Dumpster Diving Behind Public Schools

And this is what you'll find. I know, I had bad thoughts when I read this headline, too.

Babies For Love

This is what the world is coming to:

There's a stunning twist to the sudden rise in teen pregnancies at Gloucester High School. Seventeen students there are expecting and many of them became that way on purpose.

Time Magazine first reported that nearly half of the girls confessed to making a pact to get pregnant and raise their babies together. None of them is older than 16.

Schools Superintendent Christopher Farmer told WBZ's Bill Shields Thursday the girls had "an agreement to get pregnant."

No parents of the 17 girls were interviewed. What causes a peer group to come up with such a self-defeating scheme? The Superintendent says the girls "lacked love". Teenagers can be mind-numbingly stupid, though. It seems to me that at least a few of these girls had loving families. It's possible that they all had uncaring parents but I doubt it.

I'm putting this one to a vote. It just seems too crazy.

The PRIMARY reason the pregnancy pact happened is because:
	The girls lacked love
	Peer pressure
	Little supervision
	Oversexed culture
	Teenagers are stupid
	The girls lacked a moral foundation
	Media's glorification of sex
pollcode.com free polls

Cross-posted at Right Wing News

What Parents of Special Needs Kids Worry About

We all hear the stories of sexual abuse, and unfortunately, it happens too often. Parents of autistic children in particular worry about this because the child, if he or she is non-verbal, can't express what happened. So this story (via John Hawkins) is particularly egregious:

Leduc's weird tale began on May 30, when she dropped young Victoria off for class at Terry Fox Elementary and headed in to work, only to receive a frantic phone call from the school telling her it was urgent she come back right away.

The frightened mother rushed back to the campus and was stunned by what she heard - the principal, vice-principal and her daughter's teacher were all waiting for her in the office, telling her they'd received allegations that Victoria had been the victim of sexual abuse - and that the CAS had been notified.

How did they come by such startling knowledge? Leduc was incredulous as they poured out their story.

"The teacher looked and me and said: 'We have to tell you something. The educational assistant who works with Victoria went to see a psychic last night, and the psychic asked the educational assistant at that particular time if she works with a little girl by the name of "V." And she said 'yes, I do.' And she said, 'well, you need to know that that child is being sexually abused by a man between the ages of 23 and 26.'"

Victoria, who is non-verbal, had also been exhibiting sexualized behaviour in class, actions which are known to be typical of autistic behavior. (See other typical actions here) That lead authorities to suspect she had a bladder infection that may have somehow been related to the 'attack.'

Leduc was shaken by the idea. "It's actually your worst nightmare your child being violated," she admits. "So for them to even suggest that, and that be my worst nightmare, it was horrific."

So, then, the mother is investigated by CPS, but thankfully she had proof to back herself up. She bought a GPS system that records, non-stop, all sounds around the child because the school had "lost" her child a couple times.

A psychic? You'd be surprised, right, but you've dealt with the public school system or heard the stories, so nothing is shocking. The teacher won't be fired. The assistant teacher won't be fired. The principal won't be fired. The school district won't pay for the education the child needs.

The school district will dedicate its resources to defend against this woman's lawsuit when the same amount of money, or less, could help her child. You see, the policy is to deny, deny, deny, because if they help one child, they'd have to help them all. So no children will get adequately helped, or will get the bare minimum of assistance and it will be couched in ARDs as the "least restrictive environment" which is code for--we don't want to pay. And parents have no choice. They're stuck. Private schools are under no obligation to take on a special needs child. And the private schools that specialize in helping these kids are expensive.

John says, "If we had a voucher system, Colleen Leduc could simply send her kid to a private school that isn't run by complete morons." Well, the money would be a start. Public schools are woefully deficient at dealing with these children. It's a problem nationally. There simply just isn't the training or desire to be trained to deal with children outside the mean.

I've been to continuing ed seminars for teachers dealing with autism. The level of apathy among the teachers was appalling. The parents in attendance, took it all in. In fact, while the teachers ignored the speaker (who happened to be one of the brightest thinkers and a leader in autism education), I was learning and went home and taught my son how to speak that week. The information was good, but you can't teach someone who thinks she knows everything or who just doesn't care.

And out there, there are amazing teachers, wonderful teachers who are underpaid, overworked and unappreciated. That's the problem with public education. A teacher can phone it in or can work and care, she gets paid the same. She can be dull-witted and show zero judgment and still get paid. It's almost impossible for her to get fired.

What a mess. On the word of a stupid assistant teacher's psychic, a woman and her child can be completely traumatized, meanwhile, there's the little problem of the child not being educated.

Voted Out Of Kindergarten: The Solution Is Vouchers

A five year old, probably with Asperger's Syndrome but as yet undiagnosed, boy stays home after being voted out of his class by his classmates at the behest of his unapologetic teacher. Like the case of the woman harassing her daughter's depressive friend via MySpace, this case is unfathomable. In fact, when I read about this last night, I didn't blog about it. I just didn't know how to respond to an example of such callous disregard and stupidity.

My son has Asperger's Syndrome and he is indeed a challenge in the classroom--not because he's a behavior problem but because he just requires extra help to stay on task, understand the assignment and decide what to do next. For a young child with Asperger's Syndrome, the classroom is an overload of stimuli. So, depending on the school's philosophy, the child might end up in Special Education with the mentally retarded and behavior problem children. The only problem is that the children with Asperger's Syndrome have normal I.Q.s. and are often underestimated.

Teachers are frustrated because they have other children in the classroom that need to be taught. A lazy or immature or stupid teacher takes it out on the child when the problem can only be resolved with the school administration and parents. A good teacher manages and some dedicated teachers give extra time and view the special child as a challenge to be helped.

Parents are frustrated. If they get their child diagnosed, it often means medication and lowered academic expectations causing the child to fall behind. The average Asperger's child graduates High School with a second grade education. In fact, around sixth grade, many of these children fall irreparably behind but not for lack of intelligence. This is a towering educational failure with life-long implications for the child.

What many of these children need, but rarely get, is one-on-one intensive intervention in the early educational years gradually phasing it out as the child grows. This is expensive, true. But it is far cheaper than having a child on life-long disability because he hasn't been taught the skills to work and get through the day.

The Barton's, like many families, didn't get their child diagnosed until the child is in school and they're still working on it. The infant and toddler and pre-school development of the child is uneven but normal enough to not raise flags with parents and pediatricians. Stick the child in an over-stimulating environment where constant demands are made and suddenly, everyone knows something is wrong. This is a traumatic time for parents. It is an upsetting one for teachers. No one likes to bear this news.

Another thing to consider: many five year olds are emotionally immature or developmentally uneven. Some can read. Some can't. Some can count. Some can't. Some can sit still. Some can't. Kindergarten isn't about heavy duty academics, so how is this child "disrupting" the education of others as some have suggested?

Wendy Portillo, the child's teacher, put Alex Barton a five year old, in front of his classmates and asked each child to say something that annoyed them about the child. They then voted whether or not to keep him in the class. Only two out of the fourteen children voted to keep him in the room, but the children are five and hardly have an understanding of what they were being asked. Imagine, for a moment, a teacher doing this to your child. It is cruel beyond all comprehension.

Melissa Barton, Alex's mom, was just lucky that her son is verbal enough that he could tell her what happened. Many children with Asperger's and Autism, including my son, have great difficulty with expressive language. Something like this could happen to an Autistic child and his parents would never know.

The challenge of educating bright, but developmentally different children, is not going away. For whatever reason, the numbers of these children are still increasing. Parents, teachers and school districts need to stop living in denial.

I saw one teacher comment saying that parents should "take their own medicine" and be responsible for teaching their own child. Well, I did that this last year with my son. The modifications made for him here at home helped him learn, but I still had to pay my taxes so the "normal" kids can go to school. Implement vouchers. Now. I would gladly pull my child out of public school for the rest of his education, but the way it stands now, my only choice is to educate my son on my own dime while paying taxes so teachers can teach the "easy" kids. The teacher needs to decide whether she supports her own union. Vouchers and educational reform would be a solution to this. Choice. Parents could vote with their money. No doubt, schools and teachers that catered to special kids would pop up. Now, this is a way to put democracy in action, teachers. Voting is great when the person being voted on isn't the teacher. That's just a little too uncomfortable.

Bottom line, I hope Ms. Barton sues the teacher and the school. This outrage is just the most extreme version of a system that teaches to the mean and is inept at educating those who fall outside of a very narrow normal.

More at Joanne Jacobs via Instapundit. The comments are illuminating. As are the comments at the link above to the local newspaper.

Men (NOT) At Work

Some people think men are opting out of society because society isn't kind to men. Maybe. I had been thinking it was the economy and worried that women in the work world just deflated a man's need to provide or something. Stupid idea, but I just threw it out there musing aloud. Turns out, there's an economic answer that makes a lot of sense. The economic slump (I don't think anyone is calling it quite a recession anymore, because how can a quarter of growth, no matter how slight be considered going backwards?) has not affected women in the same way it's affected men because they men are concentrated in certain job sectors. Aha! Now, that makes sense to me. But there's more, it gets worse, so sayeth Peter Coy of Business Week:

What’s going on? Simply put, men have the misfortune of being concentrated in the two sectors that are doing the worst: manufacturing and construction. Women are concentrated in sectors that are still growing, such as education and health care.

This situation is hardly good news for women, though. While they’re getting more jobs, their pay is stagnant. Also, most share households—and bills—with the men who are losing jobs. And the “female” economy can’t stay strong for long if the “male” economy weakens too much. (h/t khankrum)

Long term, it seems to me that even education and health care will slow. People need money to pay for college and health care. Around here, the census at the local hospitals is low. Yes, we're out of flu season, but people will put off elective or even needed procedures if they think they can get away with it. I've always been amazed how people will care for their cars, but not their bodies. Without health you can't work to even fix the car. But still, people can survive and be pretty sick for a long time and lots of people do. We'll know the economy is really bad when people start yanking out their teeth with pliers and college enrollments drop.

Speaking of college, is a four year degree worth anything? In some areas, I really don't know. There are a few years between now and my kids deciding their futures, which is a relief. To me, anything soft--history, literature, poly sci, etc.--is worthless. Not because those areas of study are worthless, to the contrary, our students don't get enough. However, most curricula you read these days doesn't inspire confidence and colleges filled to the brim with revisionists inspire less confidence. A four year degree seems like four years of brain washing and what's the result? A worthless degree that gets a grad no solid job. However, a degree in engineering, science, mathematics, etc. will definitely land a grad a job.

In addition, even if a person wants to be a writer or a more artsy fartsy generally, it's almost imperative to have a knowledge of technology. The world gets more complex and a foundational science knowledge helps with everything. So a four-year degree in something "hard" seems valuable. The rest of it, people can learn if they have a love of reading. Most of my history and literature understanding has come in my adult years just reading and being interested in things that didn't used to interest me.

Stupid Professor Suing Note Service

When I was in chiropractic college, I ran a note service. I paid students to take and type notes, published them weekly and students bought them. It was fantastic for everyone, although it was a lot of work and profit margins were tight. Well, now some nutty professor is suing the note service company for copyright infringement. Glenn Reynolds calls it the "DUMBEST COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT CLAIM YET". No kidding.

I never understood why profs hated note service. Most of them were disorganized wrecks and the notes helped students. Some barely spoke English and the note service gave the students a fighting chance to understand the concept. I'm still shocked I passed Biochemistry. I didn't understand one word my professor said. Thank God for Daryl Luplow who was a genius and managed to translate his genius into language the rest of us could understand in his clearly written notes. We all passed because of him. The professor did nothing to forward learning.

Probably, the professors don't want to be known as being so predictable that someone can take notes one year and ten years later still use the same notes. It makes everyone question what it is, exactly, they're doing. My histology prof used 20 year old notes. Granted, histology won't be changing any time soon, so why would the notes change?

Fixing Higher Education--Guest Posted by Lorne Carignan

Editor's Note: I'm including a post from my friend Lorne Carignan, a lawyer and writer living outside Flint, Michigan. Lorne and I debate many things political and policy. He is "left leaning" which I interpret as a statist--that is, he believes the state can solve many things whereas I believe the state can turn pretty much everything to shit. Still, we agree to disagree. In this case, I agree with nearly everything he says and have some additional thoughts at the bottom of his piece. Enjoy.

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

Higher education is expensive. Along with K-12, education is usually one of the largest items in states' budgets, consuming as much as half or more of all revenues. It's also a fair chunk of the federal budget. Governments provide funds directly to public universities as well as offering numerous grants and incentives for specific research and development projects.

Governments furthermore subsidize the attendance of students with grants, loans, and tax credits, while parents take out a second mortgage or otherwise find ways to scrape up the several thousands of dollars needed each year to send their child to college. But, of course, all of this money is seldom enough to satiate the ever-widening maw of higher education. Tuition rises each year and schools demand more government funds.

One function of the high cost of education is the amount of time it takes to complete a traditional four-year degree. The raw cost of education is not the only cost of sending a kid to college. Room and board, transportation, entertainment, clothing, and numerous other expenses add up to a substantial portion of the cost of higher education. This cost is multiplied for each year that a student remains a student, which is getting longer and longer for the traditional four-year degree. In some universities, it is taking students six years to graduate with a "four-year" undergraduate degree.

Part of the problem is that the high cost of education forces students to work longer hours, which results in taking fewer classes and staying in school longer. But arguably, a larger part of the problem is that college is a highly enjoyable protracted adolescence where young people live a hedonistic, irresponsible lifestyle funded by mom and dad and easy-to-get government loans. Scholarship quickly takes a back seat to pleasure in today's colleges, and students opt for lighter courseloads so they can allocate more time to extracurricular activities.

In addition to increasing the cost of education, lengthy stays in college increases the time-to-market of trained college graduates. With the ever-increasing pace of technological change and knowledge growth, the job market needs workers to bring state-of-the-art training to the workplace as quickly as possible. In the course of a typical stay at a four-year university, students may well find the first two or three years of coursework obsolete by the time they graduate, particularly if that coursework involves using highly specialized tools and software.

Finally, one of the most disappointing costs of higher education is waste. Too many young people graduate from college with "worthless" degrees -- degrees that do not provide them with necessary professional training to earn a wage that justifies the expense of going to college. Many colleges continue to offer degrees in fields that are already saturated with job candidates and for which there is little or no demand. The result is that, later in life, many graduates are forced to return to college to retrain for another career. This move is complicated by all the cost factors already discussed. But particularly frustrating for graduates is discovering that obtaining a second degree requires completing a number of additional "general education requirements" that were not required in their earlier program. These general education requirements can easily tack another year onto the process of earning a second degree.

What to do?

First, we need to decouple the notion of job training and education. Trade schools already do this for a limited field of vocational occupations. It's an admirable concept that needs to be extended to more traditional four-year programs. Eliminating the general education requirements from degree programs will reduce the amount of time a student has to spend in college. There's no need for a computer scientist to take a certain number of credit hours of humanities, social science, natural science, English, and history. Let them take their computer science courses and get out and go to work!

The ostensible reason for these general education requirements (GERs) is to create a "liberally educated" well-rounded individual, i.e, an "educated" person. The reality is, they are "blow-off" subjects that pad university revenues and students' g.p.a's. They are unnecessary, expensive, and worthless (or nearly worthless) wastes of time and money. Eliminating these GERs would shorten the time to graduation by as much as two years and make obtaining second degrees much more practical for workers in need of job retraining.

Next, consolidate programs at state universities to eliminate redundancies. There's no need for every state university to offer all of the same programs and maintain all of the same departments and faculty when educational functions could be consolidated in one or two schools and adequately serve the demand. Why maintain a half dozen or more state universities that all train teachers along with a host of private schools and community colleges? One or two state universities training teachers would be enough to ensure that the demand for new teachers is met. The same is true for many other degree subjects.

Finally, curtail or eliminate the antiquated and unreasonable "vacations" and "sabbaticals" that pepper the higher education calendar. There's no good justification for completely suspending education during the summer months, allowing a professor to take a year of paid leave, or giving students and teachers several weeks off in spring and winter along with the extended time between terms. The so-called "pressures" of teaching and learning are myths in today's world of graduate assistants and cushy courseloads. The ordinary demands of higher education are no more enervating than those regularly placed on workers in many professions, and often much less. There is simply no justification for these extended breaks and sabbaticals. Students need to get into college, learn quickly what they need to know without unnecessary interruptions, and get out as soon as possible so they can be productive members of the workforce.

These changes would reduce the funding necessary to maintain state universities, reduce the tuition subsidies to parents, make college affordable for more students, make job retraining more practical for displaced workers, shorten the time-to-market of state-of-the-art skills, and make more workers more productive in a shorter period of time.

***********

One problem in American education is that the broad, liberal education from High School no longer exists. My own American History class in High School was ridiculous. My Honors World History class followed U of M's curriculum and was based on original works, but there was no continuity or time line, no perspective. So students getting into college have spotty liberal education. They leave with spotty education, too:

At universities such as Princeton, Yale, Cornell, Duke, and Berkeley, seniors scored lower on the test, available here, than freshmen, living proof of the broadening relevancy of the old Harvard adage that the university is a storehouse of knowledge because "the freshmen bring so much and the seniors take away so little."

The average foreign student studying in an American college learned nothing about the country's history and its civic institutions, according to the study.

This is a problem, but I'm not sure the solution will come in the public schools or in colleges at this rate. The educational standards are too politicized. The post-modern take on subjective "truth" forbids honestly looking at history, economics and civics. The bias against rote memorization precludes a broad base of knowledge.

Basically, any subject outside of science and math means uneven education. The SATs focus their verbal scores on grammar, analogies, comprehension, etc. But the guts of the content is pretty meaningless. And in the business world, a liberal education doesn't serve one much anyway, but a math, science, finance, accounting, engineering or some other specialized degree will.

Religious Discrimination and More Stifling of Free Thought On Campus

Mike Adams, professor at University of North Carolina at Wilmington, shares his experience:

At first, I thought the decision to ignore our requests was due to the fact that the College Republicans are sponsoring Frank Turek’s talk. Then, I scrolled down the page and saw that the university had advertised a recent voter registration drive sponsored by the College Democrats. Certainly, the university is incapable of engaging in blatant political discrimination. And certainly Mike Adams is incapable of engaging in blatant sarcasm.

Read the whole thing.

Another Reason My Kids Aren't In Public School

I wish this were a joke.

What's Really Wrong With Public School Education?

A dear reader asked:

Could you explain to me how the schools are not educating our children. My husband and I keep talking about this because we keep hearing it. I am very concerned about this issue and we both seem to be in the dark over this huge concern. Perhaps the problem is that I have nothing to compare with. Would you be so kind to explain a bit further about how the kids are not receiving enough education. Thank you! :-)

I think it's a great question. I'm not a home school zealot by any means. I did not, for example, pull my kids out of public school because it was a moral cesspool, because it wasn't. I didn't pull my kids out of public school because the curriculum wasn't challenging, because for the most part, it was challenging. I didn't pull my kids out of public school because the teachers were apathetic or uninterested, because most of the teachers were very good and did care. I didn't pull my kids out of public school because I wanted a Christian curriculum. Actually, the curricula I use at home is classical first.

Many of the typical reasons people pull their kids out of public schools were not the reasons I pulled my kids out of school. Mind you, as the kids get older, some of them might contribute to my decision. So, why did I pull my kids out of public school?

I pulled my kids out of the public school so they could learn every subject in a logical, make-sense sort of way. I want them to learn easily, quickly, efficiently, and I want them to enjoy doing it.

So many parts of the public school actually work against learning--there's the wasted time doing time-wasting activities. But more than this, there is no system for education. One would think, since schools are really modeled after industrial-age factories, that they would have a logical, systematic progression in their curriculum, but they don't.

This sounds vague. Let me explain what I'm doing and how it's different. The curricula I'm using --the math, the history, the geography, the hand writing, the reading, the grammar, the spelling--all of them, start at the beginning. So, this year, we are doing a survey of world history. Don't you always like it when you hear the story from the beginning? I know I do. Because of this, the kids know where Iraq is. They know the Tigris and Euphrates. They know the history of Islam. They know the Crusades. And, now, they understand better the situation in the Middle East and that it's a continuation of centuries of conflict. The world today makes sense. (Well, as much as it can, anyway.)

Likewise, their math curriculum builds in a logical sequence. Now, I have an autistic son. So rote memorization is easy for him. Comprehension in all aspects--from reading comprehension to getting the gist of a math word problem to understanding the concept of passing time--challenges him. The only way to overcome this, is to press on. But he cannot continue to the next phase of learning, if he doesn't understand where he's at. A logical progression helps him.

The public schools might cover some of the same territory. In fact, they do. In an example I've brought up before, slavery will be covered both by the public schools and by me at home. What is the difference? The difference is history, perspective, and context. By the time American history rolls around, the kids will know that the concept of equal rights is a very new and thoroughly modern concept. Slavery, in history, has been the way of the world and in some places, still is. This won't minimize the horror in American history. In fact, it will reinforce that the world has been an unfair place for a long time. Hopefully, they will be inspired to appreciate the freedoms they enjoy, and hopefully, they'll work toward treating all people without prejudice themselves. In contrast, in the school's curriculum, slavery will be the sole domain of Martin Luther King and a treatise on how America sucks. And this perspective will be given in first, before any context.

The public schools, at least here, are not dens of under-achievement. They are simply places of misplaced priorities. Eventually, the skewed perspective and confusion cause gaps and unevenness. Not to mention the emphasis on homework and busy-projects can cause frustration especially for special needs boys. And then there is the shortened school day and time for extracurricular activities and play time. And these are just some of the reasons why I'm home schooling--even though the past couple of weeks I have wanted to send the kids to boarding school, forget public school.

College Tuition Subsidies

I've written about government subsidies and college loans before. Now, the topic is receiving lots of publicity because all the candidates think it's important. It's my belief that the chief beneficiaries of government loan subsidies are the colleges themselves. The government ups loan limits, magically, tuition increases. and voila! college students are screwed.

Now, Ilya Somin sees the benefits of rising tuition costs, and makes that case that compared to not having a college education, receiving a college education is a good deal. So, that's his reasoning for no subsidized tuition:

Even at the most expensive private universities, four years of tuition, room, and board is unlikely to cost more than $180,000 or so (the approximate cost of four years at Harvard at maximum tuition rates). And, as Becker notes, many students (especially the poor) don't pay the full sticker price because of widely available financial aid and merit scholarships. The income gains of getting a higher education far outstrip the tuition. The vast majority of students can therefore afford to pay for college by borrowing against their future incomes, and still have an enormous income gain left over. Thus, there is no reason for government to subsidize college tuition on the grounds that it is "unaffordable" - even for those students who are unfortunate enough to have to bear the full cost themselves, without parental assistance.

Well, I didn't have parental assistance for any of my college and worked my way through all of them. And ten years out, I'm still paying loans off even with the income gains. What I don't think Somin is factoring in, is that the loans are such a heavy, long-standing burden, they affect the next generation.

Of course, the kids whose parents are paying the bills are at a huge, long-term advantage. Those who pay off their own loans for years, to the point that they're not saving for their own children perpetuate a cycle of governmental indebtedness. It's just not a good pattern. And yeah, there is free will. And yeah, the professional life is much better than I expect I would have had without the education. And yeah, it's worth it.

Still, my reasons for disliking governmental subsidies are different. Without them, the institutions wouldn't be subsidized. They'd have less students entering. There would be more competition. They'd have to control costs. Students would benefit.

Either way, I want the government out of the college loan business.

H/T Instapundit

Stupid And Proud of It

Americans are stupid and what's more, they enjoy their stupid, so say some researchers:

But now, Ms. Jacoby said, something different is happening: anti-intellectualism (the attitude that “too much learning can be a dangerous thing”) and anti-rationalism (“the idea that there is no such things as evidence or fact, just opinion”) have fused in a particularly insidious way.

Not only are citizens ignorant about essential scientific, civic and cultural knowledge, she said, but they also don’t think it matters.

She pointed to a 2006 National Geographic poll that found nearly half of 18- to 24-year-olds don’t think it is necessary or important to know where countries in the news are located. So more than three years into the Iraq war, only 23 percent of those with some college could locate Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Israel on a map.

And these people vote. With their emotions.

You can blame the very institutions that supposedly champion education. From elementary school until college, the emphasis is self-centric. Children don't know world geography, it isn't even taught. Maybe a kid will get world history his senior year of high school. What is happening in those intervening years?

Well, the kid learns that subsets of Americans are victims. He learns about oppressed people. He learns to "just say no" to drugs. He learns to walk quietly in line. He learns no context. No world-view. What happened with one person or people defines the world view of the child, if he even remembers it.

It seems to me that the solution is to teach children logically. Start from the beginning. That's one thing I very much enjoy about home schooling--the logical progression. So, this year, the kids are learning world geography and we're doing world history, a survey, from the beginning of recorded time. When we go back and study different periods more in depth, they now have the context to place the event--including the last 200 plus years of American history. They will have seen slavery before. They will have seen war. They will have seen persecution. They will see the roots of today's religious conflict. They will know that the badness they see today is part of the human condition.

It is distressing to see the man-on-the-street interviews where people don't know the name of the Vice President. America thrives on ideas and innovation. It's not encouraging to see the direction that post-modernism has taken the educational system.

Teacher Burnout: It's The Parent's Fault

Demanding parents burn out teachers according to a small German study. Does this hold for American teachers? Maybe. The demands on teachers have increased with the standardized testing. In wealthier school districts, competitive parents may blame a teacher for a child's lackluster performance. But in poorer districts, teachers lament the lack of parental involvement. If parents were involved, they'd feel less exhausted. So, I'm not sure this study has enough breadth or depth to be of value in America.

One reason for homeschooling my children was that the school system burnt me out. I don't recall my mom having to do projects for me anywhere through school unless it was for an extracurricular activity. It seemed that my kids brought home a project at least every other week that was beyond their capability. That meant that mom was doing homework. In addition, both kids had to read daily (no biggie, they did anyway) and I had to sign their book saying how much they read. A girlfriend taught her kids to forge her initials. Why hadn't I thought of that?

There does seem to be some inherent tension between schools and parents. Working parents strapped for time blame the teacher for their kids' achievement. Teachers blame parents for undisciplined kids. They're both right, probably. One thing about homeschooling, it's my own dang fault if my children turn out to be dull-witted cretins. Of course, I don't think any teacher would hold themselves as responsible as I feel, if it just turns out to be a challenging year developmentally.

It seems a good solution for both parents and teachers would be school choice and vouchers. The teachers could be confident that their students are there because the parents wanted their children there. The competitive urge would kick in. Teachers would be offended when parents tried to get their kids into another school and work harder. Parents would research and become more involved. It would be a win-win. Why would the teacher's union reject vouchers? It would help them, too.

Books & Test Scores

Why would this be true?

In seeking to detail the consequences of a decline in reading, the study showed that reading appeared to correlate with other academic achievement. In examining the average 2005 math scores of 12th graders who lived in homes with fewer than 10 books, an analysis of federal Education Department statistics found that those students scored much lower than those who lived in homes with more than 100 books. Although some of those results could be attributed to income gaps, Mr. Iyengar noted that students who lived in homes with more than 100 books but whose parents only completed high school scored higher on math tests than those students whose parents held college degrees (and were therefore likely to earn higher incomes) but who lived in homes with fewer than 10 books.

Maybe those with lots of books value learning and it's as simple as that.

Change The World, Make Some Money

I've had more than one conversation, especially with Christians, sharing the opinion that one of the biggest ways to change the world is by making loads of money. Give it away! Fund a charity! Invent a solution! Being willfully poor, in order to ensure humility is likely to accomplish nothing, but it may result in an embittered attitude. In the knobby-headed public sector, the goal isn't to ensure humility but to serve the world at great personal cost. Oh! The humanity! Sometimes it's just self-indulgence:

These people do in fact need to grow up, and understand that there are other ways to help people than forming non-profits and NGOs, or working for a government bureaucracy. People are helped most by technological advances that make essential items--food, transportation, communication, shelter--more affordable and accessible to them, not by those who provide them with handouts and sympathy, and keep them in a state of perpetual dependency.

The above linked article is one of the very best I've read on this topic.


H/T Instapundit

School Stress Evaporates At Home

The stress in our family has lessened so significantly since starting to home school. My kids already had severe test anxiety at the ripe old ages of 7 and 9. That's a problem. The result of their anxiety was a defeatest attitude: if they couldn't be guaranteed super-success, they didn't want to try. I don't think yoga at school would have helped much. It might have helped a little. Maybe getting rid of homework would have helped the generalized anxiety. In fact, I'm quite sure it would have helped.

Two and a half months into home schooling and the results are promising. More relaxed family (including me--an unintended benefit) and more relaxed kids. Shhhh, don't tell them, but the tests I write for them are harder. I'm pushing them to comprehend. They are being forced to remember not just what, but why. And still, they are more relaxed. They have also received their first "bad" grades and survived. They are learning to go back again and study and get it and then try again.

With home school, there is no homework. Well, not like is generally understood. They are reading and reading the "required" texts but they don't realize what they're doing. When we talk through and do assignments off of books they enjoy reading, they're doing work, they just don't really notice.

I wasn't sure at the beginning, the curriculum scared me because of its simplicity, but I simply must sing the praises of Math-U-See. It is amazing. The comprehension of math concepts is so complete and simple. The kids are motoring through it.

Another curriculum, this one for handwriting called Handwriting Without Tears, is nearly miraculous. My son, who has problems with deciding where to put the pencil and has fine more strength problems viewed learning cursive with apprehension. He literally looked suspiciously at the text book. Not now. Loves it. My husband said, "He wrote that?!" It's been pretty amazing.

We are also using Sonlight for Reading, Vocabulary, Spelling, Phonics, Grammar, History, Geography, and Bible. It is a literature-based curriculum and it's fantastic. The text books are original works. The kids are reading a couple Robert Lewis Stevenson poems a week. They are learning a couple Aesop's fables a week. They are reading out loud. They are explaining the moral of the story. They are creatively writing. Each week, we are going through a couple pieces of children's literature.

For people like me who find the notion of putting it all together daunting, the Sonlight system is flexible yet structured. The only work I add for myself, is more testing. At least every other week, I put together a comprehensive test for the kids to make sure they are retaining what they learn. This week, they have learned the basics about the Phoenicians, Spartans, Athenians, the architecture of columns, the story of Romulus and Remus, Rome, the Olympiad, Homer's Odyssey (which they are dying to read), Eastern Europe, Romania, Italy, what was significant about Mecca and the rise and fall of King Saul, the rise of David and the friendship between David and Jonathon. That's a lot. And that's all on the test. Plus dates for the Peloponnesian War and the original and reinstated Olympics. It's definitely a survey of History and Bible this year. It will be the foundation for the next four years when we go back and look, in depth, at those times.

And they aren't stressed. Can you imagine? They love it. We haven't had an art project or science project in a while. We have made cave man pictures and created hieroglyphics. When we get to Pompeii, we'll explode a volcano. They have more time for the arts--music and drama are during school hours. Dance is after school twice a week.

All in all, I don't think the stress in school comes from the volume of material or even the focus on testing. The running from one activity to another, the inability to slow things down to have a question answered, the frustration of having play-time or recess taken away to finish up work, the inability to get a drink when thirsty or run to the bathroom without missing something, the boredom when a topic is already known, the pressure to perform during timed tests (in second grade) and on and on. The schools must meet the needs of many kids so some of the flexibility needed to reduce stress just can't happen. I'm amazed at the stellar job the teachers do. It is certainly not easy.

So, it's admirable that the High School principal wants to put in a program to reduce stress for kids. That's an excellent goal. I'm just not sure it's possible.

Free Speech on Campus

Free intimidation, more like. Look at what happened to Nonie Darwish, the Arab-American author who spoke out at Wellesley about the threat from Islamofascism. She says of the Muslim girls who disrupted the speech, disrespecting her and others in attendance:

“Muslim girls like these are like gangsters. They know more about their rights in America than the Jewish girls do. The Muslim girls all have a chip on their shoulders.”

And then she is silent. Softly, she says: “We are fighting an avalanche. We are too few. I am frightened by my culture of origin. I am scared of my own people.”

That's on a college campus. There are far more examples of attempts, by diverse people, to share a diverse message. And here is what happens when people share a view that isn't politically correct, namely, that radical Islam gives moderate Islam a bad name.

That's right, being for free speech and against fascism and saying so, well, that's just crazy talk.

University Ethics

Part of the reason chiropractors are scorned is because their schools have liberal acceptance standards. While medical schools make it difficult for everyone besides affirmative action beneficiaries to get in, chiropractic colleges let nearly everyone in. I don't have a problem with that, in some ways. There are plenty of people who finally get their act together as seniors in college and deserve the opportunity to follow their dream.

There is a dark side, though.

Chiropractic colleges, law schools, and med schools allow many people in who don't have the intellectual chops, take their loan money and merrily roll along while the former student, or bewildered and under-qualified graduate can't pass his boards or bar exam and is stuck having wasted time, money and now struggles to find a job where he can pay off his debt. Likely, he can't.

One girl I know took an altered schedule, inflating her loan amounts because she was in school longer, and now works in retail where another friend bumped into her at the mall. She was a nice girl, not very bright, and not doctor material. She should never have been allowed to continue fumbling through, but the green-eyed administrators took her money. She is a slave to the school now, like the rest of us with college loans, but she will never, ever pay them off. I'm not sure the administration cares about that either, as long as she pays. And she is not alone. By the end of my third semester, nearly half of my class had failed out. Fine, right? But they already had nearly $30,000 in debt.

Another friend, again not too bright, worked his arse off to get into dental school. He struggled academically, but had excellent hands. Being a dentist, like being a chiropractor, like being a surgeon, is really a blue collar job in a white collar. The work is repetitive, highly skilled, and requires a sixth sense for knowing what's "off"--that is discerning when the problem you're seeing isn't really the problem. The stakes are higher and the machine more complicated and intricate, of course, then your average Chevrolet, but it's similar work. My friend the dentist is thriving. He runs another doctor's five practices. That doctor is more a business man. My friend is a technician extraordinaire. Had he been excluded from dental school, it would have been a shame. He still had the smarts enough to pass boards.

Universities don't just deal unethically with under-qualified students. The list of sins is long as Paul Berkowitz editorializes in The Wall Street Journal. Students receive far worse punishment than professors for similar violations like plagiarism, he notes. KC Johnson exposed the dark underbelly of the workings of Duke University--the poster child for post-modern muddledness. Berkowitz says:

The return to campus this fall brings sharp reminders of the confusion about their purpose that plagues our campuses, and so underscores the need for serious study of university ethics. In the recently published and already critically acclaimed book "Until Proven Innocent," K.C. Johnson and Stuart Taylor Jr. show how the Duke University faculty and administration collaborated with a reckless press and a lawless prosecutor in the rush to convict in the court of public opinion -- and, but for the superb work of their attorneys, in the criminal courts of Durham, N.C. -- three white lacrosse players falsely accused of raping an African-American stripper.

The problem at Universities is simple: unaccountability. I would think that the Duke Board of Regents would roast Duke's President Broadhead over an open pit, but no. Who knows how many millions of dollars they paid out to the Duke players and guess who will pay? That's right. Future students.

Universities are hermetically sealed environments. Their primary goal is the continuation of the organism. Educating students is secondary for the leadership. They have money concerns. Fine. But they should be as transparent as their ethics departments encourage private industry and the political class to be. I'll give the final word to Berkowitz:

But don't expect the leading ethics centers -- Harvard's Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics, Princeton's Program on Ethics and Public Affairs, or Yale's Program in Ethics, Politics, and Economics -- to sponsor lectures, fund graduate student and faculty fellowships, or publish writings that examine these and numerous other ethical questions that stem from contemporary university life. While lavishing attention on legal, political and medical ethics, and to a lesser extent business ethics and journalism ethics -- worthy areas of inquiry all -- our leading university ethicists have shown scant interest in exploring university ethics.

David Bernstein has more. Glenn Reynolds gets the hat-tip. My question for these law professors: When they see a student who obviously has no chance in the real world, do they fail them? Do they recommend expulsion? And are they overruled by administration?

I've talked about addressing the loan monopoly and getting rid of student loans. That would clean up Universities some, but there is no question that Universities could use shining the bright light of truth on their own unethical practices and then change them.

Courting Killer: Columbia Was Chosen For A Reason

It now seems that Ahmadinejad chose Columbia (they didn't invite him) because of Columbia's storied past. Columbia invited Hitler's envoy. This was what then President Butler said:

In response, President Butler harrumphed something about how Columbia "does not ask what a man's opinions may be but only whether he is intelligent, honest, and well-mannered in their presentation and discussion. There is no subject which a company of scholars such as that assembled on Morningside Heights, is not prepared to have presented to it by a man or woman of high intelligence and good manners, and to hear fully discussed and debated." When the "well-mannered" Herr Luther made his appearance on Morningside Heights, it seems only to have whetted the Nazi lust — and to have established a precedent for abasement. It turned out that the only kind of intercourse the Nazis understood was the kind conducted by General Eisenhower, who not only liberated Europe but went on to Morningside Heights, where he brought great distinction to the presidency of the University.

Columbia's modern president shows the same kind of moral obtuseness and it's astounding. Because Ahmadinejad spits his venom at a common enemy, George Bush, a good portion of the Left don't mind that the poison would ultimately kill them, too.

This is where consuming hatred gets a person: the line between rage and suicide blends. Would Dean Coatsworth rather die than honor his own country? If Ahmadinejad has his way, everything Western, American, Israeli, Jewish and Democratic will give way to Sharia and death squads and extermination. Dean Coatsworth would not be spared this fate, his lofty ideals notwithstanding. Back to a quoted Jeff Goldstein post of yor:

And so we have Islamic fascists exploiting the postmodern rhetorical assumptions of a western socialist / progressivist left in order to bring about the spread of totalitarianism.

Goldstein says today:

"Of course we’d invite Hitler to speak”
So says the Dean of Columbia. Sadly, no follow-up question asking how he might react should der Fuhrer get a little tipsy at the post-speech cocktail party and order his band of traveling storm troopers to stuff a dozen or so gypsies, a gay couple, and 6 million Jews into one of the caterer’s mobile convection ovens.

Which is a shame, really, because I think there’s half a chance we’d have been treated to a bit about “respecting cultural differences.

It is doubtless that Ahmadinejad knows Columbia's history. He chose Columbia for a reason. He knows our history even if the scholars choose to forget theirs. These Western elites don't mind being played for fools. Again. That's why I don't call them Useful Idiots. They are worse than useful because they are not idiots. They are intelligent. They know the game and they have chosen a side and they don't stand for freedom, no matter how they spin it. They stand for oppression and extermination. Anyone with any sense will revile them. Men like Dean Coatsworth are disgusting human beings.

P.S. This is the same institution who wouldn't allow the Minutemen to engage in the free exchange of ideas. Some ideas are more "correct" than others.

How Civics Smart Are You?

I only got 80% right. Who here didn't take an Econ class and went to public school? That would be me. How'd you do? (Go here to take the 60 Q test.) After homeschooling my kids, though, I expect to ace it.

H/T Anchoress