I couldn’t bring myself to post this yesterday. Here’s Jay Leno asking the man-woman-child-and-college-professor on the street exactly what it is that we celebrate on the 4th of July. It’s pretty depressing stuff. And where does that college professor teach? A few observations: The narrowing of the curriculum under No Child Left Behind (an unintended [...]
Adam Brodsky at the New York Post reminds us why we celebrate the Boy Scouts. It’s an organization that teaches boys qualities that are not only valuable in themselves but are essential for American citizens: …self-reliance, leadership, a sense of duty toward others — that is, a personal obligation to act with integrity and treat [...]
In the tug-of-war of education decision-making, it’s instructive to see the effect of parents’ complaints. Sometimes one complaint is enough to change a school’s policy. Sometimes the voices of many parents don’t have much of an effect. Here one parent’s complaint was enough to remove “in the year of our Lord” from high school diplomas. [...]
A second-grader in Providence, RI was told by his teacher that the hat he would not be allowed to wear the hat he made for hat day. According to the AP: Christan Morales said her son just wanted to honor American troops when he wore a hat to school decorated with an American flag and [...]
Mark Riebling at City Journal has an amazing piece about the uniqueness of American thought. As he explains, the word “responsibility” and the phrase “personal responsibility” did not enter written English until the Constitutional Convention in 1787. Of course, the Framers did not pioneer the concept of man as a personally responsible agent. That notion, [...]
Lindsey Burke and Jennifer Marshall make the case against a common national curriculum, arguing that standardization is more likely to result in uniform mediocrity than in academic excellence. According to Burke and Marshall, having common standards not only won’t increase student learning, national standards will tend to lower standards and distract schools and communities from [...]
From the AP via the NYT: Seven seniors at a Southern California high school were facing disciplinary action for participating in a game called “Beat the Jew” in which losers were subjected to “incineration” or “enslavement,” a school administrator said Friday. The game involved some students playing Nazis, who blindfolded and dropped off other students [...]
Updated 11:00 PM: La Quinta High School is a “California Distinguished School.” That means it’s been recognized for its “exemplary and quality educational programs.” Recently, though, La Quinta has earned recognition of another kind. About 40 students from the school have been playing a game called “Beat the Jew.” According to Michelle Mitchell in the [...]
In the disheartening-at-best-tragic-at-worse department, most American students don’t know anything about the fundamental ideas America is based on. (Though they most likely know about the instances when America failed to live up to her own high standards — but that’s a post for another day.) As former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor– who’s out [...]
A judge in Idaho recently ruled that a charter school could not use the Bible in class. But the case is about much more than that. As the recent controversy over the work of the social studies textbook selection committee in Texas makes plain, the issue isn’t just textbooks—as my own students point out, they [...]