Tag: Public Education

We Need A ‘Counter-Revolution’

There those out there (of which I am one) that believes that there needs to be a standardize educational program on civics.

For too long the subject of civics has been ignored and attempted to reign the subject to the dust bin of history (I always like the saying)…. most Americans are ignorant on the use of civics and how the government works….

Look at the last election and the response by Americans…..where about 10 millions Americans think the election was stolen or somehow illegitimate…. which NO evidence has proven the claims of a stolen election….all of which lead to the insurrection of 06 January….

So I agree with a statement from the Claremont Institute…..that there needs to be an educational counter-revolution.

Claremont Institute president Ryan Williams says that American civic education faces an acute crisis. In his estimation, essentially every institution – the vast complex of media, Big Tech, Hollywood, Fortune 500 companies, and education and government bureaucracies – teaches “vicious lies about America’s Founders” and our nation’s “heritage, heroes, accomplishments, and people.”

Williams argues that what passes for civic education today advances “the goal of wholesale revolution and the institution of a monstrous and unnatural tyranny.”

…

In light of these daunting circumstances, however, he counsels hope: “We at Claremont are happy warriors, and there’s no work we’d rather be doing with friends and fellow citizens.”

Williams describes The Claremont Institute, founded in 1979, as a think tank fomenting a “counterrevolution” to recover civic education through teaching, writing, and litigation. Its mission, he continues, is to restore the natural law and natural rights principles of the Declaration of Independence, the “ingenious political science of the Constitution,” and the “popular constitutionalism and reverence necessary for the maintenance of free government” to “their rightful, preeminent authority in our national life.”

https://realclearwire.com/articles/2021/04/16/the_claremont_institutes_counterrevolution_to_save_america_772948.html#

I believe that civics is one of the most important subjects that needs more attention in our educational system.

Any thoughts?

Coming soon is a post on a new civics project….something that is desperately needed….some may ask why….this cartoon says it all for me….

Image

Turn The Page!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Civics Will Solve Any Problems

From the VOMITORIUM

I have been reading and writing about the impeachment thing….to me it is just a replay of the 1990s and the Clinton thing…..I find it amazing that in a country that is so proud of our Constitution……I mean it is a prop for every damn political campaign I have every heard……that so few people know what Civics is all about.

When I was in grade school and into high school American government was a required course and without it one could not move on to the next level…..apparently those days are long gone….

The lack of Civics education shows in the people we elect and the people we listen to for the “news”…..we are a nation readily willing to believe whatever some high paid pundit wants us to believe….that is pathetic…nay it is disgusting!

Most Americans can not pass a simple civics quiz….

… lawmakers in Oregon proposed a bill that would require all public-school students in the state to pass the civics portion of the U.S. naturalization test before receiving their high-school diploma. Under Senate Bill 1038, Oregon students would have to correctly answer 60 of the 100 civics questions to pass. A student could take the test as many times as necessary to reach that threshold and could begin taking the test even before high school. Just last month, Alabama, Arkansas, and Kentucky each enacted similar laws, joining at least 15 other states with such civics requirements for high-school graduation, according to the Joe Foss Institute’s Civics Education Initiative.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2017/04/most-americans-fail-basic-civics-test/

Just how much do you know about our way of governing?

Take the quiz…….https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/04/us/us-citizenship-quiz-trnd/index.html

This is the test given by the naturalization service…..take this one and see what you truly do not know about the government…..https://www.uscis.gov/citizenship/educators/educational-products/100-civics-questions-and-answers-mp3-audio-english-version

Personally, I would support mandatory civics in grade school through high school……I think this subject is as important as the economics many schools teach our youngsters.

It is sad that so many of our elected officials have NO idea what the Constitution says or what the duties of their office are all about…..and these are the people protecting this country from harm from external as well as internal problems.

It is sad and pathetic that these people know so little.

I Read, I Wrote, You Know

“Lego Ergo Scribo”

Let’s Go To The Lesson Plan

I have been bitching about the direction our educational system is going…..it sucks.

First, there is an uptick in home schooling basically because of all t3 school shootings parents want their kids safe and they believe that home schooling will give them that safety.  (this is the subject of a future post)

Also I have been reading about just how bad the education has become in some of the private schools….the science is bad, the history is laughable and all other aspects are getting worse with each passing year.

For instance a recent study illustrates why our children are getting dumber……

Some private schools in Florida that rely on public funding teach students that dinosaurs and humans lived together, that God’s intervention prevented Catholics from dominating North America and that slaves who “knew Christ” were better off than free men who did not.

The lessons taught at these schools come from three Christian publishing companies whose textbooks are popular on many of about 2,000 campuses that accept, and often depend on, nearly $1 billion in state scholarships, or vouchers.

At the Orlando Sentinel’s request, educators from Florida colleges and school districts reviewed textbooks and workbooks from these publishers, looking at elementary reading and math, middle school social studies and high school biology materials.

They found numerous instances of distorted history and science lessons that are outside mainstream academics. The books denounce evolution as untrue, for example, and one shows a cartoon of men and dinosaurs together, telling students the Biblical Noah likely brought baby dinosaurs onto his ark. The science books, they added, seem to discourage students from doing experiments or even asking questions.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/features/education/school-zone/os-voucher-school-curriculum-20180503-story.html

All in all this is shoddy education and a disservice to the children that want to learn…..there is NOTHING accurate in these textbooks…..

I am glad I was a public education kid…the textbooks may have been old but at least they were as accurate as they could be in those “dark days” of 60 years ago.

These people are helping make a nation of morons.

Our children deserve the best education the society can provide….this story ain’t it.

Must Read “Papa”

A Sunday in the garden and is well……

Last weekend I wrote about how they were trying to replace some classics with more modern books.  As an avid reader I do not agree with this…..I mean they wanted to take Hemingway off the “must read”…..Hemingway!  Probably the only way some Americans would be exposed to the horrors of World War One and the Spanish Civil War…..

Granted Hemingway’s books seldom have a happy ending….the protagonist does not win the girl and live happily ever after or he dies in the end….

For those that may not be privy to Hemingway and his life then I can help……

At the time of Hemingway’s graduation from High School, World War I was raging in Europe, and despite Woodrow Wilson’s attempts to keep America out of the war, the United States joined the Allies in the fight against Germany and Austria in April, 1917. When Hemingway turned eighteen he tried to enlist in the army, but was deferred because of poor vision; he had a bad left eye that he probably inherited from his mother, who also had poor vision. When he heard the Red Cross was taking volunteers as ambulance drivers he quickly signed up. He was accepted in December of 1917, left his job at the paper in April of 1918, and sailed for Europe in May. In the short time that Hemingway worked for the Kansas City Star he learned some stylistic lessons that would later influence his fiction. The newspaper advocated short sentences, short paragraphs, active verbs, authenticity, compression, clarity and immediacy. Hemingway later said: “Those were the best rules I ever learned for the business of writing. I’ve never forgotten them.”

http://www.lostgeneration.com/ww1.htm

A fascinating life well lived….something we all aspire to and seldom do not find the niche we need to accomplish our desires……

Time for a glass of wine and some cheese in the garden…..enjoy your day and I will return with more stuff.

Nothing Better Than An Education!

Happy Easter…if you celebrate that sort of thing……

First some breaking news….I appears that the much anticipated North Korean missile test this weekend was a …….Failure……yes I said….FAILURE.

Another beautiful Spring Sunday….garden is going nicely, blueberries are about ready to harvest and my granddaughter is playing her flute for me……not a better day to be found.

My regulars know that I am a huge supporter of education…this country can go no further than it has without an educated populace.

I recently posted on something I read about education in Rhode Island……(in case you missed my post)…..

Source: Closing Thought–11Apr17 – In Saner Thought

Well I read another educational piece about the state of New York…..it seems that they are trying to make a 4 year college education free for poor and middle class students……

New York will be the only state in the country to offer universal public college tuition coverage for working- and middle-class residents after the program was included in the budget package approved Sunday night.

The state’s Excelsior Scholarship program will be rolled out in tiers over the next three years, starting with full coverage of four-year college tuition this fall for students whose families make less than $100,000.

Source: New York Becomes Only State to Offer Free Four-Year College – NBC News

A damn capital idea….this should be policy in ALL 50 states…..

Thoughts?

That is my post for the day (you only get one on the weekends)…..I will enjoy family and the beautiful weather…..not long until the 100 degree days return…..enjoy the weather while you can……

Thanx for all your visits in the past week and I look forward to the coming week….so much stuff and so little time……

I will be back in the morrow with more stuff and more thoughts…..peace out….my friends….chuq

Closing Thought–11Apr17

The Future Is Education!

I have been calling for some sort of free college education for our citizens…..I have always believed that education was the key to a great society….shame not many see it that way…..

I recently read a plan in the state of Rhode Island that I approve of and should be the same in all 50 states.

Rhode Island Governor Gina M. Raimondo plans today to propose that the state offer two tuition-free years for full-time students in public higher education.

Students at the Community College of Rhode Island would pay no tuition while earning an associate degree. For state residents who start at Rhode Island College or the University of Rhode Island, their junior and senior years would be tuition-free. There is no income limit, although the public system in Rhode Island serves many more low-income students than wealthy students.

Source: Rhode Island governor proposes two free years of public higher education

A capital idea!

Closing Thought–06Dec16

On Homeschooling……

I have been against homeschooling from the get go…..but I have been reconsidering the possibility…..I have seen what “Common Core” is doing to my granddaughter…it is nothing more than tests and evaluations….the students are not learning just prep work for tests.

This is not the way to get a good well rounded education.

But there are some, mostly idiots, that blame all on teachers……the GOP has had a hard on education since the late 1980’s……their accusations are a pure myth……

Until about 1980, America’s public schoolteachers were iconic everyday heroes painted with a kind of Norman Rockwell patina—generally respected because they helped most kids learn to read, write and successfully join society. Such teachers made possible at least the idea of a vibrant democracy.

Since then, what a turnaround: We’re now told, relentlessly, that bad-apple schoolteachers have wrecked K-12 education; that their unions keep legions of incompetent educators in classrooms; that part of the solution is more private charter schools; and that teachers as well as entire schools lack accountability, which can best be remedied by more and more standardized “bubble” tests.

What led to such an ignoble fall for teachers and schools? Did public education really become so irreversibly terrible in three decades? Is there so little that’s redeemable in today’s schoolhouses?

Source: The Myth Behind Public School Failure by Dean Paton — YES! Magazine

And the myths spread by morons will likely get much louder with Trump’s pick for SecEd…….it is a dismal turn……

Betsy DeVos May Complete The Big Money Takeover Of Our Nation’s Schools

…what DeVos represents in a very great sense is how rich people’s grip on the nation’s public education system has reached a choking point. No doubt, education policy led by Trump and DeVos will differ from the previous administration, but what’s staying the same is how wealthy private interests will strongly influence policies. Grasping this essential truth matters a lot in the “nasty” politics of education today, where the real debate is not so much about charters and choice as it is about who is in control.

The concept of education for profit is slinking itself through the system to become the rule of the land……

If the American Dream is still alive – the one that includes a good job and a house with a yard, kids, and a two-car garage – you can see it taking shape in Wake County in the heart of the state of North Carolina. Signs of surging prosperity are everywhere this morning as I make my way to West Lake Middle School in Apex, NC, on the outskirts of Raleigh.

What were once sleepy two-lane country roads are now teaming with impatient commuters, school busses, and mini-vans. New housing developments, shopping centers, and office buildings are transforming the rolling Piedmont landscape

Source: Tar Heel Heist: How the Charter School Industry is Hijacking Public Education | Alternet

If you truly care about your child’s education then I would suggest that you watch these developments closely….you could be next.

I read on……… op-ed written by a homeschooler……

Homeschooling is going mainstream. There are more resources than ever before. If you’ve considered homeschooling, there’s never been a better time to start.

Homeschoolers are a diverse bunch. Our teaching approaches and learning philosophies vary. Our politics run the gamut and our visions of education reform differ greatly. Yet, despite these contrasts, homeschoolers are remarkably similar. I recently asked a large, eclectic group of homeschooling parents why they chose this education option for their children. Key homeschooling features like “freedom,” and “time,” and “flexibility,” and “individualization” were common drivers for all.

Source: It’s a Great Time to Be a Homeschooler | Foundation for Economic Education

If I were younger and this was happening to our educational system then I would have probably homeschooled my daughter….she would have gotten a better education than she would have got from Common Core….I thank the spirit that I did not have to make that decision…..

Thoughts?

Charter Schools: The Perfect Con

Since the announcement of the great idea for solving the problem of education in the US, the Charter Schools, I have been telling my readers the news that the media will not tell them about this con job on the American public.

The media has taken it upon itself to use the issue to brain wash the public into accepting the perfect con….originally I called it “education by lotto”……thanx to the media the idea of this con had grown into a major solution for public education….the problem is the MSM only reports on the successes that they can isolate and seldom mentions all the failures and snags in the program.

Charter schools pretend to be public and non-profit while pocketing big bucks and paying no taxes.

Charter schools are big business, even when they are run by “non-profits” that pay no taxes on the revenue they receive from public taxes or other sources.

Take KIPP, which describes itself as a “national network of public schools.”

KIPP (an acronym for the phrase “knowledge is power program”) operates like a franchise with the KIPP Foundation as the franchisor and the individual charters as franchisees that are all separate non-profits that describe themselves as “public schools.”

Source: Big Business Charter School Chains Seek Millions in Taxpayer Dollars With No Accountability | Alternet

So they get a states tax revenue to operate?  But these same states cannot find the cash for public education……now are you not glad you voted GOP?

This is the perfect con on the voters…..propaganda and indoctrination works and works well.

Education is too important to allow it to be a profit making enterprise……the US educational system has been suffering for decades thanx to the idiots that slash budgets in an attempt to make it fail so privatization will be the only answer……but will this solve all the problems with education……like why our math scores suck?

For years now, America’s elementary and middle school students have been showing steady gains in test scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. This has happened even as the underlying demographics of the public school population have shifted to include a larger mix of poor kids, nonwhites, and kids whose parents don’t speak English.

High school test scores, by contrast, stagnated during the early years of this process. But optimists hoped and assumed that when the higher-scoring elementary school kids got older and moved into the high school population, we would start seeing results. It’s now become clear that’s not happening. On the contrary, even as America’s ninth-graders keep doing better and better, its 12th-graders are doing worse and worse.

Source: The biggest mystery in American education, in one chart – Vox

This is just one problem……but turning it into a corporate enterprise is NOT the answer.

Home-Schooled And Illiterate

Opinion from the cluttered mind of Chuq

One of these most important issues at all time should be education…..but these days it gets little notice. There is lots of debate over the rapid expansion of student debt and what are the causes and solutions…..but pre-k-12 gets very little notice……..that is until it is a good political prop for some politician trying to win his seat of power.

About the only time we hear anything about education is when the tools in Washington want to destroy it and make those lovely spending cuts…..

Since the 1960’s the popularity of home schooling has been on the rise……I question the quality of the education one child gets through home schooling.  To me it is just a way of pretending that is a good alternative…..when in most cases it is a bigoted response to public education.

The religious right calls it the “responsible” choice, but for some kids it means isolation with little education……

Source: Home-schooled and illiterate – Salon.com

I am a product of public education….I am not saying I should be a poster child or something….just that I received a great education that helped me make my choice when entering university…..yes my military service had something to do with it also….but without my public school education I do not think that I would be as active as I am today……mentally that is…..

Am I against home schooling….not really all together….but if it is an excuse to exercise some racist bullshit then I am.  I have run into more mental midgets that were home schooled than otherwise.

If a person cannot cope with society as a whole….what hope is there for functioning in the world at large?

I am proud of my public school education……

I apologize if this post insults anyone but in my opinion homeschooling is not a quality education.

How Many ‘Ghost Schools’ Are There in Afghanistan? – NBC News

Afghanistan like Iraq is a total mess…..nothing we do seems to be helping…….at least there is one area that the US has been promoting that will in the long run make a difference……..that of EDUCATION.

The news coming from Afghanistan is the the cash we pump into the country;s education programs is money well spent…..

But there seems to be a slight problem with all that chest thumping…..it may NOT be true…….

 

How Many ‘Ghost Schools’ Are There in Afghanistan? – NBC News.