Bad  Ideas  in  Public  Education

Occasionally there are reports on the internet news services about astonishingly bad ideas which have been put into practice in public schools.  Somehow these atrocious practices don't get a lot of coverage in the mainstream news media; at least not with any negative connotations.

Quick jump to the Ritalin Section below.

Obama Continues Pushing Absurd College Agenda.  [Scroll down]  The core idea, that the country needs more college graduates, is nonsensical.  The first point to observe is that "our" college graduation rate is just a statistical artifact, like "our" home ownership rate and "our" voting rate.  To people imbued with a central planning mindset, such statistics betoken national success or failure.  In fact, the nation isn't doing anything.  Millions of individuals are deciding whether or not to go to college and complete the course of study.

This is another step toward 24-hour ownership of your children:
 Education secretary calls for 12-hour school days, longer school year.  If Education Secretary Arne Duncan has his way, kids would be spending a lot more time at school — and a three-month summer would be a thing of the past.  Duncan joked with attendees at a luncheon at the National Press Club Tuesday [7/27/2010] in Washington that he would like schools to stay open 13 months out of the year.  Then he told the audience of over 100 that he seriously supports longer school hours.

California Students Get Tracking Devices.  California officials are outfitting preschoolers in Contra Costa County with tracking devices they say will save staff time and money.

The Editor says...
 When the school officials want to implant an RFID chip in your child's hand or forehead — ostensibly for everyone's convenience — it will be a dark day.

P'town puts condoms in kids' hands.  A new policy in Provincetown to make condoms available to even first-graders is being called "absurd" and a frantic overreaction to sex education.

Teacher's Assignment to HS Students:  Plan a Deadly Terror Attack.  A high school teacher who assigned her class to plan a terrorist attack that would kill as many innocent Australians as possible had no intent to promote terrorism, education officials said Wednesday [8/25/2010].

Liberals make lame excuses.  Take for instance the liberal mantra, "Kids have sex anyway might as well hand out condoms."  The left is of the belief that those divinely bestowed with a free will are powerless to control natural impulse.  Human beings are reduced to beasts, devoid of ability to choose right from wrong.  Thus, in liberal land, lack of a standard fosters the promotion of mediocre expectations and accomplishes the goal of excusing failure.

The soft bigotry of low expectations.  The Obama administration's Department of Education has announced that it will crack down on "civil-rights infractions" in public schools, including alleged disparities in the disciplining of white and black students.  This means that the administration will identify and investigate situations in which a facially neutral discipline system — offense X brings punishment Y — results in blacks being discplined more often than whites.  School systems will face the prospect of being punished unless they can explain the disparities, presumably based on a painstaking analysis of each disciplinary decision.

You're a Liberal/Progressive if You Believe...  a public school student who comes to the conclusion that 2+2=5 should get partial credit — for putting the numbers in the right order or proper usage of the "plus" and "equal" signs.  Such thinking is a natural extension of the idea that:  1. self-esteem — absent anything resembling genuine achievement — is the ultimate measurement of a child's "success" or 2. a "passing grade" should be low enough to allow the education establishment to claim they're doing a "better" job of educating American kids than they were before.  You also believe that every problem created by public school unions and their political lackeys can be solved with more money.

The Latest Thievery:  Best Friends.  [Scroll down]  "Parents sometimes say Johnny needs that one special friend," she continued.  "We say he doesn't need a best friend."  As a result of this thinking, best friends are broken up.  Buddies are put on separate teams, assigned different classes, etc.  It's not quite the sort of thing cult leaders and North Korean prison guards do, but in principle it's not too far off either.

Child "Experts" Backpedal on Socialization Dogma.  [Scroll down]  Pseudo-educators-turned-social engineers, like John Dewey in the 1920s, were among the first in a long list to dismiss the three R's as being vastly overrated and to favor child-socialization instead.  But the anti-discipline, anti-authoritarian factions began launching a more aggressive campaign under the umbrella of "Mental Hygiene" immediately following World War II.  Through speeches, women's magazines, and teacher-preparation courses, psychologists and psychiatrists started pitching the idea that unless parents wanted to turn out a bunch of little Hitlers and Mussolinis, they had better ease up on the discipline and drop their obsession with right and wrong.

New Design HS students earn gym credits by selling snacks.  Exercise-starved students from a lower Manhattan school are getting gym credits for working concessions at the Rooftop Films festival, the [New York] Daily News has learned.  "Selling drinks and popcorn at a movie is not physical education.  It's just not right," said Palmer Taylor, a gym teacher at New Design High School.

Chesapeake principal won't let mom pick up daughter.  The mother scheduled a Wednesday morning doctor's appointment for her daughter.  Come Wednesday morning [5/19/2010], the fourth-grader was taking a Standards of Learning exam.  The mother came to pick up her daughter.  The principal said no.

Michigan Elementary School Principal Investigated for Blacks-Only Class Trip.  An elementary school principal in Michigan is under investigation for authorizing a field trip for 30 black students to meet with an African-American rocket scientist.  Students who are not black were excluded from the outing — a possible violation of a state law that bans racial favoritism in public schools.

Black students' field trip draws parents' anger in Michigan.  A school district in Michigan is defending its intentions after a field trip by African-American elementary students drew complaints from excluded children and their parents.

The Editor says...
 Imagine the uproar if a public school scheduled a field trip for whites only.

Elementary is in hot water over field trip.  An Ann Arbor elementary school field trip has led to allegations that the school violated Proposal 2, the 2006 voter-approved initiative that bans racial preference in Michigan public schools.  At issue is whether the 30 Dicken Elementary students, African-American members of an academic peer-support group, should have been allowed to take a trip to the University of Michigan to hear from a black rocket scientist without an invitation going to other students in the Ann Arbor school.

Update:
 School program for black students disbanded in Ann Arbor.  A program for black elementary students in Ann Arbor has been disbanded after criticism over a field trip to meet a black rocket scientist.

Student Group Disbanded After Blacks-Only Field Trip.  The Michigan school district investigating whether an elementary school field trip that excluded white students was illegal has disbanded the black-students-only academic support group that participated in the outing two weeks ago.

Displaying Old Glory:  An "Incendiary" Act?  Some stories in the news are just too zany to be taken seriously.  Like for instance, the wretched tale of five students in Morgan Hill that were sent home for wearing T-shirts with the American flag on Cinco de Mayo Day.

Two People Who Deserve to be Fired.  There are two people who should be out of work for their poor decisions lately.  One, the school official at Live Oak High School in Morgan Hill, California who sent home two students who wore t-shirts with American flags.  Apparently, showing your American patriotism is not welcome in America during celebrations of Cinco de Mayo.  The Vice Principal thought the t-shirts were "incendiary."

California Principal Apologizes for Forbidding U.S. Flag Shirts on Mexican Holiday.  A California high school principal has apologized for telling five students they couldn't wear U.S. flag shirts on Cinco de Mayo, the local superintendent said Friday [5/7/2010].  Tensions at Live Oak High School in Morgan Hill had risen in the wake of the decision to forbid the shirts, as the students who wore the shirts defended their right to show their patriotism — even on a Mexican holiday — while a large group of Hispanic students staged a walkout Thursday in protest.

Is America Conquered when the American Flag is 'Offensive'?  Californians were recently confronted with a sobering reality.  Students at a large high school in the Morgan Hill district were told by school administrators that American flag tee shirts and other patriotic paraphernalia were not allowed, citing Cinco de Mayo as justification  Few students at the school probably realize that America provided help to Mexico in expelling the French, whose defeat at the Battle of Puebla is comemorated on May 5th.

High School Where Flag Flap Occurred Hides Racist Secret.  How is wearing the American flag, in America, disrespectful to another culture?  How is it disrespectful to your shared culture?  These protesting scholars could not give a logical explanation (there isn't one), but tried to use the bizarre argument that wearing the U.S. flag to school on Cinco de Mayo was the equivalent of wearing the Mexican flag on the Fourth of July.  The display of ignorance by these students shows that Live Oak High School administrators are not just guilty of First Amendment rights violations, but are utterly inept educators as well.

Wow!  Another teacher has a problem with a kid and an American flag.  Our flag is a symbol of the principles on which America was founded; upon looking at it, one may reflexively recall the phrase "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"; it is a symbol of freedom, individual rights, self-sufficiency, capitalism and prosperity.  Obama wants to dismantle and remake America.  His sycophants, including this Gavilan Middle School teacher, know it.

New York schools' ban on homemade goods at bake sales has parents steamed.  Low-fat Doritos and Pop Tarts are in; goodies baked at home are out.  School officials say they're fighting obesity.  Angry parents say it sends the wrong message about food habits.

Making the grade or changing the grade?  Montgomery County Maryland public schools have learned that students apparently installed keyloggers on teachers' computers, then used the passwords they captured to log in and change their grades.  Besides disciplining the students, they've given teachers two (ineffective) instructions:  to check grades, and to change their passwords.  The first is ineffective because most teachers enter grades directly into the system, and don't have hardcopies of the assigned grades to compare against.

Lower Merion School District sued for cyber spying on students.  Lower Merion School District officials brag that they give every one of their 1,800 high-schoolers laptop computers to "ensure that all students have 24/7 access to school-based resources."  Instead, they ensured they got a 24/7 sneak peek into students' private lives by secretly monitoring webcams embedded in the laptops to spy on teens and their families at home, according to a federal, class-action lawsuit filed this week in Philadelphia.

Federal judge orders school district to stop spying on students.  A Pennsylvania school district has been ordered to disable equipment allowing officials to watch students using cameras on their laptops.  The order, issued Wednesday [2/24/2010] by a federal judge, will prevent school administrators from turning on cameras installed on students' school-issued laptops remotely.

Big Teacher Is Watching You.  My laptop's webcam now has a postage stamp covering it.  Does yours?  This week, a district court judge in Philadelphia, PA, had to do the unthinkable:  issue an order preventing a school district from further remote reactivation of webcams on laptop computers issued to nearly 2,000 high school students, a practice which has left many students and parents wondering whether school administrators had unfettered access into their homes and lives.

When schools spy on their students, bad things happen.  Last week the Robbins family, whose son Blake attends LMSD's Harriton High, filed a class-action suit against the district alleging that it's been spying on its students via webcams on school-supplied MacBooks.  The suit came about after Blake Robbins was called into the assistant principal Lindy Matsko's office last November to discuss "inappropriate behavior" he was displaying — at home.  The proof?  A snapshot of him taken with his laptop's Webcam.  Apparently Matsko thought Blake was popping pills.  According to Robbins, he was merely eating candy:  Mike-N-Ikes.

Students'-eye view of Webcam spy case.  Students at Harriton High School in Lower Merion School District near Philadelphia are given Apple MacBook laptops to use both at school and at home.  Like all MacBooks, the ones issued to the students have a Webcam.  And, in addition to the students' ability to use the Webcam to take pictures or video, the school district can also use it to take photographs of whomever is using the computer.

School 'Spycam' in Student's Home Sparks Outrage in Philly Suburb.  A school district in suburban Philadelphia apparently thought it had devised the perfect anti-theft device for the laptops it issued its students — until parents discovered the plan involved secretly using a Web camera to snap photos of their children, even in their bedrooms at home.

School Snoops on Students at Home Via Computer Camera.  The Lower Merion, Pennsylvania, school district lent high school sophomore Blake Robbins an Apple MacBook laptop last fall, and then utilized security software on the computer's webcam to take pictures of him in his home.  The pictures involved him sleeping and getting dressed, but the school district's information systems coordinator Carol Cafiero contends in a lawsuit that Robbins had "no legitimate expectation of privacy" with the laptop.

Obama, Freud, and the American Progressives' Guilt Trip.  At the turn of the twentieth century, an early "progressive" Vermonter named John Dewey kick-started a makeover of America's education system. ... And so from The Child and the Curriculum emerged a construct that Dewey called the "psychologizing" of education, and progressives would use his unsupported contentions to pervert the process by which education would be conducted over the next hundred years.

Pressure-cooker kindergarten.  A new emphasis on testing and test preparation — brought on by politicians, not early education experts — is hurting the youngest students.

Say No to Universal Preschool.  Most parents are delighted to share their childcare expenses with taxpayers.  Yet there's shockingly little evidence that this costly dash to universalize the preschool experience will do much good for American education, particularly the kids who most need help preparing for kindergarten.  It's more like a new middle-class entitlement — and an expansion of the public-school empire.  Indeed, it suffers from five basic flaws...

5 Character Flaws That Are Destroying America's Future.  [#3]  Excessive Self-Esteem:  Perhaps because we've spent decades trying to pump up the self-esteem of children in our public schools, irregardless (sic) of whether they've done anything to merit it, we have legions of people in our society who have an excessive level of confidence in their beliefs and abilities.  They're just so darn sure that what they believe is right just by virtue of the fact they believe it.  Traditions?  Codes of conduct?  Religious beliefs?  Customs?  There's no need to even understand why previous generations believed what they did or to question what purpose it served.  Just remember that they were racist back then and so they couldn't have had any good ideas.

Using school kids as government pawns:
 Students' take-home assignment:  Census kits.  Anyone tempted to ignore the 2010 Census will have a tough time doing it — especially if they have kids in school.

California eyes digital textbooks.  The California Department of Education is moving forward on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's plan to scrap printed high school textbooks for digital ones.  But issues surrounding student access to computers and the credibility of the information could pose potential problems for educators.

The Editor says...
 With this system in place, how will parents know what's in their children's textbooks from one month to the next?  After textbooks are approved, they could be easily modified, and the parents would never know.  The trend away from books and toward computers is going fast enough already, I think.  The following item shows how easily digital books can be destroyed — even if (you think) you own the book!

Amazon Removes E-Books From Kindle Store, Revokes Ownership.  Today, Amazon removed George Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm from its Kindle e-book store.  The company also went ahead and removed any digital trace of the books, too — striking them from both users' digital lockers and from Kindle devices.  This disturbing, Orwellian move underscores how, in spite of comments otherwise, a purchase in the digital realm can't be compared to physical ownership of content.

Amazon Erases Orwell Books From Kindle.  In George Orwell's "1984," government censors erase all traces of news articles embarrassing to Big Brother by sending them down an incineration chute called the "memory hole."  On Friday [7/17/2009], it was "1984" and another Orwell book, "Animal Farm," that were dropped down the memory hole — by Amazon.com.

Update:
 Amazon CEO apologizes for deleting Orwell books.  Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has issued an apology to Kindle customers after "1984" and other books by British novelist George Orwell were remotely deleted from their electronic readers.  "This is an apology for the way we previously handled illegally sold copies of '1984' and other novels on Kindle," the Amazon chief executive said in a post on Thursday [7/23/2009] on the Kindle Community discussion forum.  "Our 'solution' to the problem was stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles," Bezos wrote.

The Editor says...
 This is only pertinent to the topic of this page because it shows how easily electronic books can be edited, revised, or destroyed with just the push of a button.  But as far as e-books in general are concerned, who in his right mind would buy an e-book device now that we all know how easily those books can be erased and/or removed?

Another update:
 Amazon sued over Kindle deletion of Orwell books.  A high school student is suing Amazon.com Inc. for deleting an e-book he purchased for the Kindle reader, saying his electronic notes were bollixed, too.  Amazon CEO Jeffrey P. Bezos has apologized to Kindle customers for remotely removing copies of the George Orwell novels "1984" and "Animal Farm" from their e-reader devices.

My Idea and Your Consequence.  One really bad idea that is thriving in higher education is the so-called trans-gendered rights movement.  It is thriving not because of the work of trans-gendered persons but because of feminists who are willing to use them to advance their own ideas about gender and equality.  Feminists have been increasingly enamored with the idea that there are no innate differences between men and women.  In recent years, they have been arguing with greater and greater frequency that all male/female differences come from the "culture" or that they are "socially constructed."

Title IX in Science and Engineering:  Your university's science and engineering programs might be "Titled nined" if Those That Care have their way.  Title IX, or the "Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act", is one of those government programs that sounds like a good idea to busybodies:  mandate diversity in college sports so that just as many females as males play.

Dallas ISD faulted for using fake Social Security numbers.  Years after being advised by a state agency to stop, the Dallas Independent School District continued to provide foreign citizens with fake Social Security numbers to get them on the payroll quickly.  Some of the numbers were real Social Security numbers already assigned to people elsewhere.  And in some cases, the state's educator certification office unknowingly used the bogus numbers to run criminal background checks on the new hires, most of whom were brought in to teach bilingual classes.

High on Green.  Every 26 seconds, a student drops out of high school in the United States.  National test scores reveal that half of all low-income fourth graders cannot read.  Given such alarming statistics, you'd think that helping at-risk kids would be the top education-related priority on Capitol Hill.  Apparently not.  As far as Congress is concerned, the real problem with public education in America is that it's not environmentally friendly enough.

Students Asked To Plot Terror Attack.  A ninth grade history project at a high school in Pueblo was supposed to teach students about terrorism, but instead it outraged parents.  Gini Fischer says her daughter came home Thursday [5/7/2009] saying she had two minutes to come up with a plot for an act of terrorism.

Teacher sells advertising space on tests.  Good morning, class, and welcome to U.S. history, brought to you by Molto Caldo Pizzeria.  In a cash-strapped Idaho high school where signs taped near every light switch remind the staff to save electricity, an enterprising teacher has struck a sponsorship deal with a local pizza shop.

The Editor asks...
 With the government spending around $10,000 per student for public education, is there really any need to scrape together a few extra bucks by advertising in the classroom -- for a pizza parlor?  And aren't the public school teachers and administrators the same people who pretend to be outraged by the sale of junk food and soft drinks in the school cafeterias? [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]  Or cupcakes in the classroom? [1] [2] 

Teachers Defend Tactics in Hoax DWI Program.  On a Monday morning last month, highway patrol officers visited 20 classrooms at El Camino High School to announce some horrible news:  Several students had been killed in car wrecks over the weekend.  Classmates wept.  Some became hysterical.  A few hours and many tears later, though, the pain turned to fury when the teenagers learned that it was all a hoax — a scared-straight exercise designed by school officials to dramatize the consequences of drinking and driving.

The Editor asks...
 How much does a student learn from a teacher after he finds out the teacher is a liar?

Self-esteem not a good teaching tool.  Turns out children are feeling pretty good about themselves lately.  Maybe a little too good.  A recent study by researchers at San Diego State University found that high school seniors are bursting with more self-esteem than a generation or two ago. ... Instilling that "world, here I come!" attitude is a great thing.  Instilling baseless self-congratulation?  Less so.

Down With Self-Esteem.  Remember self-esteem?  It was one of the sillier – and more dangerous – fads in educational circles, which keep going round and round. … Having been told how well they're doing throughout their well-insulated school years, these kids could be in for the shock of their nice, cushioned lives when they're thrown into the real world. … Some of these kids may be all et up with self-esteem, but they're woefully short on self-respect, which is quite another thing.

ACLU Urges California District to Let Kids Leave School for Medical Treatment Without Parental Consent.  The ACLU is threatening to sue a California school district after it changed a policy to require teenagers get parental consent to leave campus for confidential medical services.  The Vista Unified School District board voted unanimously Thursday [3/12/2009] to change its existing policy that allowed students to be excused for confidential appointments — including abortions — without notifying parents, according to the North County Times.  The ACLU of San Diego County and the National Center for Youth Law claim the new policy violates state law, KPBS reported.

$14 Million Study Proves Student Laptops are Ineffective Academically.  Our country has been waiting for a scientifically conducted study on laptops.  Now we have it.  Presented [in this article] are excerpts from the $14 Million Texas Technology Immersion Pilot (April 2006 report — funded by the U. S. Department of Education) which is supposed to prove whether student immersion on laptops by middle-school students will raise their academic achievement.  So far as I know, this study is one of a kind and is much needed since technology companies are pushing their laptops into classrooms through aggressive marketing tactics.

Duke study:  Internet makes children dumber.  Before your school district gets the bright idea of giving away laptops and getting all of the children online, have a look at this study from researchers at Duke...

Sending Poor Kids to Middle-Class Schools Doesn't Fix the System.  The magnet school scheme was tried from 1985 to 1997 in Kansas City, Missouri, at a cost of $2 billion.  To lure suburban white students, Kansas City's inner-city schools were equipped with lavish facilities:  Indoor pools, gymnasia, high-tech science labs, computers, etc.  But programs designed for the needs and interests of middle-class white suburbanites did not serve inner-city blacks.  And few suburban students were willing to commute to city schools for a luxury athletic complex or a classics magnet.  Test scores remained dreadful.  By 1997, the district actually had a smaller percentage of white students than when the plan started.

The Impact Of Violence On Public Education:  Our states and their school districts have set about establishing a variety of school security programs designed to both limit school violence and to react to it after it occurs.  But uniformed security personnel, gates, locks and alarms do little to assist the classroom teacher to maintain order in the very places where learning is supposed to be going on. ... Thus far, anti-violence programs for our schools have focused on police action and response protocols, with little focus on prevention.

The Editor says...
 Disorder and violence in the schools is the poisonous fruit of decades of "self esteem" building in the schools.  All the humanist "believe in yourself" and "follow your heart" pap has produced nothing but narcissism.  When children are told they're the masters of their own fate, they will eventually believe they can do no wrong, their respect for authority goes out the window, and the resulting anarchy looks like the situation in almost any big-city high school today.

Over Ruled:  The Burden of Law on America's Public Schools.  Even relatively routine decisions can take months to complete.  For example, suspending a disruptive student involves 65 steps and legal considerations which can take 70 days to complete.  The "How Do I?" flowcharts illustrate how intimidating and time-consuming this and other procedures can be.  "The burden of law has become staggering," said Common Good chair Philip K. Howard.  "If teachers and principals are forced to spend their time working through these arduous procedures, how will they have the energy, enthusiasm, and time to educate?"

Let the drinking age stay put.  It is troubling to learn that college presidents from some of the nation's top universities are joining together in asking lawmakers to consider lowering the drinking age from 21 to 18. … One of their arguments that the current laws encourage college students to binge drink is ridiculous and there is no evidence to support it.  In fact, scientific studies have proven the exact opposite.

Perils of a lower drinking age:  Life is full of surprises, and some 100 college presidents think they have stumbled on one.  They think there is too much problem drinking on campus — no surprise there — and suggest we might solve the problem by changing the drinking age.  They don't propose raising it to 25.  They want to lower it to 18.

Protect Our Kids from Preschool.  Barack Obama says he believes in universal preschool and if he's elected president he'll pump "billions of dollars into early childhood education."  Universal preschool is now second only to universal health care on the liberal policy wish list. … But is strapping a backpack on all 4-year-olds and sending them to preschool good for them?  Not according to available evidence.

School survey shocks parent.  Lisa Lee of Bull Shoals was shocked Thursday evening [8/21/2008] when she saw a survey containing religious questions her son was asked to complete during his career-orientation class at Flippin Middle School. … "No one needs to see this information," Lee said. "It's religious profiling."

Why is Public Education Failing?  "Cooperative learning" is nothing more than a classroom-management technique that provides a convenient hiding place for bad teachers and under-achieving students.  The student who doesn't care to learn, or has failed to grasp a concept, allows the rest of the group to do the work and yet gets the same grade.

Freedom and the Left.  Most people on the left are not opposed to freedom.  They are just in favor of all sorts of things that are incompatible with freedom. ... One of the most innocent-sounding examples of the left's many impositions of its vision on others is the widespread requirement by schools and by college admissions committees that students do "community service."  There are high schools across the country from which you cannot graduate, and colleges where your application for admission will not be accepted, unless you have engaged in activities arbitrarily defined as "community service."

Iowa Redefines 'Minority' in Wake of U.S. Supreme Court Decision.  Before the ruling, the affected districts — Davenport, Des Moines, Postville, Waterloo, and West Liberty — employed a voluntary desegregation plan, [Carol] Greta said.  Now, those districts have broadened their definition of the term "minority" student, considering a combination of socioeconomic status, English language learning status, and student achievement data.  "The goal of the department is merely to maintain the status quo, so those districts who desire to maintain diversity and cut down on white flight can maintain the ability to," Greta said.

Bush reading program gets failing grade.  A scorching internal review of the Bush administration's billion-dollar-a-year reading program says the Education Department ignored the law and ethical standards to steer money how it wanted.  The government audit is unsparing in its view that the Reading First program has been beset by conflicts of interest and willful mismanagement.  It suggests the department broke the law by trying to dictate which curriculum schools must use.

Mom Outraged After Son, 5, Voted From Class.  A South Florida mother wants her son's teacher fired after his classmates voted him out of their kindergarten class.  Alex Barton, 5, was instructed by his teacher last week to stand in front of the class at Morningside Elementary in Port St. Lucie and listen as his classmates described what they disliked about him, according to a police report.

The Editor says...
 It is almost as if the school is trying to produce the next generation of serial killers.

Texas Governor Mandates Cancer Vaccine for Girls.  Gov. Rick Perry ordered Friday [2/2/2007] that schoolgirls in Texas must be vaccinated against the sexually transmitted virus that causes cervical cancer, making Texas the first state to require the shots. … Merck is bankrolling efforts to pass laws in state legislatures across the country mandating it.

This action by the Governor has resulted in a whole new page about all the ramifications.

Truancy for Parents in Texas.  Texas may join the ranks of states like Minnesota and California who are attempting to use the criminal law as a parenting tool.  A proposal in the state legislature would charge parents with a misdemeanor and a fine if they fail to attend a parent-teacher conference at their child's school.

Mandatory Student Activism:  "Innovations" like experiential learning (based on the notion that the more time pupils spend away from structured academic environments the better they master academic material), student-centeredness, democratic classroom, interdisciplinary instruction, contextual learning, and behavioral outcomes are among the anti-academic initiatives responsible for our educational crisis, and have been generally debunked.

Keep 'America' in Michigan schools.  Censoring the word "America" from our own schools is something Josef Stalin, Adolf Hitler and Osama bin Laden would never have thought possible.  Michigan has done it without a whimper.  In perhaps a well-intentioned, but pernicious example of political correctness, the Michigan Department of Education is attempting to ban the "America" and "American" from our public schools.

The Subversion of Education in America.  I'll bet you think that the problems with our nation's schools are a fairly recent phenomenon.  Wrong.  It dates backs to the 1960's.  Those that have implemented the subversion of our educational system have sought to fly well below the radar of public awareness, depending on stealth and duplicity to achieve the wreckage that has already stunted the lives of thousands who have passed through it.

Autism crusade plagued by incaution, illusions.  The recently launched crusade to have every child tested for autism before the age of two has as its reason an opportunity for "early intervention" to treat the condition. … But the dangers of false diagnoses of toddlers and preschoolers have been pointed out by Professor Stephen Camarata of Vanderbilt University, who has tested and treated children with autism for more than 20 years and has encountered many cases of inaccurate diagnoses.

Activists Battle Mental Health Screening Law.  Two years after a new law was passed in Illinois creating the framework for schools to screen students for mental health disorders, the state has saved more than $44 million in hospital costs, according to a report released in early October.  But some groups say the alleged cost savings do not justify a program under which schools are overstepping their authority.  They also say it imposes a mandatory, universal plan to screen all children from birth through 18.

Mental Health, Education and Social Control, Part 35.  Even before the [Virginia Tech] shootings, a growing number of schools in the U.S. were screening students for psychological problems, and in some areas, all children of any age in foster care are to be screened.  According to American Health Line, June 19, 2006, "one psychological evaluation system, TeenScreen, has been administered to more than 150,000 children in 42 states and the District of Columbia, and New York State plans to begin screening about 400,000 children a year."  In previous Parts of this series, I have detailed the rather serious problems with TeenScreen.

Cradle-to-college socialism:
 Hillary Clinton Backs Federal Funding for 'America's Pre-K Movement'.  While senators scrambled to pass a financial "rescue" or "bailout" package that could cost taxpayers up to $700 billion on Wednesday [10/1/2008], Sens. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Kit Bond (R-Mo.) called for expanding the public education system to include 3- and 4-year-olds.  The pre-K programs would be paid for by state funding and supplemented by federal grants.


No Child Left Behind

This is yet another facet of the federal government's meddling in education, which (according to the Constitution) is supposed to be "reserved to the States, or to the people."

No child left behind – Republican ode to socialism.  The Constitution grants no authority for the federal government to be involved in education, and for good reason:  centralizing all learning in one distant spot is a stupid, narrow, dangerous, communist idea, one which has throughout all the world's history led to despotism and slavery.  Thus our forefathers limited federal power to a few necessary objects like national defense and foreign policy, and not at all to education.

The Bush education fix will only make it worse.  The President's proposal accepts the incorrect conclusion that the problem with education is simply an overblown bureaucracy that wastes federal funds and fails to enforce clear standards by rewarding bad schools.  His statement that "no child will be left behind" comes straight from the decade-old motto of the Children's Defense Fund, the group that claims Hillary Clinton as one of its leaders.  By being so off-the-mark, there just is no way the Bush proposal can address a single school reform issue.

Screening Mothers and Babes Instead of Potential Terrorists.  I was absolutely dumbfounded to read about something called The Children's Mental Health Act of 2003.  It requires a mental health screening of children ages zero through 18 and pregnant women.  Pregnant women would be screened prior to delivery for depression and periodically for the first six months after giving birth. … This measure fits extremely well with the outcome based educational methods currently utilized in our failing school systems.  OBE is based on the ideas that our schools are responsible for the emotional and nurturance needs of children from families where they're not being met. … OBE is exactly the type of non scientifically backed method that No Child Left Behind is trying to eliminate.

Why "No Child Left Behind" Is Nuts:  My original assumption was that the Commission was cynically aware that NCLB is a bad joke.  Yet it is also naïvely recommending plugging the crucial loophole that might make "100 percent proficiency" almost achievable on paper.  In the current NCLB, which was largely the result of an alliance between President Bush and Senator Kennedy.  Each state is allowed to concoct its own test to determine whether its own students have reached "proficiency," which the state can define however it pleases.

"No Child Left Behind" Should Be Left Behind.  NCLB was intended to improve education standards in America's dismal public schools.  It should have been named No Bureaucracy Left Behind instead.  I opposed NCLB from the beginning.  Why?  Because education is a local concern.  There is simply no way that all public schools from New York City to Alaska have the same problems that require a one-size-fits-all solution.

All Americans Left Behind.  Congress passed the No Child Left Behind Act overwhelmingly in December 2001.  NCLB's popularity was partly political and partly geopolitical.  Republicans wanted a legislative victory for the new president, and legislators sought to demonstrate U.S. solidarity in the wake of 9/11.  But adding to its appeal was the mom-and-apple-pie promise that it would raise overall achievement in math and reading while narrowing the test score gaps dividing rich from poor, and black and Hispanic from white.  Recent results from two different sets of international tests suggest that NCLB has failed to deliver on that promise.

'No Child' Data on Violence Skewed.  At Anacostia Senior High School last school year, private security guards working under D.C. police recorded 61 violent offenses, including three sexual assaults and one assault with a deadly weapon.  There were 21 other nonviolent cases in which students were caught bringing knives and guns to school.  [And yet] Anacostia is not considered a persistently dangerous school.

"No Child Left Behind" Rebellion:  "From Utah to Virginia, a revolt is building in classrooms and legislatures against the biggest education reform in a quarter century," observed the February 11 Christian Science Monitor.

Defining Achievement Downward:  How NCLB encourages mediocrity.  Holding schools accountable to the AYP [Adequate Yearly Progress] schedule has some bad effects.  Most importantly, it encourages teachers and schools to focus heavily on "bubble" children currently near the proficiency level.  Derek Neal, a University of Chicago economist who recently released a study of NCLB, found that schoolteachers are pressured to increase their proficiency numbers, while kids outside the bubble, particularly high achievers, are slighted.

Battling the 'No Child' Backlash.  The last thing President Bush needs is another fight with his political base.  But that is what he has found as he presses Congress to renew the No Child Left Behind Act, his signature education program passed by a bipartisan majority in the first months of his first term.

Intense Battle Looms over NCLB.  No Child Left Behind (NCLB) … is likely to provoke increasingly intense debate on Capitol Hill throughout 2006. … NCLB requires states to test children in reading and math annually in grades 3-8 and once in high school.  However … it allows the states to set their own standards and adopt their own tests.  Some critics believe this ensures a race to the bottom as states and localities demand less from students in order to avoid having many schools officially designated as "in need of improvement."

No Child Left Behind is beyond uninformative — It is deceptive  NCLB takes a giant step toward nationalizing elementary and secondary education, a disaster for federalism.  It pushes classrooms toward relentless drilling, not something that inspires able people to become teachers or makes children eager to learn.  It holds good students hostage to the performance of the least talented, at a time when the economic future of the country depends more than ever on the performance of the most talented.

Utah takes on the Feds.  If you seek a window into conservatism's current consternations, look into Utah.  The nation's reddest state … is rebelling against President Bush's No Child Left Behind law.  Only three states have not challenged in some way NCLB's extension of federal supervision over education grades K through 12….

Poll shows people are worried about No Child Left Behind.  A poll of people's attitudes towards public schools reveals some concerns about the No Child Left Behind law. … When asked directly about the testing being done as a result of the No Child Left Behind law, more than two-thirds said they don't think a single test gives a true picture of how a school is doing.  Eighty-percent say testing students only in math and English fails to show if a school needs improvement.

The Looming Train Wreck of No Child Left Behind:  Facing the task of reauthorizing No Child Left Behind (NCLB), Congress … faces an unsustainable status-quo.  Although fashioned with the noblest intentions, NCLB created a perverse incentive for states to lower their academic standards — an incentive that will become increasingly powerful in coming years.

Let's 'Restructure' Washington While We're at It.  [Scroll down]  Take the 2001 No Child Left Behind law, a 670-page statute that ostensibly provides for national testing so we know how schools are doing.  But that worthy goal could be accomplished in a few pages, with delegation to the Secretary of Education to make sure the standards are uniform and providing adequate funding.  Instead the statute is a model of micromanagement, a top-down exercise in terrorizing teachers into thinking nothing is important except, as one teacher put it, "test, test, test."


Why we need the Freedom In Education Act:  The federal government denies that there is a federal curriculum that reaches world government over national sovereignty.  Your Representatives in Congress are in the dark and the federal government is lying.  The fact is, the building blocks of world government are being taught in a number of ways.  There are several specific programs in today's education curriculum designed to promote global government.

The education of our children should not be left to the state.  Parents of elementary school children in California were upset that their kids were the targets of a sex survey conducted by the Palmdale School District.  The survey, distributed in 2002, focused on how often prepubescent school kids thought about sex and touched themselves — you know, just the kind of things educators need to know to in order to effectively teach reading, writing and math skills.

Fuzzy memory on fuzzy math.  The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics released new guidelines that, for example, call on fourth graders to know multiplication tables and division.  Oddly, it's big news when math teachers call for students to learn math skills.  So The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times reported that the guidelines signaled a return to emphasizing "basics" in math education.

Sorry, Cupcake, You're Not Welcome in Class.  The days of the birthday cupcake — smothered in a slurry of sticky frosting and with a dash of rainbow sprinkles — may be numbered in schoolhouses across the nation.  Fears of childhood obesity have led schools to discourage and sometimes even ban what were once de rigueur grammar-school treats.

Sounds like the Food Police came for a visit.

WSU ends "hecklers veto" aid but threatens conservative student's graduation.  It shouldn't have taken a threatened law suit and being held up to nationwide public scorn but Washington State University officials have stopped paying student hecklers who shout down speakers with whom they disagree.  Unfortunately, the stench remains strong at Washington State University of a Stalinist suppression of political views that deviate from the politically correct academic liberal orthodoxy.

Ill. students lose diplomas over cheers.  Caisha Gayles graduated with honors last month, but she is still waiting for her diploma.  The reason:  the whoops of joy from the audience as she crossed the stage.  Gayles was one of five students denied diplomas from the lone public high school in Galesburg after enthusiastic friends or family members cheered for them during commencement.

Putting tenure on trial:  If there's a dumber idea floating around than the guarantee of lifetime employment I'm not sure I want to hear about it.

Gambling with the Children.  After decades of both parties supporting a limited federal role in educational matters, we now face a broad-based assault on public education from the Beltway.  State rights?  Local control?  This education law makes a mockery of those concepts as it imposes radical and often untested change strategies across all districts.  Republicans and Democrats should join together to challenge this serious violation of state rights.

Students kicked off school bus in St. Paul for speaking English.  Imagine sending your kids off to school, but when they get to the bus they are told they can't get on because they speak English.  That's right, English.  It happened to a few children in St. Paul and now the school district is apologizing. … [The kids] were told by the bus driver the route is for non-English speaking students only.

Modern education's return to virtue, honesty, and justice.  In his new book John Dewey and the Decline of American Education, [Henry] Edmondson levels a scathing assessment of Dewey, the paradigm that drove him, and his legacy.  To Edmondson, Dewey's life is not a blessing but a curse that must be actively resisted on all fronts in the quest for educational reform and securing the future for America's youth.

They're being called the Kutztown 13.  They are a group of high schoolers charged with felonies for bypassing security with school-issued laptops, downloading forbidden internet goodies and using monitoring software to spy on district administrators. … The administrative password that allowed students to reconfigure computers and obtain unrestricted internet access was easy to obtain.  A shortened version of the school's street address, the password was taped to the backs of the computers.  The password got passed around and students began downloading such forbidden programs as the popular iChat instant-messaging tool.

 Editor's Note:   The school administrators acted with incompetence, putting the admin password on the back of the computer.  The kids who figured out how to use the computers to their full potential are the people who should go to the head of the class — not to prison.

Teacher concerns over L.A. school computerization project.  LAUSD is the second largest school district in the country, and is embarking on a computerization project that has many teachers concerned.  The driving force appears to be the desire to obtain every last possible attendance dollar per student, despite the risks that appear obvious even to persons who are not computer experts.

Crackberry Crunch:  The same study (of 100,000 school children in more than 30 countries) found that "non-computer using kids performed better in literacy and numeracy than PC-using children".  After all that public money the government sank into public school computerization...

Illinois Set to Ban Soda and Snacks in Schools.  The Illinois State Board of Education, following the urging of Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D), on December 15 began the process of banning the sale of high-fat, high-calorie foods and drinks to most of the state's elementary and middle school students. … While the proposed regulations have been developed in consultation with the American Heart Association, experts note there is no consensus on what junk food actually is.

25 Years of Forced Busing.  In 1971, Charlotte became ground zero for a noble but failed social experiment forced upon the country by the U.S. Supreme Court.  In its historic Swann vs. Charlotte-Mecklenburg school decision, the court permitted racially segregated school districts to begin busing in order to achieve integration.

101 Reasons the Public Schools are Hopeless.  Abundant anectodal evidence of abuse, poor judgement, and cruelty in the public schools.

Brainwashing in America:  The shift from factual education to feeling and experience-based learning began over seventy years ago. … Eventually, most students become conditioned to see everything through the new politically correct mental filter.

Only Half a Child:  Mixed Messages in New Mexico Schools.  Students twelve and under, you are encouraged to be sexually abstinent.  Students over twelve, you are encouraged to use a condom.  Half of your life you are encouraged to succeed.  The other half of your life, you are told you will probably fail. … It's a sad day for students and parents when the state health system gives up on teaching healthy choices and opts to believe that teens are incapable of restraining sexual urges.


Channel One

Group Launches New Campaign to Turn Off Channel One.  A broad coalition of companies, organizations and activists kicked off a new campaign [in June 2001] to stop Primedia's Channel One from exploiting school children for commercial gain.  Channel One is the in-school television program with a daily captive audience of about eight million school children in 12,000 schools, broadcasting 10 minutes of "news," music and filler, plus two minutes of advertising for a variety of child-directed products and services.

The Campaign To Tune Out Channel One:  Channel One is the in-school television program with a daily captive audience of about eight million children in 12,000 schools, broadcasting 10 minutes of "news," music and filler, plus two minutes of advertising for a variety of products and services aimed at youngsters. … Channel One misuses compulsory school attendance laws to force children to watch ads, wasting valuable school time.  The programs consume the equivalent of one instructional week of school time each school year, including one full day watching ads.

Channel One  is a 12-minute-a-day television marketing device forced on a captive audience of teenagers.  Children attend school because of compulsory attendance laws, and every day about 40% of all 11 to 18 year olds are forced to watch Channel One because their school board signed a contract agreeing to compel them. … Channel One can charge primetime rates for its one-minute spots peddling junk foods, soft drinks, expensive sneakers, and vulgar movies, magazines, and TV sitcoms.  Channel One gives advertisers a daily guaranteed teen audience comparable to the Super Bowl.

Channel One — Exploiting Children and Perverting Education.  Schools that agree to Channel Ones Faustian bargain receive the use of a satellite dish, a TV in each classroom and two VCRs per school.  The satellite dish will only receive the Channel One signal. … We understand that the purpose of advertising is to manipulate our wants and desires.  What we don't understand is why so many educators dont have a problem with exploiting a captive audience of children in this way. … Taxpayer-funded school time should not be the venue for hawking any products to students.

More articles — none of them favorable — about Channel One.


PETA Gets to Your Kids.  Radical animal-rights activists may be the last people you'd think would be planning school lessons for your children.  Well, think again.  Through its innocuous-sounding "educational" programming arm known as TeachKind, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has found a way to reach school children starting as young as kindergarten with its extremist agenda.

There has to be a Better Way for Special Education Students.  School districts around the country breathed a sigh of relief last week when the Supreme Court ruled on an arcane dispute involving the federal government's mandate for special education students.  Under federal law, public schools are required to provide a "free, appropriate public education" to all students, regardless of disability.

College Prof — a Convicted Felon — Still on Payroll at Univ. of Wisconsin.  In March a University of Wisconsin (UW) professor was convicted of three felony counts of repeated sexual contact with three minor girls, ages five, six, and nine.  This month a Wisconsin county circuit court sentenced physiology professor Roberto Coronado to eight years in prison.  But UW will not sever the employment of the professor, and will keep him on their payroll.

School Clinic Dispenses Birth Control Without Parental Consent.  Students at a Northern California school district now have low to no-cost access to contraceptives, including the controversial Plan B, at a high school clinic.

What Rob Reiner's not telling us about universal preschool:  It's a seductive proposition, but universal preschool looks to be a very expensive bad idea.

In New Zealand ...
 School parking ban to fight obesity.  One idea to be explored was banning parking around schools to encourage parents to drop children some distance from the school.  This would force them to walk at least part of the way, possibly with a "walking school bus".

School board appoints manager of lewd club as president, then silences concerned citizens.  An Alliance Defense Fund allied attorney Monday [6/20/2005] asked a federal court to order the Asbury Park Board of Education to respect the free speech rights of citizens who were critical of the board for appointing as president the former manager of a sexually explicit club.

Must This Teacher Teacher Be Fired?  Albert Einstein revolutionized Physics, Alan Turing helped invent computer science and Richard Feynman won the Nobel Prize in Physics while maintaining a reputation as the best science teacher of his generation. … None of these individuals, according to the state licensing board, would be qualified to teach in an Oregon public school.

Call it what you will, it's still failure.  The word "fail" should be banned from use in British classrooms and replaced with the phrase "deferred success" to avoid demoralizing pupils, a group of teachers has proposed.

The end of self-reliance?  From childhood on, Americans are told by "experts" — therapists, self-esteem educators, grief counselors, traumatologists — that it is healthy for them continuously to take their emotional temperature, inventory their feelings and vent them.

Federal government fails history in U.S. schools.  The flap over the U.S. Department of Education consigning 300,000 copies of "Helping Your Child to Learn History" to the trash bin is evidence anew that the federal government should have no role in education.  Illiteracy and low scores in public schools are a national scandal, but it's hard to see how federal spending improves anything.

Supremacist Judges Are Running Our Schools.  On the first court day of the New Year, the Kansas Supreme Court ordered the Kansas legislature to appropriate more money for the public schools.  According to the National Center for Education Statistics, Kansas spends $8,206 per pupil per year, but the judges said the state must spend much more to give schoolchildren the "suitable" education which the state constitution guarantees.

Add choice, not just money, to education.  The Kansas Supreme Court ruled last week that the Legislature has not fulfilled its constitutional requirement to finance what it had previously defined as a "suitable" education.  "It is clear increased funding will be required," said the court, but it did not specify how much.  One approach to the dilemma is to change the definition of a "suitable" education so that the state commits itself to purchasing a less expensive mix of services.  Advocates of increased funding argue that this would "dumb down" schools.  Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, in her State of the State address, opposed this approach and called it an "end run."

Equal Rights, Equal Opportunity, and Now Equal Outcome.  In America, we have a serious problem with the public education system.  The breakdown started with the civil rights movement and the decision to use the system to socially engineer the races — the emphasis was switched from encouraging the smart children, the future leaders, to almost all of the emphasis being placed on the least of the students, guaranteeing a dumbed-down education for all the children.  The unionization of the system greatly accelerated the breakdown — the system became the teacher's domain rather than the children's place.  The breakdown has been further accelerated by the government takeover of the schools (state and federal) from the communities.  As a result the student's learning has been degraded below that of some third world countries.

Here's another incentive for homeschooling:
Teacher has kids tasting flavored condoms.  The New Mexico Health Department is standing behind a sex-education teacher in Santa Fe who encouraged ninth-graders to taste flavored condoms.  According to a report in the Santa Fe New Mexican, parent Lisa Gallegos said that when her 15-year-old daughter balked at putting a condom in her mouth, instructor Tony Escudero told her, "Come on, sweetie, have a little fun."

No Child Left Un-medicated?  The administration's "New Freedom Initiative" envisions "comprehensive mental health screening for 'consumers of all ages,' including preschool children."

"Tagging" U.S. Schoolchildren.  Houston's Spring Independent School District "is equipping 28,000 students with ID badges containing computer chips that are read when the students get on and off school buses," reported the November 17 New York Times.  "The information is fed automatically by wireless phone to the police and school administrators."  Police can monitor children from the time they leave home to their arrival on campus.

 Editor's Note:   If you think those are the limits of such monitoring, that the monitoring begins when the kid leaves the house, that the monitoring takes place only on school days, then you are naïve indeed.  If the chips can be read at the school bus stop without the assistance of the kids, then the chips can be read anywhere in town at any time of day.  And apparently every kid in the school gets such an ID badge, whether he or she rides the bus or not.  Nobody dares to speak out against an idea like this, because ostensibly "we're doing it for the children"  or  "it's for their safety."

Mandatory Student ID Cards Contain RFIDs.  Parents in a northern California public school district and civil liberties groups are urging a school district to terminate the mandatory use of Radio Frequency Identification tags by students.  A letter was sent today [2/8/2005] expressing alarm at the Brittan School District's use of mandatory ID badges that include a RFID device that tracks the students' movements.  The device transmits private information to a computer on campus whenever a student passes under one of the scanners.  The ID badges also include the student's name, photo, grade, school name, class year and the four-digit school ID number.  Students are required to prominently display the badges by wearing them around the neck at all times.

There is more material about RFID issues here.

Fingerprinting Students:  A nascent security trend in the U.S. is tracking schoolchildren when they get on and off school buses.  A school district in Spring, Texas, is using computerized ID badges to record this information, and wirelessly sending it to police headquarters.  Another school district, in Phoenix, is doing the same thing with fingerprint readers.  … Tracking kids as they get on and off school buses is a ridiculous idea.  It's expensive, invasive, and doesn't increase security very much.

Book review
 Faulty Towers:  Tenure and the Structure of Higher Education.  As debate accelerates over the declining standards in higher education, academic tenure is viewed with suspicion by many, who see it merely as job protection for incompetent teachers.  Even many professors believe tenure is a guarantee of lifelong entitlement, whereby only the commission of a crime can lead to dismissal. … Tenured professors who have become incompetent are rarely dismissed, and superior teaching is rarely rewarded, although there is little to prevent universities from doing so.

School distributes satanic sex calendar.  Local school officials in a suburb of Houston, Texas, are investigating how it was possible that a school police officer handed out calendars to students that featured explicit details on satanic and sexual rituals for every day of the month.

Texas Teachers Learn to Cheat:  A loophole in the law allows them to pay as little as $3 in Social Security taxes and receive Social Security benefits worth about $5,200 a year for the rest of their lives.  How can teachers expect their students to behave honorably if they intend to cheat the Social Security system to get more benefits than they deserve?

How Textbooks Mislead Teachers:  Dr. Michael Sanera gives examples of how environmental teaching texts used in university-level courses in Wisconsin provide misleading information to prospective teachers about various environmental issues.

Finding Effective Lessons for Teachers.  There is no shortage of ideas to solve the problem of low student achievement in U.S. public schools:  Smaller class sizes, more talented teachers, more well-rounded teachers recruited from other careers, and better pay for teachers are just a few of the prescriptions offered.  But in a 1999 book titled The Teaching Gap (Free Press), UCLA psychology professor James W. Stigler and coauthor James Hiebert suggested student achievement may be stunted by a much more fundamental cause:  ineffective teaching methods.

The Harmful Impact of the TAAS System of Testing in Texas:  Texas, a state with a history of low educational achievement and low investment in public education, has put into place an accountability system that hinges on the testing of children.  The test has high stakes consequences for the children:  not passing the high school-level test is a bar to graduation (regardless of the student's accomplishments and courses passed).

A Different Look at DARE:  This site provides information and views on the DARE program not readily available through DARE or any official source.  This page is not sponsored or endorsed by "DARE America," and we do not purport to speak for DARE.

Brainwashing 101:  They are not "public schools."  They are government schools.  They are owned and operated by government.  Every employee, from the superintendent to the dishwasher in the cafeteria, is a government employee.  So, let's call them what they are.  Government schools.

Are Our Schools Concentration Campuses for Mind Destruction?  Paul Goodman contends that the idea that children can be educated through compulsory state education is a mass superstition.

No Child Left Unbrainwashed:  Public education became popular in the 18th century, when Prussian monarchs decided the best way to raise good Prussians was to control their education.  Writing for the Action Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, doctoral student Michiel Visser of Oxford states:  "Pupils were not primarily supposed to learn reading, writing, arithmetic or anything else, but were meant to become obedient citizens.  The history of modern education, then, is a history of social control…."

The "state" of education:  The federal government now insists that every teacher must have a degree in every subject he teaches, or must pass an exam to prove he's "highly qualified" in that subject.  Washington's one-size-fits-all education policy is the real problem here.  Federal bureaucrats are treating small towns in Montana is if they were New York City and rural villages in Alaska as if they were Dallas.

 Excellent   Judging Books by Their Covers:  In 1964 the eminent physicist Richard Feynman served on the State of California's Curriculum Commission and saw how the Commission chose math textbooks for use in California's public schools.  In his acerbic memoir of that experience, Feynman analyzed the Commission's idiotic method of evaluating books, and he described some of the tactics employed by schoolbook salesmen who wanted the Commission to adopt their shoddy products.

"Gender Blind" Dorms Top List of 2003 Campus Follies:  A conservative group has released its annual list of what it calls "the top ten most shameful events" in America's educational system.  The group says the incidences of "bias and political correctness" continue to weigh down that system.

Same story:  2003 Top Ten Campus Follies:  Our nation's education system continues to be weighted down with incidences of bias and political correctness.  Young America's Foundation compiled a list of the top ten most shameful campus events in America's education system in 2003.

This is a place of learning, not a school.  Watercliffe Meadow Primary in Sheffield has adopted the new phraseology because it thinks that the word school may have negative connotations for pupils and parents.  Linda Kingdon, the head teacher, said that the change would bring the school (or place of learning) closer to real life.  But critics condemned it as laughable political correctness.

Bilingual Education Disaster in New York City:  A recent report on English Language Learners found that [only] 3.7 percent of [New York] City's 134,000 students in bilingual education programs were able to transition into mainstream classes.  Some of these students had been in bilingual education as long as 10 years.

Learning globally:  The Bush administration has begun issuing grants to help spread a United Nations-sponsored school program that aims to become a "universal curriculum" for teaching global citizenship, peace studies and equality of world cultures.

Class sizes and Academic Achievement:  Some Florida taxpayers might accept an increase if they can be assured that having fewer students in each class will increase academic achievement.  But unfortunately, the effect of class size on student achievement hasn't been proven.

A Class-ic Mistake:  Periodically, public education is seized by a fad regardless of whether it has any real effect.  One such is the rush toward reducing class size to some arbitrary number.

What Should We Expect from Smaller Classes?  In a thoughtful review of studies of class size and academic performance in Scientific American [November 2001], Ronald G. Ehrenberg and colleagues point out class-size reduction has one obvious drawback:  "It costs plenty."  They note the state of California alone has spent more than $1.5 billion annually over the past several years to reduce class sizes to 20 or fewer in kindergarten through third grade ... with only a "tiny effect."

Should Classes Be Smaller … Or Simply More Orderly?  A recent research study highlights the importance of teacher quality and raises questions about the cost-effectiveness of class size reduction proposals.

No Preschooler Left Behind:  Thomas Watkins, Michigan's superintendent of public schools, is on a mission to expand his authority beyond the traditional K-12 boundaries.  If given his way, every child in the state—practically from birth—would become the exclusive property of state authorities.  Of course, Watkins doesn't quite phrase it that way.  Rather than acknowledge his desire to forcibly remove children from their homes, the superintendent speaks of "investment" in society's future.

The Intellectual Rape of Oakland's Schools:  This week, Dan Siegel and the Oakland school board led their corrupt and failing school in an exercise in anti-American propaganda, turning over all of Oakland's schoolchildren, from the first grade to high school, to the tender mercies of radical ideologues and their rants against the war in Iraq, the president and America.

A world without "F's":  School's out.  What did your children learn this year? Across the country, one poisonous lesson was pumped into the systems of self-esteem-inflated students:  There is no such thing as failure.

See Dick and Jane Weep:  Principals and teachers traded in phonics for histrionics.

My name is Adolf:  Among the patriotic lesson plans for 9-11 was one proposed by the National Council for Social Studies, which recommends a short story titled "My Name is Osama."  Calculatedly inciting hatred toward white American boys, the story is about a nasty little boy, "Todd," who taunts an Iraqi immigrant named "Osama."

School-to-Work = The Reason Our Schools Are Failing:  When fully implemented, School-to-Work will result in:  1) loss of personal control over daily life, 2) loss of local control over education, 3) loss of quality, academic rich curricula, and 4) loss of freedom as a free market driven economy in a constitutional republic.

How to Understand the Double-Speak of the Educrats:  The education establishment has learned to use words that have double meanings or have no known definition in the English language.  Consequently, moms and dads who stand in the arena, ready for battle are often disarmed by what seems to be a foreign language.

Restructuring Education For the Global Village:  Academic education has been replaced with indoctrination programs.  The process is designed to change the attitude, values and beliefs of the children — away from traditional American values of God and Country.  Away from the family; away from the American work ethic; away from competition.

Saving the Children:  It is sometimes said, by public school supporters, that if some children are taken out of the system to go to other schools, the public schools will deteriorate.  And so, the thinking goes, parents have a "duty to society" to keep their kids in the public schools, even though they have already deteriorated almost beyond recognition.  How absurd that the government schools think of the children as serving the schools' or society's needs instead of the other way around.

Learning About Learning:  No matter how hard we try, we can't deliberately forget something we have learned, and that is catastrophic if we learn that we can't learn."  One of the most powerful lessons schools teach children is "You are not a good learner."  Despite the knowledge that children's brains are superb learning instruments, schools always claim that "failure" is a kind of sickness.  Real or imaginary inadequacies are given clinical-sounding labels like "dyslexia," "ADHD," etc., to create the impression that physical abnormalities are involved.

Education or Indoctrination?  Largely unknown to the public, the whole notion of education has been radically transformed over the years, so that it no longer means conveying the accumulated knowledge and understanding of a civilization, but shaping children's psyches and indoctrinating their minds with politically correct ideologies.

"Sexual Orientation" Codes are Harmful to Schools:  "'Sexual orientation' school codes are invariably used to advance one-sided, pro-‘gay' programs and classroom teachings," said Peter LaBarbera, senior policy analyst at the Culture and Family Institute.  "This bias violates parents' rights and the beliefs of the majority of students who oppose homosexuality."

California Democrats Refuse to Notify Parents of Sex Ed Speakers:  A Democrat-controlled committee of the California State Legislature has killed a bill that would have required public schools to notify parents if outside speakers were invited to discuss sexual matters with students — even young students.

Educators Pull History Text for "Inappropriate" Material:  The chairwoman of the Texas Board of Education is defending the withdrawal of a textbook they say contains inaccurate and inappropriate information.  The textbook, called Out of Many:  A History of the American People, is published by Prentice Hall.  A passage in the book is entitled "Cowboys and Prostitutes."  Grace Shore, who heads the State Board of Education, says the textbook was pulled because it not only was inappropriate for children, but it contained information that is questionable.

Fort Lewis College Cancels Pornography Course After State Wide Criticism

Classes in safe sex are ineffective, says study:  Sex education classes do not reduce the number of teenagers who practice unsafe sex, according to research that suggests parents can play a more influential role.

Teacher fired for showing "graphic" movies:  School Board asserts that he had shown students movies with graphic sexual content and profanity without notifying their parents, and that he discussed with students phallic symbolism in the Christian church.

Schools' Drastic Measures Questioned:  In an effort to keep schools free of drugs and violence, authorities are resorting to heavy-handed measures that impinge on students' privacy rights and chill the learning environment, says one observer.

S.F. Schools Urge Kids to Skip for Rally:  The San Francisco Board of Education wants its high school students to skip school Thursday to show support for its pet cause:  affirmative action.

Who let these dogs out?  The awful truth about government Web sites for children.

Group Blasts Abstinence Message In Schools:  Many schools have adopted an abstinence message as a way to discourage teenagers from engaging in sexual activity, and the Alan Guttmacher Institute isn't happy about it.

The Autism Dragnet:  Department of Education Rule 51. A legal case in Nebraska shows the dangers in creating a government-mandated dragnet that can subject all sorts of children to hours of disagreeable, ineffective or even counterproductive treatment for something they do not have.

"Yummy" foods to tempt school truants:  Schools in New York will serve ice cream on Mondays and Fridays to encourage children not to truant [sic].  Officials hope offering the treat on the days with the highest truancy rate will stop kids missing classes.

 Editor's Note:   Truant is not a verb!

The Creativity-Knowledge Dichotomy:  I saw a bumpersticker [sic] the other day which said, "Creativity Is More Important Than Knowledge."  You can't separate creativity from knowledge.  The two are intertwined.

Invention Becomes the Mother of Necessity:  Technology in the Classroom:  Rather than seeing an achievement gap shrinking, some technology may actually serve to separate students further apart.  A new class system may emerge, those who understand and use technology and those who do not.  If a child cannot read or reads at such a low level to be functionally illiterate, technology matters very little.

Guess What's Going On In School!  While the education debate in Congress revolves around standards, testing, accountability and spending, 3,000 miles away on the Left Coast, very different factors have leapt to center stage.

New schools for a new world order:  The fundamental goal of socialism is the establishment of a sociopolitical milieu where the individual is controlled by the state from the cradle to the grave.  It seems this dream has taken a few steps closer to reality for young children living in Washington, DC.  The City Council of the District of Columbia is considering a bill designed to lower the age of compulsory school attendance from five to three years old.  WorldNet Daily points out that even children as young as two unfortunate to have their birthdays fall after the commencement of the academic year will be mandated to participate.

Compulsory education for 2-year-olds?  D.C. councilman proposes forcing toddlers into classrooms.

Nosy Pupil Surveys Rile Parents

Wicca [witchcraft] and ecology debated in Michigan school controversy:  Amid allegations of teaching Wiccan and pagan religion to fourth graders, the fate of an environmental school program in this quiet city on the St. Clair River rests in the hands of school officials.

Students get Big Brother identity cards.

Mandatory Student Assembly Stirs Controversy:  A California high school teacher has found himself at the center of controversy after denouncing mandatory student assemblies staged by the student National Organization for Women Club, the Black Student Union and a "Multi-Cultural Assembly," among others.

School Lunches to Go Global:  U.S. effort to start a global school lunch program.

Half a century after Brown:  The key fallacy underlying the civil rights vision was that all black economic lags were due to racial discrimination.  That assumption has survived to this day, in the courts, in the media, in academia, and above all in politics.

Half a century after Brown: Part II.  Medical authorities have long recognized that a quack remedy that is harmless in itself can nevertheless be fatal in its effects, if it keeps sick people from getting the treatment that can cure them.  Racial mixing and matching has been the great quack remedy for the educational lags of black school children that has substituted for higher standards and harder work.

Half a century after Brown: Part III.  Although Brown v. Board of Education dealt with race and with schools, its judicial philosophy spread rapidly to issues having nothing to do with race or schools.  In the half century since Brown, judges at all levels have become unelected legislators imposing the vision of the political left across a wide spectrum.


Ritalin:

Ritalin, also known as Methylphenidate, a Schedule II substance, has a high potential for abuse and produces many of the same effects as cocaine or the amphetamines.  The abuse of this substance has been documented among narcotic addicts who dissolve the tablets in water and inject the mixture.

In my humble opinion, if kids spent half as much time reading as they spend in front of a television, there would be far less demand for drugs like Ritalin.

Note:  Schedule II of the Controlled Substances Act contains those substances that have the highest abuse potential and dependence profile of all drugs that have medical utility.*

Numerous reasons to avoid Ritalin®.

Ritalin May Cause Long-Lasting Changes In Brain-Cell Function.  Scientists at the University at Buffalo have shown that the drug methylphenidate, the generic form of Ritalin, which physicians have considered to have only short-term effects, appears to initiate changes in brain function that remain after the therapeutic effects have dissipated.  The changes appear to be similar to those that occur with other stimulant drugs such as amphetamine and cocaine.

Doctors told to curb use of Ritalin in hyperactive children.  Children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) should be treated with drugs such as Ritalin only in severe cases and never when they are younger than 5, under official health guidelines issued today.  Widespread concerns that medication is used too freely to calm hyperactive children have been recognised by two clinical practice watchdogs, which are now advising doctors not to prescribe drugs whenever possible.

Reading vs. Ritalin:  There's so much talk of "attention deficit disorder" in children today.  The unquestioned, never disputed premise is that brain chemistry causes young people not to pay attention.  Yet attention deficits were never such problems in earlier eras.  What gives?  A major factor is the lack of reading.

Ritalin and Russian Roulette:  What parents are not being told by psychiatrists who prescribe the drug and the school nurses who give it to the kids, that taking Ritalin is like playing Russian Roulette, simply because nobody can be sure what the side-effects will be. … We only hear about the worst tragedies.  Skin rashes, headaches, dizziness, nausea, and palpitations don't make the headlines.  They just make the users miserable.

Experts Urge Stern ADHD Drug Warnings.  In a surprise move, an advisory panel urged the FDA to place strong warnings on all stimulant drugs used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) because of a potential risk of heart attacks, strokes, and sudden death.

No child left unmedicated.  Big Brother is on the march.  A plan to subject all children to mental health screening is under way, and pharmaceutical companies are gearing up for bigger sales of psychotropic drugs.  Like most liberal big-spending ideas, this one was slipped into the law under cover of soft semantics.  Its genesis was the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health created by President George W. Bush in 2002.

Academic Morning-After Profits:  As AIA has documented, some groups remain skeptical of the expansive definitions surrounding Attention Deficit Disorder diagnoses.  Others are concerned by the rapid expansion of the use of psychotropic drugs among children.  The investigation of the Harvard doctors, two of about 30 university-affiliated scientists under suspicion, is being spearheaded by Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), a Senator known for his fiery investigation into university endowments and transparency efforts.

In Australia:
 Two-year-olds now on Ritalin.  Toddlers as young as two are being diagnosed with ADHD and prescribed drugs including Ritalin.  Figures obtained by The Daily Telegraph reveal 311 children in NSW aged five and under depend on controversial medication, including 58 four-year-olds and 13 three-year-olds.  Health Department figures show that, nationally, doctors have prescribed ADHD drugs to five toddlers aged only two, despite possible side effects.

Ritalin is more potent than cocaine.  The children's drug Ritalin has a more potent effect on the brain than cocaine, a study has found.  Using brain imaging, scientists have found that, in pill form, Ritalin — taken by thousands of British children and four million in the United States — occupies more of the neural transporters responsible for the "high" experienced by addicts than smoked or injected cocaine.  The research may alarm parents whose children have been prescribed Ritalin as a solution to Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder.

Ritalin poses child crime risk.  Children who use Ritalin for a long period of time could be more at risk of delinquency and substance abuse, a study has found. Doctors are suggesting children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) should take a break from medication after three years of use.

Doping our kids:  This boost in brainbenders smacks of chemical parenting.

The Therapeutic Nanny State.  This new proposal threatens to force millions of kids to undergo psychiatric screening, whether their parents consent or not.  At issue is the fundamental right of parents to decide what medical treatment is appropriate for their children.

Ritalin use in Virginia is "astronomical":  Portsmouth ranks in the top 1 percent of communities nationwide for use of Ritalin, the drug prescribed to treat attention deficit disorders, a new study by a local researcher has found.

Ritalin:  the Government Drug.  Ritalin plays a significant part in the government school system's war against parents and children.  When school employees and psychiatrists recommend mind-altering behavior-modifying drugs for our children, it's not to benefit the children, it's for the convenience of the schools and the teachers.  The government attitude is that public school children are its property to do with as it chooses.

Kids popping pills:  According to the infelicitously titled medical journal Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, doctors are prescribing Ritalin for attention deficit disorder as well as several antidepressants with growing frequency.

Blackmailing Parents To Keep Kids On Drugs:  The underlying problem here is the notion that children belong first to the state — that they're best "socialized" in state-run institutions, and that biological parents are allowed to retain custody only at the discretion of school and "child welfare" officials.

A Different Kind of Drug War:  There's a different kind of drug war going on that doesn't get the kind of attention as the one in the streets of America.  In fact, those who are involved in a massive program of drug distribution are highly regarded and very well paid.  They are our nation's teachers and the legions of "counselors" who have invaded our schools.

Ritalin is Poison:  Why is America suddenly experiencing an explosion of new mental diseases and disorders never heard of thirty years ago?  Why are children seemingly out of control, refusing to listen to parents and teachers, even driven to violence?

Study:  ADHD drugs send thousands to ERs.  Accidental overdoses and side effects from attention deficit drugs likely send thousands of children and adults to emergency rooms, according to the first national estimates of the problem.  Scientists at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated problems with the stimulant drugs drive nearly 3,100 people to ERs each year.

Is Ritalin the Root of Student Violence?  As communities reel from one massive act of student violence after another, the nation looks for answers.  How many are looking at the schools themselves as the conduit through which millions of students are drugged with mind-altering drugs?

Tracking Your Digital Trail.  In 2004, Congress funded the New Freedom Initiative (NFI) — a Marxist-sounding moniker detailing a plan to screen every man, woman, and child in America for "mental illness." ... Since the NFI program went national, the nation has seen violent incidents at West Paducah, Kentucky; Springfield, Oregon; Edinboro, Pennsylvania; Red Lake, Minnesota; Virginia Tech, Virginia; Binghamton, New York; and more.  Nearly every perpetrator was already on a psychotropic drug — usually a cocktail of such drugs, in an attempt to offset side effects.  In other words, if Ritalin makes an inattentive kid "hyper," then let's give him a tranquilizer to calm him down.  If that makes him sleepy, maybe he needs an anti-seizure medication to keep him awake, and so on, until his brains are scrambled eggs. ... Mandatory drugging of nonconformists, slow learners, and naughty kids is now part and parcel of a nasty and little-publicized agenda to engineer uniformity of opinion without appearing blatant about it.

Battling ADHD disinformation:  Conservatives are sure it is a sign of parental laziness.  Liberals are sure it is big business, in the form of drug companies, conspiring to ensnare large numbers of American children.  Observers of no particular outlook are nonetheless likely to believe that ADHD is either a fraud or an invention.

A veteran educator charges NEA, APA, and drug companies are in cahoots.
 ADHD -- a "Concocted" Disorder?  A Christian educator says the National Education Association has teamed up the psychiatrists and pharmaceutical companies to promote the sale of 25 different psychotropic drugs to children.  Twenty percent of America's 50 million public school students have been declared mentally ill and are on prescription drugs like Ritalin, Adderrall, and Prozac.

ADD is "not a real condition":  The legitimacy of ADHD as a medical condition is questioned in a new report.  The report, commissioned by the Youth Affairs Network of Queensland [Australia], has called for a moratorium on and inquiry into the use of the amphetamine-based drugs Ritalin and Dexamphetamine to treat ADHD — diagnosed in thousands of Australian children.

Kids On ADHD Drugs -- Dangerous Path To Addiction.  Experts say the stimulant drugs prescribed for the treatment of ADHD are not only dangerous, they are highly addictive.  And although no drug has been approved for the treatment of autism, drugs are routinely prescribed off-label to treat autistic children.

On the other hand... Time to Focus Correctly on ADHD:  Anyone who believes Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder is not a legitimate disease clearly doesn't have it.  Nor do they experience the agony of watching their children struggle with its challenges on a daily basis.

ADHD Drugs Linked to Sudden Death.  Ann Hohmann is one of a handful of parents across the country who believes that their children's sudden death was due to the use of drugs to control ADHD.  And she said she hopes a new study released this morning, which suggests that the use of stimulants is tied to an increased risk of sudden unexplained death among children and teens, will open the eyes of the public to what she sees as the cause of her son's demise.

Wait -- it gets worse.
 California doping our youths.  I was horrified to read recently that it is increasingly common in California to treat children diagnosed with Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) with marijuana.  California voters passed a law allowing doctors to recommend medical marijuana to their patients, including those under the age of 18.  The law allows doctors to recommend marijuana "for any ... illness for which marijuana provides relief."

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