Category: Education

As We Approach 250 Years

Soon we will be celebrating this country’s 250th year in existence (some say it may be the last celebration we have)…and since moist Americans are completely ignorant about our history I thought I would do my part to try and help them understand our history and why we did the things we did.

One of the best summations of our collective history was done by US Military Academy historian, Maj. Danny Sjursen…..I include his series here from the very early days to the election of Barack Obama…it is a lot to take in but it does give a complete background to the events that made this country.

If you truly love this country then I suggest to read these and see just why….

Part 1; Part 2; Part 3; Part 4; Part 5; Part 6; Part 7; Part 8; Part 9; Part 10; Part 11; Part 12; Part 13; Part 14; Part 15; Part 16; Part 17; Part 18; Part 19; Part 20; Part 21; Part 22; Part 23; Part 24; Part 25; Part 26; Part 27; Part 28; Part 29; Part 30; Part 31; Part 32; Part 33; Part 34; Part 35 ; Part 36.

There is also another source that makes for excellent learning…..Howard Zinn’s , A People’s History Of The United States, can be found everywhere and especially on Amazon.

I want everyone to know our history all the good, the bad and the ugly for all of it is what made us what we were.

Please let me know what you thought of the series.

Be Smart!

Learn Stuff!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“Lego ergo scribo”

The Least Intelligent Among Us

Every day there is some new conspiracy coming out of social media….from eating babies to flat earth to voter fraud to alien half breeds….it seems the least capable of critical thinking are the ones holding the day.

Why is this?

New research published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied suggests that people often overestimate their understanding of political facts. This tendency to be overconfident appears most common among individuals who actually know the least about politics and those who lean conservative. The findings provide evidence that psychological traits, like a desire for quick and definitive answers, help explain why some voters struggle to accurately judge their own political knowledge.

Erika K. Fulton, an associate professor of psychology at Idaho State University and head of the META Lab, led a team of scientists to investigate how well people gauge their own grasp of political information. The research team noticed a gap in the existing scientific literature regarding this specific type of self-evaluation. Most prior studies on political knowledge were conducted by political scientists, who often use different analytical methods than cognitive psychologists.

The scientists wanted to apply the strict measurement standards of cognitive psychology to political knowledge. As the researchers explained, “Metacognition is broadly defined as thinking about one’s own cognition. The type we studied is called metacognitive monitoring accuracy, or the degree to which judgments of what one knows matches what one actually knows.”

In simpler terms, this concept refers to a person’s ability to accurately recognize when they are right and when they are wrong. “People tend to be overconfident regarding what they think they know, and this has serious consequences in the political realm, such as when people vote on candidates and issues that they don’t understand as well as they think they do,” the researchers stated.

“We couldn’t find any political metacognition studies conducted by cognitive psychologists, specifically metacognition researchers, only by political scientists,” the researchers told PsyPost. “Experimental psychology has very specific measurement criteria that guide our study designs, and we wanted to employ those for a fuller, more nuanced understanding of political metacognition.”

https://www.psypost.org/people-with-the-least-political-knowledge-tend-to-be-the-most-overconfident-in-their-grasp-of-facts/

Fascinating!  Social media is driving this erroneous thinking.

The reason social media is so influential is a person’s attention span….

In 2004, researchers at the University of California, Irvine, found that the average attention span on any screen was about two and a half minutes, Houlihan explained in the clip. By 2012, it had shrunk to 75 seconds.

In the last 10 years or so, the average attention span has plummeted to an abysmal 47 seconds, with the median being roughly 40 seconds.

What better place to tap into the short attention span to influence people than social media.

There is the problem that needs repair…..but sadly in a world that demands instant gratification we will not find the repairs we need.

The turmoil we face today will be with us for a very long time no matter the damage it does to the people….

And that is the name of that tune…..

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

A Damn Good Idea

This entire country is ignorant on how the government works and that has lead to some silly stuff in government….why is this?

Civics is not a mandatory subject in schools….here in Mississippi a Senator is trying to do something about the ignorance.

In celebration of America’s 250th birthday, we must ensure that Mississippi’s students graduate with knowledge of and appreciation for the Declaration of Independence and our state and federal institutions it inspired. Civics knowledge, skills, attitudes and behaviors are not passed along through the gene pool, but must be built anew with each rising generation of citizens.

To this end, I am proud to author Senate Bill 2292, legislation that would require civics courses in every public and charter school in Mississippi in order for students to graduate high school.

Earlier this month, the Senate unanimously passed SB 2292 with strong bipartisan support. It’s now assigned to both the House Education and Accountability, Efficiency and Transparency Committee, and I encourage my House colleagues to put aside “education politics” of the last couple of years and advance it to the House floor, teeing up its passage prior to our adjournment in April.

Thirty-seven states plus D.C. require stand-alone civics courses for high school graduation, seven of them for a full year. If we pass this bill, beginning with the 2027-28 school year, Mississippi would proudly join this mix.

Civics knowledge is sadly lacking across our citizenry, perhaps most acutely among our students here in Mississippi. Nationally, only 22% of eighth graders achieved proficiency on the most recent NAEP civics assessment — the lowest performance of any tested subject outside U.S. History. For Mississippi students, who largely lack access to a dedicated civics course, the picture is likely no better. Mississippi students deserve better than that national floor.

Sen. Wiggins: Mississippi must require civics education for graduation

This is a stellar idea….not just for Mississippi but for this whole darn country.

Here in Mississippi I do not think this has a chance for state politicians like having an ignorant popular that is easily duped into their schemes and scams.

Hopefully this idea will catch on nationwide…..it is sadly needed for an informed population.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

“Idiocracy” Is Coming True!

About ten years ago I went to see a film by Mike Judge about the decline of the American people into a dystopian future where the population became idiots.  The movie was ‘Idiocracy’.

Since then I have watched their view of the future become more and more prophetic.

And now the news is not very encouraging abut the mental make-up of the people of this country….

For the first time in recorded human history, scientists have discovered a generation they claim is actually less intelligent than the one that came before it.

Neuroscientist Dr Jared Cooney Horvath, who previously worked as an educator, argues that people in Gen Z have become cognitively stunted as a result of their over-reliance on new technology, like smartphones.

With records being kept on academic achievement for the past 200 years, this sudden decline from Millennials to Gen Zers was attributed to this rapid digital development, with Dr Horvath explaining before a Senate committee last month that this drop happened despite young people spending longer than ever in school.

Gen Z are the first age group to grow up with easy access to the internet both at home and in school, which Dr Horvath explained has caused a provable loss in skills related to problem solving, reading, memory, math, and paying attention in class.

The Mail reports that Horvath told the Commerce, Science, and Transportation committee that this is directly tied to the rise of ‘educational technology’ in school, where teachers rely on tablets or computers in school as part of the learning process.

The neuroscientist claimed that humans had not developed over the course of millions of years of evolution to digest short video clips and sentences and convert them into understanding and memory, without having to work at a novel or think through a complex idea.

On January 15, Horvath told the committee: “More than half of the time a teenager is awake, half of it is spent staring at a screen.

“Humans are biologically programmed to learn from other humans and from deep study, not flipping through screens for bullet point summaries.”

Continuing his argument about human evolution, Horvath explained that, as social creatures, we had developed to learn from each other in face-to-face discussions. Not a short YouTube video or AI summary.

Even the act of looking at a screen can disrupt the process through which our brains store information, as well as hurt our ability to focus. He also argued that it was not a case of developing better apps, but returning to how humanity had evolved to process information.

Horvath said: “The answer appears to be the tools we are using within schools to drive that learning.

“If you look at the data, once countries adopt digital technology widely in schools, performance goes down significantly.”

Calling for a sea change in how those in power look at education, Horvath asked legislators: “What do kids do on computers? They skim.

“So rather than determining what do we want our children to do and gearing education towards that, we are redefining education to better suit the tool. That’s not progress, that is surrender.”

(unilad.com)

If this continues then this country is doomed….and as long as we have politicians willing to lie and steal this country is doomed….

Just watch ‘Idiocracy’…..

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/

The movie was meant to be a comedy and instead it has become a gloomy prediction of our future without substantial change.

Glad my time is limited and I will not see the end results of this stupidity.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Who’s Afraid Of Intellectualism?

Good question and the best answer is Conservatives since about the 1960s….and ever since they have worked tirelessly to eradicate it….

As a kid, my favorite part of grocery shopping wasn’t the snacks or the cereal aisle, it was the tabloids at the checkout. I’d devour headlines about Batboy sightings, Bigfoot vacations, royal scandals, and the occasional presidential summit with extraterrestrials. These were absurdities printed with a straight face, and the comedy was half the fun.

I didn’t expect that, decades later, those supermarket fever dreams would feel less like parody and more like prophecy. The fantasies that once lived on cheap newsprint now pulse through mainstream culture. In the social media age, anything can be “true” if it flatters your bias or fuels your outrage. And with AI dissolving the already thin boundary between fact and fiction, we’ve entered an era where reality feels optional, truth feels negotiable, and the most sensational lie travels at the speed of an algorithm.

In this environment, “common sense,” emotion, and personal anecdote have muscled into spaces once reserved for evidence and expertise. But there’s nothing “common sense” about medicine, climate science, gender identity, or any other complex system that shapes human life. Yet this appeal to “what feels right” has become the jet fuel of America’s culture war. It declares: If the issue seems simple to me, it should be simple to you. And if you disagree, you’re elitist or part of a hidden agenda. This flattening of complexity has turned ignorance into authenticity and expertise into betrayal.

This is anti-intellectualism, and though accelerating, it isn’t new. Richard Hofstadter warned in the 1960s of a growing American suspicion of expertise, a belief that intelligence itself was untrustworthy. What was once a cultural tendency has hardened into a political identity and, increasingly, a governing philosophy.

It’s also tied to a literacy crisis hiding in plain sight. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 21% of U.S. adults struggle with “Level 1” literacy, basic decoding with limited comprehension, and 34% of adults perform at “Below Level 2,” meaning they cannot reliably compare or integrate information across texts. The more recent NCES update shows low literacy rates increasing, with “Below Level 2” rising from 29% to 34% as of 2024.

America’s Peril: The Rot of Anti-Intellectualism and Demagoguery is Costing Us Our Future

So why are so many Americans afraid of intellectuals?

They prefer to grasp a hold of some hair-brain idea than see if the idea holds water….is it laziness or just plain stupidity?

Inquiring minds want to know.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

What Kinda Fresh Bullsh*t Is This?

We all know that the GOP hates education and its has been trying to eliminate it for decades and then along came Donny and his Magic Sharpie and out came the cleaver to the policies.

First putting a wrestling window in charge of education is about as stupid as putting a pedophile in charge of day care…..it is moronic.

Now these twats have gone further and naming what is a professional degree….hint nursing is not…..

Nursing is no longer considered a “professional” degree under the Trump administration. The change, along with the elimination of a longstanding loan program for graduate and professional students, has sparked outrage from several nursing organizations.

As part of the U.S. Department of Education’s new federal student loan-related changes under President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” nursing has been excluded from the group of programs that are considered “professional” degrees, and a loan program for graduate students has been marked for elimination.

The changes have created new fears about how students, and particularly students seeking post-baccalaureate nursing degrees, will finance their education — and several organizations have already voiced their disapproval and concern at the updates.

In early November, the department made several alterations that impact federal student loans, according to a news release from the U.S. Department of Education. “In total, negotiators reviewed and agreed to 17 regulatory provisions,” per the release, including a “new and simplified” Repayment Assistance Plan and “the definition of a professional student.”

https://people.com/nursing-is-not-a-professional-degree-under-president-donald-trumps-new-bill-11855209

This policy is stupid.

In case you are interested….nurses are not alone in this whack job….

https://www.newsweek.com/full-list-degrees-professional-trump-administration-11085695

It is sad that this group of idiots in charge decide who is a professional….hint:  maybe everyone in the cabinet should be put on this list and we could weed out a bit of incompetency.

Why is this attack on students and the student loan situation so damn important to a bunch of micro-mental toads?

Leave it to the GOP to stop poor people from getting and education and those that do are in debt for most of the rest of their life.

These people make me sick.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

The Phoenix Declaration

Right about here most people are asking….HUH?

This is that group of a/holes from the Heritage Foundation on our education system….

Florida is the first state to embrace the manure from these ‘people’…..

Florida education leaders on Thursday approved a set of principles that would teach a conservative-backed vision of the United States. The State Board of Education, which also approved social-studies changes intended to highlight ideological evils of communism, signed off on Florida becoming the first state to adopt the Heritage Foundation’s “Phoenix Declaration: An American Vision for Education.”

The declaration is a statement of principles described as fostering “a love of country,” teaching children to “seek the good, true and beautiful” and aiming for students to “achieve their full, God-given potential.” Education Commissioner Anastasios Kamoutsas said the declaration establishes an “affiliation” with the Heritage Foundation and promotes what the board supports rather than what it opposes. “We often call out what is problematic in education, pushing an ideology over indoctrination, whether that’s the instruction of sexual orientation and gender identity in elementary schools or divisive concepts like critical race theory and DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) that treats people differently based on the way God created them,” Kamoutsas said. “Well, this talks about what we want to see. We want to see parents empowered. We want to see curriculum, transparency, we want to see academic excellence in all of our students.” The Washington, D.C.-based Heritage Foundation has a stated mission of building and promoting conservative public policies. Critics addressing the education board Thursday described the Heritage Foundation declaration as promoting indoctrination.

Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/education/article312907332.html

It is bad enough that these dicks have fucked up our political system and now they have a plan to do the same with the education of our children.

My favorite part of the whole debacle is there statement…..“We often call out what is problematic in education, pushing an ideology over indoctrination”

Now what is the difference between instruction and indoctrination?

How long before the other Red States embrace the crap these people are pushing?

It is true that the education system needs an overhaul but nothing these idiots are proposing will make it better…..if anything it will feed the bigotry and ignorance they say they want to eliminate.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

The War On Education Continues

The conservs have always had a hard on for teachers and in the last decade it has gotten to pathetic heights….for example that a/hole Bannon attacks teachers as terrorists…

Steve Bannon labeled America’s teachers “terrorists” while speaking from Charlie Kirk’s massive memorial service in Arizona on Sunday.

The former Trump adviser made the comment during a broadcast on the right-wing network Real America’s Voice, as his co-host Gina Loudon was celebrating Kirk’s “throwback ideas,” such as “young marriage” and having “lots of children.”

When Loudon noted that the late right-wing activist’s old-school ideas “are not popular on college campuses right now,” Bannon pushed back with a startling statement.

“Well, I actually think they are popular,” Bannon, 71, said, “but it’s not the way those kids—look, from kindergarten all the way up, they are essentially, you know, a third of the teachers are terrorists that are trying to form them.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/steve-bannon-says-teachers-are-terrorists-in-unhinged-charlie-kirk-tribute/

Terrorists?  Seriously?  What kind of deluded moron makes such an assertion?

A MAGA twat….that’s who.

More on the sad state of education….

The average reading and math scores of American high school seniors fell to their lowest levels in two decades in 2024, according to new national data released last week.

The results, from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), found that, on average, reading scores for 12th graders were 10 points lower in 2024 than they were in 1992, when the test was first administered, and that math scores fell to their lowest levels since 2005, when the math assessment began.

The test, administered by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), which is part of the US Department of Education, assessed roughly 19,300 12th-graders in math, 24,300 in reading and 23,000 eighth-graders in science between January and March of last year.

The report found that 35% of seniors “performed at or above” the NAEP’s “proficient” level in reading, and 22% were at or above that level in math.

It also stated that 45% of 12th graders scored below the NAEP’s “basic” level in math, marking a five percentage-point increase from 2019. In reading, 32% of students scored below the basic level, which was a two-point increase from 2019

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2025/sep/20/high-school-students-scores

What can we expect with the assault on education and the whole social media BS….

I think we need public education and good teachers that make the slow mind students think for themselves….it seems that the GOP is doing all it can to kill public education….I do not agree one iota with any of their plans for schools…..

While the White House’s fight with elite universities such as Columbia and Harvard has recently dominated the headlines, the feud overshadows the broader and more far-reaching assault on K-12 public education by the Trump administration and many states.

The Trump administration has gutted the Department of Education, imperiling efforts to protect students’ civil rights, and proposed billions in public education cuts for fiscal year 2026. Meanwhile, the administration is diverting billions of taxpayer funds into K-12 private schools. These moves build upon similar efforts by conservative states to rein in public education going back decades.

But the consequences of withdrawing from public education could be dire for the U.S. In our 2024 book, “How Government Built America,” we explore the history of public education, from Horace Mann’s “common school movement” in the early 19th century to the GI Bill in the 20th that helped millions of veterans go to college and become homeowners after World War II.

We found that public education has been essential for not only creating an educated workforce but for inculcating the United States’ fundamental values of liberty, equality, fairness and the common good.

https://theconversation.com/why-america-still-needs-public-schools-260368

I support education completely and thanks to the GI Bill after Vietnam most of my education was paid for (of course that was a long time ago before college became big business and prices went out of sight)

Education should be a vital component of preparing our children to face this world and help the next generation to do the same.

Any thoughts?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

What Happened To DOGE?

For months after Donny took office and tagged in Elmo to lighten the government of personnel the media was fixated on his movement and his actions….then Elmo blew out of town after creating governmental chaos and the reports lessened and then seemingly to disappear.

So how was DOGE doing at making government lighter?

Good question that needs a good answer.

Elom promised to save the country $2 trillion.

That target quickly dropped to $1 trillion. Then in April, Musk started intimating that the savings would only be in the region of $150 billion, making it clear to all but his most diehard supporters that DOGE was failing on its own terms — even going by its own dubious estimates of its progress.

Now, it’s looking like those purported “savings” are somehow even more pitiful than once believed.

A new investigation by Politico found that of the $52.8 billion that DOGE claims it’s saved by cancelling federal contracts through July, its actual savings were closer to a paltry $1.4 billion — which is barely two percent of what it’s boasting to the public.

The books, it seems, have been well and truly cooked — but how? According to Politico, DOGE is using the maximum spending possible allocated for some of the 10,000 contracts it axed as of last month, a “ceiling value” that’s often way higher than what the government ends up spending.

“That’s the equivalent of basically taking out a credit card with a $20,000 credit limit, cancelling it and then saying, ‘I’ve just saved $20,000,'” Jessica Tillipman, associate dean for government procurement law studies at George Washington University Law School, told Politico. “Anything that’s been said publicly about [DOGE’s] savings is meaningless.”

DOGE took a “move fast and break things,” take-no-prisoners approach to gutting the federal government. It gleefully pushed for firing tens if not hundreds of thousands of federal employees, demanded access to sensitive and private data, hollowed out the Social Security Administration, and targeted funds for science, education, and healthcare.

https://futurism.com/elon-musk-doge-even-more-failure

So the stats are out and DOGE was NOT nearly as effective as promised….to be real it was a dismal failure.

Like many of the campaign promises many things are falling way short of their promise….but that is okay for Donny is taking revenge on all the people and groups that have defied him in the past…..and is not that what a president is suppose to do instead of putting the country on a positive footing?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

History Revisionism

We know that Donny and his merry band of idiots have their own version of American history…..and now Donny wants to make sure that history fits his vision of events from our past.

He has ordered the Smithsonian to fall in lie with his perverted vision…..

The Trump administration informed the Smithsonian Institution on Tuesday that it will check its current and planned exhibitions’ displayed wording, websites, and social media “to assess tone, historical framing and alignment with American ideals.” A letter from the White House said the museums will have 120 days to make any changes the administration wants, the New York Times reports. The changes could include “replacing divisive or ideologically driven language with unifying, historically accurate and constructive descriptions,” the letter to Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch says.

The letter provides the first details of the administration’s plan to scrutinize the Smithsonian, per the Washington Post, to ensure adherence to Trump’s goals of removing what he called its “improper ideology” in favor of “truth and sanity.” The Smithsonian released a statement later Tuesday pledging cooperation with the administration and saying its work “is grounded in a deep commitment to scholarly excellence, rigorous research, and the accurate, factual presentation of history.”

A historian called the Trump administration plan an affront to the professionals trained to ensure historically accurate presentations, per the Wall Street Journal. “If those things are taken out of the hands of historians, the public stands to lose a great deal in having reliable and engaging content that tells a whole and complex story of the American past,” said Sarah Weicksel, executive director of the American Historical Association.

This is, as I have said making history fit into the warped ideals of Donny and the mental midgets behind him….

The Wall Street Journal reports on Tuesday that U.S. President Donald Trump’s White House is keeping an eye on the Smithsonian Museum to ensure that its exhibits on display for the United States’ 250th anniversary “align with” the president’s personal “interpretation of American history.”

According to the Journal, the administration this week sent a letter to the Smithsonian announcing it was seeking what the paper describes as a “far-reaching review” of its “museum exhibitions, materials and operations” that will include everything from “public-facing exhibition text and online content to internal curatorial processes, exhibition planning, the use of collections and artist grants.”

The goal of the review is to ensure the materials comply with an executive order Trump signed earlier this year that called for “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.”

(commondreams.org)

Truth and sanity?  Nothing in the Donny led government is about truth and sanity.

This will do more damage than good….denying history or trying to transform into some unrecognizable POS is NOT the way to instill ‘truth and sanity’ into the subject.

A white nationalist vision of American history is one that centers the role of white Americans above all others and, in fact, typically treats the history of the nation and the race as one and the same. For white nationalists, the United States is a nation created and founded by white people, and American history necessarily spurns the contributions of all other groups. The sins of slavery, segregation, and violence are excused as minor blemishes made along a path toward greatness. It was the accomplishments of America’s great white men, we are led to believe, that brought us the prosperity for which we should all be so thankful. To question them—even if they enslaved, raped, and killed for power, expansion, or wealth—would be to question America itself.

Various versions of this story exist. For decades, the most pervasive version of this mythology lived in the American South. From practically the day after the Civil War, white Southerners crafted a white nationalist morality tale—in popular culture, veterans’ organizations, and the Lost Cause ideology—of lazy Black slaves with generous white masters who in the 1860s did their best to fight off a war of “Northern Aggression” that threatened white Southern freedom. For most of the twentieth century, this story was advanced by groups like the United Daughters of the Confederacy, or UDC—activists who dedicated much of their lives to celebrating white Confederate heritage. They published textbooks, erected monuments, and led public ceremonies honoring the legacy of the Southern white men who tried to destroy the United States.

https://newrepublic.com/article/198384/trump-white-nationalist-vision-future-history

Remake history in HIS image will do nothing to save the nation from imminent destruction.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”