violated the feminists' speech code both in letter and spirit. His ousting drives home the point that no one is beyond their reach. It was in anticipation of an impending no-confidence vote from such "colleagues" that Summers resigned.

The situation at W&M is more typical of how PC functions on campus: quietly, bureaucratically and against the "little guy." The case is also significant because includes a blueprint of how to break the back of PC power. Namely, uproot the laws and policies through which it bites. A student newspaper at W&M, The Remnant, is demanding such an uprooting. Meanwhile, W&M defend its judicial system and recommends only minor reform. The "fixes" suggested by The Remnant are hardly minor. They include:

-- Accused students should be allowed the full use of an attorney. Currently, attorneys cannot participate in a hearing, for example, by questioning testimony or presenting the case.

--A higher standard of proof should be required, especially in criminal cases involving expulsion. Currently, a "clear and convincing" standard of evidence is used. This requires more than the "preponderance of evidence" [51 percent] used in civil courts but less than "beyond a reasonable doubt" [99 percent] employed by criminal ones.

-- Students who cannot testify because of pending criminal charges should be temporarily suspended and their hearings reasonably delayed. (The accused's attorney strongly advised him not to go on record with W&M before the criminal charges were resolved. Thus he was expelled without being heard.)

The Remnant is currently organizing an "initiative for change." On March 20, it will host a forum to which representatives from the Dean's office will be invited. The forum discussion will be heated. Remnant editor Will Coggin has a penchant for quoting the W&M's Student Handbook which guarantees students rights. It states that they "shall enjoy all rights, privileges, and immunities guaranteed to every citizen of the United States and the Commonwealth of Virginia."

In short, the handbook guarantees the civil liberties of students. In criminal matters, these include the right to representation by an attorney, the presumption of innocence and high standards of evidence. Coggin has concluded that the guarantee "is a lie." I hope W&M makes Coggin eat his words by rehearing the case against the accused student and by instituting the individual rights it guarantees. If they do, I think Coggin will smile as he swallows.

More here



AFFIRMATIVE ACTION DOOMS LOTS OF BLACKS TO FAILURE

Stuart Hurlbert sends a timely and powerful reminder that the misrepresentations, distortions, and alarmist predictions from critics of the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative are simply deja vu all over again.

Stuart is a biologist at San Diego State University with some experience in these matters.

My own initiation into these battles came eleven years ago when I was able to obtain some normally difficult to obtain information on admission and graduation rates at my own university. In an article in the student newspaper, I pointed out that as a result of racial preferences, the 6-year graduation rate for all African-American students had dropped to 10%. This was the unhappy consequence of 2/3 of the African-American freshman class being admitted in the mid 1980s without the minimum credentials normally required for entrance to the university. The article was sympathetic to the dilemma of the students, but not so sympathetic to the white administrators whose nearsighted and predictably damaging policies were responsible for the harm.

On appearance of the article, my department chair and another faculty member sent a letter to all faculty members in my department asking them to sign a letter censuring me for my "racial insensitivity". Par for the course in some segments of academia, as most of you will understand. But the effort badly boomeranged. Numerous colleagues told them they were way off base, and the letter was withdrawn. Eventually I received many positive responses from both within my department and˙ around campus for having addressed a serious, controversial matter in an honest and sensitive way. The PC forces have been, at least in my department, quiet ever since. Higher administrators have become aware that roughly half the faculty oppose racial preferences, and no longer talk about ways to circumvent Prop. 209 in open meetings.

When I asked Stuart's permission to quote the above, I told him I'd be happy to keep both his name and university anonymous. He replied:

John, Go for it! You need keep neither my name or university anonymous. I fly well above the radar here - in part so my special equipment can pinpoint those radar transmitting sites!

If every university had at least one professor willing to expose the corruption of racial preference with Stuart's verve, and had his ability to dodge the predictable politically correct flak, the future of racial preference would be even shorter than it is now.

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here. My home page is here

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26 March, 2006

Why did Yale slam the door on Afghan women?

This sounds like an attempt to shame the unshamable to me but you never know. Maybe there are some sincere people in the Yale administration

A statement from Yale University, defending its decision to admit former Taliban spokesman Ramatullah Hashemi, explained that he had "escaped the wreckage of Afghanistan." To anyone who is aware of the Taliban's barbaric treatment of the Afghan people, such words are offensive--as if Mr. Hashemi were not himself part of the wrecking crew. It is even more disturbing to learn that, while Mr. Hashemi sailed through Yale's admissions process, the school turned down the opportunity to enroll women who really did escape the wreckage of Afghanistan.

In 2002, Yale received a letter from Paula Nirschel, the founder of the Initiative to Educate Afghan Women. The purpose of the organization, begun in that year, was to match young women in post-Taliban Afghanistan to U.S. colleges, where they could pursue a degree. Ms. Nirschel asked Yale if it wanted to award a spot in its next entering class to an Afghan woman. Yale declined.

Yale was not alone. Of the more than 2,000 schools contacted by Mrs. Nirschel, only three signed up right away: Roger Williams University in Rhode Island, Notre Dame College in New Hampshire and the University of Montana, Missoula. Four years later, the program enrolls 20 students at 10 universities.

Mrs. Nirschel, it should be noted, had an "in" at Roger Williams. Her husband, Roy, is the president. Mr. Nirschel recalls that after 9/11 his wife mourned not only for the American victims but for the people of Afghanistan, whose brutal regime had helped to sponsor al Qaeda. Mr. Nirschel admits that his first reaction, upon hearing his wife's concern, was to say that they should just give to a charity. But Mrs. Nirschel asked whether he, as university president, could give a scholarship to an Afghan woman instead. He was doubtful at first about the practicality of the idea but eventually agreed. "My wife can be very persuasive," he told us.

Mrs. Nirschel, who has been a homemaker for most of the past three decades, set up the program to find suitable college-ready candidates and pay their travel expenses to the U.S. But the colleges themselves were asked to cover tuition, room and board. Mrs. Nirschel did not want the Initiative to Educate Afghan Women to be treated as a chance to "escape." The program requires that its students return to Afghanistan each summer to work for an organization involved in rebuilding the country. And they must go home at the end of their four years in the U.S.

Aren't the students tempted to remain in this land of plenty? Nadima Sahar, who will graduate from Roger Williams in May with a political science degree, says: "Staying here has never crossed my mind. . . . We are responsible for making sure our country succeeds, so that future generations don't face problems we did." Mrs. Nirschel expects a "trickle-down effect." The returning students will "influence their family, their community and the country at large." Clearly there is more going on here than the usual search for campus "diversity."

These women require no remedial classes, by the way. They come prepared, many having huddled in basements secretly imbibing what information they could from male relatives or having lived in Pakistani refugee camps to gain access to schools. Not one of them has a GPA below 3.5.

Arezo Kohistani, now attending Roger Williams, tells us that she had planned to major in journalism. But she changed her focus when several reporters were assassinated in Afghanistan during her first semester. Stories like this remind us that her country has a long road ahead. The graduates of the Initiative to Educate Afghan Women will surely help to speed it along the way.

Source



POWERFUL CAMPUS TRIBUNALS ARE KANGAROO COURTS

A Summit County, Ohio, jury found Charles Plinton not guilty of selling drugs to a confidential informant in 2004. A few weeks later, a University of Akron disciplinary board found him “responsible” for “selling drugs to a confidential informant.”

The difference between those two words, guilty and responsible, may not sound meaningful to the average person. But it's a distinction that begins to explain the secretive world of college justice in which campus committees may re-try the facts of serious crimes after criminal courts have already decided them.

Critics see the hearings as unaccountable Star Chambers marshaled to advance political and ideological agendas. “Campus tribunals are the ultimate ‘kangaroo court,’ an affront to the rational thinking that is supposed to underlie the academic enterprise,” said Boston-area attorney Harvey A. Silverglate. He co-authored “The Shadow University” with Alan Charles Kors and helped found the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.

Disciplinary hearings are not trials; they are more akin to union grievance procedures and other types of administrative law hearings that have much looser rules. Students usually aren't going to get a lawyer for one of these hearings. The university's representative may advise the panel on how to conduct the hearing; in criminal court, the prosecutor would never advise the judge on how the trial should proceed. Criminal trials are open to the public and subject to public scrutiny. Student privacy laws keep most campus hearings closed to the public and the records confidential, known only to the student or perhaps a student's parents, depending on age. To lower students' expectations of due process, universities are advised to use nonlegalistic language to describe their procedures.

It's not defendants and trials; it's respondents and hearings. It's not evidence, it's information. Students are not found guilty; they're found responsible or in violation. They aren't sentenced, they're sanctioned. Changing the word “evidence” to “information” is an attempt to avoid defamation lawsuits because hearing boards cannot accuse students of committing crimes, Silverglate said. “It's meant to keep people from expecting that the campus system is like the criminal justice system in the real world and from expecting a decent level of fairness,” Silverglate said.

Universities once kept an even tighter leash on students, standing in place of the parent. That control loosened with the social revolutions of the 1960s, but made a comeback in the 1980s and 1990s as universities attracted more diverse student bodies and sought to provide an educational refuge from racism, sexism and other social evils. What's changed, said Silverglate, is that campus hearing boards are now deciding serious criminal matters, especially hot-button issues such as date-rape, sexual harassment and hate speech. “If the student is convicted in the criminal courts, the schools throw out the student, relying on the court's judgment,” Silverglate said. “If the student is acquitted, most schools re-try the student, convict him, then punish or expel him. It is a completely loaded deck.”

EVIDENCE STANDARDS ARE LOWER

The National Center for Higher Education Risk Management consults with universities throughout the country on how to lower students' expectations of due process by removing words that evoke the criminal justice system. Brett A. Sokolow, an attorney and president of the Pennsylvania-based nonprofit, said he hasn't worked with the University of Akron. But he's not surprised that a student found not guilty in a criminal court would still be found “responsible” at the university level. “By definition, a college's lower evidence standard means that they will often find a student in violation of the conduct code for an offense that results in a not-guilty verdict in court,” Sokolow said.

It may be legal, but is it fair? Sokolow thinks so. “I think many people realize we're not convicting students of crimes, and that colleges need more latitude to ensure safety within a closed, trusting community,” Sokolow said. The higher courts have given universities a wide berth in enforcing their own policies, but they do require some due process. Evidence against a student in an administrative hearing should at least be “substantial,” he said. That standard is considerably lower than “beyond a reasonable doubt,” the highest level that criminal juries need before convicting someone. The “substantial” standard is even lower than “preponderance,” which simply means that guilt is more likely than not 50 percent of the evidence plus a little. Sokolow figures that the substantial standard is satisfied if a third of the evidence points toward guilt. That's a very rough estimate, Sokolow said, but it's still less than half. “Because no one goes to jail, the standards are more relaxed,” Sokolow said. “The more serious the consequence, the more process is due. The courts do not consider suspension or expulsion as extreme deprivations of liberty or property, comparatively speaking.” [It can only ruin your life, after all]

Evidence standards alone are no guarantee of due process because they can mean different things to different jurors, but standards do provide a guide. “More than half of colleges use preponderance,” Sokolow said. “Many use clear and convincing. A small number use substantial evidence, but it is the minimum standard required by law.”

PROFESSOR CALLS HEARING ‘ABERRATION’

Plinton's former department head, Professor Raymond Cox, said a higher standard of evidence probably wouldn't have helped Plinton. The panel that heard Plinton's case decided 3-2 that he was “responsible” for “dealing drugs to a confidential informant.” “That's kind of scary, but that's the reality,” said Cox, who has a background in administrative law. “Clearly you had three people who said ‘I believe cops.’ That's a 100-percent statement.” Cox said the university is “very, very sensitive” about drug use on campus. “They're going to bend over backwards to avoid making a mistake that permits people to stay,” he said. “It does give you pause.” He said he generally supports the university's hearing process, and believes the Plinton case was an aberration. Cox sat on hearing boards during the 2004-05 school year and always thought of Plinton when he walked into the room. “The process is limited by the strengths and weaknesses of the people sitting in judgment,” Cox said

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here. My home page is here

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25 March, 2006

CALIFORNIA HIGH SCHOOLS CONDEMNED BY UNIVERSITY

High schools statewide are not providing enough counselors or college preparatory courses to adequately prepare students for four-year universities, according to a University of California report issued Wednesday. "These aren't just speed bumps. These are huge barriers on the pathway to college," said Jeannie Oakes, director of UCLA's Institute for Democracy Education and Access and author of the College Educational Opportunity Report. California ranks 37th in the nation in a count of students who receive bachelor's degrees within six years of completing high school, Oakes said.

Researchers at UCLA and the UC All Campus Consortium on Research for Diversity used the study to call for a boost in education spending, although increases in K-12 state spending are largely restricted by funding formulas. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed spending $40 billion, or about one third of the state budget, on K-12 schools next year. "So many students begin high school saying they want to go to college," Oakes said. But the decision is often taken away from them because of lack of guidance or insufficient course offerings, she said. "There are not the opportunities there to pursue their own dreams," Oakes said in a conference call Wednesday with reporters.

The study shows that California has the worst counselor-to-student ratio in the country - one counselor for every 790 students, or almost three times the national average. Teacher-student ratios also are higher in California, the study says. Researchers also said more than a quarter of California high schools assign improperly trained teachers to college prep courses, particularly math classes.

A more rigorous curriculum is appropriate for all students, even those not college-bound, Oakes said. But for those attending a state university, "many students show up at the door with the paper qualifications but aren't prepared to do the work," she said. One in eight schools in California faces all three "roadblocks" - limited access to counselors, lack of college prep courses and ill-trained teachers, said John Rogers, associate director of the UCLA institute involved in the study.

Those problems are four times more likely to occur in high schools serving minorities, the poor and immigrants still earning English, Rogers said. The study did not identify those schools.

College officials have already taken notice with outreach programs to steer low-income and first-time college-bound students toward the UC and California State University schools. But they are fighting a proposed $7 million state budget cut to keep those programs intact. Community colleges also are trying to help struggling students catch up. The Sacramento-area Los Rios Community College District began a tutoring and intensive counseling program this year for "at-risk" college students in the 18-20 age group. "They have huge barriers to overcome and they're not prepared for college," said Brice Harris, the Los Rios chancellor.

Source



AMERICAN EDUCATION BETRAYS THOSE WHO NEED IT MOST

America's public schools turn out many graduates with little chance for future. The top education bureaucrat in Florida wants to pass students who can't meet the academic requirements. He says this is not social promotion. He's full of what one finds in a stable-and I don't mean horsehair.

The fear of flunking and being held back a year was a great motivator in my short academic career, especially in the early grades. Nothing struck more fear in us recruits in Army basic training than the threat of being recycled-forced to start basic all over again in a new company.

Why do education bureaucrats believe that you can strip teachers of every tool to motivate their students and expect the teachers to educate the little savages anyway? The answer, of course, is civic cowardice. Civic cowardice, especially on the part of education bureaucrats, is a pandemic in America today.

I spent several hours one afternoon with a middle-school teacher as she poured out her frustration with the system. In her school, the rule said that if a student flunked one nine-week period and made a D the next, the D and F had to be "averaged" to a D for the semester. Now here's the kicker. If the student flunked both of the next nine-week periods and got an F for the semester, that F and his earlier D had to be "averaged" to a D so he would pass for the year.

How long do you think it takes kids to figure out that they only have to make one D and then can ride free for the rest of the year? Not long, and the teacher said that as soon as the kids figured it out, then any hope of motivating them was gone.

The tragedy and sin of social promotion is that it is aimed at those students who most need motivation and an education. Thus, the poorest kids from the most dysfunctional families are cheated out of an education just so the bureaucrats won't have to put up with any complaints.

My first-grade teacher in a little Georgia school laid out the basic premises of education when she said, "I teach, but you have to learn." Education is a two-part process. No matter how skilled the teacher, all the learning has to be done by the students. And learning is hard work. It involves memorization and drills and practice. There is no easy way to learn an academic subject. To argue that students shouldn't have to work hard in the classroom is as stupid as telling a kid he can become a basketball star without practicing on the court.

The other damning aspect of social promotion is that it ignores the fact that education is cumulative and must be done in the proper sequence. A student who doesn't learn to read and to do basic arithmetic in the early grades will be frustrated for the rest of his time in school. How can you learn history if you can't read your textbook? You can't learn algebra if you don't know how to add, multiply, subtract and divide. You will never learn a second language without the ability to memorize. You will never learn English grammar without learning the parts of speech and diagramming sentences.

Education is a deadly serious business. I remember attending a parent-teacher association meeting at which a Pakistani gentleman complained bitterly that this expensive, well-furnished American school was far behind the shabby school in Pakistan his children had attended. His kids were already two grades ahead of American kids the same age. His plea for a tougher curriculum went unheeded, of course.

Unless Americans wish to become the servants one day of Indians, Chinese, Arabs, Pakistanis, Koreans, Japanese and Russians, we'd better fix this broken, bureaucrat-ridden public-education system or scrap it altogether. God knows, the ignorance of many college graduates is appalling. No nation can survive an ignorant, lazy population. We've been living off the seed corn of earlier generations, but the bin is about empty. The evidence of that is the across-the-board decline in the quality of all of our institutions.

Source



FEMINISM BACKFIRES

The excerpt below is from an article that made my day (I know that's bad of me!). It notes that feminist-inclined admissions officers at elite colleges now feel obliged to discriminate AGAINST women! Read on:

The fat acceptance envelope is simply more elusive for today's accomplished young women. I know this well. At my own college these days, we have three applicants for every one we can admit. Just three years ago, it was two to one. Though Kenyon was a men's college until 1969, more than 55 percent of our applicants are female, a proportion that is steadily increasing. My staff and I carefully read these young women's essays about their passion for poetry, their desire to discover vaccines and their conviction that they can make the world a better place....

Rest assured that admissions officers are not cavalier in making their decisions. Last week, the 10 officers at my college sat around a table, 12 hours every day, deliberating the applications of hundreds of talented young men and women.... The reality is that because young men are rarer, they're more valued applicants. Today, two-thirds of colleges and universities report that they get more female than male applicants, and more than 56 percent of undergraduates nationwide are women. Demographers predict that by 2009, only 42 percent of all baccalaureate degrees awarded in the United States will be given to men. We have told today's young women that the world is their oyster; the problem is, so many of them believed us that the standards for admission to today's most selective colleges are stiffer for women than men. How's that for an unintended consequence of the women's liberation movement?

The elephant that looms large in the middle of the room is the importance of gender balance. Should it trump the qualifications of talented young female applicants? At those colleges that have reached what the experts call a "tipping point," where 60 percent or more of their enrolled students are female, you'll hear a hint of desperation in the voices of admissions officers. Beyond the availability of dance partners for the winter formal, gender balance matters in ways both large and small on a residential college campus. Once you become decidedly female in enrollment, fewer males and, as it turns out, fewer females find your campus attractive.

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here. My home page is here

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24 March, 2006

Struggling U.K. pupils lose share of 'sprayed around' 700 million pounds

Some secondary schools get more money than they need at the expense of others with children who are struggling, the leader of a head teachers' organisation said yesterday. The Government "sprayed around" more than 700 million pounds a year to raise standards in areas of low achievement, instead of concentrating it on schools in greatest need, said John Dunford, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders.

He told the association's annual conference in Birmingham that the money should be redirected to help children who had fallen furthest behind in their studies. The 300 secondaries in greatest difficulty should be funded at the same level as private schools. "Resources must be targeted accurately and without waste - not the inchoate mixture of government initiatives that have sprayed funds around in recent years like Dick Cheney on a quail shoot, but targeted on students with the lowest prior attainment, wherever they are at school," he said. "This is a direct challenge to central government to look at the 702 million pounds that it currently spends on Excellence in Cities, Leadership Incentive Grant, Fresh Start, the Secondary Performance Project and the Key Stage 3 national strategy, and reallocate it more precisely to reflect low prior attainment in both urban and rural settings."

Mr Dunford said that there should be a "special focus" on the 300 schools that had "the greatest distance to take their pupils from their attainment on entry to a respectable clutch of qualifications at the age of 16". They should have the same funding per pupil as independent schools so that they could hire more and better teachers, and reduce class sizes from an average of 17 to 10 students. Initiatives such as Excellence in Cities, which aims to boost urban achievement, had spread money across whole areas such as Birmingham or Manchester instead of responding to the needs of individual schools. "Because the area covered by any one Excellence in Cities grant is drawn so widely there are inevitably some schools in that area that need additional funding a lot less than others," Mr Dunford said. There are some high-performing schools in Excellence in Cities areas that would be the first to admit that they are not as much in need of additional funding as other schools.

"The Leadership Incentive Grant is another example. I recall a head coming to me quite embarrassed that they were going to get this extra 115,000 pounds a year in their school because they happened to be in an area where there were other schools in difficulty. We ought to look at whether we are spending this money as efficiently as we could and whether we ought to target this money better on schools of maximum disadvantage."

Reform was particularly important because the Government's next Comprehensive Spending Review in 2008 was unlikely to be as generous to education as the previous two. Redistribution of funding would have to take place over time to prevent some schools falling into difficulties.

Heads at the conference said that government rules on grants often took little account of individual circumstances. For instance, schools with 20 per cent or more pupils eligible for free school meals, a measure of poverty, received an extra 120,000 pounds a year. But those just below this threshold got nothing, while schools with far more pupils on free meals received no extra money to reflect the increased challenges they faced.

Mr Dunford also demanded radical cuts in the amount of examining in schools. Spending on exams had risen to 600 million pounds annually, he said, adding: "Our bloated examination system is a waste of scarce national resources, teachers' time and students' opportunities." Many public exams could be replaced by assessments within schools carried out by specially trained teachers whose judgments would be checked by external monitors. League tables should also be reformed to show results for schools that worked together rather than for individual secondaries competing with each other

Source



Kids must learn spelling, grammar and punctuation

An editorial in "The Australian":

That Australia's educationalists are in thrall to some pretty daffy ideas is nothing new. This newspaper has for years defended proven teaching methods such as phonics while exposing the depredations of programs like "critical literacy" and other attempts to politicise and discard the bedrock of our culture in favour of "texts" that are "more relevant". Indeed, last year Queensland's Education Minister vowed to reform English education in his state after being shown examples of students' work by The Australian - including a child's feminist critique of the fairytale Rapunzel.

Horrifying as that is, in Western Australia it's about to get worse - to the point where calculation errors won't matter in maths class, and where spelling, grammar and punctuation will be tossed out the window in English and media classes. It's called "outcomes-based education" and, once implemented in Western Australia, Year 12 English students may pass their final exams without ever reading a book; analysing TV ads and film posters will do. Students will even be allowed to draw their answers, if they are able to figure out the mind-numbingly complex exam instructions.

Like "critical literacy" before it, with its emphasis on finding hidden racism and sexism in great works of literature, outcomes-based education is little more than a jargony post-modern scam foisted on an unsuspecting public by folk-Marxist educationalists. It is the pedagogical equivalent of the Australian Institute of Sport abandoning their world's-best practices for training elite athletes to tell runners that their times don't matter and swimmers that "wetness" is just a Western cultural construction. And Australian educators and politicians are taking young people down a path just as radical under the guise of OBE.

Disturbingly, Western Australia is not the only jurisdiction tearing down proven educational methods in favour of feel-good fads. Outcomes-based education is entrenched across the country: Tasmania recently launched its own radical curriculum, Essential Learnings, which was so controversial that teachers were barred by the local union from criticising it publicly and the state Education Minister was forced to promise a rethink. In South Australia, kids are taught that "Western science . . . is only one form among the sciences of the world", as if the laws of gravity are different in Japan. And Victoria is infamous for letting English students read a grand total of one book a year. More broadly, ideas such as "edutainment" (where an episode of Neighbours is just as valid a "text" as a novel by Dickens) are gaining increasing currency.

The war on excellence being waged in our classrooms is not just a matter of concern for parents and pointy-heads. When Australian students score well behind their foreign counterparts in maths and science exams, or employers find graduates are unable to write a proper sentence, it becomes a matter of vital concern to all Australians. OBE backers say that students will be better equipped for the real world under their regime; in fact, they will learn little more than how to use Google and calculators and to tear down a culture whose roots they have never been taught. This is hardly a recipe for literate and competent citizens who can go on to nourish and transmit all that is great about Australia to their descendants.

Certainly, parents and teachers have the greatest role to play in challenging these fads; in Western Australia, the recently formed PLATO (People Lobbying Against Teaching Outcomes; http://www.platowa.com) is doing an admirable job of raising the alarm. Especially when politicians have lost their senses (to say nothing of their nerve) someone has to stand athwart brewing disasters such as WA's new curriculum and yell, "Stop!". The feral postmodernism and hyper-relativism that is "outcomes-based education" has no place in Australia's classrooms.

Source



Australian Federal government to smarten up teaching



Federal Education Minister Julie Bishop will consider a major scholarship program to attract some of the best and brightest Year 12 students into maths and science teaching. Ms Bishop was commenting on the revelation that students with Year 12 scores as low as OP19 - the bottom 20 per cent of students - were gaining entry to teaching courses in Queensland.

A Department of Education, Science and Training spokesman said the Federal Government had funded 18,500 more university places in all disciplines nationally this year than in 2004, and another 39,000 places would be allocated by 2009. The growth of Queensland's population meant many of those would be allocated for teaching in this state.

Ms Bishop said that while standards had to be maintained, it was also important to ensure enough teachers were trained to meet demand. "We have to maintain that balance," she said. "I think we should be doing more in terms of encouraging teaching as a career of choice."

Teaching, like nursing, is a national priority area, so students incur the lowest HECS fees. But Ms Bishop said a more targeted approach, such as maths/science scholarships, also would be considered. She said teachers needed good nurturing, social and communication skills, and academic ability alone did not guarantee a good teacher.

While research is limited on how well low-score entrants perform in teaching courses, preliminary data gathered by the University of Southern Queensland suggests students with entry scores below OP15 are struggling. USQ associate dean of education Peter Cronk said: "The data is all over the place, but the preliminary stuff suggests that once you go below OP15 they start to find things more difficult." He said the university was well aware of the need to avoid first-year attrition in courses and had put support programs in place to bolster students' literacy, numeracy and assignment-writing skills. "Someone who has done science at school, for instance, may not be used to writing the kinds of assignments that are expected at university," he said.

While USQ has some of the lowest entry scores at its Wide Bay and Toowoomba campuses with OP19, its new Springfield campus has a teaching cut-off of 15, two places higher than that of the nearby University of Queensland Ipswich campus.

Under the OP system, no student "fails" outright, but scores in the range of 16 to 19 would suggest students scored in the low to middle ranges (low achievement and satisfactory achievement) in their Year 12 subjects.

Griffith University vice-chancellor Professor Ian O'Connor, whose institution's scores have remained in the middle ranges, believed Griffith was attracting better-calibre students because it had invested heavily in its education courses and they had a good name among schools.

Queensland University of Technology vice-chancellor Professor Peter Coaldrake, who has promised to maintain entry scores at the state's biggest university for training teachers at their present levels, said it worried him that no students from leading private schools with high percentages of OP1s and 2s had opted for teaching. "We need to recognise that teaching is a traditional and noble profession, and that it is vital to our economic and community interests in the Smart State era that its value is recognised," he said.

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here. My home page is here

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23 March, 2006

EDUCATION IS THE DIVIDING LINE

The plight of black men in the United States is far more dire than is portrayed by common employment and education statistics, a flurry of new scholarly studies warn, and it has worsened in recent years even as an economic boom and welfare overhaul brought gains to black women and many other groups. "The choice is education or incarceration," declared the Rev. Jim Holley, who runs a program for almost 200 high school dropouts in Detroit, where estimates suggest barely half of the students who start high school graduate within four years. "We really need to . address these problems or else they're only going to get worse."

The studies, by experts at Columbia, Princeton, Harvard and other institutions, show that the huge pool of poorly educated black men is becoming ever more disconnected from mainstream society, and to a far greater degree than comparable white or Hispanic men. Among the recent findings:

The share of young black men without jobs has climbed nearly unstopped. In 2000, 65 percent of black male high school dropouts in their 20s were jobless. By 2004 the share had grown to 72 percent, compared with 34 percent of white dropouts and 19 percent of Hispanic dropouts.

Incarceration rates have reached historic highs. In 1995, 16 percent of black men in their 20s who did not attend college were in jail or prison; by 2004, 21 percent were incarcerated. By their mid-30s, six in 10 black men who were dropouts have been in prison.

In the inner cities, more than half of black men do not finish high school. Similar trends are apparent across Michigan. In 2000 there were about 100,000 black men in their 20s in the state, and almost half of them didn't have jobs, according to U.S. Census Bureau figures. Almost a quarter of black males in their 20s had not finished high school, and for them, two of every three were not employed.

Source



Dumb teachers in Australia too

Some of Queensland's future teachers are being drawn from among the bottom third of school leavers seeking tertiary places. Universities are training teaching students who scored as low as OP19 in their final year of school on the 25-point OP scale. Teaching cut-offs for many courses have dropped two OP places in only 12 months.

Several universities have begun support programs for first-year students to bolster their literacy, numeracy, comprehension and assignment-writing skills. They are also beginning to investigate how students with lower entry scores in previous years have performed. But although the minimum scores are low, many students enter teaching courses with OPs as high as one to five.

Education Minister Rod Welford said most Queensland teachers were trained at Brisbane universities where scores were generally ahead of those at regional universities. "Obviously it would be preferable if those entering the teaching profession had the highest scores, but not everyone with top results necessarily becomes a good teacher," he said. Mr Welford said teaching standards in Queensland were being improved through new accountability requirements, which meant that teachers had to update their skills to be re-registered every five years by the College of Teachers.

Richard Smith, Central Queensland University's executive dean of arts, humanities and education, said he had "absolutely no concerns" about the entry score. "There is no correlation between the OP score students enter with and their performance at university," Professor Smith said. "Ours are outcomes-based degrees and we ensure our students are workplace ready."

Under Queensland's OP scoring system for Year 12 students, OP1 - obtained by just 2.37 per cent of students - is the highest grade and OP25 is the lowest. More than 70 per cent of students score OP16 or better. A survey by The Courier-Mail has found that an OP19 was the cut-off for the Bachelor of Education degree for early childhood, primary and middle schooling teachers at the University of Southern Queensland's Wide Bay campus. It was also the cut-off score for early childhood teaching at USQ Toowoomba.

Universities accepting candidates with OP17s include the University of Queensland for middle school teaching (a dual degree with Behavioural Studies), Central Queensland University for early childhood, primary and Japanese teaching, and the University of the Sunshine Coast for science and arts teaching. James Cook University accepts trainee primary, secondary and early childhood teachers with OP16s.

Universities with higher cut-offs include Griffith University (OPs 10 and 11 and OP7 for the combined Science/Education degree), the Australian Catholic University (OP11) and QUT (OPs 11 to 13), which has the largest number of trainee teachers in the state. Many teachers also enter the profession with a post-graduate degree.

QUT vice-chancellor Professor Peter Coaldrake pledged that QUT would not allow entry scores to drop any lower. But he said if a student passed a four-year teaching degree, this overtook their Year 12 result. Queensland Teachers' Union president Steve Ryan said he was worried the focus was on filling universities with trainee teachers, rather than turning out good teachers.

Source



Destroying Mathematics education

"Outcomes Based Education" is a system to avoid grading of students. You either attain the "outcome" or you do not. All kids are equal, is the basic (boringly Leftist) idea

Maths students will no longer be penalised for arriving at the correct answer using incorrect calculations under Western Australia's controversial outcomes-based education system. In a fundamental change to the way mathematics is assessed, the new OBE maths curriculum will reward students regardless of the process they use.

Co-founder of lobby group PLATO, Greg Williams, said the move would produce high-school graduates who would not need to have a fundamental understanding of mathematical concepts. Mr Williams said that under the present system, students were awarded marks for the calculations they made, as well as the final answer. But under the OBE system, a student who gave the correct answer but made the wrong calculations to arrive at it would be given exactly the same mark. This would not equip students for a career and life in the real world, Mr Williams said. "If you're an engineer and your calculations are sloppy, the bridge that you are building falls down," Mr Williams said.

PLATO's (People Lobbying Against Teaching Outcomes) concerns follow revelations that the Curriculum Council of Western Australia has turned away from the importance of spelling and grammar. The 2007 sample exams for English, media and aviation provide teachers with their first glimpse of what will be assessed under the new education system. All three samples state students should not be penalised for "poor spelling, punctuation, grammar or handwriting". Students are also permitted to draw answers or write them in dot form.

"If you're not going to learn how to write English with correct grammar, spelling and continuous prose, where the hell are you going to learn it?" Mr Williams said.

Mathematical Association of Western Australia president Noemi Reynolds said she did not believe the new system would result in a major change to student assessment. "But we have quite a mixture of opinions on OBE," she said. Ms Reynolds said many maths teachers had expressed concern after witnessing the confusion surrounding the implementation of a new English syllabus. "We understand and have sympathy for our fellow English teachers but maths teachers will not stand for a lack of support in the implementation (of the changes)," she said.

State Education Minister Ljiljanna Ravlich said she would not speculate on how maths calculations would be marked until she had seen a sample exam. "I'm going to wait until I see a copy of an example paper until I comment," Ms Ravlich said. She said claims by PLATO that students would not be prepared for life after school was scaremongering. "Students will need to be able to demonstrate good grammar, spelling and punctuation. If they don't, it will result in students achieving lower marks in the examination," she said. "This is a pretty tough (English) examination. I think it really is quite rigorous."

But federal Education Minister Julie Bishop said that while she was not attacking the concept of outcomes-based education, she did not approve of how the system was being implemented in WA. "The current debate centres around how it is working in practice and whether the (Curriculum Council) promotes sufficient guidelines to teachers," Ms Bishop said. "What I am hearing from teachers is that they need clarity on the knowledge and skills that students are to develop (under OBE)." She said spelling, grammar and punctuation had to be one of the highest priorities in the teaching and assessment of English.

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here. My home page is here

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22 March, 2006

BIG VICTORY FOR PHONICS IN BRITAIN

All children should be reading independently by the age of 6, according to the author of an official reading review.

With a fifth of England's 11-year-olds unable to read and write properly, the Government yesterday accepted that schools must return to the "traditional" phonics method to raise standards. If they are taught well, every child should be able to read confidently within 18 months, Jim Rose, a former Ofsted director of inspections, who presented the findings, told The Times.

The move in effect abandons the central element of the national literacy hour, known as the "searchlights system", after the nine-month independent review found that it did not work. Since 1998, schools have been able to pick from a range of methods to teach children how to read. But from September, they will focus on one method, which will give 5-year-olds the "building blocks" to read by learning the sounds of the alphabet and blending them together into words. "It's a bit like numbers in maths. You wouldn't dream of teaching maths without it," Mr Rose said. "It gives children the building blocks to read - all the other approaches work, but in a less efficient, more distracting way."

Mr Rose said that other methods that have dominated since the 1960s, such as the "whole word" approach, where children recognise words alongside pictures, opened up "many more variables". He said that, ideally, all schools should employ a dedicated phonics teacher to undertake the change and sustain it, as had already occurred in some parts of the country. He believed that if phonics were taught well for 20 minutes a day from the first day of primary school, most children should be able to read within 18 months. "I'd have thought that by the time the child is 6 or 6 and a half, the vast majority ought to be showing promising progress, or reading a book on their own at least," he said.

Mr Rose's review, Teaching of Early Reading - whose initial findings were accepted by Ruth Kelly, the Education Secretary, in December - came after a seven-year project in Clackmannanshire, Scotland, found that children taught synthetic phonics exclusively were 3« years ahead of their peers in reading and 18 months ahead in writing at the end of primary school.

Mr Rose said that the "case for synthetic phonics was overwhelming", not only in raising standards in reading and writing overall but also in narrowing the gender gap, because boys in particular thrived with the more focused hands-on approach.

Ms Kelly confirmed yesterday that the phonics approach would be taught in all primary schools from September. "I am clear that synthetic phonics should be the first strategy in teaching all children to read. I want to be clear in the National Curriculum and we will now work with QCA on how best to do this," she said.

Teaching unions reacted with little enthusiasm. "Teachers will be bemused by the Government's proposal to promote synthetic phonics. Phonics is already at the heart of early-years teaching. They simply wish for an end to the reading wars," Steve Sinnott, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, said

Source



Federal vouchers to fund private education for slow learners in Australia

The parents of children who struggle to make the grade in maths and English could soon be able to send them to private schools under a taxpayer-funded voucher scheme. Education Minister Julie Bishop has flagged her support for an expansion of voucher programs, to also include disabled children. And as part of the push to improve literacy and numeracy, universities would be encouraged to establish centres of excellence for teacher training.

Releasing preliminary findings of a national pilot program offering $700 tutorial vouchers to students who fail to meet Year 3 reading benchmarks, Ms Bishop said parents had resoundingly endorsed the scheme, with 88 per cent "satisfied or very satisfied". However, tuition assessments showed that just 60 per cent of students actually improved their reading skills. Almost 70 per cent of tutors believed their students had improved.

Accusing the states of failing to invest enough in improving students' performance in reading benchmarks, Ms Bishop also backed debate on a voucher scheme in other areas. "I am quite supportive of the notion of vouchers across the board," she told The Australian. "The notion of vouchers to give parents choice is a notion that appeals to me. There are a whole range of areas where tutorial vouchers could be utilised. There is one with children with special needs. I think vouchers have a place there."

Prime Minister John Howard has previously ruled out a voucher scheme for all students that would allow parents to spend a taxpayer-funded grant at public or private schools. However, the Government has embraced the idea of $700 vouchers for students struggling with literacy.

Critics of the current funding model for schools have also argued that a voucher scheme already exists in practice, because students at both public and private schools all secure a basic grant from taxpayers.

Ms Bishop said she was also preparing to unveil major reforms to improve teacher training following complaints some universities were forced to run remedial literacy lessons for undergraduates. "What I think we can do is promote centres for excellence within universities," she said. "If there were a centre for excellence for teacher training other universities could draw upon that."

More here

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here. My home page is here

***************************



21 March, 2006

What's Wrong With Education? It's the Government, Stupid!

The recent brouhaha over Colorado high school teacher Jay Bennish is just one more in a long litany of reasons that the government needs to get out of the education business altogether. Bennish teaches geography at Overland High School in Aurora, Colorado, just outside Denver and less than a mile from where this column originates. He has just returned to the classroom after temporary administrative leave. This came after a student went public with a recording of Bennish's anti-Bush rant on the morning after the State of the Union speech.

The predictable controversy ensued. Democrats hooted and hollered about Bennish's First Amendment rights. Republicans hooted and hollered about liberal indoctrination of public school students.

Henry David Thoreau once remarked that "There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root." The branches of evil are all the crises and scandals that emanate from government schools. The root is that the government runs the schools.

It is as if something is sacred about "the schools." We hear no end of "we ought to do this in `the schools'" or "it is a travesty that we do that in `the schools'." Again, we always attack the symptom rather than the problem. The problem isn't the radical talibanic Christian right or the radical secular humanist left or not enough money or the ACLU or any of that. The problem is the government. To paraphrase James Carville, it's the government, stupid!

In a free society, which America is not, there would be a separation of school and state. No one would be required to attend a school or to subsidize education against their will. If you had had it with the Bennishes of the world, you could pull your child out of their brainwashing centers and you could freely refuse to pay their salaries any longer.

In a free country, you could exercise your Ninth Amendment right to educate your children as you saw fit, without asking for permission. You could home school you kids if you wanted. Catholics could send their kids to the Our Lady of Mercy School; Baptists could send their kids to the Obadiah Baptist School; Mormons could send their kids to the Joseph Smith School; Muslims could send their kids to the Allah Akbar School; believers in Mungabunga could send their kids to Mungabunga school. If you are not spiritual, you could send your kids to the Whitney Houston School - "Where the children are the future" -- or to the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young School -- "Where we teach your children well."

Moreover, political correctness, prayer, declining academic standards, evolution, creation, condoms, sex education, gay curricula, affirmative action, busing, standardized testing, bullying, discipline, dress codes, Christmas celebrations and all the other debates surrounding education today would cease to be political issues.

It ought to surprise no one that government schools are such hotbeds of socialism. Notre Dame, Georgetown and Boston College are run by the Catholic Church and, therefore, advance the cause of Catholicism. Brigham Young University is run by the Mormon Church and, therefore, advances the cause of Mormonism. Therefore, it ought to come as no surprise that state education advances the cause of statism.

"Reform" is not the answer. It matters not how many of the "right people" we put on the school boards and in the classrooms. This majority will only last until "the other side" gets a majority in the legislature or the school board. If the folks on "the other side" are so horrible, why do we open ourselves - and our children - to the possibility that they wield so much power?

We tweak and fiddle endlessly with government schools in the totally false hope that we will arrive at some optimal arrangement. One-size-fits-all education is like one-size-fits-all clothing. It is as if the law mandated that I wear a Speedo and a Dallas Cowboys tee-shirt when my preference runs toward baggier, more modest swim trunks and the garb of my beloved Super Bowl XL champion Pittsburgh Steelers.

It amazes me how so many Christians have swum with the cultural current on this issue. There is no basis for state education in either the Bible or the Constitution. However, state education is one of the ten policy planks of the Communist Manifesto.

Eliminating the federal Department of Education was once prominent on the to-do list of Christians and conservatives. Now, millions blindly follow a president who brags about increasing federal education spending by 49 percent in three years.

I have heard it said that education is so-o-o-o-o important that the government must, for the sake of the prosperity of the nation, have a heavy hand in it. Well, eating is important, too! Let us, therefore, have a state agricultural monopoly just like they did in the Soviet Union. During the 1980s, the average Soviet consumer spent two hours a day in line to buy groceries, while America was the world's number one food exporter and Americans still had so much access to food that overeating was a major problem.

Beatle drummer Ringo Starr once commented that "Everything the government touches turns to crap." Education is but one on an endless list of examples.

Source



Subsidized Education

It's an annual ritual. With a sense of dread tinged with resignation, college students, or their parents, wait to discover how much this year's tuition will rise. Unlike their experience with new computers, they entertain no expectation that rates for their education will decrease. The upward spiral in prices appears inexorable. Yet is that the way it must be?

For a student in college between 1997 and 2001, average total costs will be nearly $46,000 at government institutions, reports Investor's Business Daily (December 8, 1998). For those in private schools, the news is even bleaker. Students face expenses approaching $97,000. Twenty years from now, graduates may well be staggered by costs of $157,000 and $327,000, respectively.

In the past four decades, the total yearly spending on higher education increased from $7 billion to $170 billion a year. Financial aid at both the state and federal levels reached $60 billion in 1998, with guaranteed student loans comprising nearly 60 percent of that aid, a six percent increase from 1997. Many people would contend that such a bump in financial aid is justified given the price hikes in tuition and other costs. Not only would they adamantly resist any attempt to lower that aid, they actively lobby for more.

Unfortunately, the first or most obvious answer to a problem is not necessarily the correct one. The reality is that government subsidies not only lead to ever greater educational costs, but also threaten the very existence of private institutions of higher learning. Two things need to be considered in this matter: basic economic principles and individual freedom.

The price we pay for any good or service is essentially determined by relative supply and demand. Other things being equal, the greater the supply of a product with a given demand, the lower the price the supplier will ask and obtain. Conversely, when demand rises relative to supply, prices will increase.

This is as it should be. Through this process, consumers indicate the importance they attach to a certain product or service by their willingness to purchase it at a given price. This insures that economic goods flow to the people who will pay the most for them. Those who are outbid will turn elsewhere to satisfy their desires.

Under normal circumstances, when a product's price is high and supply relatively low, more producers move into that line of work, hoping to cash in on greater returns than they might obtain producing other goods or services. This increased supply then tends to bring down prices. Left to operate on its own, supply and demand will bring goods and prices into equilibrium until all the supply is purchased by those willing to pay the price.

What happens, though, if the price of a product is artificially set below its clearing price? If music CDs usually sell for, say, $15, there will be a given number of people willing to purchase them at that price. However, if a third party decides to subsidize music lovers to the tune of $5 per CD, more people will decide they can afford to purchase CDs. Demand will increase. Delighted producers will make more of them. Sales will increase.

Before long, producers will realize that all those people willing to buy CDs at the unsubsidized price of $15 are paying less than they are willing to pay. So the producers will start increasing their prices, say to $17 at first, then $19, then $20. After all, with the subsidy, the consumer has to pay only $15. But some consumers who have grown accustomed to buying cheaper CDs will have to cut back on their purchases or stop entirely. They are unhappy about seeing their living standard fall. So they demand a larger subsidy, joined by the producers, who face declining sales. If the buyers succeed in getting the "music they deserve" at the price they want, the whole cycle begins again.

So it is with government programs that mask the true costs of college for students. State and federal grants, guaranteed student loans, and direct subsidies to public colleges and universities lower the apparent price of obtaining a college education. This leads to a higher demand. College administrators then feel justified in increasing tuition and fees, realizing that many if not most students are subsidized in one form or another. The cycle is born: raise tuition; give out more aid; raise tuition again.

A side effect of this policy is that it attracts more poorly qualified and less motivated students who value higher education less than others who are willing to pay the full price. Colleges have to devote more resources to remedial programs, and students in these programs have a greater dropout rate.

Another problem is that since public administrators do not have to show a profit to stay in business, they are less concerned with the satisfaction of their customers. (Remember the last time you had to wait in an interminable line at the post office or department of motor vehicles?) Administrators also have incentives to increase their budgets needlessly. After all, increased "costs" translate (through a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy) into increased subsidies.

According to the Heritage Foundation, in the 30 years since its inception in 1965, the federally guaranteed student loan program subsidized 74 million students to the tune of $180 billion. By artificially lowering interest rates and insuring banks against defaults, this program has actually raised the total cost of a college education in the long term for all students-whether they receive guaranteed loans or not.

While the short-term direct costs of subsidized loans are less than for loans obtained in a free market, the long-term result is to reinforce a cost spiral that outpaces the general price rise (as outlined above). With less attention paid to restraining spending-by administrators and students-waste and unnecessary expenses tend to increase more than they would in a market-based environment.

When combined with direct subsidies to government-owned colleges and universities, the loan program makes such institutions more attractive to students than they might otherwise be. Private colleges find it difficult to compete against public institutions whose price is lowered by taxpayers' money.

At the beginning of this century, 80 percent of students enrolled in private schools. Now that same percentage of students enters government-owned colleges. In the past 30 years, over 300 private institutions closed. It is as if the government decided to subsidize one supplier of CDs and not another. Who would want to buy more expensive (unsubsidized) CDs? The second supplier would soon be out of business.

When government interferes in the supply of any good or service-whether it be CDs, food, or education-it distorts the behavior of consumers and producers alike. When the product is education, this process becomes outright dangerous. A vital society depends on a diversity of viewpoints and ideas. With government largesse comes government control. But government has no business regulating ideas. That is the essence of the First Amendment to our Constitution. Political leaders should not be picking winners or losers in the realm of education. Diversity in approach, attitude, and emphasis should be left to the producers and consumers of education.

Besides that encroachment on liberty, no one has a right to anyone else's money. The taxes diverted toward education are taken not only from those who do attend college but also from those who do not. No one should be forced to pay for something he does not use. Even less should anyone have his wealth, and the portion of his life which that wealth represents, taken from him to pay for the teaching of ideas he does not support.

Liberty, intellectual independence (personal and institutional), economic efficiency, and educational diversity and quality all argue that government subsidies and guaranteed student loans should end. Only in this way will the unceasing upward surge in tuition be moderated. Even more important, we can begin to restore respect for the freedom and dignity of each individual

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here. My home page is here

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20 March, 2006

PEACE PREACHING IN LIEU OF LEARNING

Post lifted from Betsy Newmark. See the original for links

Colman McCarthy advocates against testing students.

From the academic sidelines, where calls to Leave No Child Untested are routinely sounded by quick-fix school reformers, Jay Mathews joins in with his Feb. 20 op-ed column, "Let's Teach to the Test." In well-crafted prose, he reports that "in 23 years of visiting classrooms I have yet to see any teacher preparing kids for exams in ways that were not careful, sensible and likely to produce more learning."

On Mathews's visit to my classroom four years ago -- at School Without Walls, where I have been volunteering since 1982 -- he must not have noticed that not only was I not preparing my 28 students for tests but that I regard tests as educational insults. At School Without Walls and two other high schools where I am a guest teacher -- Wilson High School in the District and Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School in lower Montgomery County -- I have never given a test. I respect my students too much to demean them with exercises in fake knowledge.

Tests represent fear-based learning, the opposite of learning based on desire. Frightened and fretting with pre-test jitters, students stuff their minds with information they disgorge on exam sheets and sweat out the results. I know of no meaningful evidence that acing tests has anything to do with students' character development or whether their natural instincts for idealism or altruism are nurtured.

Yes, because what we send our kids to school to learn is idealism and altruism. Subject matter? That's hooey. As long as a kid thinks good thoughts and wants to help people, give him a diploma. We wouldn't want to have the dear little ones actually work to learn something and prove they know a set amount of material. That is tyranny that, according to McCarthy, leads to dishonesty and stress.

And what does Mr. McCarthy teach? He teaches peace. Too bad he can't teach peace to the terrorists who are trying to kill innocents. Instead, he works his magic on Maryland high school students in classes in which he presents his political viewpoint day after day without any counterweight. His political diatribes are amusing and interesting for the kids. Then the students don't get tests. Any wonder why his classes are popular?



Intelligent design and educational stupidity

Worried about the rise of creationism in UK schools? This teacher blames the timidity of the science establishment.

After the verdict went against the teaching of intelligent design in schools in Dover, Pennsylvania, you could be forgiven for thinking that the argument for teaching creationism was on the decline. However, in the UK the educational establishment seems hell-bent on introducing those very same ideas into all state schools.

As reported in The Times (London) on Friday, the OCR examination board has included a comparative study of creationist views on evolution alongside those of Darwin. But should we be surprised to see ideas promoted by the religious right in the USA dished up to schoolkids in Britain?

Even a cursory look at the new science GCSE is enough to give anyone pause for thought. As I have argued in the Times Educational Supplement, the new curriculum is riddled with ideas that have little to do with a formal scientific education and more to do with a sociological critique of science (3). It seems that the science education lobby is determined to undermine the idea that scientific knowledge has any objective basis in reality.

The agenda for reform of the science curriculum in UK schools is dominated by the view that formal science education is not important for the majority of children. Instead, the argument goes, children need to be taught to question the basis of scientific knowledge rather than just accept it as fact. This might sound like a good way to foster an intellectually independent mind. However, it is more likely to amplify young people's cynicism towards science in the school laboratory.

The same sociological critique of science that is driving the reform of science education here was used to defend the teaching of intelligent design in the Dover court case. Steve Fuller, professor of sociology at Warwick University, argued on behalf of the intelligent design lobby. Fuller believes Darwinism has had it all its own way for too long.

As Fuller sees it, Darwinism is being taught as dogma and intelligent design acts as a 'critical foil' to those ideas. To him, teaching intelligent design in US schools is the lesser of two evils, if it allows pupils to question the domination of the established scientific community when it comes to understanding evolution. For Fuller and other cultural critics of science, the loss of scientific objectivity is a small price to pay for a chance to undermine the dominance of the scientific elite.

This gives the lie to the idea that the attack on Darwinism is the product of a right-wing conspiracy to infiltrate mainstream education with Christian morality. Despite the work done to uncover the 'wedge' strategy of the intelligent design lobby in the USA, teachers would do well to look at the scientific and educational elites before looking for fundamentalist Christians under the bed.

The fact that the Discovery Institute and others in the USA are actively promoting an attack on science and its materialist philosophy should not scare us. They claim to be targeting the weak points in science's own arguments. This would only be of concern if science could not substantiate its argument. If the argument for evolution did not stand up it would deserve criticism - in fact, the strength of the claims made against Darwinian evolution is weak and unsubstantiated.

Far more serious is the turn away from science both here and in the USA. The inability of governments to counter panics about the use of science and technology - whether it is the scare over the MMR vaccination or the need for stem-cell research - suggests that the argument for science has been lost within the establishment itself. Despite an obvious need to maintain science as a cornerstone of modern technological advance, governments have fallen back into discussing science through the prism of risk and the precautionary principle.

This allows the cultural critics of science to repose the scientific establishment as an elite who are deaf to the concerns of the public. The collapse of the notion of scientific expertise, once highly regarded in the West, is now contrasted to the cultural claims of different groups within society, whose claims on knowledge are seen as more important than upholding scientific truth as a vehicle for progress. Thus we find ourselves not only witnessing the US establishment ditching its faith in science in favour of its Christian constituency, but also in Britain there is a growing recognition of the need to respect Muslim beliefs.

But what escapes most commentators is that both Muslim and Christian views on Darwinism are a recent product of the attack on scientific certainty in the West. The anti-Darwinian views of Muslims are not a product of the Koran. Instead, they are a product of the same left-wing critique of scientific elitism which has predominated in Western universities for the past 20 or so years.

The intelligent design movement arose from the collapse of attempts to push 'young earth' creationism into US schools in the 1990s. The proponents of intelligent design consciously adopted the tactics of the cultural critics of science by presenting their own argument for teaching scientific uncertainty. Despite their hostility towards each other, the similarity between the Muslim and Christian attacks on Darwinism belies their common roots. The attack on science is a product of Western anti-elitist politics.

It is the argument between the proponents of science and its cultural relativist critics in the UK and the USA that should be our real target. Unless scientists and teachers can re-establish a sense of science as a progressive social project, we will not be able to halt the slide. Standing up for science now means being prepared to win the arguments for progress with those who want to accept muddle-headed semi-religious ideas in its place rather than dismissing them.

On this point, I agree with Steve Fuller rather than Richard Dawkins. Lambasting religion as being the source of all evil will win no-one to the cause of science. Instead, we need to understand why people think science has lost its relevance to them, and challenge the idea that science is an elitist tool of domination.

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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19 March, 2006

English-only immersion debated for Arizona schools

In November 2000, Arizona voters approved the most restrictive English-only education law in the country and prohibited textbooks, materials, bulletin boards, or teaching in any language but English. Two years later, voters reinforced their message by electing a state schools chief who promised tougher enforcement of the new law. The law nearly eliminated bilingual education programs that had been widely used in Arizona schools, classes with specially trained teachers that combined instruction in Spanish and English. To help schools comply with the new law, the state developed a model English-only immersion program.

Under the model, English-learners would be placed in English immersion classes of five to 15 students with a specially trained teacher and a teaching assistant. State planners said most students would learn enough English in one year to keep up with their peers in regular classes by their second year.

To be prepared for English-learners moving into regular classes, the state requires all teachers to complete a 15-hour workshop in English-only teaching methods by August. And under the model, schools would track students who tested out of the English-learner programs and provide tutoring and other help for those who fell behind. After six years, few schools have been able to establish that model. Schools say they can't afford the cost. The state can't afford to offer technical guidance or much oversight. And many teachers remain lukewarm on the entire idea. So instead of a uniform approach, the state's English-only immersion programs are different from classroom to classroom and district to district.

In January 2000, before the vote on English-only schools, a federal court had already decided Arizona was not spending enough on English-learner programs. That court battle has continued for six years, through the vote, through a couple of studies and through a contentious Legislature. So far, under orders from a frustrated federal judge, the state is approaching $1.5 million in daily fines while the governor and lawmakers continue to fight over what the state needs to spend to make English-learner programs work. The daily fines began Jan. 25 at $500,000, increased Friday to $1 million and will hit $1.5 million in March while politicians try to fix the problem. If the Legislature adjourns without a solution, the fines will reach $2 million a day.

There is one thing, however, the different parties appear to agree on: Arizona needs to create an English-only education system that works. Each side has its own twist on a plan, but the basic outline is the same. The state needs to create a variety of English immersion programs and send technical teams to schools to launch them. Then, it needs to track students' progress and make changes to any program not helping English-learners keep up with their peers. Beyond the basic plan, here is the status of English-learner issues today through the eyes of key players.

State: Politics and money

The battle among the court, Arizona legislators and Gov. Janet Napolitano is about how much extra money schools need to teach English-learners and how it should be distributed. Beneath the surface it is also about clashing political ideologies, illegal immigration and a November election.

For example, Republican lawmakers, who run both the state Senate and House, want the funding plan to include tax breaks for businesses that help pay for English-learners to transfer from public to private schools. Napolitano has twice vetoed that idea. The House did eventually approve a funding bill for English-language learning, backed by Republican leaders, that did not include corporate tax credits for private schools. Republican lawmakers also want schools to use federal money earmarked for children living in poverty before they ask the state for more to teach English-learners. The governor has rejected that idea, too, saying the state is responsible for funding the programs.

Lawmakers and Napolitano are aware of growing concerns among state voters that illegal immigration is out of control and responsible for filling classrooms with kids who can't speak English. In December, Arizona schools chief Tom Horne, citing Pew Research Center statistics, asked the federal government to reimburse the state $750 million a year for the cost of educating 125,000 children who are in the state illegally. But a Pew analyst said half of those children were born here and are U.S. citizens. To Horne, that was splitting hairs. "It's the federal government's fault the undocumented parents crossed over, and had they not done so, we would not be presented with these students," he said.

State Senate President Ken Bennett, a Prescott Republican, said he has an obligation to voters to turn the current "mish-mash" of programs into a structured system that will teach English in a year or two. That was the promise that sold the ballot initiative six years ago.

Becky Hill is education adviser to Napolitano. She said the governor is most interested in tracking progress of students in any new program and making changes if the program isn't working. "The governor wants schools to use what programs are within the letter of the law and that work," Hill said. "Then replicate them."

Rep. Linda Lopez, a Tucson Democrat, said the state should turn to the schools for direction. Schools have monolingual kids arriving throughout the year and at all grade levels. Some children speak survival English; others can't read in their own languages. Each school may need a variety of programs to help all the kids. "People want to paint English-language-learner kids with the same brush," Lopez said. "You can't do that."

Republican lawmakers wanted the Arizona Department of Education, run by Horne, to develop the wider variety of model programs. They did not want the 11-member State Board of Education, with its growing number of Napolitano appointees, to take the lead. Now, they've agreed to a task force but continue to wrangle about who appoints members of the task force.

Much more here



The wilful destruction of Australian education continues

English school students in Western Australia could pass their final-year exam without reading a book or being able to spell, punctuate or use correct grammar. The new Year 12 English exam instead asks students to compare posters for the films Spider-Man 2 and Gandhi, and to analyse a piece of their own writing rather than accepted greats such as Shakespeare or George Orwell.

The sample exam for the new general English course just released for the West Australian Certificate of Education says students can draw answers and are not required to use grammatically correct sentences. "Student responses can also be given in dot-point format, diagrams or other suitable alternatives to continuous prose," the marking key says. "Student responses should not be penalised for poor spelling, punctuation, grammar or handwriting, unless these are elements ... specifically being assessed."

Western Australia began implementing a new curriculum for Years 11 and 12 this year with four revised courses, including English, being offered to Year 11 for the first time. The first Year 12 exams in the new English course will be sat next year and the state's Curriculum Council said the sample paper, designed by a panel of teachers, industry and university members, was representative of future exams.

But an English head teacher at a Perth Catholic school, who did not wish to be identified, said students could get away with studying snatches of text such as posters and CD covers, and were not required to study full-length serious texts. "If you are a lazy teacher, or even a teacher who just wanted to get your students the best marks, you don't have to read a book," the teacher said. "There's too much focus on popular culture."

The exam has also been criticised for making the assumption that all forms of writing are equal, and so teenagers are asked to analyse their own writing. In the writing section, where spelling and grammar are assessed, students are asked to write about 400 words to convince a particular audience of a point of view and are then asked to analyse their own piece of writing, including its vocabulary, content and structure.

Adjunct professor in the school of education at the University of NSW Trevor Cairney said literature should not be sacrificed in an English course to broaden the types of text that students study. Professor Cairney praised the exam for the diverse writing tasks and said items such as movie posters had a place in an English course. But they should not be included at the expense of literary texts. "A child having to comment on a picture is not as important as commenting on a piece of literature that's been significant for centuries, or at least decades in the case of contemporary books," he said. "People are suggesting all textual forms are equal and it's as relevant to look at a piece of advertising as a well-known piece of literature."

Lecturer in English curriculum at the University of Western Australia's education faculty Elaine Sharplin defended the changes and said the professionalism of teachers meant they would teach novels as part of the course. But Ms Sharplin said the new course was intended to broaden the appeal of the written word to more students by studying a greater variety of texts. "There's been a change in perception that English literature is esoteric and only suited to the most talented students," she said. "We want to encourage students to engage with texts and therefore this caters for a broader range of needs by dealing with a broader range of texts."

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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18 March, 2006

WHY THE ANTI-PHONICS NONSENSE?

An interesting email from a reader below. It may be worth noting that the actual origin of the whole language instructional theory goes back to an observation first made in Wilhelm Wundt's psychological laboratory in Germany around a century ago -- the observation that adults recognize whole words in their reading. The marvellous resultant theory that children should be taught that way would soon have been knocked on the head by its poor results if schools had been run as for-profit companies who were paid by results. Being protected by governmment, however, schools had no incentive to abandon what did not work. They just carried on in their love of their theory -- which seemed "obvious" to them. It is a pity that the obvious (such as the flatness of the earth) is sometimes wrong. So the Whole Language people are essentially flat-earthers.

Why did Whole Language methods persist? Why did the phonics versus Whole Language dispute divide along political lines? I have four tentative partial explanations.

1) Drill, past the point at which the student "gets it", is boring. Worksheets can be crutches for lazy teachers. Drill beyond the point of boredom may provoke an allergic reaction in students. I see this as a reasonable consideration, but it should not have been decisive. I use worksheets and drill in math instruction.

2) To academic theorists, it is more important to be original than correct. Tried-and-true is uninteresting to Professors of Education.

3) Ineffective methods of instruction enhance employment in the education industry, which has no incentive to be efficient.

4) The publisher of a the popular Hooked On Phonics program, Regnery/Gateway, was also a publisher of numerous anti-Clinton titles, which other publishers refused. The US government sued Regnery/Gateway over Hooked on Phonics and so reduced their revenues from this product. I suspect that this was retaliation for their Clinton criticism. Professors of Education provided ammunition to their ally.

One day someone will write a history of the Whole Language fraud. Too bad no one will read it. Over the entire population, this deliberate lobotomization probably reduced overall longevity as much as a minor disease like pancreatic cancer. It probably reduces productivity over an afflicted worker's lifetime as much as all the illnesses for which s/he takes sick leave, put together.



Student Debts, Stunted Lives

I have edited out the fanciful polemics of this article and left below just the case-studies but you can find the original here if you prefer speculation to facts. There is no doubt however that the student loan fiasco is a black mark on the record of the GOP. See here for the actual politics of the matter

The Democratic Party did not find her. The Hollywood liberals did not find her. The reactionaries are not looking for her. But the Chicago Tribune did find Margo Albert and did understand how significant her plight is. The paper wrote, "Margo Alpert is on the 30-year plan. Every month between $500 and $600 is automatically deducted from her salary to pay off college loans. By the time the 29-year-old Chicago public-interest lawyer is in her mid-50s and thinking seriously about retirement, she will finally be free of college debt."

The newspaper also found Carrie Gevirtz, a 28-year-old social worker with a degree from the University of Chicago, a $55,000 school debt and an annual salary of $33,000. She is quoted as saying, "I can't afford my lifestyle. I'm not in a position to buy a place. I can't buy a condo and don't know when I would, unless my income changed dramatically.... I was not prepared for this.... It really freaked me out." To make ends meet after deducting her $250 monthly payment on her student loan, Gevirtz has a second job at a health club and does baby-sitting.

Starting July 1 the interest on student loans taken out by students will rise to just less than 7 percent. Loans taken out by parents for students will shoot up to 8.5 percent.....

Whenever the subject of the high and ever mounting cost of tuitions and the student loans needed to pay for them comes up, the focus falls on individual financial hardship. We're invited to pity or empathize with Margo Alpert, and she certainly deserves it, but our attention is not drawn to the consequences of these arrangements.

The most important consequence of the financial hole the Margo Alperts are in, thanks to their education, is that many of them are going to be childless. Many others will have one child at most. How can a young couple, each with $40,000 or $50,000 of debt, think of having three or four kids? They will have to wait until they are in their late 30s to have a family and by then, when they think of college costs, they will feel compelled to limit themselves to one child.

How many young people turn away from low-paying but vital professions because they can't earn enough to pay back their loans? How many potential social workers, pro bono lawyers, journalists, environmentalists, teachers, artists, secondary medical professionals and community workers are we losing?



Strange homework in Australia: "Doing the dishes, aromatherapy and shopping with mum are all considered homework under a new policy adopted by some Victorian schools. Known as the Homework Grid, the policy has been tried in at least a dozen primary schools across the state. The grid defines homework as not just studying, but incorporates meditation, sport and housework. St Joseph's School in Chelsea is one school that has assigned it to grade 5 and 6 students. Principal Christine Ash said the school decided to use the grid after surveying parents on their expectations of homework. The school's grid recommended 10 minutes a night of reading and 20 minutes a night of other activities such as sport, housework and shopping. A weekly grid is given out on a Monday and parents are required to sign off on it. Ms Ash said there had been a positive response from parents, students and teachers".

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

***************************



17 March, 2006

LEFTIST RACISM RETREATING

Facing threats of litigation and pressure from Washington, colleges and universities nationwide are opening to white students hundreds of thousands of dollars in fellowships, scholarships and other programs previously created for minorities. Southern Illinois University reached a consent decree last month with the Justice Department to allow non-minorities and men access to graduate fellowships originally created for minorities and women. In January, the State University of New York made white students eligible for $6.8 million of aid in two scholarship programs also previously available just for minorities. Pepperdine University is negotiating with the Education Department over its use of race as a criterion in its programs.

"They're all trying to minimize their legal exposure," Susan Sturm, a law professor at Columbia University, said about colleges and universities. "The question is how are they doing that, and are they doing that in a way that's going to shut down any effort or any successful effort to diversify the student body?"

The institutions are reacting to two 2003 Supreme Court cases on using race in admissions at the University of Michigan. Although the cases did not ban using race in admissions to higher education, they did leave the state of the law unclear, and with the changing composition of the court, some university and college officials fear legal challenges. The affected areas include programs for high schools and graduate fellowships.

It is far too early to determine the effects of the changes on the presence of minorities in higher education and how far the pool of money for scholarships and similar programs will stretch. Firm data on how many institutions have modified their policies is elusive because colleges and institutions are not eager to trumpet the changes. At least a handful are seeking to put more money into the programs as they expand the possible pool of applicants.

Some white students are qualifying for the aid. Last year, in response to a legal threat from the Education Department, Washington University in St. Louis modified the standards for an undergraduate scholarship that had been open just to minorities and was named for the first African-American dean at the university. This year, the first since the change, 12 of the 42 first-year recipients are white.

Officials at conservative groups that are pushing for the changes see the shift as a sign of success in eliminating race as a factor in decision making in higher education. "Our concern is that the law be followed and that nobody be denied participation in a program on account of skin color or what country their ancestors came from," said Roger Clegg, president and general counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity, which has been pressing institutions on the issue. "We're not looking at achieving a particular racial outcome," Mr. Clegg added. "And it's unfortunate that some organizations seem to view the success or failure of the program based simply on what percentage of students of this color or that color can participate."

Advocates of focused scholarships programs like Theodore M. Shaw, president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc., challenge the notion that programs for minority students hurt whites. "How is it that they conclude that the great evil in this country is discrimination against white people?" Mr. Shaw asked. "Can I put that question any more pointedly? I struggle to find the words to do it because it's so stunning." Mr. Shaw said protecting scholarships and other programs for minorities was "at the top of our agenda."

More here



AUSTRALIA'S ANTI-PHONICS CHILD ABUSERS

Diane Philipson is a former primary school teacher who spends her days at home in Newcastle coaching children who are struggling to read. This week she had phone calls from two desperate mothers who say their sons, one aged 12 and one aged eight, feel life isn't worth living. "The eight-year-old told his mother he'd rather be dead than have to struggle so much with reading," Philipson said yesterday. Philipson is one of a number of backyard operators across Australia to whom anxious parents have turned to teach their children to read when school has failed. They invariably use a method that involves direct, explicit, systematic phonics. This is the inexplicably politicised way of teaching children that letters in our alphabet are associated with sounds.

There is a pharmacist in a country town in NSW, for instance, dismayed by the number of parents coming to her to fill scripts for attention deficit disorder medication, when all that was wrong with their children was they couldn't read. With a little research, she discovered a phonics-based course which she is agitating for the local school to use to further train reading teachers.

In Newcastle, desperate parents found out about Philipson, 63, by word of mouth, or through informal referrals from a learning disorders clinic at the hospital, which, according to one mother, "doesn't want to be seen to be helping Diane's business but they know what she does works".

Philipson has devised her own system of teaching, a systematic phonics program in which children hear a sound, say it, then read it and sound it out. "I've never had a child I couldn't teach to read," she says. Some of the children she coaches have specific learning disorders. Others, mostly boys, just haven't been taught how to read in a way that suits the way their brain works. She has had 10-year-olds unable to read a word.

No one blames the teachers, most of whom do a tremendous job, and the best of whom are saints. But as the committee of the National Inquiry into the Teaching of Literacy (of which I was a member) pointed out last year, as many as 30 per cent of children are leaving school functionally illiterate. The report of the inquiry, released in December, finds that most teacher training institutions aren't giving graduate teachers the repertoire of skills they need to teach all children to read. Less than 10 per cent of course time in university teacher education departments is spent training teachers how to teach reading.

The former education minister, Brendan Nelson, set up the inquiry in response to an open letter from 26 of Australia's literacy researchers, cognitive scientists, psychologists and speech therapists warning of the crisis facing large numbers of children who were failing to learn to read. The scientific verdict was in, they said, and it was overwhelming: phonics was a necessary foundation of reading. But from the start the inquiry was bedevilled by the belief within education circles, and even among some on the committee, that there was no literacy problem, that phonics was already being taught and that our students were superior to those of every country except Finland.

Nelson's concern was dismissed as pandering to right-wing extremists who were committed to imposing "boring phonics" on children as a form of ideological control. One leading educationist even drew a link between the teaching of phonics and the Iraq war. Try as it did to base its findings on the best evidence-based research, the inquiry never managed to escape the whole-word-versus-phonics wars which have been raging for almost 40 years. The attack on its report was led by the popular children's author Mem Fox, a whole-word devotee who seems to think if parents read enough of her books aloud their children will automatically learn to read.

Some might, but at least 25 per cent of children won't, according to Kevin Wheldall, director of Macquarie University's Special Education Centre, and one of Australia's leading literacy experts. Anyone who thinks we do not have a literacy problem should visit Aboriginal students on Cape York. Or perhaps doubters could spend an hour in Wheldall's classroom at the Exodus Foundation in Ashfield, where underprivileged children in years 5 and 6 are given remedial reading instruction. There you will meet children who have spent five years going to school and haven't a clue what those black marks on the page mean.

And as many of the National Inquiry into the Teaching of Literacy committee discovered, the effect on little boys and girls of not being able to read is devastating. The Reverend Bill Crews set up the Exodus program because, he said, he was "sick of burying kids". Normal, bright children who weren't being taught to read soon grew into sullen pre-teens who felt worthless and preferred to get into trouble than go to school where their "stupidity" was on display.

Nelson, who often visited the Exodus classroom as a backbencher, said when he launched the inquiry's report: "I ask myself, as a layperson, how is it we can live in a country where a boy at the age of 12, with neither a physical nor intellectual disability, can seriously [say], 'I didn't realise it's the black stuff that you read. I didn't realise you start on the left hand side and work to the right.' "

Literacy was a pet project for Nelson and he warned he would withhold funding from states which resisted the recommendations of the inquiry's report, which included systematic phonics teaching, improving teacher education, and testing children regularly. But Nelson has moved on, as politicians do, and his replacement, Julie Bishop, has yet to prove herself. We will know, soon enough, when the federal budget is released in May, how much Nelson's fine words really meant.

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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16 March, 2006

Pity the Poor Students

By R. E. Smith Jr.

“You’ve got to wonder at what point it’s going to stop,” said the student body president at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington, referring to tuition increases. Stop? When do cost increases of any service stop? Oh, sorry, that talk is about a government funded university. Of course, those taking advantage of public supported higher education expect it to be free—actually, they expect other people to pay for their education. The somebody-owes-us attitude is well stamped on immature minds by their elders.

The editorial editor of the Wilmington Star News, frequently calling to dump more money in the university, wrote “The Honorables keep dumping more of the cost onto students and their families….”—as opposed to dumping the cost on state taxpayers. This editor often reminds us that here in North Carolina the state constitution grants free education “as far as practicable….” He does not question cries from university beneficiaries for more money. But “free” is no longer feasible. Taxpayers have given more than their fair share to the bloated bureaucracies.

The prolific university system sprawled across the state uses up a large chunk of the state government budget. For many years new funding has poured into these campuses. In 2000, after intense lobbying by university officials (state employees) and supporters; and promises that bond legislation would not result in raising taxes, a $3.1 billion debt was voted by North Carolinians on themselves.

Jon Sanders, writing in the Carolina Journal in July 2004, described the university spending campaign: “all those chancellors, administrators, legislators, state dignitaries, self-promotional ‘investigative reports’ by WUNC-TV, crying students, UNC officials shamelessly applauding crying students, and student government flunkies speaking at football games….”

And, guess what? Within a year taxes began to increase every year thereafter and the UNC budget continued to increase with no apologies from those who lied to the citizens.

Sanders wrote that the “UNC system played a game of whine and dine.” Officials complained their funds were being “cut to the bone”—but there were no cuts. In 2004, another bond of $340,000 was passed by feckless legislators fearful of being labeled unfriendly to education, without voter or UNC Board of Governors approval. By 2005, the state General Assembly had increased the UNC budget to $1.87 billion.

Meanwhile the university went on a spending spree. New programs; additional buildings; an institute for higher education; operating an airport; buying houses for chancellors; tuition grants; and, of course, salary increases. In 2004, former Chancellor Marye Anne Fox received a $248,225 salary. In addition she was provided a house and car. A university Board member dubbed this generosity as “totally underpaid.”

What are we getting for the huge amounts of money flooding into higher education? Who knows? Academia is unaccountable for its spending habit. Money is dumped into the system with presumed “benefits,” but educational value is questionable. Tax money distributed to counties and cities with university facilities helps local businesses, but economic development is not the purpose of education.

Richard Vetter, an economics professor at Ohio University, in a “National Review” article October 11, 2004, says that there is no value added evaluation of university output. The only accounting is from private rankings which show: “The more the school spends, the higher the ranking.”

But spending does not equate with quantity or quality of education. A recent study by the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy revealed that schools with higher rankings—such as those published by U. S. News and World Report—may not offer instruction as good as that given at lower ranked institutions. Study authors wrote that subjective factors such as “academic reputation” and faculty compensation provide no direct correlation with student learning. Few people realize this, or seem to care.

The “watchdog” press has failed to investigate and report this information. Instead, the editorial attitude, expressed by the Star News, represents advocacy for unaccountability: “Of course, there’s no question that UNCW needs more money….” they say. No question? Based on what?

University chancellors and presidents serve as government lobbyists. Administrative officers (handsomely paid by the state) regularly and successfully plead with legislators and deep-pockets donors to give more money. But what do they do with it? Much of it goes to elaborate facilities, athletic subsidies, higher salaries and other things unrelated to the teaching/learning mission.

The name of the game is to admit more students, few of whom pay their fair share. Grants, deductions, discounts and tax credits subsidize most of the public university cost of tuition to students. Despite increases in the published price of tuition, tuition paid has gone down in recent years—about one-third less from 1998 to 2003, for example.

Instead of whining about perceived increases in tuition, students should be demonstrating against the inefficiencies of the university and demanding better education.

Poor teaching protected by tenure, low faculty teaching loads, top-loaded administrations, emphasis on sports and food services, fluff courses and politically motivated programs divert funds from the essentials of teaching and learning. Students could better spend protest time to correct these problems, and the press would better serve the public by reporting them



The Sad State of American Education

By Nathan Tabor

Each election year, you’ll find a candidate who says we desperately need to pour more money into our public schools. Ignoring the property tax burdens on senior citizens, the candidate will say that taxpayers need to be prepared to spend more on education—even if it entails incredible sacrifice.

There is little doubt that education can be a sound investment. But I have to wonder what schools are using all that tax money for, given the results of a new study by the McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum.

The survey showed many things, but here is the most startling fact of them all: Americans know more about the TV cartoon known as “The Simpsons” than they do about the First Amendment. I suppose that, in an age where trivia is king, this should not be all that surprising. However, it should provoke some serious soul-searching among public officials, teachers, and parents.

According to the study, only one in four Americans can name more than one of the five freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment. For those of you hazy on this point, the five freedoms are freedom of speech, religion, press, assembly, and petition for redress of grievances. Yet, more than half of those surveyed could name at least two members of the Simpson family.

And it gets worse. About one in five Americans can name all five members of the cartoon family, but only one in a thousand can name all the First Amendment freedoms. But this isn’t only about the Simpsons. There’s also the situation involving “American Idol.” More people know the three idol judges—Randy, Paula, and Simon—than know at least three First Amendment rights. In addition, Americans are more likely to remember popular advertising slogans than anything about the First Amendment.

Oh, but there is this gem: one in five people surveyed thought the right to own a pet was protected under the First Amendment. But the question we need to ask ourselves as Americans is not who’s minding the dog—but who’s looking out for our own basic rights as citizens.

But, let’s be clear here. There’s plenty of blame to go around. While it’s true that maybe we should have all paid more attention at school, how much of the school calendar was devoted to the First Amendment—one of the most precious rights the founding fathers could have given us?

Here’s why this is so important: there are numerous instances today of individuals trying to take away our freedoms. For instance, our freedom of speech is threatened by those who say that the only allowable speech on our college campuses should be politically correct speech. Our freedom of religion is routinely targeted by groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union, who want to ban God from our schools, courthouses, and civic buildings. Freedom of assembly is challenged by those who believe the only legitimate protests are the left-wing kind.

Of course, the news media routinely trumpet freedom of the press—but it is only one segment of the press many of them are interested in. For instance, conservative columnist Ann Coulter is vilified for expressing her anti-left, anti-establishment views. Fox News is accused of pandering to the right—even though its mission is to provide fair and balanced coverage.

In an Associated Press article, Joe Madeira, director of exhibitions at the McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum, said he was actually surprised by the results of his survey.

Madeira told the AP, “Part of the survey really shows there are misconceptions, and part of our mission is to clear up these misconceptions. It means we have our job cut out for us.”

It obvious money isn’t the solution to our education woes. We must return to teaching the basics.

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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15 March, 2006

EDUCATION: PAY FOR WHAT YOU USE

Should individuals be forced to pay for something, to pay for anything, that they have no use for? Would you expect to receive a bill from say, the gas company, if you did not use natural gas in your home? Would you pay an invoice from an appliance store where you had never made a purchase in your life? Why would you pay a milkman who never delivered any milk? Would it help to be told that you are being charged for all these things because you must be forced to contribute “your fair share” for the benefit of everyone that does use those goods and services? Your fair share? What is fair about forcing people to pay for things they do not need and will never use?

There is nothing fair about forcing people to pay for things they do not use, of course. Hence is the problem with every universal social program that has ever been concocted by human beings, to which education is no exception. Any social program that is applied to all taxpayers, by design, forces some people to pay for some things they will not use. It does not take a genius to figure out, that is just plain wrong.

How do I know it doesn’t take a genius to come such a simple realization? Well, because some Canadian politicians have apparently come to realize that it is wrong to charge people for things they do not use, particularly public education. And, I am of the opinion that if politicians of any stripe can figure it out, surely anyone can. The good news is, if you are a senior citizen living in Ontario you get a reimbursement on your property taxes for the schools you are not using. I hope someone in the States is paying attention.

It all started in May of 2003 when Janet Ecker, Ontario’s Minister of Finance, introduced the “Ontario Home Property Tax Relief for Seniors Act.” It proposed a new program that provided senior homeowners and renters a refund for a portion of the property tax on their principal residences. The refund is expressly for the “education portion” of their tax bills. In other words, Ontario does not make its senior citizens pay for schools they are not using. It looks like Ontario’s government is at least trying to be fair with some of its taxpayers and I certainly applaud the effort.

Under Minister Ecker’s “Ontario Home Property Tax Relief for Seniors Act” it is estimated that seniors will see savings on their taxes of 450 million dollars annually. That works out to about $475 in annual savings for each of Ontario’s 945,000 senior households. It may not seem like very much, but I bet it means a lot to those almost one million taxpayers getting the tax break they desperately need and rightfully deserve.

Now, I can hear the critics screaming already about the government’s loss of 450 million dollars in revenue for education, and how it must surely adversely affect the quality of education the children are receiving. Well, it is not really such a big deal according to Ontario’s own Ministry of Finance website which had this to say about property-tax relief:

“Providing property tax relief for seniors in no way diminishes the government’s commitment to public education, which is based on a student-focussed (sic) funding model. With the enhancements announced in the 2003 Budget, education funding for the upcoming 2003-04 school year, including direct provincial transfers and education property taxes, stands at a record $15.3 billion — the highest level of education funding in Ontario’s history, which represents a $2.4 billion increase since 1995.”

So you see, the government, nor the children, are really hurting at all from doing the right thing for taxpayers that already carry way too much of the burden created by the beast Bureaucracy.

Now, how about taking this exercise in fairness one-step further. As I said, I applaud Ontario’s government in realizing an unjust taxation when they see it; and, for moving in the right direction to address a flaw in the system. But, if government is showing this kind of understanding toward the elderly, how much harder would it be to recognize all the other unfortunate victims of an unfair tax? If Ontario’s government is to be criticized at all in its efforts to reform taxes for education, it is only that they haven’t gone far enough. Many individuals are unjustly taxed every year to help pay for public school systems they do not need or use, and they need to be recognized right along with the elderly.

Who are these forgotten individuals who are forced to pay for government schools they are not using, you ask? First and foremost are the single taxpayers that do not have dependent children. Some, of course, will meet other singles, marry and have children, but many of them will never have children and never need a public school system. It is simply unfair, as it is with the senior citizens, to force these individuals to pay for a service they never use. One cannot claim someone else has a fair share of anything in which they do not share.

Even individuals that do have children must be considered on an individual basis in order to continue our exercise in fairness. How about the parents that choose not to send their precious offspring to government-controlled schools, but instead choose to send them to private institutions? And what about the parents that have decided to educate their own children at home? We can’t forget any parent that has chosen alternatives to public schools because they just don’t use the system. Why should any of these people be forced to pay for services that are not being provided for them? Don’t they deserve a tax break too? Well, of course they do!

The answer is really quite simple. Individuals should not be forced to pay for anything they are not using, so only make people pay for what they use. If parents chose to take advantage of state-run schools, then they certainly should be expected to pay the government for the service. But, if individuals are not using a public education system, they should not be forced to pay for one.

Simple! Pay for what you use. Why should education be different from any other commodity on the free market? Only those that actually use a product should be expected to pay for it, even if the product happens to be education.

Source



Audit: 40 felons work in UW System, four on academic staff

And you can bet that they would all still be sitting pretty except for media attention

The University of Wisconsin System, under fire for its employment practices, employed 40 felons as of this fall, four of them on the academic staff, according to an audit released Tuesday. The nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureau reviewed the system's employment rolls after concerns were raised last year following media reports on three professors who kept their jobs despite felony convictions. One of the professors was fired earlier this year.

The audit noted state statutes prohibit job discrimination based on an employee's arrest or conviction record unless the conviction is substantially related to the person's job. The UW System took steps earlier this month to expedite the termination of faculty who are convicted of serious criminal misconduct.

The audit found: 27 of the 40 felons work at UW-Madison. Two of the workers were convicted of homicide during the 1970s and have been on parole since the early 1990s. Four employees were convicted of a total of five sexual assaults of a child. There were 54 felonies committed by the 40 employees. Nine of them were considered violent. The nonviolent offenses included fraud and forgery, operating a vehicle while intoxicated, theft, and drug possession. The report on felons is part of a larger review the Audit Bureau is conducting of UW System employment practices.

Source



Some offbeat "Education" quotes

"In the first place God made idiots; that was for practice; then he made school boards." (Mark Twain)

"Dublin University contains the dream of Ireland - rich and thick." (Samuel Beckett)

"Cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education." (Mark Twain)

"Don't let schooling interfere with your education." (Mark Twain)

"I won't say ours was a tough school, but we had our own coroner. We used to write essays like 'What I'm going to be if I grow up.'" (Lenny Bruce)

"In our school you were searched for guns and knifes on the way in and if you didn't have any, they gave you some." (Emo Philips)

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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14 March, 2006

Behind The Veneer Of Public Education

Americans who love their country and its heritage have been outraged as they learned of Aurora Colorado geography teacher Jay Bennish, who was recorded by a student last month as he spewed anti-American diatribe to his class. But should anyone really be surprised? By no means is this an isolated incident.

Students who have been immersed in similar venom are alarmingly easy to spot. They are the geography students who can fluently regurgitate the wisdom of Cindy Sheehan, but who cannot find Oklahoma on a map.

They are the math students who can elaborate on the “failures” of Reaganomics and the inherent superiority of Maoist fiscal policy, but who cannot make change when working behind a cash register. And they are the history students who can recite the lyrics of every Vietnam era protest song and believe World War II was only about the internment of Japanese Americans, but who have not a clue as to the historical significance of Washington or Lincoln.

Amazingly, the liberal education establishment has, over the past several decades, brilliantly turned this deplorable situation into an ongoing political and financial boon. As students’ academic scores continue to tumble, the inevitable result of being taught such claptrap in lieu of traditional education, educrats invariably respond with endless calls for increased funding, ostensibly to “fix” the problem.

Throughout the nation, the annual “fix” to the education crisis is enormous increases in budgetary allotments towards education, with no commensurate academic improvement.

Any responsible legislator who refuses to go along with this ruse is publicly excoriated as being “anti-education” and “anti-child.” Few possess the courage or principle to face such a firestorm. So, budgets continue to bloat, staffing is increased, facilities undergo costly upgrades, and in the end, the indoctrination continues unabated.

Why, in the midst of such a program that bestows incentives for failure, should the education establishment ever consider changing course? Indeed, on the day that schools begin turning out brighter students who score better on their SAT tests, the “education” lobby will lose its most powerful weapon for pressuring legislative bodies and the general public to allow it even greater access to the public trough.

It is beyond naive to hope that this abysmal cycle will somehow correct itself, especially as long as the current situation keeps providing such a reliable “win/win” for the left.

Nevertheless, it is primarily the parents of school-aged children who bear ultimate responsibility for this dismal state of affairs. As is evident from the public outrage and surprise over the Colorado episode, most Americans remain unaware of the degree to which government schools have mutated into something grotesquely distorted from their original purpose.

To this day, far too many parents staunchly believe that such abominable events are not happening in their own communities, and that their own children’s declining test scores will indeed be fixable if school budgets are expanded during the next legislative session. This situation cannot ever be expected to change until the public becomes thoroughly aware of the extent of the problem and commits to the difficult task of true educational reform.

Unfortunately, from federal to local levels, the political system is presently stacked against any such fix. Among the “highlights” of President Bush’s first term was a multi-billion dollar education bill, passed with the collaboration of Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy.

Doggedly opposing true reform, Kennedy was nonetheless able to funnel unfathomable sums of money into the hands of a political lobby that will ensure much of it returns to the campaign coffers of liberal Democrats. Meanwhile, he can cast himself as a patron saint of “education” and an advocate of children, all with the public blessing of a Republican President.

Only when conservative office holders muster the courage to face the inevitable political fallout, will America have any hope of changing the status quo. Until then, the Colorado situation will predictably recur on an endless basis, its victims moving henceforth into society to conduct their lives, and perhaps participate in government, philosophically undergirded by such criminally fraudulent information.

And liberal educrats will not stop there. Look for them to pursue an ever-expanding reach. The Colorado student who secretly recorded his ranting teacher on an MP3 player had obviously not been properly indoctrinated.

Thus can be explained the seeming disparity between the education establishment’s inability to fulfill its traditional responsibilities, in contrast to its craven aspirations for an ever greater role in rearing the next generation.

Source



Airy-Fairy education in Australia

Universities and TAFE colleges are turning out graduates who are not "job-ready" and have skills better suited to academic pursuits, warn leading Australian business groups. The Business Council of Australia accuses universities of stifling the "culture of entrepreneurship", producing graduates without adequate problem-solving skills. The group, which represents the nation's 100 biggest companies, says this failure is choking creativity and limiting Australia's competitiveness in the global market. In a major report backed by companies across many industries, the BCA will urge academics to put greater emphasis on communication skills and to ensure that students are given a solid grounding in the basic skills required in the workplace.



The BCA report, due for release today, comes as federal Education Minister Julie Bishop considers proposals to introduce a "job-ready" rating into Year 12 certificates. "Employers are concerned about the lack of skills regarding creativity, initiative, oral business communication and problem-solving among graduates," the report says. "Research still shows a significant lack of entrepreneurial skills among Australians. "There is increasing recognition of the importance of delivering 'employability skills' associated with communication, teamwork and problem-solving for innovative business. "Courses and programs needed to be practice-based, relevant and appropriate for business innovation needs -- rather than suiting particular academic interests and pursuits."

The report also says that red tape, infrastructure gaps and Australia's tax system all work against innovation. Companies warned that the tax system requires reform to encourage business innovation and the personal taxation system was a "major constraint" in attracting talented workers from overseas. The BCA argues for a broader definition of innovation that includes business strategy and training. "Many companies also raised various concerns about the ability of the education and training system to deliver the skills that were essential for business innovation success," the report warns. "Many companies noted that the education and training systems were not providing graduates with the technical skills appropriate to industry innovation needs. For example, a number of companies noted that university engineering graduates were not skilled in simulation techniques that were being increasingly used throughout business."

The claims prompted an angry response last night from one of the nation's most respected university chiefs, Melbourne University vice-chancellor Glyn Davis, who urged business to "produce the evidence" that graduate quality was in decline. The chairman of the Group of 8 "sandstone universities", Professor Davis said the opinions of the BCA did not constitute evidence. "The fact is that 95per cent of graduates are snapped up within three months of leaving university," he said. "I don't know if there's much graduate-bashing around but I do know we track performance. "I do know our graduates get jobs and they are highly skilled. "One of the big issues for Australia is the big number of graduates who head overseas and have no trouble getting jobs in the UK, China and India."

In a separate report also due for release today by the BCA, Changing Paradigms, one of Australia's biggest car manufacturers, Holden, says engineering graduates are a particular concern. "Holden Innovation considers that universities have fallen behind in the ability to meet industry needs," the report says. Australia's biggest independent oil and gas exploration company, Woodside, also notes that the education system is "not turning out enough skilled people". Insurance Australia Group also raises concerns about the shortage of workers in the panel-beating and motor vehicle repair trades.

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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13 March, 2006

BRITISH TEACHERS VOTE WITH THEIR FEET

Post lifted from the Adam Smith blog

Many state school teachers might be prepared to defend comprehensive schools and oppose selection in principle, but not when it comes to their own children. Geraldine Hackett, Sunday Times education correspondent reports that many of them who contribute to an education website run by the Times Educational Supplement (TES) admit either to playing the system to get their children into preferred schools, or to going independent. Some teachers have admitted to lying about their religious commitment in order to get their children into high quality faith schools, or to using false addresses within the catchment areas of good schools.

What shines through these contributions is a complete rejection of the allocation of their own children to local, low quality schools, and to unconcealed contempt and derision for some of those schools. Other parents might have to accept places in bottom-of-the-league schools, but these teachers are not, no matter what it takes to escape them.

Alan Smithers, professor of education at Buckingham University, said he was concerned by the entries on the TES website, which is mainly used by state school teachers. "Teachers know the school system best," said Smithers. "If they are thinking it is not good enough for their children, that is an indication that something must be seriously wrong."

It is an indication of something else, too. Bear in mind that a place dishonestly obtained at a good state school is a good place denied to another child. Some state school teachers, it seems, are quite prepared to let other children suffer, provided their own are preferred. State school teachers who choose private schools for their children are at least not harming the chances of other state schoolchildren.



ARROGANT SCHOOL POLICIES HURT TWINS

And parents are allowed no say over how their own children are treated

We all have different tastes, likes and dislikes and this is America after all, the world's greatest Democracy where individuals ALWAYS have freedom of choice! At least we're supposed to, unless you happen to be a parent of multiple birth children (twins, triplets, quads etc) entering the school system. Then you probably won't have any choice, unless you move to Europe.

Under the Constitution, parental rights to "direct the education and upbringing of ones children", have long been protected in addition to other specific freedoms under the Bill of Rights. Yet parents of multiple birth children are being denied the freedom to decide whether or not their children would benefit more from being placed together or if they would be better off being placed separately within the classroom. Although cousins and best friends are often placed together without concern, our education system allows some school districts and principles to impose "across the board" separation policies of twins, based solely upon their "multiplicity" in the hopes of promoting "individuality".

A contradiction perhaps? Children who are not being judged on their OWN individual merits are being treated as a "GROUP" in order to promote "individuality", based of a trait determined prior to their birth? Discriminatory even? I believe it's both. But on the other hand, maybe you think it does seem logical to separate children born and are raised together in order to promote their "individuality", so why all the fuss? Well imagine you're a coffee drinker again, but Starbucks gives you indigestion. You would want another choice, wouldn't you? Well, some twins and even their parents end up with indigestion-theoretically that is.

Internationally renown Twin Researchers and Authors, Dr. Nancy Segal and Dr. John Mascazine, as well as the International Society of Twin Studies and National Multiple Birth Advocates, have all called for forced separation policies to end and for a flexible placement policy to be instituted. In their studies, they have found that separating some 'twins' before they are emotionally ready, can cause psychological and academic repercussions which in some instances can last for years. Although some children do well when separated, others seem to benefit both academically and socially when they are allowed to remain within the same classroom as their sibling. You guessed it, research shows, what we all could have surmised just from a trip to the supermarket, choice is good and what's good for one is NOT always good for all!

So why, with all this information available to educators, do many schools still NOT allow parents to have a choice? The answer is simple. They have ALWAYS done things this way and like most discriminatory practices which have eventually been outlawed in this country, they most often apply to a minority of the population. Multiples, though there are more twins than ever being born every year, still remain a minority. That is why, twin parents like myself, have joined together and begun a campaign to see that Legislation of a "Twin Bill" becomes sponsored and enacted into law. The Bill would allow parents of twins, triplets and higher order multiples to have a "voice" in the placement decision's of their multiple birth children either separately or together within the classroom. Minnesota's Senator Dennis Frederickson sponsored the first "Twin Bill" which was signed into law on May 5th 2005 and I am determined to see that New York follows suit. After all, I live in the Big Apple, the world's melting pot, where anything can happen and everything is possible.

More here

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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12 March, 2006

THE POWER OF ATTITUDE

Failure in the classroom is often tied to lack of funding, poor teachers or other ills. Here's a thought: Maybe it's the failed work ethic of today's kids. That's what I'm seeing in my school. Until reformers see this reality, little will change.

Last month, as I averaged the second-quarter grades for my senior English classes at T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Va., the same familiar pattern leapt out at me. Kids who had emigrated from foreign countries - such as Shewit Giovanni from Ethiopia, Farah Ali from Guyana and Edgar Awumey from Ghana - often aced every test, while many of their U.S.-born classmates from upper-class homes with highly educated parents had a string of C's and D's.

As one would expect, the middle-class American kids usually had higher SAT verbal scores than did their immigrant classmates, many of whom had only been speaking English for a few years. What many of the American kids I taught did not have was the motivation, self-discipline or work ethic of the foreign-born kids.

Politicians and education bureaucrats can talk all they want about reform, but until the work ethic of U.S. students changes, until they are willing to put in the time and effort to master their subjects, little will change. A study released in December by University of Pennsylvania researchers Angela Duckworth and Martin Seligman suggests that the reason so many U.S. students are "falling short of their intellectual potential" is not "inadequate teachers, boring textbooks and large class sizes" and the rest of the usual litany cited by the so-called reformers - but "their failure to exercise self-discipline."

The sad fact is that in the USA, hard work on the part of students is no longer seen as a key factor in academic success. The groundbreaking work of Harold Stevenson and a multinational team at the University of Michigan comparing attitudes of Asian and American students sounded the alarm more than a decade ago. When asked to identify the most important factors in their performance in math, the percentage of Japanese and Taiwanese students who answered "studying hard" was twice that of American students.

American students named native intelligence, and some said the home environment. But a clear majority of U.S. students put the responsibility on their teachers. A good teacher, they said, was the determining factor in how well they did in math. "Kids have convinced parents that it is the teacher or the system that is the problem, not their own lack of effort," says Dave Roscher, a chemistry teacher at T.C. Williams in this Washington suburb. "In my day, parents didn't listen when kids complained about teachers. We are supposed to miraculously make kids learn even though they are not working." As my colleague Ed Cannon puts it: "Today, the teacher is supposed to be responsible for motivating the kid. If they don't learn it is supposed to be our problem, not theirs." And, of course, busy parents guilt-ridden over the little time they spend with their kids are big subscribers to this theory.

Maybe every generation of kids has wanted to take it easy, but until the past few decades students were not allowed to get away with it. "Nowadays, it's the kids who have the power. When they don't do the work and get lower grades, they scream and yell. Parents side with the kids who pressure teachers to lower standards," says Joel Kaplan, another chemistry teacher at T.C. Williams. Every year, I have had parents come in to argue about the grades I have given in my AP English classes. To me, my grades are far too generous; to middle-class parents, they are often an affront to their sense of entitlement. If their kids do a modicum of work, many parents expect them to get at least a B. When I have given C's or D's to bright middle-class kids who have done poor or mediocre work, some parents have accused me of destroying their children's futures.

It is not only parents, however, who are siding with students in their attempts to get out of hard work. "Schools play into it," says psychiatrist Lawrence Brain, who counsels affluent teenagers throughout the Washington metropolitan area. "I've been amazed to see how easy it is for kids in public schools to manipulate guidance counselors to get them out of classes they don't like. They have been sent a message that they don't have to struggle to achieve if things are not perfect."

Neither the high-stakes state exams, such as Virginia's Standards of Learning, nor the requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act have succeeded in changing that message; both have turned into minimum-competency requirements aimed at the lowest in our school. Colleges keep complaining that students are coming to them unprepared. Instead of raising admissions standards, however, they keep accepting mediocre students lest cuts have to be made in faculty and administration.

As a teacher, I don't object to the heightened standards required of educators in the No Child Left Behind law. Who among us would say we couldn't do a little better? Nonetheless, teachers have no control over student motivation and ambition, which have to come from the home - and from within each student. Perhaps the best lesson I can pass along to my upper- and middle-class students is to merely point them in the direction of their foreign-born classmates, who can remind us all that education in America is still more a privilege than a right.

Source



UK: A NEW CONSERVATIVE STUDENT LIFESTYLE

The all-night student who parties until dawn and lives off stale pizzas and black coffee in university digs is, it seems, a myth. Undergraduates are indeed sipping Starbucks, but they are eating healthily, drinking less and living at home to save money. They are also socialising away from university, as more than half hold down a job for up to 20 hours a week and a fifth are teetotallers.

Unions and academics caution, however, that the new lifestyle undermines the purpose of higher education and that students are in danger of missing the opportunities it offers.

Faced with looming debts, nearly half a million or 449,488 of the 2,247,440 students in Britain are now choosing to live with their parents while studying at university, according to a survey of 2,200 undergraduates commissioned by Sodexho, an institutional catering company. Of those, four fifths pay nothing towards their rent and little towards their upkeep. While the cushioned home life might have its attractions, researchers point out that two thirds never join in campus life, they are five times more likely to work part time and commute up to four hours a day.

The most common rent for those who do pay is between 61 and 70 pounds per week, spent by 17 per cent of students. Nearly a quarter, 24 per cent of students, live on a weekly budget of between 41 and 50 pounds after paying rent. Professor Stuart Sanderson, associate dean at Bradford University School of Management, said: "They live at home, commute long-distances, work in term-time and pursue their social life almost entirely off campus." He said that these students "are missing out on the wider aspects of a university education while better-off undergraduates can spread their wings and whoop it up a little with their peers".

The findings, which come before the 3,000 pounds deferred tuition fees this autumn, worry student leaders. Veronica King, Vice-President of the National Union of Students, said that with more students living at home and undertaking part-time work, universities' "central ethos" risked being undermined as well as causing concern among business leaders. "Students are choosing to work part time, which means they are less likely to get involved in the student union and if they live at home, they have another barrier to joining societies and getting involved in fundraising activities," she said.

Universities UK said yesterday that the survey confirmed many of their own findings, particularly that students now spend a fifth less on alcohol than they did in 2001. He also pointed out that, although higher tuition fees would be introduced from September, no one would have to pay them back until after they were earning more than 15,000 pounds per year

Source



CHICAGO NUTTINESS: IT TAKES PUBLICITY TO GET SOME SANITY

Most high school students eagerly await the day they pass driver's education class. But 16-year-old Mayra Ramirez is indifferent about it. Ramirez is blind, yet she and dozens of other visually impaired sophomores in Chicago schools are required to pass a written rules-of-the-road exam in order to graduate _ a rule they say takes time away from subjects they might actually use. "In other classes, you don't really feel different because you can do the work other people do," Ramirez said. "But in driver's ed, it does give us the feeling we're different. In a way, it brought me down, because it reminds me of something I can't do."

Hundreds of school districts in Illinois require students to pass driver's ed, although the state only requires that districts offer the courses. A state education official says districts that require it should exempt disabled students. "It defies logic to require blind students to take this course," Meta Minton, spokeswoman for the state Board of Education, told the Chicago Tribune in a Friday story.

About 30 students at two Chicago high schools with programs for the visually impaired recently formed an advocacy group in part to change the policy.

A Chicago Public Schools official said the district would be open to waiving the requirement. "I can't explain why up to this point no one has raised the issue and suggested a better way for visually impaired students to opt out of driver's ed," said Chicago schools spokesman Michael Vaughn. Vaughn said parents of disabled students can, by law, request a change in their child's individual education plan, which could include a driver's ed exemption. But teachers and students said that is a little-known option, and that they have been told driver's ed is required to graduate.

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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11 March, 2006

SOME HOPE FOR CALIFORNIA EDUCATION YET

The State Board of Education voted unanimously Wednesday to reject alternatives for "highly proficient" students who fail the California High School Exam, echoing state Superintendent Jack O'Connell's staunch support of the test. "If a student were highly proficient in both math and English, it would be a travesty if they could not pass this test because this test is very simple," said board member Donald Fisher, chairman of the Gap clothing company. The student representative to the board echoed that view. Paul Gardner III, a Culver City High School senior, said his peers support the test. But the board's decision adds fuel to the fire for opponents of the exit exam, who say the state has not met its legal obligation to study alternative paths to graduation for students who fail the math and English test of sixth-to 10th-grade skills. This year - for the first time in California - students must pass the exit exam to graduate from a public high school. At the start of the school year, more than 90,000 seniors still had not passed.

"Today's decision means that the only avenue left for students to receive a diploma is the litigation with the courts," said Arturo Gonzalez, an attorney with the Morrison & Foerster law firm in San Francisco. He has sued the state to try to block the government from denying diplomas to students who fail the exam. "Ironically, today's decision may also be one of our strongest pieces of evidence because I don't think any court is going to accept the 45-minute hearing and consider that to be an adequate study of alternatives," he said.

State law calls for the Board of Education and the state superintendent to study other ways students could demonstrate their knowledge and receive a diploma even if they fail the exit exam. At Tuesday's meeting, O'Connell's staff presented a 31-page document detailing their study of potential alternatives. The process began in 1999, the same year the law creating the exit exam was passed, said testing director Deb Sigman. Since then, she said, a panel devoted to the exit exam has held 19 meetings with numerous experts from around the country to develop the test and consider changes. Independent consultants have conducted several studies of the exam and its impact on students.

In December, the Department of Education held a daylong meeting where education experts, lawyers, students and parents voiced their feelings about alternatives to the test. Many said they thought other measures - such as a student's grades, scores on other tests, or a portfolio of work [i.e. work done by others] - should substitute for a failed exit exam.

In January, O'Connell announced that none of the alternatives was feasible. They were either too time-consuming and costly, he said, or would not hold students to the same academic standard as the exam. O'Connell said Tuesday that his study met the law's criteria.

But exit exam opponents said the state's study of alternatives was insufficient. They argued that the board should ask the Legislature to delay the exam's consequences for another year while the board studies alternatives. "I ask you as we ask them: Do your homework with all deliberation and thought," said Sen. Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles.

Source



AMAZING! CREATIONISM GETS A MENTION IN BRITISH HIGH SCHOOLS

An examinations board is including references to “creationism” in a new GCSE science course for schools. The OCR board admitted that a biology course due to be introduced in September encourages schools to consider alternative views to Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. Its new “Gateway to Science” curriculum asks pupils to examine how organisms become fossilised. It then asks teachers to “explain that the fossil record has been interpreted differently over time (eg creationist interpretation)”. OCR, one of the three main exam boards in England, said that the syllabus was intended to make students aware of scientific controversy. But critics accused the board of blurring the line between science and religious education by putting creationism into lessons alongside evolution.

A spokeswoman for OCR said: “Candidates need to understand the social and historical context to scientific ideas both pre and post Darwin. Candidates are asked to discuss why the opponents of Darwinism thought the way they did and how scientific controversies can arise from different ways of interpreting empirical evidence.” John Noel, OCR’s science qualifications manager, told The Times Educational Supplement: “It is simply looking at one particular example of how scientific interpretation changes over time. “The history of scientific ideas not only has a legitimate place in science lessons, it is a requirement of the new programme of study.”

But James Williams, science course leader at Sussex University’s school of education, said: “This opens a legitimate gate for the inclusion of creationism or intelligent design in science classes as if they were legitimate theories on a par with evolution fact and theory. “I’m happy for religious theories to be considered in religious education, but not in science where consideration could lead to a false verification of their status as being equal to scientific theories.”

A second exam board, Edexcel, included a reference to creationism in a draft lesson plan for teachers as part of preparations for a new biology GCSE. But a spokeswoman said that it had not been included in the final specifications for the course.

Evangelical Christians in the US have been pressing for schools to teach “creationism”, the idea that God created the world, as well as an offshoot theory of “intelligent design”, which holds that nature is so complex that it could not have evolved on its own. Controversy about the teaching of creationism has flared in England over three comprehensives run by the Emmanuel Schools Foundation, which is funded by Sir Peter Vardy, a millionaire Christian car dealer. Sir Peter said in 2003: “We present both. One is a theory, the other is a faith position. It is up to the children.”

A spokesman at the Department for Education and Skills said: “Neither creationism nor intelligent design is taught as a subject in schools, and are not specified in the science curriculum. “The National Curriculum for science clearly sets down that pupils should be taught that the fossil record is evidence for evolution.

Source



Shakespeare being edged out

In the article below, Prof. Henningham seems to be quoting some guy all the time

Although Brisbane will be the mecca of Shakespeare lovers for a week in July as host of the World Shakespeare Congress, our local theatre companies continue to give "short shrift" to the Bard. "That it should come to this!" For the fourth year running there is no Shakespeare in the Queensland Theatre Company's program. QTC has run four plays by the Bard since 1998 (Lear, The Tempest, Richard II and Richard III), out of almost 80 productions. It seems "forever and a day" since Shakespeare appeared in a season at La Boite Theatre which (despite its continental name) eschews anything other than good old (or bad new) home-grown Australian theatre. The last piece by the Bard was Romeo and Juliet in 1999 - 38 plays ago. Until the last quarter of last century, it seems not a year would go by without some major Shakespeare performances from our leading companies. But since the late '90s, only 4 per cent of Brisbane-based professional productions have been by Shakespeare.

Instead, "more in sorrow than in anger", theatre-goers endure a gallimaufry of experimentation, fashionable ideology, political correctness, sordid titillation and various shades of contemporary angst, with a succession of plays that have little chance of surviving the first decade of the 21st century, let alone lasting 400 years. Is this "much ado about nothing"? Falstaff? Who's he? That's what the average high school student or even university graduate would ask these days. A whole generation of Queenslanders has never seen a Falstaff (comic star of Henry IV and of Merry Wives of Windsor), one of the great character creations of all time. Sir John Falstaff is the tragic buffoon who enlivens young Prince Hal's (the future King Henry V's) misspent youth, his "salad days" when he was "green of judgment". Most Queenslanders have never even had the chance to see a Hamlet in recent years, that most brilliant, intriguing and fascinating dramatic creation, a tower of strength.

Shakespeare can at times be obscure, his words do not always speak their meaning at first glance, but, "give the devil his due", he has a rare gift of getting under the skin of human nature and evoking people's deepest longings and dreams in enduring terms. You don't have to go as far as Harold Bloom, who claims Shakespeare invented being human, to concede that Shakespeare (or whoever wrote Shakespeare) was a pretty special guy.

The failure to produce Shakespeare is even more damaging in conjunction with the watering down of Shakespearean studies in our schools. The virus of postmodernism has taken root in English syllabuses, resulting in an approach to literary studies that prefers the discernment of ideological biases to the fostering of aesthetic appreciation and admiration for great writing. It's "madness", but there's no "method in it".

Queensland's stalwart amateur companies are doing their best to rescue Shakespeare: their experience is that Shakespeare pulls crowds and draws performers like no other playwright. Audition calls are clogged when the Bard is the go, with wannabe young actors falling over themselves for the chance to be involved in a Shakespearean production. Brisbane Arts Theatre makes room for the Bard about two years out of three, as does the wandering Nash company. Pro-am Harvest Rain in New Farm also makes a regular commitment, delighting its audiences with action-packed musical versions.

Queensland Shakespeare Ensemble gives gifted amateurs serious training and brings out lesser known plays with interesting variations (such as a re-gendered Comedy of Errors last year). The redoubtable Bryan Nason's Grin & Tonic and GNT2 take Shakespeare to schools across Queensland and perform in garden settings in the city. But the most charitable critic must concede that even the best amateur productions suffer from unevenness in casting, acting and direction - "the course of true love never did run smooth" - and they certainly lack "all that glisters" in lighting, sets and costumes which professional companies can spirit up.

John Bell has been prepared to be the saviour of professional Shakespeare performance in Australia. His Sydney-based travelling Bell Shakespeare Company, unsubsidised for most of its existence, has done more than any state company to keep the flame of Shakespeare's genius alive. Brisbane has been lucky enough to see a Bell version every couple of years, the most recent being last year's extraordinarily good Measure for Measure. And Bell will be back for a Romeo and Juliet this year, during the Brisbane Festival.

Shakespeare will not be ignored by Queensland professional performing arts companies this year. But it's Shakespeare without his words. Both Opera Queensland and the Queensland Ballet (who know how to please the crowds) are running versions of Romeo and Juliet (to the music of Gounod and Prokofiev). So perhaps "all's well that ends well" and our local theatre companies will finally realise that the game is up: the people want more Shakespeare. If not, well, "the miserable have no other medicine but only hope".

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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10 March, 2006

ADF steps in after atheist entity challenges status of collegiate Catholic group

Attorneys with the Alliance Defense Fund's Center for Academic Freedom have written a letter to University of Wisconsin-Madison officials in response to demands made by the Freedom from Religion Foundation that the school de-fund a Catholic student organization.

"Universities are supposed to be the marketplace of ideas," said ADF Senior Legal Counsel David French. "Eliminating funding in order to placate an outside political organization amounts to viewpoint discrimination. We have written to the university to remind it that the law requires that its students and student organizations have equal rights to free speech and student fee funding. FFRF's demands have no merit."

FFRF's Feb. 26 letter to school officials complained about funding allocated to the University of Wisconsin-Madison Roman Catholic Foundation. FFRF argued the university should de-fund UWRCF simply because the student group speaks from a Catholic viewpoint. On behalf of UWRCF and in response to FFRF's demands, ADF issued a letter to university clarifying the law and noting the university cannot de-fund a group simply because it dislikes its message.

According to UWRCF spokesperson Tim Kruse, the 501(c)(3) organization received funding from the school's student funding committee last year. However, the committee disputed, then cut, several of UWRCF's budget items for this year. UWRCF appealed to UW's student judiciary, who overturned the cuts and awarded most of the requested student fee budget.

ADF's letter to university officials may be viewed at www.telladf.org/UserDocs/UWletter.pdf.

A statement from UWRCF's lay leader in response to the FFRF's demand is available at www.telladf.org/UserDocs/UWRCFletter.pdf.

"Profession of faith or a particular set of values does not relegate a person or a student organization to second-class status," French said. "ADF will continue to monitor the situation to make sure UWRCF's constitutional rights are not violated."

Source



DISMISS A TEACHER? HORRORS!

Incompetent teachers in Glasgow who fail to improve their performance face being sacked to combat the long-running problem. The promise by Steven Purcell, council leader, to take tougher action was welcomed yesterday by Scotland's largest teaching union, the Educational Institute of Scotland. His comments follow a government report showing that one-fifth of school-leavers lack the skills necessary to get a job because bad teachers are "tolerated" by education bosses.

Mr Purcell insisted it was up to head teachers to decide which staff needed removed, but promised to support them. He said: "Only head teachers know if there are under-performance issues, but I don't think it is a secret that it is an issue that has been shied away from in this city for too long."

A report by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Education last month highlighted "unacceptable variation" in teaching quality across Scotland. The schools watchdog is also to publish a separate report on the performance of individual education authorities. Ronnie Smith, general secretary of the EIS, said: "We don't want incompetent teachers. All I ask is that the necessary employment procedures and fairness are followed."

Source



Anti-Christian education in Australian schools

The publication of the Danish cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed was considered insulting by Muslims and, notwithstanding freedom of expression, the argument was put by many in the West that the cartoons were culturally offensive and should never have been published. Witness the way nuns and priests are vilified and mocked in Sydney's gay and lesbian Mardi Gras and the offensive nature of so-called artworks such as Piss Christ and it quickly becomes apparent that moral outrage is sometimes selective. As noted in George Weigel's The Cube and the Cathedral, it is not a good time to be a Christian. Secular humanism is in the ascendant, evidenced by the European Union Constitution's refusal to mention Christianity in its preamble, and "European man has convinced himself that in order to be modern and free, he must be radically secular".

Further evidence of the way Christianity is either disparaged or ignored can be found in the way history is taught. Beginning with the national studies of society and the environment curriculum developed during the '90s, the focus is very much on diversity and cultural relativism. Learning is defined in terms of gender, multicultural, global, futures and indigenous perspectives, and you can search in vain for a substantial recognition and treatment of Australia's Anglo/Celtic tradition or this nation's Judeo/Christian heritage.

This year's Victorian history curriculum for prep to Year 10 continues in the same vein. Students are told that Australia has always been multicultural and that our history is one of multiple heritages, influences and connections. The focus is on various and diverse cultural groups without any recognition that the contributions of some should be more valued than others. In line with a postmodern view of the world, one where there are no absolutes and where knowledge is subjective, students are also told that historical understanding is multiple, conflicting and partial as "there are many perspectives on events and that explanations are often incomplete and contested".

School textbooks such as the Jacaranda's SOSE Alive 2 and Humanities Alive 2 offer further evidence of the way Australia's mainstream cultural and religious beliefs and institutions are belittled. As noted in Thomas E.Woods's How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilisation, a strong argument can be put, especially during the Middle Ages, that the church was critically important in promoting learning, scientific discovery and advances in agriculture and animal husbandry. Not so, according to the writers of the Jacaranda textbooks. In the chapter Medieval Life, the power of the church, instead of being based on the strength or truth of its teachings, is said to be based on controlling people by making them "terrified of going to hell" or facing "torture and death".

The references to monks and priests also present the church in a negative light. Students are told about "corrupt church men" who lie in order "to attract pilgrims to get money for their monastery" and who are more interested in "drinking and gambling". In describing the Renaissance, with its emphasis on classical learning, the implication is that the church was interested only in controlling people in a heavy-handed, doctrinaire way. Ignored is the role of the monasteries in preserving Greek and Roman manuscripts and the church's involvement in establishing universities throughout Europe. As noted by Woods: "The fact is, the church cherished, preserved, studied and taught the works of the ancients, which would otherwise have been lost. Western civilisation's admiration for the written word and for the classics comes to us from the Catholic Church that preserved both through the barbarian invasions."

The most egregious example of the way education has succumbed to moral relativism is the textbooks' treatment of September 11. The textbook presents the Muslim terrorists who destroyed the World Trade Centre as the moral equaivalent of Christian Crusaders, as both gave their lives for a religious cause and both expected they would "go straight to heaven when they died". Students are also asked: "Those who destroyed the World Trade Centre are regarded as terrorists. Might it be fair to say that the Crusaders who attacked the Muslim inhabitants of Jerusalem were also terrorists?"

In addition to the selective nature of the outrage against the Danish cartoons and the fact Islam cannot be lampooned while Christianity is fair game is the irony that the very values most often stated in defence of accepting diversity and difference arise from the Judeo/Christian tradition. As such, there can be no place for moral or cultural relativism. Tolerance and respect for others, the rule of law, separation of powers and popular sovereignty are all essential aspects of Western civilisation and have strong links with the Christian faith.

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

***************************



9 March, 2006

YOU CAN BET THAT ALL THESE GUYS ARE TEACHING SOMEWHERE IN AMERICA

Post lifted from Betsy's Page

How perfect is it that Howard Zinn's organization, Historians Against War, has a name that lends itself to the acronym of HAW. As historians must be aware, this recalls Lord Haw-Haw, the nickname for the radio announcer of the radio show broadcast by Nazi Germany into Britain during WWII.

The name Lord Haw-Haw is most commonly associated with the Irish-American William Joyce, a former member of the British Union of Fascists, whose on-air style approximated to a sneering mockery of the British military effort against the Germans.

Gee, sneering at your nation's military effort when at war? Is it a coincidence that Zinn's group chose a name with that acronym?

Jacob Laksin looks at what some of these historians were saying at their most recent confab. One historian is upset that some feminists actually had the poor taste to support the war in Afghanistan.

Where Zinn urged a new dedication to the cause of politicized education, the conference's other keynote speaker, Andrea Smith, a radical feminist and a assistant professor in Women's Studies and American Culture at the University of Michigan, took aim at those who dared to dissent from academic orthodoxy with respect to the wisdom of military intervention. Smith singled out for opprobrium feminists who supported the U.S.-led overthrow of Afghanistan's Taliban regime. One report quoted Smith sneering that a bombing campaign could never liberate women. Enlarging on that theme, Smith asserted that the real threat to women came not from the governments like the Taliban but from concepts like the nation state.

Yeah, those Afghan women were so much better off under the Taliban. I'm sure they would prefer to go back to that tyranny rather than to have had the U.S. army throw out the Taliban.

Read more of the speeches that these historians were giving praising themselves for their efforts to turn students against America. This is what parents are paying so much so that their kids can hear this sort of propaganda. It boggles the mind.



FAR-LEFT PROPAGANDA MASQUERADING AS EDUCATION

That the Crusades were a defensive response designed to halt and roll back Muslim conquests of Christian lands is the most basic history but it seems that Australian kids are hearing the opposite



A textbook widely used in Victorian high schools describes the Crusaders who fought in the Holy Land in the Middle Ages as terrorists, akin to those responsible for the September 11 attacks. The Year 8 textbook Humanities Alive 2 says that the Crusaders, like Muslim terrorists, "believed they were giving their lives for a religious cause". "Like the Crusaders ... they were told they would go straight to heaven when they died," the book says. "Those who destroyed the World Trade Center are regarded as terrorists. Might it be fair to say that Crusaders who attacked the Muslim inhabitants of Jerusalem were also terrorists?"

The book, used in about 100 schools around Victoria, is a revised edition of a series of textbooks published by John Wiley and Sons since 2003, all of which have included the section on September 11. The selection of textbooks is at the discretion of individual schools in Victoria and neither the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority, nor the state Education Department, have any input into the quality or content of textbooks. A spokesman for state Education Minister Lynne Kosky said schools decided for themselves what was appropriate to be taught and there were no recommended books for the curriculum.

The textbook also portrays the church as a corrupt institution driven by the desire for power and which tortured and killed anyone with opposing beliefs. "It's very out of date, this view of the church as being fiendishly power-hungry," said Dr Collett, a visiting scholar at Oxford University. "The church's activities were far more humane and pastoral than you would guess from reading this." Dr Collett said the textbook presented an oversimplified view of history and the language used suggested a particular point of view rather than asking open-ended questions. Despite popular perception, Dr Collett said those involved in the Inquisition actually spent most of their time working with divided families rather than torturing heretics. Rather than working with government to oppress people, Dr Collett said the church was the principal force against the authoritarian excesses of governments.

General manager of the schools division at John Wiley, Peter van Noorden, denied the textbook makes a connection between the Crusades and September 11. He said the section was intended to encourage discussion and prompt students to think more broadly about history. "It's very specifically put at the end of the section as a challenge for students to consider ... to analyse things from different perspectives," he said.

Source



A SKEPTICAL VIEW OF BRITAIN'S CURRENT EDUCATION DEBATE

Ruth Kelly is not the most engaging or charismatic of politicians. Yet when the history of the Blair Labour Government is written, she will probably be remembered not for strings of platitudes or her droning delivery but for her courage and tactical skill. After her brave decision last year to veto the Tomlinson plan for merging academic and vocational A levels, Ms Kelly has again defied the teachers' unions, the educational establishment and the Labour Left - the people whose misguided egalitarianism since the 1960s has steadily debased the quality of Britain's state education and closed off the main avenues of social advancement for bright children from poor homes.

The best arguments for supporting Ms Kelly's reforms come from her opponents. Until this week I was inclined to agree with the Tories that this Bill was so timid as to be almost irrelevant. But then I heard Steve Sinnott, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, denounce the Bill for promoting "the Government's obsession with so-called choice and diversity". Any educational reform opposed by the NUT probably has something to commend it - and if this Bill really does advance diversity and choice, then it deserves support.

Even more encouraging for those of us inclined to dismiss Ms Kelly's efforts as another tedious, vacuous compromise were these attacks by Frank Dobson and Peter Kilfoyle, two of the Neanderthal Labour Party's most prominent educational thinkers.

In Mr Dobson's view, "the object, not the by-product (of this Bill), is the fragmentation of the education system. Putting more and more emphasis on shopping around benefits the well-off and the informed." The consequence, Mr Kilfoyle says, is clear: "This will lead not just to a two-tier but a multi-tier system, to the benefit of people with the wherewithal . . . of aspirational and articulate parents."

If Mr Dobson, who has spent more time studying this legislation than I ever will, believes that it will "fragment" the education system, and if Mr Kilfoyle, who is an expert on legal niceties, confidently predicts that this Bill will "benefit aspirational parents", then I am converted from lukewarm indifference to enthusiastic support.

For fragmentation is exactly the right approach to reforming a dysfunctional, centrally planned system. And more opportunity for "aspirational parents" to try to improve their children's education without having to spend vast sums of money is exactly what Britain requires.

Educating children raises endless questions to which nobody can claim to have found all the answers. Indeed, almost every country in the world believes itself today to be in the midst of some kind of educational crisis. Under these circumstances, the best hopes for improvement come not from another Stalinist lurch into a new centrally planned educational theory, but from some kind of market mechanism of "bold persistent experimentation", with different schools trying out many different approaches and with successes distinguished from failures through the trial and error of consumer choice.

The standard objection to such choice is that some children will end up with a worse education than others, either because their parents make the wrong decisions or because the most popular schools will not admit everyone who applies. But after 40 years of purporting to deliver educational equality it is clear that the uniform comprehensive system has failed in this objective, as in so many others. This is hardly surprising, since parents can never be prevented from promoting their children 's interests in a free society. Moreover, if parental involvement in education is to be encouraged, as almost everyone apart from the Labour Neanderthals now believes, then "aspirational parents" should be welcomed, not condemned. So in terms of broad objectives, the new education Bill is clearly pointing in the right direction and deserves support. Having said this, the Bill ignores the three really fundamental questions that have dogged British education for decades and are far more important than the great controversies over local authority relations with the new school trusts or even the issue of academic selection at 11.

The first of these is how to improve vocational training for teenagers and young adults without getting education policy sidetracked into a pointless quest for the mirage of "parity of esteem" between vocational and academic education. The second question is how to deal with the bottom 20 per cent of the intelligence and behaviour spectrum. This issue is of great importance to mass education, which can be severely disrupted by relatively small numbers of difficult pupils, yet it has been persistently neglected by politicians and the media, who are obsessed with the much less socially important issue of how to educate the top 20 per cent.

This leads to the third and most mysteriously absent question in Britain's educational debate. Now that the Tories have formally abandoned even the pretence of any interest in restoring the old grammar school system, there is a unanimous consensus in Britain against any kind of academic selection at the age 11 (except, of course, for the rich and successful who maintain their passionate support for this principle in private schools). But what about selection at 13, 14 or even 16? That 11 is too early an age to divide children (especially boys, who tend to be later developers) between academic and vocational streams may be indisputable. But nobody disputes that such a division has to be made at 13, 14 or 16 and indeed is made in almost every school.

By turning selection at 11 into an ideological totem, both the Left and the Right have distracted attention from two much more important issues: establishing the right age to divide children into academic and vocational streams; and creating the right institutions for both types of pupil to have a proper education. These questions are likely to remain taboo for many years, but maybe some answers will come from the diversity and experimentation in the education Bill

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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8 March, 2006

HARVARD IN DECLINE (1)

Leftists eventually destroy everything they get control of. Destroying things is what they like doing. "Revolution" they often call it. The first article below however, by Peter Beinart, is a view from the moderate Left

Some of my best friends are professors. Many of my relatives, too. I'd probably be one myself, had I done better in graduate school. But, this week at least, I'm glad I chose another line of work, because the most prestigious professoriate in the world, Harvard's, has just made an ass of itself.

It has done so by toppling President Lawrence Summers, who resigned rather than face a second faculty no-confidence vote, which he seemed set to lose. In explaining the coup, conservatives will cite political correctness. They'll say that, by challenging African American Studies Professor Cornel West and musing about the relationship between gender and scientific aptitude, Summers ran afoul of the left-wing dogmatism that dominates campus life. But that gives the faculty too much credit. It lets them pretend they were defending some abstract ideal, some principle larger than their own self-interest. The truth is far shabbier: The Harvard faculty deposed Lawrence Summers because he wanted them to care about something beyond themselves.

First, Summers wanted tenured professors to teach. And not just that; he wanted them to teach large undergraduate survey courses. Summers noticed what people have been noticing for a long time: Students at Harvard--and at other prestigious universities--often graduate without the kind of core knowledge that you'd expect from a good high school student. Instead, they meet Harvard's curricular requirements with a hodgepodge of arbitrary, esoteric classes that cohere into nothing at all. Summers wanted to change that, perhaps by making students take overview courses that gave them a general introduction to different disciplines. The problem is that those are exactly the kinds of courses Harvard professors don't want to teach. Most professors are specialists. They want to delve ever more deeply into their particular research areas. The more their teaching tracks that research, the easier their lives are. So they offer classes on obscure micro-topics. The last thing they want is to bone up on introductory material they forgot in graduate school. Summers, who made a point of teaching a freshman seminar himself, thought perhaps they should. And, for that, he was accused of not respecting the faculty. When he mentioned reviving Harvard's introductory art history survey to one top professor in the department, she responded that no self-respecting scholar would want to teach such a course. "Are we citizens or employees?" asked another professor, pretentiously. How na‹ve of Lawrence Summers: He actually thought they might be teachers.

Summers certainly wasn't opposed to research. But he was impolitic enough to ask various departments to explain why their research mattered. He evidently believed that, as president of the world's premier university, asking probing questions about the direction of academic disciplines was part of his job. The poor fool. He even had the temerity to ask West, one of only 19 "university professors," a rank supposedly reserved for the greatest scholars in the world, what he was doing. The confrontation exploded because West is high-profile and black. But he wasn't the only university professor who was asked about his work. And, for many faculty, the really offensive part wasn't that Summers confronted a black faculty member. It's that he asked any tenured faculty member to justify how they spent their time. "Once someone's a tenured professor," one professor told The Chronicle of Higher Education, "if he wants to write articles for The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times instead of doing his scholarship, he has every right to do that. Once someone is a tenured professor, they answer to God. It's as simple as that." Summers thought it was a little more complicated: He thought that tenured professors had a responsibility to cultivate more than their own egos. It's unlikely his successor will make the same mistake.

Finally, Summers thought it was a problem that roughly 90 percent of Harvard seniors were graduating with honors. The Ivy League considers itself a bastion of meritocracy. But, as Summers understood, Harvard's shameless grade inflation mocks that pretense. By giving almost everyone very high grades, Harvard promotes the fiction that virtually all of its graduates are academic superstars--and obscures those who actually are. Worse, it punishes those less exalted universities na‹ve enough to believe that a mediocre student deserves a C. As a result, students with honest transcripts find themselves at a disadvantage when competing for jobs or graduate school.

But, for professors, giving everyone absurdly high grades is the path of least resistance. The last thing an academic wants is angry students showing up at her office door, trying to appeal their grades. Far easier to preemptively capitulate, which seems to be what the Harvard faculty thought Summers would do as well.

Even more than professors, one might have expected Harvard students to rebel against Summers's crusade against grade inflation. But they didn't. In fact, despite all the news reports about how controversial Summers was at Harvard, he doesn't seem to have been that controversial among students at all. An online poll found that only 19 percent of undergraduates believed Summers should resign. A New York Times Magazine profile noted that virtually "every student who has actually had contact with Summers has come away liking him." And, while the faculty passed a no-confidence vote against him last year, graduate students in the arts and sciences rejected one. One wonders, in fact, what might happen if Harvard students were given the chance to vote no-confidence in their professors.

Perhaps none of this really matters. In this era of conservative power, in which politicians are more likely to run against America's top universities than to learn from them, Harvard is largely irrelevant. But that was part of Summers's project: to challenge the narcissism that makes Harvard easy to ignore. It's why he has made it easier for students to participate in rotc. It's why he waived tuition for families making less than $40,000 a year. It's why he wanted professors to do useful research and students to learn basic knowledge. As one of the few contemporary college presidents who tried to turn liberal ideals into government policy, rather than just opining about them from the ivory tower, he wanted Harvard to serve the nation, not merely itself. And, when Harvard hired him five years ago, that's what it said it wanted, too. Now we know the truth.

Source



HARVARD IN DECLINE (2)

When James Bryant Conant became president of Harvard in 1933, he took over an institution riddled with anti-Semitism, bound by parochial ties to wealthy Northeastern families, and hostile to the broad teaching of modern science. Fortunately for Harvard and for the United States, Conant could rely for two decades on the firm backing of the Harvard Corporation as he implemented a curriculum that became the gold standard of American education in liberal arts. Although Conant served more than half a century ago, the Harvard that the world imagines today-an internationally renowned center of learning that attracts the brightest minds in every discipline-is very much his creation.

For the past three decades, however, Harvard's reputation for preeminence has not always reflected reality in Cambridge. Who now thinks Harvard is better in engineering than MIT or Caltech? Who thinks Harvard's Law School, hobbled by rancorous dissent, is better than Yale's, Virginia's, or Stanford's? Its Philosophy Department, once the home of William James, C.I. Lewis, and W.V.O. Quine, is now typically ranked below departments at Michigan and Pittsburgh.

Harvard's relative decline is not entirely its own fault: It is difficult to remain at the top in dozens of academic fields, especially in a prosperous nation where many universities pursue excellence. Is it Harvard's fault that the University of Texas became ambitious enough to lure away Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg and his entire team?

And yet we expect more of Harvard than of other schools, if only because its $26 billion endowment alone accounts for 9 percent of the total endowments of America's 3,500 colleges and universities. A university that rich cannot have financial problems and ought to be able to maintain its lead in all fields. Harvard has not.

One would suppose that some such candid self-assessment led the Harvard Corporation to appoint Larry Summers as president in 2001. Summers's vast experience in government and world affairs gave him a perspective on the world and Harvard's position in it not available to those who have never left the cloistered confines of academia. He did not come complacently to Harvard, ready to accept the status quo. He came to make Harvard-great as it is-even greater and to guide Harvard into new important areas of study and service.

Why then did the Harvard Corporation quaver before a few hostile articles in the press, generated by faculty ideologues who, with rare exceptions, spoke under the cloak of anonymity? Why did the board cast aside the best and most effective president of Harvard since Conant at the behest of a minority of faculty?

The Boston Globe and The New York Times reported the opinions of faculty members that there was a ''crisis at Harvard," ''a state of paralysis," that it was overwhelmed by ''a tide of chaos and dysfunction," and that the cause was one man-Larry Summers

But the facts are very different. Harvard was and is functioning beautifully. Students are attending classes. The faculty-even those fomenting revolt-were and are teaching their classes and continuing their research in all of Harvard's many schools and colleges. The situation at Harvard today can hardly be compared to the paralysis in the Vietnam era. The fact that a small minority of faculty wished to depose the president did not constitute a crisis until the Corporation made it one.

Summers's removal will haunt Harvard as it seeks his successor. Harvard needed what Larry Summers had to offer. But will anyone of his drive and courage now take the job?

. . .

As the Harvard Corporation proclaimed in announcing his departure, Summers ''brought to the leadership of the University a sense of bold aspiration and initiative, a prodigious intelligence, and an insistent devotion to maximizing Harvard's contributions to the realm of ideas and to the larger world." This is quite an endorsement, one fully merited by Summers's major accomplishments-including, among other initiatives, the Allston campus, the digitizing of library holdings, the Stem Cell Institute, and curricular reform.

Summers also fulfilled his academic responsibilities by questioning the work of faculty and challenging ideologues to support their claims with facts. Many faculty members believe they are infallible and that no president should dare criticize them, while every faculty member sheltered in the cocoon of tenure feels free to criticize the president (though again, usually on the condition of anonymity). Woe to the president who asserts his right to criticize a faculty member.

Summers also exercised his intellectual leadership in a forthright address to an academic conference on women in science. By raising provocative questions, he had the temerity to assert that no subject of scientific inquiry is taboo in the university.

As has been noted, Summers is himself partially to blame for his loss of authority. In a futile effort to placate his critics, he met with faculty and apologized for the way he expressed himself. He was not so much arrogant as naive, for his critics were not seeking understanding, but power; they interpreted his repeated efforts at reconciliation as weakness and vulnerability. Summers made the mistake of apologizing again and again for being right.

But the members of the Harvard Corporation must accept most of the blame for Summers's fall and its consequences. Disgruntled faculty activists were greatly emboldened in recent weeks when members of the Corporation began meeting with them behind Summers's back. There is nothing so effective as Star Chamber proceedings to secure a conviction. The Corporation must also accept responsibility for taking far too seriously the vote of no confidence among members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Only 218 out of 657 members of one Harvard faculty supported the measure. The vote would have been meaningless if the Corporation had ignored or repudiated

In recent years the faculty of Emerson College in Boston has twice voted no confidence in President Jacqueline Liebergott, but Emerson's Board has wisely supported her in developing a new campus and resisting faculty obstruction.

At Boston University in the 1970s, I raised standards for tenure and promotion, fought the formation of a faculty union, restored ROTC, and addressed our precarious finances. I was twice subjected to votes of no-confidence-about 500 voted the first time, about 700 the second, and in each case the majority of professors attending voted against me. Nine deans called for my resignation. I was even falsely accused of going through the wastebaskets of faculty and employing photographic surveillance. One distinguished faculty member who opposed my reforms lamented, ''Why don't you let the university go bankrupt with dignity?"

The attempt by faculty at Boston University to unseat its president was ended by a vote of confidence from the Board of Trustees. The late Arthur Metcalf, a member of the board, brought its deliberations to a close by saying, ''If the board removes its president, Boston University will descend into the leperdom it shall richly deserve." The board then gave me its hearty endorsement by a three-fourths majority. While many faculty members and deans believed my dreams were impossible aspirations, the board shared my vision of a great Boston University. The board's resolve ended the revolt, and board members proudly endured the contumely of the press.

The members of the Harvard Corporation have shown no such courage, nor did they understand that the changes they endorsed would inevitably lead to controversy. Faculty members may be well-informed in their specializations, but they have limited knowledge and experience-and no responsibility-with regard to the needs and goals of the university as a whole. They lack the objectivity to govern the entire university or to assess the president's service to it.

...

The Corporation's failure of nerve has debased the presidency of Harvard. The office is now at the mercy of any minority of faculty who can convince the media that a contrived tempest in a teapot is a crisis of major proportions and, thereby, spook the members of the Corporation.

Where will Harvard now turn to find another leader? The Corporation has repudiated a strong president who recognized Harvard's weaknesses and was determined to correct them and who perceived new objectives and was determined to pursue them. Many timid and compliant souls will seek this prestigious office with promises of obeisance. But what outstanding person intent on making a difference at Harvard will consider it?

One member of the Corporation, Nannerl O. Keohane, anticipates no problem. ''Faculty members are not interested in 'taking over' the university," Keohane pronounced; ''they are mainly interested in getting on with the work they do as teachers and scholars." This is true for the large majority of faculty who supported Summers but stuck to their work. It is pure balderdash with regard to those who schemed to remove him. Their appetite for power increased by what it fed on. Summers's opponents now propose changes such as giving professors a controlling voice in the appointment of deans and even putting faculty members on the Corporation.

Once reality sets in, the Harvard Corporation may well abandon the quest for another Conant, a president who can restore substance to the university's international reputation. It may perhaps adopt the German system, permitting the faculty to elect a rector who will serve with limited influence for two or three years. Power will then be thoroughly diffused among deans and activist faculty. But Harvard may then need to replace its motto-Veritas-with Status Quo.

Source



ALL KIDS ARE EQUAL IN AUSTRALIAN SCHOOLS

Smart kids not wanted

As many as 250,000 gifted children across Australia are being forced to dumb down at school, trapped in classes up to four grades below their ability. The head of the gifted education centre at the University of New South Wales, Miraca Gross, said between 10 and 15 per cent of the school population was exceptionally talented. Half the gifted children aged 8 to 10 who were tested on Year 8 maths, English, science and reading scored better than the average 14-year-old and similar results were found for children in years 7 and 9 who were tested on Year 12 material, Professor Gross said. "If they achieve at their full level, other kids don't particularly want to be friends with them," she said. "The other choice is to dumb down and work at a level much lower than they can, ask silly questions in the classroom and make deliberate mistakes in their work or tests so other kids will think they're like them."

The centre tests about 2000 students every year who are identified as advanced learners by their teachers but Professor Gross said the vast majority of talented students left school unrecognised. Professor Gross said schools were still poor at identifying their gifted students and often reluctant to develop and accommodate their needs. "We are only scratching the surface on the tip of the iceberg," she said. "And eight-ninths of an iceberg is underwater, so we are failing to identify a lot of kids. "In every class of 30 there would be at least two or three who could work about three years beyond their age."

The university's Gifted Education Resource Research and Information Centre tests about 1500 students annually in years 4 to 6 (aged between 10 and 12) with work designed for Year 8 students (about 14 years) in maths, science, English and reading. About 500 students in years 7 to 9 sit Year 12 tests. Primary students Talia Jacobs, 11, and Jack Lo Russo, 10, performed so well in the tests they were invited to one of the university's residential programs that run for five days in January for students who score in the 97th percentile for their age. Jack started a new school this year that recognises his talent. He has a large group of friends who are also bright students, but said that at his previous school he was often bored because the work was too easy.

Talia has been more fortunate in having a teacher and a school who recognised and stretched her academic talent, but she still appreciated the chance to mix with other gifted students at the residential program. "I just liked that there were other people of the same ability as me, and that I could relate to them in the same sort of way," she said.

Professor Gross said many gifted students were ostracised or quietly ignored by their age peers and it was imperative that schools started actively identifying and catering for gifted students, in the same way as for those gifted in music or sports. "Gifted kids can feel they have to make a choice between friendship and achievement," she said.

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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7 March, 2006

APPALLING IGNORANCE IN THE BRITISH EDUCATION SYSTEM

How the hell can the kids learn when the teachers keep making the most glaring mistakes?

My son is a maths whizz, but for once he wanted my help. “I can’t work this one out, Dad,” he said plaintively. It was a bit like David Beckham asking me to take a free kick. He had been working on an old Key Stage Three paper by way of preparation for a forthcoming examination. It was a multi-part question and in the middle of it you had to be able to come up with a simplification of (n +1)² in order to progress. It was clear, looking ahead to the next part of the question, that the examiners expected you to write: (n +1)² = n² + 1.

Now anyone who studied with the late great J P C (Jake) Cole (MA, Cantab) will know that this is a classic schoolboy howler. It was the kind of thing that used to make him go red in the face and snap the chalk in his hand. Every now and then we would give him answers like this just to enrage him (for which I apologise and ask the Cole family to take several dozen similar offences into consideration). We knew — since Jake had drummed it into us — that (a + b)² = (a + b) (a + b) = a² + b² + (crucially) 2ab. Therefore (n +1)² = n² + 2n + 1, not n² + 1. The authors of KS3 had omitted the 2n.

I have come across another transgression against all that J P C Cole held sacred. This is the question of 9 ÷ 0 = ? Jake could have demonstrated that any number divided by zero must give infinity. How many times can you get zero into 9 (or, to put it another way, subtract 0 from 9)? 1, 2, 3? Obviously an infinite number of times. Therefore 9 ÷ 0 = u221E and n÷ 0 = u221E.

Some authorities maintain that dividing by zero is just an impossible operation (when in 1997 the computer of the USS Yorktown tried to divide by zero the ship shut down for three days and had to be towed into port). Or that dividing by zero produces the Big Bang, the infinite energy of the vacuum, and shakes the whole structure of mathematics. The commissars of Key Stage One mathematics think the answer is 9.

Case, the Campaign for Science and Engineering, recently highlighted the case of a father who discovered that his child was being taught that 9 ÷ 0 = 9 (as if zero were equal to nothing and the 9 wasn’t really being divided at all). Amazed, he complained about it to the school. They said it was perfectly correct. Incensed, he took it to his local education authority — and they said it was fine, too. Now really determined to get this sorted, he took his problem to the Numeracy Bureau and they said thank you for his concern but that the answer was spot on.

With a highly developed sense of infinity, especially in the higher realms of bureaucracy, this single-minded father finally had to go all the way up to the Department for Education, who checked with their Supreme Mathematical Adviser, who said yes, of course it was bloody wrong and what stupid idiot had been putting this about?

These mistakes can be fixed, but it strikes me, having witnessed young high-fliers being systematically ground down by years of sheer plod at school, that there is a larger problem threatening to immobilise the whole stately QE2 of mathematics.

At my older son’s school, the top set in maths is disproportionately packed with boys and girls from Asia, mostly Chinese, and some from Singapore and Korea (a situation borne out, at the global level, by the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study — Timms). How come? A lot of the British children think the answer is that Asian children are just better at mathematics than we are. They are Manchester United or Chelsea to our worthy Conference cloggers. And they are right, not because of any inherent genetic advantage, but simply because in the Far East good young mathematicians are cherished and nurtured and coached in the way good football teams are. In Singapore, for example, the highly fluid and flexible web-based HeyMath system allows you to be as good as you can be.

If Team UK is hovering around the relegation zone, it is partly because we still have a misguided if well-meaning idea that everyone is or should be or could be equally good at maths. They aren’t and never will be. Mathematics, like music and chess, is one of those fields in which some kids are just amazingly gifted —Mozarts or Grand Masters of maths — and they have to be given the freedom to play at their own level.

The numeracy strategy may have been effective in making the innumerate numerate, but it tends to condemn to stifling, mind-numbing repetition those who are already — almost instinctively — mathematically fluent. This feels like punishment, being shot down for flying too high too soon. Kurt Vonnegut has a story about a perfectly egalitarian Utopia in which all the fast runners have weights chained to their ankles and fast thinkers have to wear headphones that send a regular buzz through their brains to sabotage all coherent thought. Under the guise of numeracy, our schools are tending to hold back the hot young mathematicians and lock them up with a numerical ball and chain so that everyone else can catch up. And buzz their brains, every so often, with manifest absurdities.

Source



The never-ending decline of Australian public education:

One of Victoria's newest government schools is a homework-free zone. Students at Point Cook's Carranballac Prep to Year 9 College are not assigned any homework. Instead, the school's 820 students are encouraged to spend more time with their families including playing board games, gardening and learning how to sew and bake cakes. College director Peter Kearney said he wanted students to bond with their families and improve their general knowledge and lifestyle skills, instead of locking themselves in their bedrooms to do hours of homework.

Mr Kearney said it was "absolute rubbish" to give students as young as Prep daily homework of up to 30 minutes a day as recommended by the Department of Education. He said schools were giving out homework only to "appease parents". "Parents think homework means success, but there's no link between academic performance and homework," he said. "Nine times out of 10 the homework doesn't help kids, it diminishes them." Mr Kearney said the school curriculum belonged in the classroom with students needing to learn from other sources outside school including reading and playing sport. "The world we live in is full of stimulation. We need to have more of a general knowledge and understanding," he said. "Some of the kids in our school thought carrots grew in supermarkets." But Mr Kearney said his school may give some "purposeful" homework to Year 9s next year to prepare them for VCE.

More here



Keith Burgess Jackson on inteligent design: "What a strange world! I'm an atheist and a Darwinist, but, because I'm also a philosopher and a conservative, I find myself on the side of design theorists on the question of science education. As I've said many times in my blogs, I respect religion and am grateful for my Judeo-Christian heritage. I see no harm in allowing science teachers to raise questions about Darwinism. Isn't that what education is all about? Shouldn't students be urged to think critically about every theory? Sadly, there are some Darwinists who want to shield the theory from criticism. This is nothing more than indoctrination. If philosophers and scientists can debate design theory, why can't high-school students?

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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6 March, 2006

A SMALL CORRECTIVE TO SOME UNWORLDLY EDUCATION

"Southwestern Oregon Community College President Judith Hansen is offering grief counseling to the students of the college's culinary institute, so they can cope with the sudden departure of their teacher, Chef Robert Gregson. It doesn't sound like Chef Gregson told his students much about the restaurant world.

The following are real situations that his grief-stricken culinary aces may encounter in their careers.

The new chef has just produced all the dinners for a big table, but the diners insist on walking out now because it took too long. Call the restaurant psychologist! The chef needs grief counseling!

The waitress is bringing two dinners for a couple who have just finished their salads - but when she gets to their table they're gone. They have taken their plates, cups, glasses and silverware and are driving off in their ratty old VW-bus. Grief counseling.

Some guy sends his omelet back three times, claiming it is burned - but he doesn't even look at it. A customer who ordered shrimp cannelloni is outraged because there is a shrimp in the cannelloni and she is allergic to shrimp. Somebody else can't possibly eat his fish because the pieces are cut a different shape from last time. Some woman refuses to eat her clam chowder because it isn't white enough. All of these cases call for grief counseling.

In the middle of the dinner rush, there's a flood in the restroom: Somebody has stuffed paper towels in the toilet. Forget Roto-Rooter: grief counseling!

Good grief! The list could go on, with employees who steal, parents who won't control screaming, running kids; vagrants who think the flower pots are bathrooms; and customers who are high on something, but I have the solution. Southwestern should pioneer a new academic major, restaurant grief counselor. The potential is awesome."

Source

Update:

Chef Gregson has replied to the above comments here but he sounds such a jerk that I have no inclination to reproduce the reply.



THE CORRUPT DE PAUL UNIVERSITY AGAIN

As a nominally Catholic university, these Stalinists must be some embarrassment to the Holy Father, who seems to be a man of strong principles. Post below lifted from Marathon Pundit

Chicago's DePaul University is at its favorite game again, stifling free speech. Marathon Pundit was informed this afternoon that DePaul backed out of an agreement to run the linked-below advertisement in the DePaulia, an owned and operated publication of DePaul.

Click here to see the ad that DePaul turned down.

Big thanks to Phil Haskett of Medary.com for hosting the document.

FrontPage Magazine is on online publication, its editor-in-chief is noted author David Horowitz, whose latest book is The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America Horowitz is the braintrust behind the Academic Bill of Rights. Discover the Network also known as DTN, is a project of FrontPage.

Here is an excerpt of the ad copy of that DePaul refused:

In October 2005, DePaul University forbade its own students to protest a campus appearance by Ward Churchill. Churchill is known for blaming the World Trade Center victims for their own deaths, calling them "Little Eichmanns." DePaul's actions came about a year after it suspended Professor Thomas Klocek for engaging students in an academic debate.

More..

Find out why DePaul is considered one of America's 100 most intellectually corrupt campuses. Visit the academia section of www.discoverthenetworks.org.

Discover the Networks is a project of FrontPage Magazine.

For more on Thomas Klocek, click here on the FIRE site.

Also from FIRE, click here for more on DePaul's censoring of a student group protesting Ward Churchill.

For more on the controversial University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill, read the Churchill Files from the Rocky Mountain News.



A little knowledge is a dangerous thing

Does teaching preschoolers about Aboriginal culture or homosexuality make them more `tolerant'? This educator thinks not

There is a strong belief in our culture that 'knowledge is power'. There is a parallel suspicion that those who wish to deny certain knowledge to some people are doing so to protect a powerful group or interest. 'Transparency' is touted as a virtue and the 'right to know' is promoted.

There is no doubt that in some cases information is covered up in order to protect dubious activities. But is it always the case that it is a good idea to 'let it all hang out'?

Educators also have great faith in the power of information to change people in desirable ways. We, and the community at large, believe that knowing more about an issue or a group of people will inevitably lead to more informed attitudes and greater tolerance.

My observations of young children have caused me to doubt the worth of some attempts to increase children's tolerance by increasing their awareness. This occurs when programmes are designed without regard to children's developmental stage. In these circumstances another old saw applies: a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

My first inkling that well-meaning education programmes might be doing more harm than good came when my family moved to a country town in Australia that had a large Aboriginal population. I was wandering around the shopping centre with my four-year-old and we encountered some Aboriginal people. My daughter asked why they had dark skin and I said 'because they are Aboriginals'. She proclaimed: 'Aboriginals are yucky.'

I was appalled and astounded, as she had had no contact with Aboriginal people until we moved to the town a month or so before. I asked her why they were 'yucky'. She replied that it was because they eat grubs.

It transpired that her previous preschool had conducted an Aboriginal education programme. Its well-meaning teachers had not considered how the information presented might sound to three- and four-year-old Anglo children, especially the effect that knowing that the Aboriginal diet included witchetty grubs might have on them.

Another example of the backfiring of attempts to educate about human difference is the introduction of very young children to the variety of human sexual practices. The ABC children's television programme Play School has featured gay people and there are any number of well-meaning books with titles like Angie Has Two Daddies.

Anyone who has dealings with infants and primary school-aged children, as a parent, teacher or otherwise, knows that for kids of this age 'kissing' and everything that goes with it is in the same category as eating grubs: it's yucky! This is the case for heterosexual activity and the 'yuck factor' now also extends to homosexual activity, something about which most children of earlier generations knew nothing.

Of course it is not the sexual practices that are taught - but make no mistake, there's enough subterranean knowledge circulating in the playground about what mummies and daddies do to make it plain what daddies and daddies or mummies and mummies might also be doing.

The new awareness has not led to increased tolerance of human variety - rather, my observations indicate that the result is a whole new set of things to be concerned about and an increased collection of nasty names to call people. These days infant school girls call each other 'leso'. I took a straw poll and others agree with me that 'in our day' infants and primary school (or even high school) children did not abuse each other in this fashion.

Thus, far from an increase in tolerance the inappropriate mixing of information about varying sexual practices with lack of cognitive readiness has led to intolerance.

Children decide soon after they start school that teachers are obviously a higher authority than parents, because, for example, notes go home telling parents to do things and parents oblige. This notion can combine with some, again, well-meaning education programmes to cause difficulties. I shall use my youngest child as an example once again.

In her final year of preschool my daughter started to respond to many requests with strident refusals and the insistence that 'I don't have to do what you tell me to/what I don't want to do'. Another moment of astonishment and concern followed for her mother. I tried to get to the bottom of this newfound rebelliousness and discovered that it was her take on the message being purveyed by the anti-child abuse education she had received.

Programmes designed to help children avoid abuse quite rightly do not go into detail about the harm they are designed to prevent, and can quite easily be interpreted as conferring the right to say 'no' to anything that the child does not want to do. My daughter is certainly not the only one who got the wrong message: another mother reported that the result for her son of 'If it doesn't feel right, you can say no' was his refusal to eat peas because 'it doesn't feel right'. He cited his teacher as the authority supporting his defiant stance.

My daughter is now eight but the residual effects of her misunderstanding the point of the anti-abuse education lingers. It is now part of her mindset that she does not have to do what she does not want to do. There is a troubling sense in which such programmes lead to an 'it's all about me' mentality rather than 'I'm part of a family/community' attitudes.

While we understandably want our children and those we teach to be able to look after themselves while being tolerant of others, current attempts to ensure this may be backfiring. It's time to consider whether children are hearing what we are trying to say to them. Or whether it is the case, to quote one of my informants, that 'we've gone from being ignorant even as adults about many matters, not too many generations ago, to being informed but still ignorant at the age of 5'.

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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5 March, 2006

Black Flight: The exodus to charter schools

MINNEAPOLIS--Something momentous is happening here in the home of prairie populism: black flight. African-American families from the poorest neighborhoods are rapidly abandoning the district public schools, going to charter schools, and taking advantage of open enrollment at suburban public schools. Today, just around half of students who live in the city attend its district public schools.

As a result, Minneapolis schools are losing both raw numbers of students and "market share." In 1999-2000, district enrollment was about 48,000; this year, it's about 38,600. Enrollment projections predict only 33,400 in 2008. A decline in the number of families moving into the district accounts for part of the loss, as does the relocation of some minority families to inner-ring suburbs. Nevertheless, enrollments are relatively stable in the leafy, well-to-do enclave of southwest Minneapolis and the city's white ethnic northeast. But in 2003-04, black enrollment was down 7.8%, or 1,565 students. In 2004-05, black enrollment dropped another 6%.

Black parents have good reasons to look elsewhere. Last year, only 28% of black eighth-graders in the Minneapolis public schools passed the state's basic skills math test; 47% passed the reading test. The black graduation rate hovers around 50%, and the district's racial achievement gap remains distressingly wide. Louis King, a black leader who served on the Minneapolis School Board from 1996 to 2000, puts it bluntly: "Today, I can't recommend in good conscience that an African-American family send their children to the Minneapolis public schools. The facts are irrefutable: These schools are not preparing our children to compete in the world." Mr. King's advice? "The best way to get attention is not to protest, but to shop somewhere else."

They can do so because of the state's longstanding commitment to school choice. In 1990 Minnesota allowed students to cross district boundaries to enroll in any district with open seats. Two years later in St. Paul, the country's first charter school opened its doors. (Charter schools are started by parents, teachers or community groups. They operate free from burdensome regulations, but are publicly funded and accountable.) Today, this tradition of choice is providing a ticket out for kids in the gritty, mostly black neighborhoods of north and south- central Minneapolis.

While about 1,620 low-income Minneapolis students attend suburban public schools, most of the fleeing minority and low-income students choose charter schools. Five years ago, 1,750 Minneapolis students attended charters; today 5,600 do. In 2000-01, 788 charter students were black; today 3,632 are. Charters are opening in the city at a record pace: up from 23 last year to 28, with 12 or so more in the pipeline.

According to the Center for School Change at the University of Minnesota's Humphrey Institute, Minneapolis charter school enrollment is 91% minority and 84% low-income, while district enrollment is 72% minority and 67% low-income. Joe Nathan, the center's director, says that parents want strong academic programs, but also seek smaller schools and a stable teaching staff highly responsive to student needs. Charter schools offer many options. Some cater to particular ethnic communities like the Hmong or Somali; others offer "back to basics" instruction or specialize in arts or career preparation. At Harvest Preparatory School, a K-6 school that is 99% black and two-thirds low income, students wear uniforms, focus on character, and achieve substantially higher test scores than district schools with similar demographics.

Since the state doles out funds on a per-pupil basis, the student exodus has hit the district's pocketbook hard. The loss of students has contributed to falling budgets, shuttered classrooms and deep staff cuts, and a district survey suggests more trouble ahead. Black parents in 2003 gave the Minneapolis school system significantly more negative ratings than other parents, the two major beefs being poor quality academic programs and lack of discipline. Preschool parents, another group vital to the district's future, also expressed disillusionment: 44% expressed interest in sending their children to charters. Charter school parents, in contrast, appeared very satisfied: 97% said they would be "very likely" or "somewhat likely" to choose a charter again.

The school board has promised to address parent concerns, but few observers expect real reform. Minneapolis is a one-party town, dominated by Democrats, and is currently reeling from leadership shake-ups that have resulted in three superintendents in the last few years. The district has handled budget cutbacks and school closings ineptly, leading some parents to joke bitterly about its tendency to penalize success and reward failure.

Parents are particularly angry about seniority policies, which often lead to the least experienced teachers being placed in the most challenging school environments. Nevertheless, a few weeks ago the Minneapolis school board approved a teacher contract that largely continues this policy, along with other union-driven practices that perpetuate the status quo.

Black leaders like Louis King have had enough. He has a message for the school board: "You'll have to make big changes to get us back." He says the district needs a board that views families as customers and understands that competition has unalterably changed the rules of the game. "I'm a strong believer in public education," says Mr. King. "But this district's leaders have to make big changes or go out of business. If they don't, we'll see them in a museum, like the dinosaurs."

Minneapolis families seeking to escape troubled schools are fortunate to have the options they do. That's not the case in many other states, where artificial barriers--from enrollment caps to severe underfunding--have stymied the growth of charter schools.

The city's experience should lead such states to reconsider the benefits of expansive school choice. Conventional wisdom holds that middle-class parents take an interest in their children's education, while low-income and minority parents lack the drive and savvy necessary. The black exodus here demonstrates that, when the walls are torn down, poor, black parents will do what it takes to find the best schools for their kids.

Source



'Rubbish' humanities research projects knocked in Australia

The humanities have become so corrupted by nonsense and propaganda they should be thrown out of the contest for public research funding. Paddy McGuinness, the journalist asked by former federal education minister Brendan Nelson to vet "wacky" grants at the Australian Research Council, said the humanities could be excluded from the council's funding scheme with "little loss to society". "The intellectual rigour of the sciences is increasingly absent from the humanities and social sciences," McGuinness writes in this month's issue of Quadrant magazine, which he edits. McGuinness said yesterday he could not talk in detail about the 27 research projects he believed were unworthy to share in November's $370million round of ARC funding.

Dr Nelson vetoed seven projects but did not identify them. "There was a lot of polemical, Windschuttle-the-bastard type stuff, then some very silly feminist and queer studies projects etcetera," McGuinness said, in a reference to revisionist historian Keith Windschuttle, who has challenged the work of a number of prominent academics. "Those from so-called political economists were rubbish," McGuinness said. "There was even somebody wanting to do a thing about Cuba, and what a wonderful place it is."

Some academics criticised the appointment of McGuinness as part of a right-wing political assault on the independence of the ARC. The contrary view is that the council process lacks accountability and is open to cronyism.

McGuinness said he and another outside appointment to the ARC quality and scrutiny committee, former High Court judge Daryl Dawson, had been treated with contempt by the "academic establishment" that ran the committee. "I'm used to academics attacking me but Dawson was very insulted ... he has refused to have anything more to do with it," McGuinness said yesterday. "I don't think I'll be asked (to serve on the committee) again."

Sir Daryl could not be contacted for comment, but a member of the committee, who declined to be named, challenged McGuinness's account. "He must have been at a different meeting ... that wasn't the tenor of the meeting at all." ARC chief executive Peter Hoj said McGuinness was entitled to his views. But Professor Hoj opposed a division between so-called hard and soft disciplines. "It would be counterproductive ... we shouldn't look at technology apart from its social and economic implications," he said. "You just have to think about nanotechnology."

McGuinness said he did not oppose research driven by pure intellectual curiosity but closer scrutiny of research quality was inevitable as universities succumbed to lower standards and managerialism. He said the ARC did a good job in doling out research money for the hard sciences. "There are more objective criteria - it's not just a postmodernist saying postmodernism is wonderful." The ARC system wasted the time of scientists by involving them in the review of humanities proposals, he said. "They don't know what they're doing - they just accept the so-called experts' recommendations. "When the experts are the same kind of people as those they're recommending, it's just mutual back-scratching."

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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4 March, 2006

AMERICA-HATING HIGH SCHOOL TEACHER EXPOSED

An Overland High School teacher who criticized President Bush, capitalism and U.S. foreign policy during his geography class was placed on administrative leave Wednesday afternoon after a student who recorded the session went public with the tape. In the 20-minute recording, made on an MP3 player, teacher Jay Bennish described capitalism as a system "at odds with human rights." He also said there were "eerie similarities" between what Bush said during his Jan. 28 State of the Union address and "things that Adolf Hitler used to say." The United States was "probably the single most violent nation on planet Earth," Bennish also said on the tape.

Bennish, who has been part of Overland's social studies faculty since 2000, did not return calls seeking comment Wednesday. Cherry Creek School District officials are investigating the incident, but no disciplinary action has been taken, district spokeswoman Tustin Amole said. Bennish was placed on leave "to take some of the pressure off of him" during the investigation, which could wrap up in a week, Amole said. Superintendent Monte Moses, who received a copy of the recording on Monday from 850 KOA-AM radio show host Mike Rosen, said it appears "a breach of district policy" occurred. "Our policy calls for both sides to be present ... in the interest of intellectual discourse," Moses said. Bennish's presentation appeared to be unbalanced, he said.

The district is looking into whether the incident was an isolated one and will ensure that a balanced viewpoint of the president's State of the Union address is provided to students, Moses said. Moses also said the district will be fair to Bennish. "People in life make mistakes occasionally," he said. "We address them. We learn from them."

The 20-minute recording of only a portion of the class was made by 16-year-old sophomore Sean Allen the day after the president's speech. The recording has raised questions about what level of academic freedom is acceptable for high school teachers. It also has generated discussions about Bennish on dozens of websites. Sean, who appeared on Rosen's show Wednesday morning, said in an interview he had been disturbed by the "political rants" he heard in Bennish's class. He added that he wanted to tape the session for his father, who later shared it with the media. Sean, who described himself as a political independent, said the comments seemed inappropriate for a geography class. "If he wants to give an opinion in class, I'm perfectly OK with that," he said. "But he has to give both sides of the story."

James McGrath Morris, an author who has written about academic freedom issues, said Bennish's comments are acceptable for an adult audience, but they are hard to defend in a high school classroom. In a number of legal cases, courts have ruled that "up until the age of majority, children are easily influenced ... in a way that they don't have the faculties to sort out rights from wrongs," Morris said.

Source. (HT Interested Participant).



VALUE OF UNIVERSITY STUDY QUESTIONED IN AUSTRALIA

Double masters graduate Meagan Phillipson claims university was the worst investment she has made. After eight years of study and accumulating a $20,000 HECS [tuition fee] debt, Meagan says she can't find a job. Universities should be clearer in their statistics on graduate employment, she says.

We asked NEWS.com.au readers if they thought university was a waste of time and money. We were flooded with responses, many from irate graduates or tradespeople who are raking it in. Many of you slammed Meagan for choosing an arts degree, saying she should have had more realistic expectations of her job prospects. Others said they valued their time at uni but wouldn't have had a hope in the real world if they hadn't kept a foot in the job market. Ed wrote: "My university degree would have been useless had I not complemented it with years of work experience".

Some questioned the value of going to university to raise job prospects - instead of for the learning experience. "I feel as if all of Generation Y has been brainwashed by the idea that if you don't go to uni you're a loser; quite the opposite actually," Leila wrote. "It's the tradesmen who left in Year 10 who are making six figures thanks to a critical shortage of skilled people."

Reader Nelly said unis had to give students more information about the job prospects in their chosen field, "so that they can make an informed decision whether to complete the course or not". But other readers, such as Yuan, said it was up to the individual to find job opportunities. "University is definitely worth it ... You need to stop expecting to be spoon fed and relying too much on info from the advisers."

While Louise raised a tough catch-22: "As a recent graduate with 2 degrees and a diploma and just into my 2nd year in an entry-level position, I will say that I have learnt more from being in the workforce for 12 months than I did my years of education, but without my education I would never have gotten this position."

Finally, readers such as LTJ brought a harsh dose of reality to the debate, : "Swallow your pride, get a job that you are overqualified for, do the leg work for a year or two - if you're cute, your ascension will be ever faster

More here



The Unhinged Kingdom again: "Tots as young as FIVE will help draw up school rules under Tony Blair's flagship education shake-up. Small groups of children must be consulted on measures to promote "good behaviour and discipline". The pupil-power plan is in the Government's overhaul unveiled this week. Mr Blair and Education Secretary Ruth Kelly want parents and kids to take a role in classroom decisions. But the move was branded "daft" by Shadow Education Secretary David Willetts. He said: "Is there no end to the Government's obsession with consultation? Now teachers must consult five-year-olds. The Sun revealed in October pupils of 11 will help hire teachers. MPs will vote on the Bill on March 15.

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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3 March, 2006

THE ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT PROBLEM AND THE SCHOOLS

As an Australian, I live in a country that DOES have control over its borders and where both major political parties support that control. It is always a wonder to me that the USA does not have similar control. The excerpt below is from immigration campaigner Frosty Wooldridge

As a teacher, I sat dumbfounded last May 16, 2005, when the Rocky Mountain News inked a story, "What Happened?" to a stunned Denver, Colorado audience. In a five year study starting in 1999 in Denver Public Schools, 5,663 students started the eighth grade. Five years later, only 1,884 graduated from high school. That's a 65 percent drop out/flunk out rate! That's pathetic, if not frightening.

What was the cause? First of all, 30,000 illegal aliens, speaking 40 different languages, attended Denver schools. Our classrooms suffered thousands of kids functionally illiterate in English with parents functionally illiterate in English and Spanish. The classrooms featured so much incompatible diversity that it created horrific tension, stabbings and death. Thus, American kids suffered a profoundly dumbed-down educational process. One in five teachers quit or transferred out of those Denver classrooms every nine month cycle during those five years.

Last week, the Denver Post announced that 30 percent of teachers in Denver schools were not coming back next year. This is a nationwide travesty. Why? As a teacher, I taught in the inner city in the 1970s. It's exasperating beyond understanding to walk into a classroom where children suffer learning disabilities, broken homes, teen pregnancies at 14, 15, 16, multiple languages and violent confrontations with other ethnic groups. It's impossible to teach. I left my idealism in the ghetto and escaped to a suburban school. But, today, teachers can't escape because over 1.5 million illegal alien students with more than 100 languages attend our kids' schools nationwide. We witness a national breakdown in education. Last week, Superintendent Roy Romer of Los Angeles public schools resigned in frustration and defeat. California schools match the violence of a war zone.

Can you imagine such a failure rate across the country? Can you imagine the consequences of an illiterate generation leading this Republic into the 21st century? Folks, this country won't make it. Where is the outrage?

It takes four aspects for a free and democratic society to maintain itself. It requires a highly educated population that can write, read, think and vote intelligently. It takes a similar moral code whereby everyone adheres to the common good. It requires a similar code of ethics whereby citizens adhere to honesty, doing what is right and maintaining those ethics throughout the social fabric. Finally, it takes a similar language that allows citizens to discuss, debate and resolve problems. We compromise all four with an invasion exceeding four million new people into the USA annually-20 million illegals to date and climbing. We allow the disintegration of our nation without a whimper. Where is the outrage?

Last Monday, February 20, 2006, the Rocky Mountain News reported, "Mile-High Drug Hub" making Denver the leading center for drug distribution in the United States. It's part of MS-13 Gang's dispersal of $128 billion in drugs crossing our border with Mexico every year. Ironically, Congress guards South Korea's border with 37,000 troops with our billions in tax dollars, pats down gray-haired ladies at our airports, spends $80 billion annually on the war on drugs, but leaves our border unguarded allowing that $128 billion in drugs to cross year after year. Additionally, terrorists from any country can walk over the Mexican border with a 99 percent chance of succeeding. Where is the outrage?

With a growing illegal alien population exceeding 300,000 in Colorado, the state House legislators on Wednesday of last week defeated six bills to stop illegal alien migration. One particular bill, HB 1134, would have given cops the ability to arrest, detain and deport illegals. It was soundly defeated after dozens of citizens, including this Coloradan, testified to support the bill's passage.

I demanded, "We are tired of being collateral damage for illegal aliens. We're tired of being raped, killed, robbed and our schools being trashed by multiple languages while our medical systems take better care of illegals than our own citizens."

Representative Francesca Natividad Coleman remarked that it was a Federal issue. I retorted, "We're the ones getting killed and raped here locally and we're tired of it." Last year, three Coloradans were killed by illegals; Greeley, Colorado suffered 270 hit and run car accidents alone; eight rapes by illegal aliens in Boulder and thousands of robberies. Where is the outrage?

To top off the crisis in our Denver schools, the Rocky Mountain News reported the next day, February 21, 2006, "Welfare Surges 45%" with an increase of 4,743 cases. They said it was tough job hunting, but neglected to mention that 300,000 illegal aliens in Colorado stole jobs from Coloradans in every sector: drywall, construction, landscaping, fast food, house painting, janitorial, paving and dozens of other jobs formerly worked by Coloradans. Where is the outrage?



HOW TO GET YOUR KID A GOOD EDUCATION IN BRITAIN

With what the government leaves you of your money

There are ways of playing the system. All you have to do is put your social conscience on hold for a couple of decades, ignore every educational pledge made by prime ministers past, present and future, and be prepared to change jobs, houses, friends and quite possibly religion for the sake of the kids' schooling. If you are single-minded enough to do that, read on. If you aren't, read on anyway. It's always entertaining to know how the pushy middle classes live.

First, though, alarm bells are ringing. Your child is already born? Then you are leaving its education dangerously late! As the latest Good Schools Guide reports, some private schools now accept bookings from embryos - accompanied, of course, by a hefty deposit. As for a place at one of those coveted Catholic schools which in some cities are the only source of top-quality free education, even embryos are too old. If you aren't attending Mass at least a year before your child's conception, you won't get the necessary Good-Catholic accreditation. The Church of England is, as always, easier going - but not much. To be certain of a place at an oversubscribed C of E school, be sure that the vicar spots you dusting the pews at least a year before you want your child to join.

Why are such shameless shows of mock- piety necessary? Because amid the alleged sinking sands of British state education, "faith schools" are seen as rocks of stability. That's the respectable answer. The ruthless, calculating answer is that, if all your other plans go awry, it's vital to have the local church school as the least-worst fallback.

But suppose that you are thoroughly secular and too honest to pretend otherwise. Can you trust the state system to deliver your child to a decent university? That depends on where you live. The trouble with journalists who prattle about education in national papers is that most live in inner London. Wonderful for chic restaurants and trendy galleries. Terrible for state secondaries. So they project a lurid picture of state education across the country as a whole. That's a monstrous libel. There are now many pockets of excellence, even if the overall picture is patchy. Areas such as Suffolk, Hampshire, Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire, North Yorkshire, East Lothian and Gloucestershire now have genuine comprehensives that can rival the best private schools. And although other big cities have their underperforming schools, none has the problem of London - which, because of its size, can give parents the oppressive feeling of being trapped in a borough where no good secondary education is available.

It's quite likely, then, that the most effective investment you can make in your child's education is to move home. True, you will end up in a smaller house for twice the mortgage, because property prices in areas with good state schools are notoriously exorbitant. And you will have landed yourself with extra commuting expenses as well. But comfort yourself with this thought. If you stayed in the city, you would probably feel compelled to bail out your children into private schools. That could easily cost 100,000 pounds per child. Do the arithmetic . . . and then start house-hunting.

Of course, saving money isn't everything. Idealistic parents search for schools that share their values and seem capable of bringing out the best in their children. Which is fine - except that this assumes that it is parents who make the choice. I have bad news. It's not. Very few good schools, state or private, are short of pupils. The best are enormously oversubscribed. Some of the country's 200-odd selective grammars have ten pupils contesting each place. Unless you opt for the neighbourhood sink comprehensive, on the grounds that you are in love with the head teacher or certifiably mad, you will not be choosing your child's school. The school will be choosing you.

And to emerge triumphant in the scramble for coveted secondary places, you need to be making plans at least ten years earlier. Don't even think about relying on the local state primary to equip your child to pass either "Common Entrance" (the standard exam used by many private secondaries) or a selective grammar's entrance tests. It won't happen.

So you have two options: paying for extra coaching in the evenings, which has a whiff of the remedial about it, or paying for a prep school. In counties such as Kent and Buckinghamshire - which have fine selective grammars but not many acceptable comprehensives - large numbers of parents have realised that it makes sense to invest early. They pay for the prep-school education that will help their children sail through the entrance tests for the (free) state grammars.

But the best preps are also choosy. So the age at which children start being crammed gets earlier and earlier. There are actually private nurseries in London that specialise in training two-year-olds for the test that will admit them to the pre-prep that feeds the prep that feeds St Paul's. Madness. And I haven't even mentioned the coaching needed to make a favourable impression when the head teacher does selection interviews. No, not with your child. With you.

Nor does the agony stop once your child is safely in a good secondary. These days it's far from certain that kids will take their GCSEs and A-levels in the same establishment. Such is the fear of slipping down the league tables that some hotshot academic schools, particularly in the state sector, "encourage" pupils not heading for straight As to further their post-GCSE education elsewhere (though they will usually deny this vehemently in public). More worry for parents.

Does all this terrify you? It should. But permit me to end on a provocative personal note. Back in the Eighties we bred three children. We lived in London, but didn't move house. We didn't go private. We didn't even turn Catholic. They all went to nearby state schools. They mingled with rough kids. Yet they turned out fine. A fluke? Quite possibly. But it does raise an interesting question. Is all of this angst really necessary?

More here



An internet browsing fee??? "[Australian] Schools have warned they will have to turn off the internet if a move by the nation's copyright collection society forces them to pay a fee every time a teacher instructs students to browse a website. Teachers said students in rural areas would bear the brunt of cuts if the Copyright Agency was successful in adding internet browsing charges to the $31 million in photocopying fees it rakes in from schools. The agency calculates the total due by randomly sampling schools each year for materials they copy, and extrapolating the results. The battle between the schools and the agency will go to the Federal Court over its attempts to make schools pay for asking students to use the web. Negotiations between the Ministerial Council on Education Employment, Training and Youth Affairs, representing the schools, and the agency have broken down over plans to change the scheme to include a question in the survey on whether teachers direct students to use the internet".

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

***************************



2 March, 2006

Students Document Abuse of Black History Month on US Campuses

Parents will be surprised -- at times shocked -- to learn that leading colleges and universities have used the February Black History Month to lash out angrily at whites, to spread socialist and Marxist ideas, and to honor the Black Panthers, according to a statement released by the Young America's Foundation. They claim that missing from many Black History Month campus activities were positive messages and discussions about the accomplishments that blacks have made in business, education, government, and science. They also complain that "too few black conservative speakers, such as Ward Connerly, Walter Williams, and Star Parker, were invited to provide a balanced and uplifting message of Black Americans." Fewer even mention such African-American luminaries as Secretary of State Condi Rice and General Colin Powell.

Young America's Foundation researched the Black History Month calendars of 83 leading colleges and universities in the United States. The 12 schools listed below highlight the most flagrant instances of left-wing activism's hijacking of an entire month. Instead of applauding the accomplishments of blacks in history, students were fed a steady diet of "victim politics" and anti-white sentiment. The list will shock some, but most conservatives and moderates have come to expect such politically-motivated shenanigans from the institutions of higher learning in America.

1. In what has to be the most egregiously biased commemoration of Black History Month, the University of New Mexico celebrated the Black Panthers' 40th Anniversary. Speakers included Elaine Brown, who clearly endorsed socialism when she intended to help "poor population[s] through redistribution of massive revenues." Another speaker, Mark Rudd, a white Marxist from the 1960s, was a member of Students for a Democratic Society, a group affiliated with the Weather Underground - -known for several bombings during the 1960's and 1970's. Rudd was president of the Columbia chapter of Students for a Democratic Society during the 1960's, which served as an umbrella organization for socialists, radical feminists, Maoists, communists, and Marxists

2. Tennessee State brought conspiracy theorist Dick Gregory, who claims that the CIA knowingly allowed minority neighborhoods in Los Angeles to be flooded with crack/cocaine. Gregory believes that "the major white media continue to ignore the possibility that the CIA knew the Nicaraguans were raising money by selling drugs in black communities."

3. University of Maryland's Protest and Revolution in the Black Community: Where Do We Go From Here? featured rapper M-1 of the group Dead Prez. M-1 refers to America as "Amerikkka" and believes in a "conscious world wide struggle with decisive victory won in the area of defeating capitalism and imperialism which is our main enemy." "Where I'm coming from," M-1 continues, "the critical part of revolutionary struggle is concerned with taking power out of the hands of people who stole it [whites] from us all these years and returning back those resources."

4. Brown landed Julian Bond, Chairman of the NAACP, to address the campus community. Bond has stated that conservatives' "idea of equal rights is the American flag and the Confederate swastika flying side by side." Bond doesn't believe that America has made progress abrogating racial barriers. "Everywhere we see racial fault lines which divide American society," he said, "as much now as at anytime [sic] in our past."

5. Filmmaker Keith Beauchamp led discussions at Notre Dame on the 1955 brutal murder of Emmitt Till, a 14-year-old black boy living in Mississippi. To Beauchamp, this brutal murder is not just about racism during segregation, but it's "going to help with reparations, it's going to help with affirmative action, [and] it's going to help with other civil rights cases that need to be reopened."

6. UCLA brought author Randall Robinson to campus. Robinson is famous for saying that "Whites don't give a sh-t what we [blacks] think. Never did. Never will" and that whites are "little more than upper primates." Robinson authored the book, The Debt, a slavery reparations manifesto.

7. Stanford brought the rapper and founder of the hip-hop label Public Enemy, Chuck D, to campus. In addition to serving as spokesman for organizations such as Rock the Vote and the National Urban League, Chuck's EnemeyBoard on the Public Enemy's website has called the Bush Administration a "wolf in sheeps [sic] clothing," posited that the Patriot Act "overrides our Constitution," contends that Jesus Christ came to violently overthrow capitalists, and refers to Justice Thomas as "Clarence 'Uncle' Thomas."

8. Columbia invited University of California at Santa Cruz professor Tricia Rose to address the student body. Rose's claim to fame came to life when she created an oral narrative discussing black women's sexuality in America. The story, entitled Longing to Tell: Black Women Talk About Sexuality and Intimacy, is supposedly the first oral history of black women's sexual testimonies. Rose is no stranger to racist commentary, stating on her website that "many whites do not see (some refuse to see) that whiteness carries multiple kinds of privileges" and that "white racial advantage and privilege" are alive today.

9. Northwestern brought Bell Hooks, a self-identified feminist, who told the Third World Viewpoint that she is "concerned that there are not more Black women deeply committed to anti-capitalist politics." She also admitted that Marxism "is very crucial to educating ourselves for political consciousness."

10. Smith College brought Tim Wise, another white Marxist to campus. Wise likes to rattle on about white privilege in the United States and serves as director of the Association for White Anti-Racist Education (AWARE). He wrote, White Like Me: Reflections of Race from a Privileged Son.

11. Cornell's keynote speaker was former New Orleans Mayor Marc Morial. Morial ran on the ticket as an unapologetic liberal saying that the left monopolizes the values of "equity, equality, and inclusiveness on which this nation was founded."

12. Georgetown University went the direction of a poetic racist. Sonia Sanchez discussed her vision of America. She's famous for penning "Right On: White America," a tear-jerker on America once being "a pioneer land" eliminated by the intolerance of all those that it saw different. Sanchez writes that "there ain't no mo indians, no mo real white all American bad guys." Sanchez believes that black people need to "check out," for the guns and shells are ready to destroy them.

Judging from this sample -- Young America's Foundation claims they documented 83 such programs -- one would be safe in assuming the topic of discussion was more about whites than about blacks.

Source



Back to basics in Australian State?

Must be an election coming up!

Queensland state schools will put a new emphasis on reading, grammar and spelling from Prep to Year 9. Education Minister Rod Welford announced details of a new strategy to boost literacy levels in Queensland schools. Mr Welford said the plan, Literacy - the Key to Learning: Framework for Action 2006-2008, was a practical response to community concerns about literacy. The minister said that in his experience, literacy skills were "patchy".

Mr Welford said literacy skills would no longer be just the responsibility of English teachers. All teachers, regardless of subject, would receive ongoing professional development in teaching literacy skills because science, mathematics, technology and other teachers had to share the task of instilling good communication skills. "It is essential we give every student from Prep to Year 12 the best chance to master literacy so they can meet the challenges of 21st century life," Mr Welford said. "The plan recognises that quality teaching can make the single-biggest difference to students' literacy outcomes. "It will ensure every classroom teacher from Prep to Year 9 has intensive training in the teaching of literacy, including the teaching of reading, grammar and spelling."

Asked if this meant that students would no longer come home from school with written work corrected by teachers that ignored significant and repeated spelling and grammatical errors, the minister said: "It does."

Mr Welford said he also liked the idea of age-appropriate booklists being made available to families through schools so parents knew what to buy or borrow to help their children enjoy a wide range of quality books to boost their reading skills. Mr Welford said the plan recognised that many children attending state schools were from diverse backgrounds and may need tailored assistance. He said the plan was part of a wider strategy to improve student learning. "We've had the Queensland Studies Authority looking at the 'essentials' that all students should be learning in Years 1 to 10," he said. "This initiative will address concerns by parents and teachers about the crowded curriculum by focusing on the work that is most important to student learning."

A new student reporting system, currently being finalised, would be trialled in schools later this year and would be implemented in all schools in 2008. Mr Welford said this would set out standards in different subjects for different age groups - for example, Year 5 maths students should be able to divide and multiply numbers up to 12 - and let parents know precisely what their students were achieving.

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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1 March, 2006

A CHALLENGE TO "PEACE STUDIES"

Post lifted from Michelle Malkin

Ex-Washington Post columnist Colman McCarthy, "veteran peace activist, animal advocate and educator who founded and directs the Center for Teaching Peace in Washington," teaches a "Peace Studies class" in the Montgomery County, Md., public school system. It has been unchallenged for two decades. But now, two outspoken students are raising questions about McCarthy's unabashed propaganda. Via yesterday's Washington Post:

For months, 17-year-old Andrew Saraf had been troubled by stories he was hearing about a Peace Studies course offered at his Bethesda high school. He wasn't enrolled in the class but had several friends and classmates who were.

Last Saturday, he decided to act. He sat down at his computer and typed out his thoughts on why the course -- offered for almost two decades as an elective to seniors at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School -- should be banned from the school.

"I know I'm not the first to bring this up but why has there been no concerted effort to remove Peace Studies from among the B-CC courses?" he wrote in his post to the school's group e-mail list. "The 'class' is headed by an individual with a political agenda, who wants to teach students the 'right' way of thinking by giving them facts that are skewed in one direction."

He hit send.

Within a few hours, the normally staid e-mail list BCCnet -- a site for announcements, job postings and other housekeeping details in the life of a school -- was ablaze with chatter. By the time Principal Sean Bulson checked his BlackBerry on Sunday evening, there were more than 150 postings from parents and students -- some ardently in support, some ardently against the course.

Since its launch at the school in 1988, Peace Studies has provoked lively debate, but the attempt to have the course removed from the curriculum is a first, Bulson said. The challenge by two students comes as universities and even some high schools across the country are under close scrutiny by a growing number of critics who believe that the U.S. education system is being hijacked by liberal activists.

At Bethesda-Chevy Chase, Peace Studies is taught by Colman McCarthy, a former Washington Post reporter and founder and president of the Center for Teaching Peace. Though the course is taught at seven other Montgomery County high schools, some say B-CC's is perhaps the most personal and ideological of the offerings because McCarthy makes no effort to disguise his opposition to war, violence and animal testing.

Saraf and Avishek Panth, also 17, acknowledge that with the exception of one lecture they sat in on this month, most of what they know about the course has come from friends and acquaintances who have taken the class. But, they said, those discussions, coupled with research they have done on McCarthy's background, have convinced them that their school should not continue to offer Peace Studies unless significant changes are made. This is not an ideological debate, they said. Rather, what bothers them the most is that McCarthy offers students only one perspective.

"I do recognize that it is a fairly popular class," Saraf said. "But it's clear that the teacher is only giving one side of the story. He's only offering facts that fit his point of view."

McCarthy is "puzzled" by the students' objections, even as the Post describes his mission in overtly political terms:

For McCarthy, it seems Peace Studies is not just a cause; it is a crusade.

"Unless we teach them peace, someone else will teach them violence," he said.

Here's a description of McCarthy's textbooks.

Here's a column from McCarthy on one of his classes in 1991:

I had just finished meeting with my class, 40 juniors and seniors in a class called "Alternatives to Violence." On the eastern edge of the school's front lawn about 150 students had gathered around a wide stump of an oak tree. Atop it was a young woman giving a speech. When I moved closer, I recognized her s a student from my class. She was speaking to a rapt audience about the war in the Gulf and the need to give nonviolent sanctions a chance.

The evening before, as U.S. bomber pilots began attacking Iraq, George Bush had announced that the world could "wait no longer." He was wrong. This part of the world could wait, as small and peripheral as it seemed on the lawn fronting the school. All semester, while reading and discussing essays on pacifism by Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Dorothy Day, Tolstoy, and a long list of other practitioners of nonviolence, the Pentagon's preparation for war hovered over the collective consciousness of the class.

Now that the bombing and killing had begun, as more than three-fourths of the class had predicted it would by a show of hands one morning in October, the time had come for action. I looked among the students at the rally. I knew about 20. Some I would have figured to be there, because I had listened to their anti-war views throughout the semester. Others surprised me - reserved ones who had not said much in class one way or the other about the Gulf.

The senior girl who had been speaking when I came over was in the group. I listened in amazement. Where did all that passion come from? And what inner fires had been burning in the next speaker, a senior boy who spoke knowledgeably about draft resistance. Be aware of your rights, he said, and went on to tell about the national groups that provide counseling on conscientious objection. When the rally dispersed, four students took a large sign - "Honk for Peace" and stood behind it on the highway in front of the school. A clamor of honks began. The group, joined by others, decided to cut classes and go be educated in democracy by visiting the anti-war protest in front of the White House.

They learned there that they were not alone, that resistance to the Gulf war was spreading daily in their country and in Europe. Mr. Bush has vowed that "this will not be another Vietnam." Wrong again. It took less than a week for America's streets, from San Diego to Boston, to be filled with citizens expressing their opposition and contempt for the same kind of war ethic that dragged the United States into Vietnam.

It's about time someone questioned authority, to use the Left's favorite phrase, and challenged McCarthy's proselytizing in the Montgomery County, Md., school system.



Real learning essentials missing in Australia

Tasmania's curriculum promotes the worst of outcomes-based education. ("Outcomes-based" is code for no grading, among other things). Article below by the redoubtable Kevin Donnelly

Late last year, after business groups criticised Tasmania's radical approach to curriculum, Essential Learnings, the teachers union, students, authors Don Watson and Richard Flanagan, as well as Education Minister Paula Wriedt leapt to its defence. Wriedt accepted the new curriculum hadn't been effectively communicated but argued: "I have confidence in the Essential Learnings curriculum ... to produce the type of students we need and want in our community." This week it appears the minister's confidence has been shaken. Wriedt admits there are flaws in Essential Learnings: "We have never said this was set in concrete. I have always said never say never and am open to change on this."

Amazing how an election focuses the mind and how policy seen to be a liability can be so quickly changed. This is especially the case when the Liberal Opposition has as its policy a review of Essential Learnings in order to raise standards and to address teacher and parents' concerns.

Wriedt has reason to reconsider Essential Learnings. As Flanagan has since noted: "It is not possible to defend Essential Learnings, which is damaging our state education system, eroding public confidence, imposing humiliating difficulties on our fine teachers, and, worst of all, is destructive of our children's education." Even though teachers have been gagged and warned against publicly criticising the curriculum, as reported in the Hobart Mercury, such is the level of frustration and complaint, that many are prepared to voice their opposition.

Teachers' complaints are justified. Essential Learnings, given that it adopts the worst aspects of Australia's outcomes-based approach to education, is full of confusing jargon and edubabble. Worse still, it fails to provide a clear and succinct road map on what should be taught and imposes an overly bureaucratic, vague and new age assessment system. In part, the problem is that learning is considered developmental on the basis that, "the rate of individual development and learning can vary enormously and students may achieve a particular standard at different age levels". As a result many students float through school without learning the basics or being told that they have failed.

Further evidence of the flawed nature of Essential Learnings is evidenced by results of the federally funded report, Benchmarking Australian Primary School Curricula, released last year. The report evaluated all Australian state and territory mathematics, science and English primary school curriculum documents and ranked Tasmania's Essential Learnings as the weakest in terms of academic rigour, being detailed and unambiguous and measurable.

The academic responsible for the mathematics evaluation concluded that Essential Learnings failed to "assist schools at the more detailed level of planning programs for each year level and making sure that there was a clear progression of content throughout the school". In relation to science, the analysis concluded that Essential Learnings provided teachers with "little guidance as to the science concepts being developed or clarity or purpose that would help them understand what students are meant to achieve".

Traditionally, English is a discrete subject with a strong focus on literature. Not so in the Tasmanian curriculum. English as a subject disappears into the learning area Communicating Being Arts Literate and there is little attempt to teach phonics or classic literature in a rigorous and substantial way.

In her defence of Essential Learnings, Wriedt argues that the Tasmanian curriculum has much in common with approaches across the rest of Australia. To the extent that all systems have adopted various versions of outcomes-based education, the minister is correct. What she fails to realise or admit is that the tide has turned and the type of curriculum represented by Essential Learnings is increasingly seen as flawed and substandard. The ex-chief executive of Australia's Curriculum Corporation, Bruce Wilson, now admits that outcomes-based education typified by Essential Learnings represents an "unsatisfactory political and intellectual exercise".

Last year, the president of the NSW Board of Studies, Gordon Stanley, agreed that teachers needed a succinct road map on what should be taught. And a union official agreed that the existing outcomes-based education system was overly detailed, jargonistic and cumbersome. In Western Australia, there are so many concerns about extending outcomes-based education to years 11 and 12 that a parliamentary inquiry has been established. No wonder concerned classroom teachers have funded a website, www.platowa.com, to air their grievances.

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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