British Educational Failure

A survey of 3,000 under-twenties Britians found that:

• 20 percent thought Sir Winston Churchill is a fictional character
• 47 percent believe that the 12th-century crusading English king Richard the Lionheart is fictional
• 27 percent thought Florence Nightingale, the pioneering nurse who coaxed injured soldiers back to health in the Crimean War, was a mythical figure
• 65 percent) believe that King Arthur existed and led a round table of knights at Camelot
• 58 percent believe that Sherlock Holmes was real, and actually lived at 221B Baker Street
• 51 percent believe that Robin Hood lived in Sherwood Forest, robbing the rich to give to the poor
• 47 percent believed Eleanor Rigby was a real person rather than a creation of The Beatles

When you get all your information from television, movies and video games, there's no telling what you'll end up believing.

Letter to Dr. Daniel Robinson, Oxford University

Dear Dr. Robinson,

I am writing to you to convey my profound thanks to you for having entered into an agreement with The Teaching Company. I have just finished your 60-lecture series, The Great Ideas of Philosophy.

I must admit that I purchased these lectures with more than a little trepidation, as I am a middle-aged American conservative with some distrust of the academic world. But the lure of the subject was too much for me to resist and so I purchased your course.

My fears were groundless as I found you to be thoughtful, thorough and balanced. While your knowledge of philosophy is remarkable, I was more impressed by your perception. My favorite lectures were Justice and Just Wars (I listened to the whole thing twice) and your thoughts in God – Really? (I listened to the final two chapters three times).

I also enjoyed the smattering of dry humor that all too occasionally made their way into your teachings (my favorite, “God could have limited the creation to angels – or beagles, comparably delightful.”)

So thoroughly pleasant was the experience that I look forward with great anticipation to listening to your series, American Ideals: Founding a "Republic of Virtue". Your students are luckier than they can imagine. If this were a just world then you would be more famous than a rock star. You are certainly far more interesting.

With Gratitude and Deep Respect

I urge everyone who commutes, spends a half-hour on the treadmill, or otherwise has a few minutes a day to immediately click over to The Teaching Company. A half-hour lecture is a rewarding way to spend otherwise wasted minutes of the day. The Teaching Company finds the most gifted educators and offers courses on everything from ancient history to particle physics for non-physicists. They even offer courses on fuzzy subjects like art and music.

Go now, there's a bundle of courses currently on sale.

Now you will have to excuse me. On the theory that you cannot understand that which comes later without understanding the origin, I am about to start Introduction to Judaism. See ya.

Let Are Kids Walk

Straight-A Student Arrested by Thought Police

I understand that another Virginia Tech should be avoided, but this is ridiculous:

Allen Lee, an 18-year-old straight-A student at Cary-Grove High School, was arrested Tuesday near his home and charged with disorderly conduct for an essay police described as violently disturbing but not directed toward any specific person or location. ...

Today, Cary-Grove students rallied behind the arrested teen by organizing a petition drive to let him back in their school. They posted on walls quotes from the English teacher in which she had encouraged students to express their emotions through writing.

Can you imagine Steven King growing up in today's restrictive environment?

A Call for Segregation

Reader Advised by Wolves alerted me to a post by Jane Galt in which she addresses her support for vouchers. My attention is drawn to this single sentence in her rather long and well-reasoned post:

I want a voucher system not because I have it in for teachers, but because I want a school system that is more responsive, child focused, creative, outcome-oriented, and effective.

Not entirely unexpectedly, I have some thoughts on the matter.

Jane's first point (with 24 to follow) is:

1) The American educational system sucks.

I would like to point out that the American educational system has many very fine schools. I will go further to explicitly state that once you take minority schools out of the equation, there are many, many good schools that turn out legions of shiny new college students every year.

For instance, the Shelby County schools system attracts and keeps good teachers, pays them above average wages yet spends less per student than every other school system in Tennessee (which consistently ranks at the bottom in the nation for dollars per student spending). Further, three years ago they achieved one parent in the PTA for every student in the system – something that has not been achieved in any school system before or since. But parent participation remains high and the school system consistently receives “A”s from the feds and the state.

But in inner city schools, even the brightest of kids aren’t allowed to learn because a black child that tries to pay attention is ostracized for “acting white”.

And so in the city of Memphis (which lies within Shelby county but has a different school system), teachers are little more than embattled babysitters, parents are largely indifferent and kids are growing up stupid.

White flight – and affluent black flight – continues to tax the county’s resources, while Memphis is increasingly a majority poor, black community.

It’s not the school system, folks. It’s a culture thing.

The bottom line is that culture of Black America is sick. We can’t fix the educational system without that particular subculture taking a long, hard look at itself and addressing some fundamental issues. Yes, you can blame decades of welfare for decimating the strong family values that once were the mainstay of the Black community. Children are having children and fathers are absent. It’s a pit from which few escape.

But White Guilt is powerless to fix this problem from the outside.

If that makes me a racist, so be it. But then so is Dr. Bill Cosby (and I’ll be proud to stand with him any day of the week). Blacks may say I have no right to say such things because I am not one of them (and many do). Tough. An outside observer can see that there is a problem – you’d have to be blind not to see it.

I call for segregation. That’s right, the scary “S” word.

No child left behind is crap, because year after year we are leaving legions of children behind.

It’s time to recognize that fact and separate the ones that have the necessary support system, whether it is involved parents or just a hard-working single mother that insists that her child works hard, passing on the work ethic that made this nation great.

How do we segregate these future successes from the influence of their life-sucking peers?

Vouchers.

We must remove the bright minority students from their I-am-a-victim culture and put them in private schools where they are given a chance to succeed. Those kids that fail, become disruptive, succumb to gang pressures – kick them out and make them go back to the current failing schools. (This is a vital element; the private schools must have the freedom to deny service to anyone. Over-regulation will kill the effectiveness of the voucher initiative!)

We’ll never separate the wheat from the chaff from within “the system”. Vouchers will allow kids with promise, drive and determined parent(s) to extricate themselves from the culture of failure. Vouchers will give them a chance.

Call me an optimist, but I believe vouchers and capitalism will fix our problem.

In a dozen years, we will have a generation of black students going to college. Not because they are black, but because they are bright and ambitious and prepared and capable.

In two decades we will see the reemergence of the black family. Educated, successful fathers tend to stick around when they father children. Educated, successful men tend to stay married. Color has no bearing on these facts.

In a quarter century we will have blacks succeeding in our workforce, entering the ranks of executives or starting businesses. Not because they are black, but because they are smart and educated and have learned to think.

In a half century, affirmative action will be a thing of the past and racism will have dropped to a mere murmur compared to the constant, deafening cacophony that we have now.

We can’t save everyone, so let’s start by saving those we can and increasing that percentage every year. Eventually, we won’t need to save anyone.

If we don’t do something different, we’ll just have 50 more years of failure.

Myth of the Underpaid Teacher

On the average, teachers are better paid than architects or economists according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. From today's Opinion Journal:

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, public school teachers earned $34.06 per hour in 2005, 36% more than the hourly wage of the average white-collar worker and 11% more than the average professional specialty or technical worker.

I've always maintained that we overpay most teachers, because you just will when the system is based on how many years you can stomach showing up for work instead of how well you do your job. This, too, is addressed in the article:

In fact, the urban areas with the highest teacher pay are famous for their abysmal outcomes. Metro Detroit leads the nation, paying its public school teachers, on average, $47.28 per hour. That's 61% more than the average white-collar worker in the Detroit area and 36% more than the average professional worker. In metro New York, public school teachers make $45.79 per hour, 20% more than the average professional worker in that area. And in Los Angeles teachers earn $44.03 per hour, 23% higher than other professionals in the area.

Hell, I've been an Oracle database administrator, an applications development manager, a project manager and am now in charge of a global initiaitive and I certainly don't pull down figures like that. Wish I could start getting a garaunteed raise every year from a job that it's virtually impossible to get fired from.

Teachers are trusted with our most important resource, our children's future. A good teacher can change a child's life, and should be rewarded far beyond anything I should dream of. But sadly, these teachers are far too few and the crop of administrators running our schools are even worse.

And don't give me that crap about teachers buying their own school supplies. Our schools have regular rip-offs fundraisers and ask for donations of pens and paper.

Capitalism in Academia

Move over "Big Oil." Academia is just as greedy and immoral.

Heh. Explanation At the Zoo.

Educating Baptists

Southern Baptists are looking to depart en masse from public schools:

A committee at the Southern Baptists' annual gathering was scheduled to report Wednesday on a resolution that would urge the denomination to form a strategy for removing Southern Baptist children from public schools in favor of home schooling or education at private schools. ...

"We are commanded biblically to train our children in the nurture of the Lord," said Roger Moran of Troy, Mo., who sits on the executive committee and offered the proposal with Texas author Bruce Shortt. "The public schools are no longer allowed ... to even acknowledge the God of the Bible."

One can hardly blame them, given the current situation in our schools:

Brittany McComb, valedictorian of Foothill High School in Clark County, Nevada, stood up at her graduation and began to speak. A few paragraphs into her speech, school administrators cut off McComb's microphone. She didn't tell a dirty joke. She didn't curse. She didn't insult her classmates or her teachers. Brittany McComb committed the egregious sin of attempting to thank God and Jesus. "I went through four years of school at Foothill and they taught me logic and they taught me freedom of speech," McComb stated. "God's the biggest part of my life. Just like other valedictorians thank their parents, I wanted to thank my lord and savior."

If Schools were Supermarkets

The best explanation of why our schools are failing that I've seen in quite a while, from blogging economist Don Boudreaux:

Government K-12 schools, as now run everywhere in the U.S., will never excel at educating students. The reason is that each school gets its students and its budget without having to compete for them.

Imagine if, say, supermarkets were run the same way we run schools. Everyone in my county would pay taxes to fund the county supermarket system; each one of us would then be assigned one specific county supermarket at which we are allowed to shop.

Of course, once in our assigned store, all the groceries that each of us gets are "free" -- meaning, we don't have to pay for them on the spot. If the products and services supplied by the supermarket are of poor quality, we're not allowed to switch to other county markets; we must, instead, complain to politicians.

The managers of the supermarkets will agree that their stores offer abysmal service and undesirable products; they will assert that this sad fact is caused by underfunding. We will be warned that only by paying higher taxes will we have any possibility of getting better supermarkets.

So our taxes will rise and funding for supermarkets will increase. But quality will remain poor -- and the excuses offered by the government-employed managers of the supermarkets will remain that they need yet more funding.

Technorati Tags: Education, Failing Schools.

Scholastic Shooting Explodes in Memphis

Who would'a thunk it? A good school program expanding as the number of school shooting teams in Memphis triples this year:

Last season, only Memphis University School and Houston High School had trap shooting clubs.

That changed when Shelby County School Board member Ron Lollar heard about the 400 scholarships set aside by the Tennessee Wildlife Federation for Tennessee high school trap team members across the state.

Lollar and County Schools Supt. Bobby Webb gathered interested coaches and sponsors to form four more teams from Arlington, Bolton, Germantown and Briarcrest high schools. To join, students must maintain a "C" average, cannot misbehave and must complete a Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency hunter's safety course.

I always liked Ron Lollar.

And who would'a thunk it? The Commercial Appeal prints a story about kids with guns and doesn't descend into left-wing nut-bag ranting, not even a little.

Technorati Tags: Scholastic Shooting, Education, Second Amendment, Memphis, Tennessee, Shelby County.

Teaching Immigrant Children English

The touchy-feely crowd in California was panic-stricken when voters called for teaching children in English, rather than keeping them from learning how to get along in America. But once again, the liberals were just plain wrong:

THE LATEST TEST scores of California's English learners show that immigrant children are continuing to do well under English immersion, defying the doomsday predictions by opponents of 1998's Proposition 227. The mandate that schools teach children "overwhelmingly" in English, rather than in their native languages, has resulted in a large, demonstrable improvement in English proficiency. ...

In 2005, 47% of California's English learners scored in the top two categories of English proficiency — "early advanced" or "advanced." By comparison, only 25% scored in the top two categories in 2001, shortly after many school districts began eliminating their bilingual programs. That's a remarkable improvement.

It's time to say that to live in America you must learn English.

Technorati Tags: Education, Immigration, National Language, English.

The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy

The following is the abstract from a paper posted on the Harvard University site under the section Faculty Research Working Paper Series:

In this paper, John J. Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago's Department of Political Science and Stephen M.Walt of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government contend that the centerpiece of U.S. Middle East policy is its intimate relationship with Israel. The authors argue that although often justified as reflecting shared strategic interests or compelling moral imperatives, the U.S. commitment to Israel is due primarily to the activities of the “Israel Lobby." This paper goes on to describe the various activities that pro-Israel groups have undertaken in order to shift U.S. foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction.

Nowhere in the paper do the authors acknowledge the activities of pro-Islam groups, such as CAIR, and their efforts to shift U.S. foreign policy.

It is a one-side, myopic view of complex policy. Reviewing the actual text of the "academic" paper would lead one to think that it was written by an ambitious grade schooler. I began to fisk the article but soon realized that it would take weeks to list all the errors.

As my brother put it, "Dispicable. This passes for scholorship at Harvard."

Technorati Tags: Harvard, Liberal Academia.

Engineering Shortage a "Myth"

We've heard for decades that American education is failing and technical jobs are being given to Asians because there aren't enough Americans to fill the need. But then there's this from Business Week:

Because of fuzzy definitions of "engineering graduate," estimates of Indian and Chinese numbers can be wildly exaggerated, while America's are understated.

Just look at the numbers using consistent criteria. If one counts people who study computer science and information technology as engineers -- as India does -- then the U.S. grants 134,000 four-year engineering degrees annually. Indeed, the U.S. is producing far more engineers per capita than either of Asia's emerging superpowers. Indian schools grants only 122,000 four-year engineering degrees (and almost as many three-year degrees), while China generates 351,000.

"SPREADING PROPAGANDA." But China's statistics may still be inflated because the definition of an engineer can vary widely from province to province. In some cases, auto mechanics are included. "The numbers seem to include anybody who has studied anything technical," Wadhwa says.

The bottom line is that America's engineering crisis is a myth, Wadhwa argues.

Technorati Tags: Education, Engineering, Offshoring.

What's Wrong with America

I took an online Zogby poll this morning. I do these every once in a while because (1) it gives some insight as to what pollsters are looking at (and thus what the media and politicians are concerned with, and from there what gets put into the American psyche) and (2) I get some fairly interesting newsletters from Zogby in return.

This morning's poll asked:

What do you think should be the number one priority for the next congress?

• War in Iraq
• Economy
• Social security reform
• Scandals/ethics
• Environment
• US foreign policy
• Homeland security
• Tax reform
• Federal budget deficit
• Off-shoring of jobs
• Poverty
• Racial divide in the US
• Health care
• Illegal immigration
• Nothing/not sure
• Other-Specify

What is missing from this list? What domestic issue has fallen so far off the radar that it doesn't even merit consideration?

Education.

Poverty is on the list, but if all our children were educated then poverty would be massively reduced, if not virtually eliminated.

Off-shoring of jobs is on the list, but if all our children were educated then we would be off-shoring our talent to help the developing world.

Racism is on the list, but if all our children were educated then a great deal of the causes of racism would be eliminated. Education is the key to true equal opportunity. And as the economic, political and academic segments of our society become integrated, racism melts away. The culture of victimization could not survive. There would be no more resentment from taxpayers for supporting a growing welfare state. Most importantly, you do not hate those who work work with, who help you be successful in your career, who live next to you and whose children play with yours.

If all our children were educated then the black family could grow strong again. Educated fathers tend to stay married, regardless of race. Educated girls have ambition, not babies, regardless of race.

If all our children were educated then crime would plummet. Tax revenues would be raised hand over fist. Everyone would have health care that they choose, not that the government tries to provide.

Some may say I'm being racist by stating things in a stereotypical manner. Some may say I'm oversimplifying. But none can sway me from the position that we are cheating our children and weakening our country's future because we are failing to address this problem.

Treason on Campus?

Clayton Cramer prints a letter from a college professor to a conservative student.

HS Online Gym Class

Some Arizona high schools are allowing students to take gym class online:

Take Primavera Online High School in Chandler. P.E. students there can jog, dance or go on a bike ride, then file heart-monitor readings to their teacher online as proof.

How long before kids put on the heart monitor, have sex and upload the readings?

Update: Office discussion have prompted other ways to fool the system:

1. Give your little brother $5 to wear the monitor while he runs around the neighborhood and plays so you can sit on the couch watching American Idol.
2. "Here, Grandpa, put this on and try walking across the room."

20% Calif. HS Grads Fail Exit Exam

100,000 California high school seniors have failed the state's graduation exam. They must pass both the English and math sections of the test by June in order to graduate.

Predictably, the failure rate is highest among minority and low-income students where societal pressues to succeed are lowest. And just as predictably, the liberals in California are looking for a way to pass them anyway:

Alternatives on the table include summer school, additional course work at community colleges, or even an alternative diploma.

I don't see "retest" after summer school or community college courses, but that could be an oversight. But what is an "alternative diploma"? One that says, "I went . . . most of the time . . . but didn't learn anything"?

Breaking Liberal Stranglehold on Academia

Steven Warshawsky proposes a uniquely conservative way to give our future a choice in choosing an education: the free market.

Just as conservatives smashed the Left’s “illiberal stranglehold” on the mainstream media by establishing competing sources of news and opinion, they can defeat the Left’s domination of higher education by establishing competing colleges and universities dedicated as institutions to conservative values, ideas, and texts. Indeed, I submit that this is the only viable long-term solution to the problem of left-wing bias in higher education. Some of these conservative-oriented institutions already exist (most notably, Hillsdale College and several religious colleges), but many more need to be established at all levels of higher education.

I've often thought this and am pleased to see it beginning to be discussed. I for one refuse to give money to my alma mater because of the liberal direction it has taken, but would be pleased to support a new venture that was balanced — or, given the state of academia today, even biased the other way.

Don't Turn My Kids Into Wimps

The Perverted Republican is a little irate at a Boston Globe story that reports most teachers are using purple ink rather than red when grading papers because it has “red’s sense of authority but also blue’s association with serenity.” Drop by and encourage the her to do more political commentary so she'll come up with more gems like this:

I want my kids to get thrown out in dodgeball, know that red pen means wrong answer, an "F" means failure and getting grounded and you'd better get your act together.

I will NOT raise my future children to be sheltered little pussies.

Schools Ordered to Hold Constitutional Day

Sen. Byrd (D-WV) usually slips amendments into legislation that spends taxpayer money on pork projects in West Virginia. But now he has used his sly talents for something else entirely — he added an amendment to a spending bill that orders all federally funded schools (including colleges) to hold a program commemorating the signing of the Constitution in 1787 on or around 17 September every year.

This'll be sure to end up pissing off everybody. Liberal educators will be mad that the federal government is mandating changes to the curriculum, and conservatives will be mad with the material presented. "Why is that?" I hear you ask:

Miss Aspey said federal laws prohibit curriculum mandates, but the Byrd mandate "doesn't dictate to schools the content or the specifics of their Constitution Day program." ...

"Each school can rely on the ingenuity of its educators to determine how best to present its own program on the Constitution," [Byrd] said.

What do you think the presentation content will be in Berkely?

Surprise! Christian Education Good for Boys

From a survey of school children in England:

Boys at private Anglican and Catholic schools are more likely to oppose sex before marriage and be less tolerant of pornography.

They are also less likely to feel depressed or consider suicide, according to a survey of 13,000 teenagers by Professor Leslie J Francis from the University of Wales, Bangor.

Compare and contrast with the latest Planned Parenthood sex-education materials tells 8^th graders that they should be using Saran Wrap as “protection” when engaging in oral and anal sex. Janice Crouse has this to say:

How did we get to the point where it must be assumed that 8th graders are going to be “performing” oral and anal sex and we have to equip them to do it “safely”? This wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact that the sex education lobby — in its supposed superior wisdom — has been pushing to strip kids as young as kindergarten age of their innocence by insisting that they be taught about every kind of deviant sexual practice long before they are emotionally ready for such information. ...

The FBI publishes A Parent’s Guide to the Internet. Note well how it describes the modus operandi of pedophiles: “These individuals attempt to gradually lower children's inhibitions by slowly introducing sexual context and content into their conversations.” And millions of parents are letting so-called sex-education experts do exactly this to their children in the classroom without raising any objection.

NEA Suit Discredited by Internal Memo

The National Education Association is suing the federal government claiming that the No Child Left Behind initiative is underfunded. But then there's this annoying little memo written by the NEA's chief lawyer is not a mandate — it is voluntary because it is only enforced if the state accepts federal education funds.

Liberal Academic Brainwashing Inneffective

The Washington Times says student Bush backers outnumber critics:

The survey of 1,206 students nationwide finds about 47 percent approve of Mr. Bush, about 46 percent disapprove and about 6 percent are unsure. There's an uptick in collegiate conservatism as well: 33 percent say they are conservatives, up three points from 2004.

The numbers reveal a politically engaged but independent young population -- with a few surprises of its own.

Paper released by Harvard University here.

Teacher Fails, ex-Homeless Man Excells

Is this hilarious, shocking, or both?

A thin, black New York teacher who repeatedly failed his state certification test has been arrested for paying an overweight white man 20 years his senior to take the test for him. But it wasn't the man's appearance that aroused suspicion; instead, it was the sudden jump in his test score. Teacher Wayne Brightly paid stand-in Rubin Leitner $2 for the deed, saying he was afraid he'd lose his $59,000 dollar a year job if he flunked the test again.

Leitner says the teacher told him no one would ever know and no one did - until authorities noticed the enormous improvement in the teacher's test scores. He has now been charged with coercion and falsifying business records - and has been removed from the classroom.

School Chancellor Joel Klein was "outraged" and said, "The fact that somebody doesn't meet that minimal qualification, as this teacher seemed incapable of doing, is a pretty good indication that we wouldn't want them teaching our students."

A "pretty good indication"? I'd say it was more than just "pretty good" and much more than just an "indication".

It turns out that they guy who excelled on the test used to be homeless, but this was probably because he suffers from the developmental disorder Asperger's syndrome, a condition that affects social skills but not IQ.

But wait — there's more! Dim Brightly is still on the payroll! Why? Because he's in the union!

But teachers union President Randi Weingarten defended the contract, saying the city has "failed to put into place the proper safeguards" to make sure teachers are certified.

Brightly has a temporary license to work in the city schools and is protected by the teachers pact. His license expires this summer, meaning the city will not have to continue paying his $59,000-a-year salary beyond that point, Klein said.

According to the union it is the city's fault that Brightly cheated because they didn't make it so he couldn't cheat.

I'm betting the union President votes Democrat.

No Child Left Behind is Working

I didn't like the law, but this is encouraging:

Students are doing better on state verbal and math tests required under the No Child Left Behind Act, and the gaps between white and minority students are narrowing. ...

The good news, according to the survey by Jennings' group, is that nearly three-quarters of school officials surveyed said their schools' standard skills scores improved in 2004. In 21 states, the gaps between white and ethnic minority achievement scores narrowed. The gaps between low-income and other students also shrank.

According to the school officials surveyed, the improvements are mainly due to teaching that is more focused on the skills that the exams are testing, to better-qualified teachers, and to more attention to low-achieving students.

Bill Gates Confronts Education Problem

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates takes a look at America's educational system and doesn't like what he sees:

Our high schools are obsolete.

By obsolete, I don't just mean that they are broken, flawed and underfunded — although I can't argue with any of those descriptions.

What I mean is that they were designed 50 years ago to meet the needs of another age. Today, even when they work exactly as designed, our high schools cannot teach our kids what they need to know.

Until we design high schools to meet the needs of the 21st century, we will keep limiting — even ruining — the lives of millions of Americans every year. Frankly, I am terrified for our workforce of tomorrow.

Read it all. The man is right.

Japan's Kids Clueless, Too

Watching Jay Leno talk to people on the street you get the impression that Americans are really, really dumb. Cheer up, we're not the only ones:

A recent survey revealed that about 40 percent of university students in Japan cannot find Iraq (news - web sites) on the map, despite a historic mission by Japanese troops in the war-ravaged Middle Eastern country.

NYC 6th Graders Send Soldier Hate Mail

Pfc. Rob Jacobs is currently stationed 10 miles from North Korea and may be headed to Iraq soon. Imagine the impact when he received 21 letters like this from Brooklyn schoolchildren (as part of a school assignment):

One girl wrote that she believes Jacobs is "being forced to kill innocent people" and challenged him to name an Iraqi terrorist, concluding, "I know I can't."

Another girl wrote, "I strongly feel this war is pointless," while a classmate predicted that because Bush was re-elected, "only 50 or 100 [soldiers] will survive."

A boy accused soldiers of "destroying holy places like mosques."

For the complete story on this subject click over to the Education Wonks.

Crusades: Truth Behind the History Lesson

From a book review:

But the truth is that the Crusades had nothing to do with colonialism or unprovoked aggression -- and in A Concise History of the Crusades, renowned medieval historian Thomas F. Madden sets the record straight. The Crusades, he shows, were not the brainchild of an ambitious pope or rapacious knights but a response to more than four centuries of conquests in which Muslims had already captured two thirds of the old Christian world. At some point, Christianity as a faith and a culture had to defend itself or be subsumed by Islam. The Crusades were that defense. Their entire subsequent history is one of Western reaction to Muslim advances -- they were no more offensive than was the American invasion of Normandy.

Could my history teacher and Hollywood have been lying to me? How unprecedented!

I might just have to break down and buy this book (and then make time to read it!).

Why the NEA is a Terrorist Organization

The NY Post has discovered that nearly half of NY teachers brought up on charges up to and including drug possession are still on the payroll:

* Eileen Mackay was charged last year with showing up drunk at PS 20 in Staten Island.

Yet the 52-year-old teacher managed to keep her $48,739 salary and get a paid "restoration of health" sabbatical in exchange for random alcohol testing and a $3,000 fine.

* Anthony Beach, a 45-year-old teacher at HS for Business and Technology in Brooklyn, was busted in 2003 for possessing crack cocaine.

He never told the Education Department of his arrest nor of another brush with drug charges two years earlier — but he collects a $54,476 salary today after being ordered to seek drug counseling and pay a $7,500 fine.

* Only 74 of the 555 teachers charged since 2000 were actually fired.

* More than 180 teachers retired or resigned, presumably under pressure from the city — a move that allows them to collect a pension. Another 68 cases are pending.

Teacher unions have made it nearly impossible to rid the system of these "teachers" and yet the government continues to force the public to send their children to these people to be supervised and taught.

Terrorists want to do us irreparable harm. The NEA wants to do irreparable harm to our children. Education Secretary Rod Paige was right.

English First

Something to consider the next time that someone argues that American schools should offer alternative-language education:

"About three-fourths of all English that is spoken is used as a second language, not the first. In China, more than 300 million people are studying English, which is more than the number of Americans who know it."...

"No doubt a large number of students want to study in the United States, not just because of the quality of education available, but because they understand proficiency in English is essential in a globalized world," says Robert Pastor, vice president of international affairs at American University.

With the growing standardization of English as the language of commerce, you'd think that we could insist on teaching it to the children growing up on our own soil.

Damn leftists.

Education Outrage Coverage

By now everyone should have heard about the teacher who has been barred from giving students copies of the Declaration of Indepence because it mentions God.

Truth, Lies & Common Sense has the best coverage of the story I've seen yet in Enemies, Foreign and Domestic, complete with contact information of the guilty and a nice roundup of blogger reactions.

Keeping God Out of the Classroom

Read The Real Ordeal for the skinny on this story:

A California teacher has been barred by his school from giving students documents from American history that refer to God -- including the Declaration of Independence.

Child Suspended for Cartwheels

An 11-year-old girl was suspended from school for doing cartwheels and handstands during lunch. School authorities had warned her to stop doing "gymnastic stunts" during lunch because they were "dangerous".

They said gymnastics on the playground creates an unsafe situation

"I thought they were absolutely weird, because I see other kids playing baseball and soccer and I think that's more dangerous than gymnastics," Faegre said.

An intelligent person would certainly think so. And being 11 isn't a barrier to being intelligent (but perhaps working in the "educational" system is).

Lunch is like recess. You know, that period of time where kids are suppossed to run around and be kids for a while, burning off excess energy before they are cooped up in a room again so they can be taught to be adults.

Where was this? California, of course.

Kiddie Pole Dancing

Just when we tired o