Predatory Women Teachers
Monday, March 9th, 2009So, last week Drudge puts up a link to a story about two different women teachers having sex with a 13 year old boy student unbeknown to one another. Nice. Why can’t crazy women just be strippers and prostitutes? Now, they’re foisting their antisocial behavior on children.
A couple thoughts:
1. Yes, society is degrading. What used to be unthinkable has become rather common place.
2. Critics of home schooling, due to the fact that the kids may be in a “dangerous environment”, need to put a cork in it.
3. Critics of the Catholic Church need to be morally consistent. Where is the outrage over this abuse? All indicators point to a systemic failure for the education system to keep children safe. This is a little addendum at the end of the article:
Recent cases
Since 2007, at least 10 other Utah teachers or school employees have been charged with engaging in sexual acts with students. Among recent cases:
In November 2007, Frank Laine Hall, 37, was sentenced to prison for molesting 11 of his first-grade students at Rosamond Elementary School in Riverton.
Also in 2007, former West High School guidance counselor Marco R. Herrera, 53, received three consecutive one-to-15 year prison terms for engaging in sexual acts with a 14-year-old girl at least 10 times. An honors teacher at the same school was charged in 2008 with multiple counts of having sex with the same girl; his case is pending.
This is just in Utah. There are stories like this every day. Here’s one from Houston. But when I did a search, multiple cases came up. Here’s a complete list. And this is just the women.
Where is the Teacher’s Union? Where are the huge settlements from school systems for providing unsafe environments? Why are schools given an exemption from the expectation that children should be safe?
Evidently, there is a taboo bigger than sexual abuse and assault: Thou Shalt Not Put Teachers In A Bad Light.
Cross-posted at RightWingNews
WSJ
Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009Dick Durbin Ends D.C. Voucher Program
It’s good for thee but not for me: Sidwell loses low income students as voucher program is killed.
American Spectator
Monday, March 2nd, 2009Ken Blackwell: Not Making The Grade
More on no-standard admittance to colleges
“Fair Test”
Wednesday, February 18th, 2009A friend sent me this article last week and I am just now getting around to it. Evidently, the Standard Achievement Test (SAT) is unfair and so a “fair test” must replace it. Before even reading, I had pictures in my head of dullards finally having self-esteem because the test is easy enough that “everyone’s a winner!”
Oh there’s that, alright. But what’s more important than the feel-good ideas behind the group is who makes up the group itself. A little Bill Ayers, a little George Soros, a little Jesse Mernell (go look in the article to find out about this shining beacon of leftism) and you have a group giving college admissions advice to and gets an endorsement from the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC). From CNS News:
The incestuous nature between a blatantly political organization like Fair Test – which is funded in part by radical foundations – and a professional organization for admissions practitioners is disturbing. Either NACAC shares Fair Test’s political agenda or is negligent in ascertaining the credentials of experts they cite in reports. The same can also be said of media organizations that routinely quote Fair Test officials.
Such ties between a political group advocating the end of standardized testing and an academic professional organization overseeing college admissions are troubling. The relationship between those entrusted with making college admissions fair and those with a larger political goal merits investigation particularly in light of the conclusions of education researcher Jonathan Epstein, who has studied the impact of test-optional policies in college admissions.
Writing in May 2008 for the education consultancy Maguire Associates, Epstein reveals that test-optional policies at colleges and universities lead to artificially inflated average SAT scores among incoming freshmen, which, Epstein warns “may completely disorient prospective students and families.” Epstein concludes that such disorientation in the market, which is fueled in large part by Fair Test political activists, “is not in the best interest of any institution or higher education in general.”
This risk alone provides sufficient reason for media and academic organizations to reassess their reliance on Fair Test and other political organizations for meaningful input in the college admissions debate. Whether they will take this course of action remains to be seen.
Translation: Dumb kids who have no business in college get a pass and get in, only to fail. The SAT would screen these kids out, but in the interest of politically correct diversity, everyone deserves a chance.
The more disturbing trend overall is how leftist organizations now seems to influence and dominate education at every level. Future American citizens will be little more than indoctrinated, underperforming automatons ripe for the collective mentality. Conservatives need to fight back–not only by fighting outside of the system with home schooling and private Christian schools, but from within. It is our tax dollars, too. It matters how it’s spent.
Change.org
Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009Disabled Researchers In Education
Even the journal Science can be wrong. Via @MatthewKTabor
Why Homeschooling Will Continue To Grow
Monday, January 12th, 2009U.S. News reports that homeschooling is increasing overall but the percent of evangelicals homeschooling is declining:
Brian Ray, president of the National Home Education Research Institute, says recent studies suggest that evangelicals still account for roughly 70 percent of home-schooling families. But the picture has changed dramatically since the 1980s, when conservative Christians launched the movement, he says. “In the early years, you had to be a pretty big believer in something to home-school because there was a lot of adult peer pressure not to do it,” he says. “There are a lot of people who now consider home-schooling who would have never 10 or 15 years ago.”
The National Home Education Research Institute, which supports home schooling, puts the number of home-schooled students above the Department of Education’s estimates, at just over 2 million. The institute’s research has found that home-schooled students score about 15 to 30 percentile points above their public-school peers on standardized achievement tests.
I homeschooled last year and put my kids back in school this year. Despite my worries, they were two years ahead academically. The biggest problem with public school is curriculum. Far too much time is spent on tangential silliness.
Really, education is simple: Make sure a child can read, write, and do arithmetic. Push them so that it’s challenging. My son and daughter both do well at science. In fact, my son’s teachers felt it was his best subject. Guess what? I didn’t “teach” any science. However, as we went through history, we learned about weather (affects war outcomes), volcanoes and earthquakes (destroys societies), earth (certain foods were new in the New World), etc. They had books to read about all that. Their curiosity sought answers. Geography and history are so intermingled as to be one subject. Sociology and psychology is revealed through good literature. History teaches forms of governance.
Parents who want to give their kids an elite education would be wise to check out home schooling. Even if it’s only for a year or two, homeschooling can accelerate a child’s learning and also give them confidence and autonomy. The last is counter-intuitive. My children were forced to learn and figure stuff out because I refused to save their bacon every time they found a topic challenging. They also couldn’t get the privilege of reading until they finished their work. And there was no pressure. They could take ten minutes or two hours to conquer an idea. They could take the time they needed.
I was going to do a book review on Outliers: The Story of Success
Homeschooling will continue to grow because it is an excellent form of education. Parents can choose curricula. Kids can learn at their own pace. This is something that doesn’t just appeal to evangelicals, but all parents wanting to give their kids every possible advantage.
Cross-posted at RightWingNews.com
Black Students Do Better With A White Roomie
Tuesday, December 16th, 2008Black Students Do Better With A White Roomie
Interesting
Do High School Kids Need A Laptop?
Monday, December 15th, 2008Do High School Kids Need A Laptop?
Not so sure.
“Little Marxists”
Monday, December 15th, 2008Dr. Helen answers a question from a librarian/teacher about goose-stepping 4th graders and how to help kids get properly educated about such things as capitalism versus socialism.
In our kids’ school, the Third Grade project is starting a business, paying more rent for better space (the front classrooms), choosing partners, a product to sell, marketing it, etc. Well guess what? There’s much gnashing of teeth when a kid picks a slouch for a partner. There’s agony (even though the teachers try to spin it positively as our “civic duty”) when the teacher comes and collects the taxes from hard earned bucks. It’s a nice learning experience all the way around.
What would be an even better solution in my opinion is to create a socialist week, in all it’s mediocre glory. So everyone works as a group, makes a crappy product that no one wants to buy, two kids do all the work, but all the kids get the same pay and the government takes 80% of their income. Then, a kid decides he’s hurt his toe and can’t work but gets the same pay. If they work harder they only get a C.
If kids got to experience both capitalism and socialism, they’d make the right choice because socialism is inherently unfair, rewards failure, and is a disincentive to achievement and production. Kids are hardwired for fairness. They get it.
While I know education is important, I think how a kid is raised is even more important. A dull-witted parent emphasizing self-esteem over honest achievement will destroy the best school lessons. And a parent who emphasizes hard work and morality will inoculate against soft-headed ideas rooted in post-modern and Marxist philosophies.
Team sports help because there’s winners and losers. Individual sports help because there is only achievement. Getting a job during High School helps a kid manage his energy and money.
Marxism has to be taught and indoctrinated because it goes against natural law. It is antithetical to how men are wired and ignores basic psychology. Marxism sounds great on paper and stinks in real life. It feels good to believe in collective everything, but it falls flat in practice. That’s why any training about these philosophies needs to be taken out of the realm of theory and into real life.
Get a kid on a ball field or court and he’ll learn the concepts of talent, hard work and winners and losers pretty quickly. Let him makes some money and then have the government take half to spend how they see fit, and he’ll understand why excessive taxation is a disincentive.
Real life cures Marxists.
Cross-posted at RightWingNews and the Houston Chronicle
