Friday, January 23, 2015



Journalism school dean: The First Amendment ends at insulting Mohammed

Unusual, not because it’s rare to see an American journalist bowing to Islamic sensibilities on depictions of Mohammed but because typically they don’t go so far as to demand legal limits on their own profession. When the New York Times refuses to run a cartoon goofing on Islam, they don’t want the reason to be government censorship. They prefer to be censored by more sympathetic agents, like violent Muslim radicals.

To be precise here, though, DeWayne Hickham, the dean of Morgan State’s J-school, isn’t demanding a “Mohammed exception” to the First Amendment. He’s demanding an exception for all speech that would make the audience so angry that they might react violently — exactly the sort of slippery slope on censorship that people like you and me worry about when images of Mohammed are suppressed. Actual line from this op-ed, regarding the new cover of Charlie Hebdo: “The once little-known French satirical news weekly crossed the line that separates free speech from toxic talk.”

    "The most current issue of Charlie Hebdo again has Mohammed on its cover. This time, he appears crying under a headline that reads: “All is forgiven.” Well, apparently not. Ten people have been killed during protests in Niger, a former French colony. Other anti-French riots have erupted from North Africa to Asia. In reaction to all of this, Pope Francis has said of the magazine, “You cannot make fun of the faith of others.”…

    In 1919, the Supreme Court ruled speech that presents a “clear and present danger” is not protected by the First Amendment. Crying “fire” in a quiet, uninhabited place is one thing, the court said. But “the most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic.”

    Twenty-two years later, the Supreme Court ruled that forms of expression that “inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace” are fighting words that are not protected by the First Amendment.

    If Charlie Hebdo’s irreverent portrayal of Mohammed before the Jan. 7 attack wasn’t thought to constitute fighting words, or a clear and present danger, there should be no doubt now that the newspaper’s continued mocking of the Islamic prophet incites violence. And it pushes Charlie Hebdo’s free speech claim beyond the limits of the endurable."

Amazingly for a J-school prof, none of that is right. The Supreme Court hasn’t used the “clear and present danger” test for First Amendment cases in decades. The test now for inflammatory speech is the Brandenburg test, a strciter standard that allows the state to criminalize incitement only in narrow circumstances — when the speaker intends to incite violence and violence is likely to quickly result. Charlie Hebdo’s Mohammed cartoons may have met the “likely” prong of that test but they sure didn’t meet the “intent” part. The “fighting words” doctrine is still good law but it too has been gradually narrowed over time. Today, for the moment, it’s limited to “direct personal insults” between people who are face to face. That’s the key difference between publishing an offensive cartoon and, to borrow the Pope’s recent analogy, stepping up to a man and insulting his mother. From the Supreme Court’s perspective, those situations are apples and oranges.

I appreciate Wickham’s candor in trying to expand “fighting words” to allow censorship of all kinds of offensive speech, though; I’ve worried about that myself, as longtime HA readers know. If speech can be criminalized because it angers a man to the point where he wants to attack you, why should we limit it to speech said in his presence? “Fighting words” is a potential trojan horse for smuggling all sorts of exceptions for “hate” into the First Amendment. I’m surprised more lefties aren’t as forthright as this guy is in making the case for it.

Someone should poll the media on whether they agree with Wickham’s “heckler’s veto” assumption that it’s Charlie Hebdo’s staff, rather than, say, the jihadis like Al Qaeda who put a bounty on them and ended up murdering them, that’s guilty of “incitement.” I’d be curious to see the numbers

SOURCE






UK: Ofsted director forced into apology on Rotherham abuse failings

An Ofsted director has been forced to say sorry to Rotherham child sexual exploitation victims for the service’s failings.

Debbie Jones, Ofsted director with responsibility for inspecting children’s services, only made the apology after being repeatedly pressed to do so by MPs.

Speaking to the Communities and Local Government Committee this afternoon, Ms Jones initially refused to issue a direct apology for its failures to highlight the scandal during repeated inspections in Rotherham.

She said Ofsted had previously admitted the inspection regime had not been good enough, but that improvements have been made.

However, she was asked repeatedly by Clive Betts, committee chairman and Labour MP for Sheffield South East, to give a ‘straight-forward answer’ and issue an apology.

She eventually said: “We in Ofsted along with everybody else feel that what we have done is not good enough.

“Of course we are sorry. We are sorry along with everybody else that has been in front of this committee.

“The frameworks we had at the time did not focus on child sexual exploitation, not to the degree they do now.

“At the time, child sexual exploitation did not have the focus, wrongly, that it does now.”

The independent Jay report published in August revealed at least 1,400 children in Rotherham were abused between 1997 and 2013.

It said Ofsted inspections of Rotherham’s child protection services took place in 2003, 2004, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012.

The 2009 report resulted in Rotherham Council being given a notice improve children’s services. The notice was removed in January 2011.

Ms Jones said Ofsted’s 2014 inspection of Rotherham’s children’s services, which gave an ‘inadequate’ rating proved the inspection regime had improved.

She said: “I hope the people of Rotherham were reassured by what we reported very robustly recently.

“Had we inspected on the current framework before, the likelihood is we would have a different outcome. We have raised the bar.”

However, Ms Jones said she could not guarantee future grooming scandals similar to Rotherham will not occur.

She said: “It would be wrong of me to say there won’t be another Rotherham. I couldn’t possibly say that. I hope the systems that have been put in place will ensure the spotlight is there.

“However, it is wrong to say it could never happen.”

SOURCE






'Degrees don't guarantee jobs – and nor should they'

Last Sunday's Observer ran a piece that asked what higher education could, and should, do to adapt to the modern world. Its assertion that perhaps work experience could be provided as part of a degree course got me thinking, yet again, about the purpose of university.

I refer you to an article I wrote this time last year, having bumped into a piece by Evelyn Waugh in my then-university library. In the piece, entitled 'Was Oxford Worth While?', Waugh concludes that it wasn't, and graduates today might take the same view of their university experience if they have found themselves unemployed after graduation.

The Observer doesn't ask whether university is worthwhile but rather probes the idea that universities should become at one with the modern world, with particular reference to placement years and careers matching.

The idea that universities should provide better careers services is not unknown, but it begs the question of what university is actually for. Déjà vu, much?

The Observer suggests that universities should set students up better for the real world, and it's hard to contest that. But that isn't their primary role. They are not an academic 'mum and dad', ready to catch every student when they can't decide what to do next.

Part of growing up includes learning to do things for yourself. This invariably means preparing yourself for work. It's not rocket science: brush your hair, learn how to make a phone call and make sure your nails are clean. It's pretty basic.

My university education didn't explicitly help me with the only parts of a job specification that are actually essential: being a nice, sensible person who can get up every morning five days a week and come into an office.

It gave me the opportunity to do work experience in the holidays so that I *could* get a job, but I did the rest myself. Because that's what growing up is all about.

People are very quick to blame the establishment, whatever kind it is, for things that they have failed to do themselves. Of late, university education has been consistently blamed for not producing work ready graduates, and there is an element of blame that might fall on colleges.

Ultimately, if you graduate from university with no plans, ideas or ambitions then that's not the fault of your tutors. They are not your parents, and your fees – however much they cost – can only fund your indecision for so long.

Most of my peers that complain about not knowing what they want to do next have never been to the careers office to ask for help.

We live in a continually appalled, offended and precious culture of blame: education suffers as a result of it, as does everything else. Blame is put on everything and anything except ourselves, and this permeates the arena of work ready graduates.

Soft skills are important, but cannot be learnt from a textbook. Most of them fall under the rarely-used-these-days category of common sense. Turning up to a job interview looking presentable and writing a thank-you note after isn't anything but good manners.

If this crisis of ill-preparation actually exists, then how much of it down to the university? Higher education is not a spoon feeding exercise in how to get through the day, it is supposed to line the corridors of potential study, and allows three or so years for you to grow up socially.

This bit you have to do yourself, and getting ready for work is part of that.

It is lazy to suggest that universities must be the sole provider of life preparation for students, whatever the cost. An academic degree is what you get from university, on paper – the question of whether your academic degree is worth the paper it's written on is another debate. The rest, the socialising and ability to turn up on time, is down to you.

People complain that my generation isn't resilient enough, that those younger than me need lessons in 'character' to learn some grit. Such nonsense. The only way to become more resilient is to live, unfettered and without having your yogurt fed to you on a spoon.

To all those that have applied to university this week: good luck. Once you're in, you can make your own.

SOURCE


Thursday, January 22, 2015



Education’s No Dollar Left Behind Competition

One of education’s most important annual rituals began last week, when Education Week released its annual Quality Counts report, which grades states based on a variety of criteria, including spending. On cue came the predictable hand-wringing over K-12 education funding.

On Thursday Florida’s Duval County Public Schools Superintendent Nikolai Vitti told the Florida Times-Union that underfunding is undermining student achievement. “[I]magine how much stronger our students would perform if the policy commitments were maintained and balanced with an increase in per pupil funding,” he said.

In the school spending category, the states at the bottom include North Carolina, Texas, Arizona, Nevada, Utah and Idaho, which ranked the lowest at 49th. (No rankings were available for Hawaii and Washington, D.C.) But school funding in isolation is misleading. In the past year alone at least a dozen states have been ranked 49th in K-12 spending, depending on the source and its methodology. Among the states earning this distinction were Alabama, Arizona, California, Illinois, Nevada, Oklahoma and Texas.

California’s 49th place ranking was cited in a 2014 UCLA Undergraduate Students Association resolution, based on per pupil spending adjusted for regional cost-of-living differences. Florida ranked 49th according to the National Education Association. And based on Wallet Hub rankings of per capita school spending, Tennessee deserved 49th place. Still other 2014 studies by the Missouri Public School Advocates and the Open Sky Policy Institute gave 49th to Missouri and Nebraska, respectively.

What these identical rankings prove is that you can aggregate data and sift statistics to prove almost anything you want. And what teachers unions and politicians want is more money. Too bad there’s no direct correlation between dollars spent and what matters most: student achievement.

Consider the Education Department’s data on “instructional” spending, which across the U.S. averaged more than $6,500 a student during the 2010-11 school year (the latest data available). Among the dozen states that supposedly ranked 49th in funding last year, Idaho’s instructional spending was reported to be the lowest, around $4,100 a student, followed by Arizona and Oklahoma, which spent about $4,200 and $4,300, respectively. Illinois and Nebraska spent the most, around $7,000 and $7,700, respectively.

How did these states do in terms of student performance? The best answer is to look at the performance of low-income students, those who qualify for the national school-lunch program. Based on public-school results from the 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the average nationwide reading and math performance among low-income eighth grade students was pitiful, with a 48% proficiency rate in both subjects.

The big spenders paid more for worse results. In Nebraska, which spent nearly $8,000 per student, a mere 39% of disadvantaged eighth-graders scored proficient or better in reading and math. For the approximately $7,000 a year Illinois spent on instruction, its low-income eighth-graders did no better than the national averages in reading and math.

States that spent less per pupil tended to have better educational outcomes. More than 45% of low-income students in Idaho—with its relatively puny $4,100 per pupil spending—tested proficient in reading and math. Low-income students in stingy Arizona, which spent $4,200 per pupil on instruction, had 51% proficiency rates in both subjects. And students in penny-pinching Oklahoma, which spent around $4,300 per pupil, achieved a 53% proficiency rate in reading and 52% in math.

One of the most striking differences between these two sets of states is the availability of parental-choice programs. Unlike Nebraska or Illinois, both higher-scoring Arizona and Oklahoma have parental-choice scholarship programs that enable parents of disadvantaged students to choose the schools they think are best, including private schools. Schools have to compete for students, which forces them to improve their performance.

Instead of obsessing over who is at the bottom in spending, it would be better to focus on which states are producing the best results for every education dollar spent—and replicate what they’re doing. Student achievement is the only measure that counts.

SOURCE






UK: Christian faith school once graded 'best-performing' now placed in special measures by Ofsted inspectors because it does not promote "British values"

According to some aggressive Leftist inspectors, British values are Muslim and homosexual values

A Christian school that was once rated the best-performing state school in Sunderland has been placed in special measures because it does not promote British values.

The headmaster of Grindon Hall Christian School said the critical inspection by Ofsted, which was published on the school's website today, came as a 'huge shock' to staff, parents and pupils.

It comes a week after it emerged the school made a formal complaint over an 'intrusive' inspection conducted in the wake of the Trojan Horse controversy over Islamist attempts to infiltrate schools.

Inspectors were said to have asked pupils a number of inappropriate inspections during the visit in November, including quizzing them over what lesbians 'did'.

They are also said to have questioned pupils about transsexuality and asked if any of their friends felt trapped in the 'wrong body'.  

Ofsted will publish the report in the coming days, but it has been sent to the school and uploaded to their website.

Officials identified 'serious weaknesses in teaching and behaviour' and said that 'discrimination through racist or homophobic language persists'.

It also stated that the curriculum did not adequately prepare its 590 pupils for life in modern Britain.

Sixth-form pupils 'do not have a good enough understanding of British values', according to the report, and teaching did not enable pupils to 'reflect about fundamental British values'.

Grindon Hall, which teaches pupils aged four to 18, has a Christian ethos but no faith-based selection criteria, resulting in an intake that includes pupils from various religions.

Principal Chris Gray was a supporter of the British values initiative when details were published last year but inspectors' unannounced visit to the school last November led him to complain to Ofsted that the 'tenor of the inspection was negative and hostile'.

It was 'as if the data collected had to fit a pre-determined outcome', he said, and many of the questions 'seem to betray an underlying disrespect for the Christian faith'.

Speaking today, Mr Gray said he strongly disputed the negative findings.  He said: 'We are grateful for the many messages of support that we have received from our pupils and parents, and from people around the country.

'The Ofsted report issued to us today will come as a huge shock to our parents, pupils and staff because they - along with anyone who knows us - will not recognise the school portrayed there.

'It is now well known that the manner in which inspectors questioned our pupils in November was hostile, inappropriate and raises serious safeguarding issues.  'Despite raising these concerns more than a month ago we have yet to receive any response from Ofsted.'

Mr Gray said grading the best-performing secondary state school in Sunderland as the worst 'defies all common sense'.

He claimed schools were getting caught in the cross-fire between the Department for Education and Ofsted.

And the controversial issue of regulations on British Values was not helping children 'prepare for life or achieve good exam results', he said.

He added: 'We are proud of our school and its staff. We have a Christian ethos which our parents love.  'We have happy, high achieving pupils, and we are oversubscribed - we always have a lot more applications than we have places.

'Yet Ofsted's approach to us was negative at every stage, as if the data collected had to fit a predetermined outcome.

'We take any criticism seriously and aspire to the highest standards for our pupils.

'We continually strive to be better, but this report, prompted by the new British Values rules, lacks any sense of proportion.'

Mr Gray said anyone comparing the latest report with one published only in May last year would think two different schools had been inspected.  'There have been no major changes of staffing, pupils or policy to account for the difference,' he said.

'The difference was the introduction of the widely discredited 'British Values' rules and the aggressive attitude of the inspection team.

'We are a Christian school. Under our funding agreement and the law, we have a duty to prioritise the teaching of the Christian faith.  'At the same time, we make sure our children respect people of all faiths and none.'

The latest Ofsted inspection rated school leadership, pupil behaviour and sixth form provision as 'inadequate'.

Teaching, early years provision and achievement were rated as requiring improvement.

It said: 'The curriculum does not adequately prepare pupils for life in modern Britain.  'Pupils show a lack of respect and tolerance towards those who belong to different faiths, cultures or communities.'

And it also said: 'Prejudice-based bullying, while reported on, is not tackled effectively enough.  'Discrimination through racist or homophobic language persists.'

Ofsted found the school offered good music and sport provision and said pupils were polite to adults and visitors. It also said they were willing to learn.

Guidelines, introduced by the Education Secretary Nicky Morgan last year, require schools actively to promote 'British values' including democracy, liberty and tolerance.'

The new rules were introduced in the wake of investigations into the Trojan Horse takeover scandal in Birmingham.

Other institutions said to have unfairly fallen foul of the rules include a Christian school in Reading, Berkshire, that says it was warned it could face closure for failing to invite imams and other religious leaders to take assemblies.

In another case, Education Secretary Nicky Morgan said Durham Free School, which is also a Christian school just 11 miles away, will close because of serious failings.

SOURCE





Education Venture to Offer ‘Freshman Year for Free’ Online

Modern States Education Alliance announced a $1 million program to reduce the cost of attending college by providing a year of free college courses online to anyone wishing to enroll.

Last Thursday's announcement came just weeks after President Obama announced that he plans to offer a “free” community college education to qualifying students at a cost to taxpayers of $60 billion over ten years, according to White House estimates.

Modern States is seeking to enable students to participate in Massively Open Online Courses, also known as MOOCs. Created by Stanford Computer Science Professor Sebastian Thrun in 2011, MOOCs enable students to take courses from prominent universities online.

Modern States will work with nonprofit educational provider edX, which partners with institutions such as Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to provide the program’s coursework.

Modern States describes itself as a “nonprofit whose goal is to create a path to a tuition-free, high-quality and universally-accessible college education for any motivated students who seek one.”

“We live at an exceptional moment where the world’s most elite universities are offering their finest courses free of charge to everyone around the world,” the group stated on its website.

Since their inception just over three years ago, the popularity of MOOCs has grown rapidly. In its Report Card on American Education last October, the American Legislative Exchange Council gave 17 states an “A” grade for offering the highest possible level of access to online learning opportunities - including MOOCs - to their K-12 students.

Dhawal Shah, the founder of MOOC-provider Class Central, estimated in 2013 that students could choose from some 1,200 courses taught by more than 1,300 instructors from 200 universities worldwide. He estimated the number of students taking advantage of such opportunities at the time at 10 million.

The donation from Modern States will enable edX to create new online courses, including calculus, U.S. history, and Chinese language. Modern States and edX have set a goal of offering every subject covered by a high school Advanced Placement (AP) or College Level Examination Program (CLEP) exam within the next 18 months. Students would be able to take the courses both during and after high school.

The courses will include online discussion, quizzes, tests, and assignments. Unlike traditional classrooms, course texts will be offered for free. Modern States says it intends to add other online services such as tutoring and counseling over time.

MOOCs offer students greater flexibility than traditional classrooms because they can choose from a greater selection of instructors and course offerings and work on their own schedule. Unlike traditional colleges, MOOCs also allow students to take college-level courses irrespective of of their age or educational status.

Modern States spokesman David Vise told CNSNews.com that such flexibility was something that could help students from all walks of life pursue higher education.

“This is a path forward for all students to get started with college and a road back for students who may have started college, left for whatever reason, and are looking for a way to get back on the higher education track,” Vise said.

Financier Steven Klinsky, the founder of Modern States, has engaged in various philanthropic educational ventures for several decades. He also founded Victory Education Partners, an advisory firm for charter schools, and contributes financially to after-school centers in Brooklyn, N.Y.

SOURCE



Wednesday, January 21, 2015



K-12 Education settles for Empty Curriculum

I taught myself for Senior High School.  It was easy to do.  I just brought a copy of the syllabus -- a slim volume that listed what we had to learn.  So I learnt it and passed the final exam that was all you had to do in those days. I cannot see how I would be able to do that nowadays.  It's all just waffle

Throughout most of the past century, the big shift in education has always been away from traditional academic subjects and toward faux-subjects and PC attitudes.

Circa 1800, Benjamin Franklin’s Philadelphia Academy offered: Reading, Handwriting, Writing, Bookkeeping, Arithmetic, Drawing, Rhetoric, Logic, Oratory, Morality, Natural Philosophy, History, Geometry, Algebra, Surveying, Navigation, Astronomy, Geography, Natural History, Mechanics, Gardening, English, Spanish, Latin, French, Greek, German.

In 1937 a New York City report card still listed all these subjects: Reading, Memory, Grammar, Composition, Spelling, Word Study, Penmanship, Arithmetic, Nature-Science, Geography, History-Civics, Drawing, Sewing, Cooking-Shop, Music, Physical Training, Habits (which include Honor, Speech, Cleanliness).

Note that these are subjects where you learn facts, dates, places, knowledge, information, pick any terms you want. All that is scoffed at now. Traditional subjects are déclassé, trivial, not to be bothered with in the modern public school. Now welcome: an empty suit curriculum.

Even if a school claims to teach arithmetic, for one example, it does so in a Common Core approach that virtually guarantees children don’t know how to do arithmetic.

So what will the students do all day? They will learn a variety of “skills” and “competencies” that were hardly thought of 50 years ago.

According to the website called ThoughtfulLearning, “21st century skills are a set of abilities that students need to develop in order to succeed in the information age.” These skills include Learning Skills (Critical Thinking, Creative Thinking, Collaborating, and Communicating); Literacy Skills (Information Literacy, Media Literacy, and Technology Literacy); and finally Life Skills (Flexibility, Initiative, Social Skills; Productivity; Leadership).

A large school district in Virginia recently announced “Compass to 2020, the Strategic Framework.” Buzzwords include: “critical concepts”; “globally competitive skills”;  “Responding to Students Needs (RSN) model”; “effective and innovative teaching practices that maximize rigor and meaningful engagement for all students”; “create inquiry-based and experiential-learning opportunities”; “personalized learning opportunities”; “social-emotional learning strategies”; and “interest-based, flexible, student-directed learning opportunities.”  

We don’t hear much about what facts the children will actually learn. And how do you test all this stuff? Collaborating and communicating? The feeling is that the school system prefers to discuss all these generalized methodologies rather than saying children will know the states in the union or how to do long division.

Professor Charles Fadel, for his Curriculum Redesign initiative, created a PDF presentation that said we need: “Character:  Adaptability—deeper learning; Resilience; Persistence; Ethics, etc.; Skills: Creativity/Innovation; Critical thinking; Communication; Collaboration, etc.”

Resilience and persistence? I suspect the Boy Scouts would teach all these things more effectively than our schools. Or send the kids out for a week of Wilderness Training.

Fadel wants to “Reassess Knowledge for relevance.” He wants to “harness interdisciplinarity.” These were buzzwords 40 years ago.  It seems to be difficult to come up with new and different wisps. But our so-called educators keep trying.

Visit Wikipedia and look at Life Skills, a fad from the last decade or two: “Life skills can vary from financial literacy, through substance-abuse prevention, to therapeutic techniques to deal with disabilities such as autism.” Here are some more: Coping, Defense mechanisms, Emotional intelligence, Emotional literacy, Emotional self-regulation; Empathy, Moral development, People skills, Psychological resilience, Social emotional learning, Social intelligence, Soft skills, Study skills, and Theory of multiple intelligences.

Soft skills? Yes, that’s the perfect word for all of this. It sounds a lot like satire.

Meanwhile, across the country, professors of education now agree that teachers shouldn't teach. Professors from Harvard University pontificate: teachers must be facilitators. In short, the schools won’t be teaching knowledge. They’ll be teaching “resilience" or whatever. Oh, really?

It’s an historical fact: our public schools have waged war against academic content for a long time. All the jargon discussed so far is simply the latest marketing slogans in a never-ending campaign to make sure that children don’t learn what seven-times-eight is or why George Washington is important. This dilution of content sprang naturally from Dewey’s “progressive” education, which was always intended to lead to a socialist America.

In 1950’s there was the a fad called “Life Adjustment Education.” A professor of curriculum wrote an article in 1954 that began:

"How can secondary-school teaching be enriched and enlivened so as to provide effective education and development for all American young people? How can interest and real effort toward learning be aroused and maintained among pupils who won’t study unless they clearly see a reason for study? What does the secondary school program have do with the development of sound citizenship, with character education, with moral and spiritual values? How can every youngster in school receive individualized, personalized, and sustained guidance and attention? How can school learning be related to the practical down-to-earth concerns for growing boys and girls as they approach adult responsibilities?”

You can plainly see they’re recycling all the same rigmarole today. Here’s the Nihilism Two-Step: You denigrate anything substantial that the schools are still teaching. You announce that henceforth we will focus on cutting edge attitudes and adjustments.

The bottom line on all of this “adjustment” is that children learn less.  These elite educators fear a fact the way women were traditionally understood to fear a mouse. Oh my God, what is that thing there? Don’t let it in the classroom!

Look back at the subjects that Benjamin Franklin’s Academy taught. Maybe we wouldn’t want big doses of all those topics, but it’s easy to imagine that most people would think this an exciting education: History, Gardening,  Oratory, Drawing, Astronomy, Natural History. This is real education, i.e., what your brain wants to take home and keep.

Instead, we see a Zero Curriculum taking shape. Like Pepsi Zero it will have no calories in it. But the ads will tell you that it’s the perfect beverage.

What we all want is education that’s like a sumptuous buffet, a memorable smorgasbord. Lots of lush facts and fascinating information. If these pretenders up at the Harvard Graduate School of Education would stop fooling around, they would focus on teaching children what children need to know and want to know.

Bruce Deitrick Price explains educational theories and methods on his site Improve-Education.org

Throughout most of the past century, the big shift in education has always been away from traditional academic subjects and toward faux-subjects and PC attitudes.

Circa 1800, Benjamin Franklin’s Philadelphia Academy offered: Reading, Handwriting, Writing, Bookkeeping, Arithmetic, Drawing, Rhetoric, Logic, Oratory, Morality, Natural Philosophy, History, Geometry, Algebra, Surveying, Navigation, Astronomy, Geography, Natural History, Mechanics, Gardening, English, Spanish, Latin, French, Greek, German.

In 1937 a New York City report card still listed all these subjects: Reading, Memory, Grammar, Composition, Spelling, Word Study, Penmanship, Arithmetic, Nature-Science, Geography, History-Civics, Drawing, Sewing, Cooking-Shop, Music, Physical Training, Habits (which include Honor, Speech, Cleanliness).

Note that these are subjects where you learn facts, dates, places, knowledge, information, pick any terms you want. All that is scoffed at now. Traditional subjects are déclassé, trivial, not to be bothered with in the modern public school. Now welcome: an empty suit curriculum.

Even if a school claims to teach arithmetic, for one example, it does so in a Common Core approach that virtually guarantees children don’t know how to do arithmetic.

So what will the students do all day? They will learn a variety of “skills” and “competencies” that were hardly thought of 50 years ago.

According to the website called ThoughtfulLearning, “21st century skills are a set of abilities that students need to develop in order to succeed in the information age.” These skills include Learning Skills (Critical Thinking, Creative Thinking, Collaborating, and Communicating); Literacy Skills (Information Literacy, Media Literacy, and Technology Literacy); and finally Life Skills (Flexibility, Initiative, Social Skills; Productivity; Leadership).

A large school district in Virginia recently announced “Compass to 2020, the Strategic Framework.” Buzzwords include: “critical concepts”; “globally competitive skills”;  “Responding to Students Needs (RSN) model”; “effective and innovative teaching practices that maximize rigor and meaningful engagement for all students”; “create inquiry-based and experiential-learning opportunities”; “personalized learning opportunities”; “social-emotional learning strategies”; and “interest-based, flexible, student-directed learning opportunities.”  

We don’t hear much about what facts the children will actually learn. And how do you test all this stuff? Collaborating and communicating? The feeling is that the school system prefers to discuss all these generalized methodologies rather than saying children will know the states in the union or how to do long division.

Professor Charles Fadel, for his Curriculum Redesign initiative, created a PDF presentation that said we need: “Character:  Adaptability—deeper learning; Resilience; Persistence; Ethics, etc.; Skills: Creativity/Innovation; Critical thinking; Communication; Collaboration, etc.”

Resilience and persistence? I suspect the Boy Scouts would teach all these things more effectively than our schools. Or send the kids out for a week of Wilderness Training.

Fadel wants to “Reassess Knowledge for relevance.” He wants to “harness interdisciplinarity.” These were buzzwords 40 years ago.  It seems to be difficult to come up with new and different wisps. But our so-called educators keep trying.

Visit Wikipedia and look at Life Skills, a fad from the last decade or two: “Life skills can vary from financial literacy, through substance-abuse prevention, to therapeutic techniques to deal with disabilities such as autism.” Here are some more: Coping, Defense mechanisms, Emotional intelligence, Emotional literacy, Emotional self-regulation; Empathy, Moral development, People skills, Psychological resilience, Social emotional learning, Social intelligence, Soft skills, Study skills, and Theory of multiple intelligences.

Soft skills? Yes, that’s the perfect word for all of this. It sounds a lot like satire.

Meanwhile, across the country, professors of education now agree that teachers shouldn't teach. Professors from Harvard University pontificate: teachers must be facilitators. In short, the schools won’t be teaching knowledge. They’ll be teaching “resilience" or whatever. Oh, really?

It’s an historical fact: our public schools have waged war against academic content for a long time. All the jargon discussed so far is simply the latest marketing slogans in a never-ending campaign to make sure that children don’t learn what seven-times-eight is or why George Washington is important. This dilution of content sprang naturally from Dewey’s “progressive” education, which was always intended to lead to a socialist America.

In 1950’s there was the a fad called “Life Adjustment Education.” A professor of curriculum wrote an article in 1954 that began:

"How can secondary-school teaching be enriched and enlivened so as to provide effective education and development for all American young people? How can interest and real effort toward learning be aroused and maintained among pupils who won’t study unless they clearly see a reason for study? What does the secondary school program have do with the development of sound citizenship, with character education, with moral and spiritual values? How can every youngster in school receive individualized, personalized, and sustained guidance and attention? How can school learning be related to the practical down-to-earth concerns for growing boys and girls as they approach adult responsibilities?”

You can plainly see they’re recycling all the same rigmarole today. Here’s the Nihilism Two-Step: You denigrate anything substantial that the schools are still teaching. You announce that henceforth we will focus on cutting edge attitudes and adjustments.

The bottom line on all of this “adjustment” is that children learn less.  These elite educators fear a fact the way women were traditionally understood to fear a mouse. Oh my God, what is that thing there? Don’t let it in the classroom!

Look back at the subjects that Benjamin Franklin’s Academy taught. Maybe we wouldn’t want big doses of all those topics, but it’s easy to imagine that most people would think this an exciting education: History, Gardening,  Oratory, Drawing, Astronomy, Natural History. This is real education, i.e., what your brain wants to take home and keep.

Instead, we see a Zero Curriculum taking shape. Like Pepsi Zero it will have no calories in it. But the ads will tell you that it’s the perfect beverage.

What we all want is education that’s like a sumptuous buffet, a memorable smorgasbord. Lots of lush facts and fascinating information. If these pretenders up at the Harvard Graduate School of Education would stop fooling around, they would focus on teaching children what children need to know and want to know.

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Free Community College Is a Government Handout for Rich, Middle Class

When it comes to President Obama’s proposal of free community college for all Americans, middle-class Americans should just say no.

Last week, the Obama administration announced the plan, which would make any college student who goes to community college part-time and maintains a 2.5 GPA eligible for a free ride for two years.

But this isn’t about offering a helping hand to struggling Americans who would have no other way to attend college. Low-income students already can use Pell Grants to pay for community college.

So the proposal would primarily benefit middle-class and affluent students. That’s a problem. Why is the federal government — already deep in debt — subsidizing education for students who personally or through their families can afford it?

Yes, it would be good if more Americans went to college. But because something is good doesn’t mean the government should intervene. As shown by test scores of the public school system and the Head Start preschool program, government spending and management don’t correlate with success.

Furthermore, a college education is a good investment for those who complete college. Students who, along with their families, pay for their own education will reap the benefits as they generally make more than their non-college-educated peers. They also tend to value more the things they’ve earned and not simply been given.

As a teen, I heard about the importance of saving for college — and I did, setting aside money earned from babysitting and taking orders at Burger King. When I was tempted to skip a class later in college, I’d usually think about how much my education was costing — and go.

No, I couldn’t cover most of the costs of my college education. But receiving a gift from your parents is different from receiving a government handout. I knew the amount had come out of decades of hard work. I was grateful — and I felt accountable.

A recent photo from the Humans of New York blog showed a woman in a worker’s uniform, standing in Grand Central. “After I finish my shift at the bakery, I start my shift at Starbucks. I work 95 hours per week at three different jobs,” she told the photographer. “One of my sons graduated from Yale, and I have two more children in college. And when they finish, I want to go to college, too.”

You can bet her children won’t forget her sacrifice. But if her kids were just given a government gift, would they appreciate their education as much?

Government does some things well. But making a college education an entitlement for the middle class and rich isn’t one of them.

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UK: Poland is leading the way for England's schools, Education Secretary says

The Coalition's school reforms have been inspired by Poland, the Education Secretary has said after new figures suggested that immigrant children are outperforming poor British pupils.

Nicky Morgan disclosed that the renewed focus on core academic subjects for all children has been influenced by the approach in Poland, which has jumped up international rankings in the past decade.

Her comments came as new figures published by the OECD suggest that immigrant children are outperforming the most disadvantaged pupils at mathematics.

The figures show that immigrant children are less likely to be among the poorest performing pupils than those from the most deprived backgrounds.

A separate report published last year suggested that cities with large numbers of immigrant children produce better GCSE results than the rest of the country because pupils work harder.

Highlighting the Coalition's reforms in a speech in London yesterday, Mrs Morgan said: "As exam results in England soared ever higher, our international performance was stagnating, with other countries overtaking us in rankings like the PISA survey.

"We knew we needed to make urgent changes and looked to the world’s leading education systems for inspiration. We saw that they shared some key features: high levels of autonomy, accountability and aspiration as well as a strong focus on teacher quality.

"We saw that the results of countries like Germany and Poland had improved massively following moves to ensure that all their pupils studied core academic subjects, regardless of whether they went on to an academic or vocational path."

Poland has overhauled its education system over the past decade and gone from being below average in the OECD group of economies to being among the top 10 nations for reading and science, and top 15 for maths. Pupils attain higher scores on international tests than Britain in both reading and maths.

Under the reforms in Poland, pupils spend more time studying core subjects and vocational study has been delayed until they are 16.

The Coalition echoed the changes in new national curriculum announced last year which has a greater focus on core subjects and more exacting standards.

One education source said: "Polish parents who come to the UK say they cannot believe how easy the national curriculum is compared to what they are used to."

According to the OECD, the performance of Britain's schools failed to improve significantly between 2000 and 2012.

The report found that overall UK is ranked just 26th out of 63 nations for its performance in maths as it lags behind countries in the Far East.

Andreas Schleicer, the OECD director of education and skills, said: "The UK has pretty much been flat in terms of learning outcomes at least until 2012, despite a very significant increase in spending.

"Spending on reducing class sizes is not a very promising way to invest on better outcomes. The best education systems have put their money squarely on the quality of teaching. "

He said that the UK should be doing much more to check what difference education reforms make to children's lives.

Around the world, trillions of dollars are spent on education policies, but just one in 10 are actually evaluated, according to new research by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

The OECD's research also warns that the UK has some policies such as grouping pupils by ability in class, and giving families choice over schools, that could "hinder equity" – meaning they may not help to create an equal school system for all pupils.

SOURCE

Tuesday, January 20, 2015


Canada: Ten reasons to reject Wynne’s sex education curriculum

As the Ontario government gets ready to bring back the radical sex education curriculum for Ontario's children, here are ten reasons why parents should reject it in spite of the political correctness propaganda that supports it.

1. Children don't need to know all the mechanics of sex before they are emotionally, physically, intellectually and spiritually old enough to understand what they are being taught. Scrap the curriculum and spend the money on properly counselling students, in making sure there is help for students who have mental issues and feeding those that come to school hungry.

2. The morally misguided idea that elementary children can give consent to sex is evil. Children are being abused when they are introduced to explicit sex. This isn't a healthy and responsible way to teach about human sexuality. Consensual sex doesn't necessarily make sex safe, moral and appropriate. Even the absurd idea of consent to rape or any kind of sexual abuse never justifies it

3. What has "gender inequality" got to with sex education? Who gets to define the term and the meaning? Parents should not even recognize the word "gender" and refer only to the two sexes, male and female. Catholic parents have the constitutional right to do so. The government should say what they really intend to do. Tell Ontarians that the curriculum pushes homosexuality, "gender identity" and teaches kids dangerous sexual acts such as anal and oral sex.

4. No Ontarian should swallow the lie that the new sex education is needed to deal with Internet and safety issues. If some students have gotten into trouble with revealing pictures they have posted on the Internet, how is teaching them about the disputed "gender theory" of self-defining sexuality based on feelings and the will going to solve the problem? It's not.

5. Parents should be mislead and confuse school violence, bullying and the proper use of social media with the need to teach children all the details about sex at a young age. To address cyberbullying and sexting issues can best be done with the help of companies that provide the service and parental involvement. Let's not confuse school safety with the perverted notion of children being used as objects of sex because the agenda of political correctness entitles them, and even some groups at the United Nations agree, to have "sexual rights." This right is just as false the "reproductive right" to kill a baby in the womb. This corrupts language and leads to behaviour that's immoral.

6. Yes, it's a good idea to try to stop a student from harm because they posted an inappropriate photo on a social media site and sent it to a friend. The photo somehow gets to others who were never intended to view it or it reaches a person who misuses it to blackmail the sender. There's no easy solution, but the answer isn't this: teach the children an explicit sex education curriculum. No educator in his or her right mind believes this nonsense. Children need the proper and loving guidance of parents and teachers in order to best deal with this serious issue. Often these students need special help because they are suffering from emotional, psychological and social problems which lead to the inappropriate photo posting in the first place.

7. Sadly today some university and college students are sending graphic and explicit message about sex. At Dalhousie University, for example, social messages like would you like to "hate f__," have been used. But this is the result of a society that has oversexualized children too early and at some point we are bound to see the evil fruits. We live in a very sexualized society and more explicit sex at a  younger age is hadly the answer. Instead, the solution begins with parental and teacher guidance. As a society, we need to encourage our young to show proper respect for themselves and the dignity of the person.

8. The fact that Benjamin Levin helped develop the sex-ed component of the Health and Physical Education curriculum ought to be reason enough to reject it. Levin has been charged with seven counts of child exploitation, including charges of possessing and accessing child pornography. It's fair to say that he's currently on trial and the accusation have not been proven in court. But wouldn't a good and caring government want to distance itself from any connection whatsoever to this sordid and perverted mess?

9. Parents as First Educators, Real Women of Canada and a network of parental rights advocates that includes Campaign Life Coalition, have all come out strongly to condemn the limited parental consultation process being used by the Wynne Liberals to get the curriculum approved even before it's officially released. The sex ed curriculum should have been an election issue so that voters could have had a real and transparent consultation process with their vote. But why bother to let democracy get in the way of political correctness. Ontarians has been mislead.

10. School board trustees in the province have had no say regarding the proposed new curriculum. Unless major changes are made, Catholic trustees should reject the curriculum because it contradicts the teaching of the Church on human sexuality, the family and marriage. Catholic teachers have the right to refuse to teach the curriculum and Catholic parents have the right to outright reject it. Our children must be physically and morally protected.

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UK: Half of councils concerned parents are cheating to get children into schools

A review by the Office of the Schools Adjudicator found that dozens of local authorities were worried about families submitting fraudulent applications in an attempt to secure places at particular schools.

The disclosure comes amid concerns over access to the country’s most sought-after schools because of a surge in the birth rate combined with an influx of migrants in some areas.

Previous research has shown that upper middle class parents are more likely than other groups to move into the catchment area of a top school, lie on application forms and hire private tutors for their children to secure the best places.

In her third annual report, Dr Elizabeth Passmore, the chief schools adjudicator, also warned that many schools appeared to be choosing which pupils they wanted as a result of “unnecessarily complex” admissions rules that parents fail to understand.

Often, schools which set their admissions criteria - many of which are academies and faith schools - rely on long, complicated rules to prioritise youngsters when places are over-subscribed, the report suggested. It disclosed that the number of cases considered by the adjudicator has risen by 40 per cent to 318 in the last year.

The report also warned that many schools which decide on their own admissions arrangements have rules that include requesting banned information such as details of parents’ income or child’s hobbies.

As part of her annual review Dr Passmore asked local councils for their views on fraudulent applications - families submitting false information to win a place at a certain school.

Around 49 per cent were concerned about the practice, it found.

Local authorities had implemented “a range of measures” to tackle the problem, Dr Passmore said, including cross-referencing the details of applicants with other councils or national databases and carrying out various types of spot checks.

In total, 186 offers of places had been withdrawn as a result of alleged fraud, the bulk of them (136) in primary schools, across 66 local authorities, the report suggested.

More than a third of the withdrawn offers were in just eight areas, and four of these were London boroughs, Dr Passmore said.

She also warned in her report that too many schools have admissions criteria that appear to allow them to choose which pupils they want. And despite a clear statutory code, parents still often have to “hunt very carefully” on a school’s website to find their guidelines on how they decide which pupils to admit, she said.

Dr Passmore singled out faith schools, warning that some had implemented complex religious requirements that can require parents to study the arrangements “several years before applying for a place” in order to give their child a realistic chance of securing a place.

A Department for Education spokesman said that overall the report showed that the “system appears to be working well”.

She added: “But we are not complacent and recently published a streamlined admissions code to make arrangements even clearer for schools and parents.”

SOURCE





'When pupils know more than teachers'

With 68 per cent of teachers concerned that pupils have a better understanding of computing than they do, Jason Budge says more training is needed

In my experience teachers are always up for a challenge, and the challenge this year is to successfully implement a brand spanking new Curriculum – along with a shiny new subject attached.

Already, just one term into this exercise, it is encouraging to see just how much progress schools are making in bringing this curriculum to life.

However, in staffrooms and classrooms across the country, there is one particular change to the curriculum that appears to be on most primary teachers minds. This is, of course, the introduction of computing, in which, for the first time ever, children from the age of 5 are beginning to explore, investigate and learn computer science skills and concepts.

Even if you are not a big fan of Mr Gove, the inclusion of computing in the new curriculum could well prove to be his lasting legacy for the children of this country, not to mention the economy.

As Nicky Morgan, the current Education Secretary, has noted, “giving young people a solid grounding in computing from an early age is a key part of our plan for education, ensuring they are prepared to succeed in modern Britain”.

Like Ms Morgan, this desire to prepare our children for a high skilled, digital workplace is a very common ‘call to arms’ shared across politics, education and business.

As more and more of what we use, wear and surround ourselves with becomes computerised, it isn’t hard to imagine that most skilled jobs in the future will require some level of proficiency in computing. This will apply not just for those seeking to be programmers and software developers.

In the economy of the future, computing will be relevant to everyone – many would argue that it already is.

So, now that computing has been established as a subject area, surely our children are prepared for their future careers? If only it was this simple.

While teachers and school leaders I speak to, in my role as RC for Computing At School (CAS), welcome this new emphasis on Computing and are excited by its potential to prepare children for the future, its introduction hasn’t been without issue.

The most pertinent of these problems – and the most crucial element to get right if this subject is going to succeed in helping us to create highly skilled creative workers of the future – is simply that the subject has been dropped into schools where most teachers, both primary and secondary, have no previous experience of teaching computing and probably were never taught it themselves.

Therefore it should come as no surprise to find that, in a recent survey carried out jointly by CAS and Microsoft, 68 per cent of primary and secondary teachers are concerned that their pupils have a better understanding of computing than they do.

It also found that, while a majority of teachers responsible for teaching computing feel confident delivering the new subject, many still lack skills and knowledge in crucial areas, with 8 out of 10 teachers asking for more training, development and learning materials to deliver the subject effectively.

So, children know more about computers than their teachers. Many would not find this surprising and many more might argue that this is not a problem and something we should celebrate and get used to as children develop as ‘digital natives’, and we, as ‘digital immigrants’, struggle to keep up.

It might be thought that teachers just do not like their pupils knowing more, but this couldn’t be further form the truth. In fact, it is a great thing and is often encouraged. In the age of the flipped-classroom, self assessment and putting the learner in charge, teachers welcome the expertise of children and are only too willing to act as facilitator or coach where required.

However, to be a good coach you need those skills, knowledge and experience to help you successfully guide those you coach.

Take, for example, a music teacher who has a young pianist who plays better than them. Although that teacher might not be as skilled a player, their knowledge and experience of playing enables them to coach the other to improve. While teachers without that knowledge and experience of playing would not. This is exactly the situation we have with the lack of knowledge and skills felt by many teachers.

As you talk to teachers about their concerns it is clear that it is not a desire to know more than their pupils that is driving this urge for extra training, but rather the concern that children will not progress and achieve as much as they could, however skilled they are, if their teacher is not able to act as a coach because they do not understand the core elements of the subject themselves.

If we really are to prepare the workforce of the future with the skills and knowledge that will enable them to compete in an ever shrinking digital world, then we cannot ignore this call for increased training and development materials – like those supplied by CAS QuickStart Computing.

If we do, rather than having the skilled workforce of the future, we will have lots of adults that know how to do certain things on a computer, but not a lot of people who know about computational thinking and getting computers to work for them.

SOURCE


Monday, January 19, 2015



British school inspectors asked 10-years-olds pupils if they knew 'what Lesbians did'... to check teachers were promoting 'British values'

Just an attempt by Leftist inspectors to discredit the teaching of British values

Ofsted inspectors asked ten year olds at a Christian school if they knew what lesbians 'did' to check they were being taught about British values, it has been claimed.

Grindon Hall Christian School has made a formal complaint over an 'intrusive' inspection conducted in the wake of the Trojan Horse controversy over Islamist attempts to infiltrate schools.

Inspectors are also said to have questioned pupils about transsexuality and asked if any of their friends felt trapped in the 'wrong body'.

The school is among a growing number to complain they have been unfairly penalised by rules designed to combat extremism.

There are claims that some schools – mainly those with a religious ethos or located in rural areas with few ethnic minority pupils – have been put under undue pressure by a new requirement to promote British values.

Grindon Hall, which teaches pupils aged four to 18, has a Christian ethos but no faith-based selection criteria, resulting in an intake that includes pupils from various religions.

Principal Chris Gray was a supporter of the British values initiative when details were published last year but inspectors' unannounced visit to the school last November led him to complain to Ofsted that the 'tenor of the inspection was negative and hostile'.

It was 'as if the data collected had to fit a pre-determined outcome', he said, and many of the questions 'seem to betray an underlying disrespect for the Christian faith'.

Pupils were asked whether anyone in their school had two mums or dads.

When the inspectors were giving feedback to staff on their findings, 'it was suggested that a response from one child to the effect of querying how it is possible to have two mums was viewed as indicating a lack of awareness of lesbian relationships', the complaint letter said.

'I understand the child concerned was merely thinking in biological terms. In addition, I have also heard reports of primary schoolchildren being asked if they knew of any boys or girls who thought they were in the 'wrong body'.

'Another parent has complained to me that her ten-year-old daughter was asked if she knew what lesbians 'did'.'

They also allegedly questioned children as young as six about their knowledge of Hindu festivals and the Jewish Torah.

He suggested that the questioning of pupils 'crossed the line into harassment'.

Sixth-formers at the school have also prepared written complaints, claiming that inspectors appeared to be 'manipulating' the conversation during group discussions about racism and homophobia, seemingly determined to 'discredit' the school.

The guidelines, introduced by the Education Secretary Nicky Morgan last year, require schools actively to promote 'British values' including democracy, liberty and tolerance.'

Other institutions said to have unfairly fallen foul of the rules include a Christian school in Reading, Berkshire, that says it was warned it could face closure for failing to invite imams and other religious leaders to take assemblies.

In another case, a high-performing primary school in Market Rasen, Lincolnshire, was marked down because pupils lacked 'first-hand experience of the diverse make-up of modern British society'. Inspectors made no allowance for the fact that 97 per cent of the population of the town is white.

An Ofsted spokesman said it would be 'considering the issues raised by the school' and added: 'Ofsted does not require evidence that schools 'promote' other faiths. Instead, inspectors must ensure that pupils are able to express views which are neither intolerant nor discriminatory towards others.'

SOURCE






Rev. Graham: End the Muslim Call to Prayer Policy at Duke University

Donors and alumni of the prestigious Duke University in Durham, N.C.,  a school founded by Quakers and Methodists, should “withhold their support” until Duke reverses its new policy allowing the Muslim Call to Prayer on Fridays, said Rev. Franklin Graham, son of world renowned pastor Billy Graham.

“Duke University announced today that they will have a Muslim call to prayer from their Chapel bell tower every Friday,” said Rev. Graham on his Facebook page on Jan. 14.

“As Christianity is being excluded from the public square and followers of Islam are raping, butchering, and beheading Christians, Jews, and anyone who doesn’t submit to their Sharia Islamic law, Duke is promoting this in the name of religious pluralism,” he said.

“I call on the donors and alumni to withhold their support from Duke until this policy is reversed,” added Rev. Graham, who lives in Boone, N.C., and is the president of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA).

Duke University’s Christy Lohr Sapp, the chapel’s associate dean, said the policy was being introduced to show “larger commitment to religious pluralism that is at the heart of Duke’s mission," reported WRAL.com in Durham, N.C.

The Muslim chaplain at Duke, Imam Adeel Zeb, said, "The collective Muslim community is truly grateful and excited about Duke’s intentionality toward religious and cultural diversity.”

Duke University, a private college, was founded by Methodists and Quakers in 1838 and grew early on through the financial support of the highly successful businessmen and respected Methodists Julian Carr and Washington Duke.

Reverend Graham has often spoken about the dangers of radical Islam.

On Fox’s Greta Van Susteren on May 5, 2010, Rev. Graham said, “First of all, Greta, I said Islam, after 9/11, I said that Islam was wicked and evil. I don't believe that Mohammed can lead anybody to God. I believe Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and life.”

“I don't like what Muslims do to women,” he said.  “This is a big issue for me, is how they treat women. This to me is just hard what they do.”

“[Y]ou have to look at the religion and what they teach,” Rev. Graham continued.  “What the Qur'an actually teaches. It says you cannot take a Christian to be your friend, you cannot take a Jew to be your friend.  And Greta, if you were a Muslim and wanted to convert to Christianity or Judaism, if you did not repent and turn back to Islam, your family would kill you.”

SOURCE





As Long as Obama Brought Up the Cost of College...

I gather from Obama’s “free” community college proposal that his plan for dealing with the Republican Congress over the next two years is to throw out ridiculously expensive ideas no one has ever heard of before, and then denounce Republicans for being naysayers.

Community college is already incredibly inexpensive. The only thing that will jack up the price is making it “free.” How about a big federal program to provide every American with free toilet paper? Coincidentally, that’s about all most college degrees are good for these days.

Obama’s moronic proposal has presented the GOP with a fantastic opportunity. Since he brought it up, how about Republicans get to the bottom of why college is so expensive?

The cost of a college education has increased by more than 1,000 percent only since 1978. Nothing else has gone up that much – not health care, consumer goods or home prices. The explosion in college tuition bears no relation to anything happening in the economy.

Would anyone argue that colleges are providing a better education today than in 1978? I promise you: People coming out of college in the ‘50s knew more than any recent Yale graduate – unless we’re only counting knowledge of sexual practices once considered verboten.

They’re teaching gender studies, ethnic studies, moral equivalence and hatred of America. Did the Japanese Really Start World War II or Did We? It’s worse than not reading Shakespeare. They’re reading Shakespeare for homosexual imagery. As Yale professor Daniel Gelernter says, colleges are “threatening to become an elaborate, extremely expensive practical joke.”

The fact that 80 percent of Weathermen – the violent '60s radicals – are full college professors tells you all you need to know about the state of higher education today.

The cost of college spirals continuously upward not because the product has gotten better – it’s gotten much, much worse – but because college loans are backed by the taxpayer.

The government is chasing its tail every time it increases student financial aid. If the government hiked college loans and subsidies by $1 million per student, colleges would promptly raise tuition to: [current tuition] plus $1 million.

Americans are being bamboozled into paying any price for a college degree because they are relentlessly told that if they don’t go to college, their lives will be hell. And they’re told this not only by the colleges, but by the government.

The sales pitch is manifestly false. According to an article by Adam Davidson in The New York Times magazine last June, “(m)ore than half of recent college graduates are unemployed or underemployed, meaning they make substandard wages in jobs that don’t require a college degree.” Evidently, most jobs don’t depend on a degree in women’s studies.

More than a third of college graduates, Davidson says, will never make enough money to repay their student loans.

If any other business made such false claims about a product, there would be massive congressional hearings, media denunciations and prison sentences for the CEOs. A college degree is the most expensive purchase most families will ever make, other than their home.

Right before our eyes, Democrats are colluding with colleges to create a market bubble for an increasingly worthless product, and they’re doing it by making the exact same promise that banks made about home mortgages before the housing market crash: Sure it’s a lot, but it’s an investment in your future!

Instead of hauling college administrators to court, Democrats are active participants in the fraud, acting as Big Education’s carnival barkers. It’s as if the government is telling people: “If you don’t smoke, you’ll never be cool.”

Why is the left not willing to admit that education is an industry, just like Lockheed Martin, Enron or Philip Morris? Democrats love to rail about the high costs of everything else – pharmaceuticals, health care, mortgages, missile systems, contraception and so on. College is a business, too – a cartel that fixes prices, preys on teenagers and lies to consumers.

But liberals won’t make a peep about the College Industrial Complex because college professors are brainwashing students into leftist politics. Every year, another 10 million graduates emerge, hating God, their parents, America and Republicans. For this, parents are spending $50,000 a year.

The education industry is how leftists make capitalists pay for socialism. It was a smart move for cultural Marxists to capture the country’s education establishment. GOOD THINKING, CULTURAL MARXISTS!

It’s not the fault of the students that they’re getting a crappy product at inflated prices. They’ve been lied to by shady education peddlers, including the Democratic Party.

Let’s see if the middle class is more interested in the cost of college tuition or the Democrats’ endless global warming initiatives.

SOURCE


Sunday, January 18, 2015



"Progressive" self defense



Looking to “empower” school children should the terrible occasion occur when a shooter enters school property, a middle school in Alabama is looking for ways to arm their students. Now, their suggested “weapons” are causing many to say “Huh?”

In a letter to parents, principal Priscilla Holley and assistant principal Donna Bell ask parents to send their child to school with an “8 oz. canned food item,” The New York Daily News reports.

The letter acknowledges the request is odd, though provides an explanation for its reasoning:

    “[I]t is a practice that would catch an intruder off guard…The canned food item will give the students a sense of empowerment to protect themselves and will make them feel secure in case an intruder enters the classroom.”

The program is being implemented as part of the school’s A.L.I.C.E. training, which prescribes that school children run and fight back, instead of becoming “sitting ducks” during an attack. The acronym stands for: Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, and Escape.

As part of Counter method, the training teaches children that it is okay to throw things at an intruder, including books, staplers, or even leftover cans of green beans. At W. F. Burns Middle School, the principals write:

    “We hope the canned food items will never be used or needed, but it is best to be prepared. At the end of the school year, the cans will be donated to The Food Closet.”

Meanwhile, at other schools across the country, teachers are taking seemingly more effective steps to stop a school shooter and arming themselves with actual weapons. These teachers aren’t worried about students feeling empowered, at the moment – they’re more concerned with taking out the bad guy threatening everyone’s lives.

No doubt that the educators at W. F. Burns have presented an interesting, if not strange, idea – let’s just hope they never have to test its effectiveness.

SOURCE.  More derisive commentary here






An alternative lesson from London schools

The capital’s schools have improved, but at what cost to real education?

It is perhaps only now becoming clear just how significant was then Labour leader Tony Blair’s 1996 pre-General Election speech. This was the speech, of course, in which he famously named ‘education, education and education’ as his three priorities for government. Government interference in schools did increase with the 1991 national curriculum, but it has been during the period since Blair came to power that the tendency to see schools as a means to address social, economic and personal failings has become most pronounced. Seventeen years after Blair’s speech, we can see the effects of the politicisation of education, with London schools at the heart of government interventions.

The effect on London schools, post-Blair, of the politicisation of education is rarely remarked upon. Instead, in reports such as the recent Lessons from London Schools: Investigating the Success, the story is one of dramatic success: London schools have risen from the sick child of the English education system to become the shining star. But how much truth is there to this story?

In the early 1990s, many London children attended bog-standard comprehensive schools that trailed the rest of the country in terms of examination results. Teacher recruitment and retention rates were low, and pupils were reportedly demotivated and badly behaved. Now things are different. Schools have been re-built, re-opened and re-branded. Today, an average London school has glass walls, an atrium, brightly coloured furniture, state-of-the-art IT facilities, smartboards in place of blackboards and fancy reception areas adorned with leather couches, flat-screen TVs and glossy school brochures. Teacher pay has improved and high-flying graduates have been attracted into the teaching profession. Even the teachers and pupils look smarter in their business suits and colourful blazers.

School results have also been transformed, as outlined in Lessons from London Schools and other reports. London schools now outperform all other English regions in terms of the proportion of pupils achieving five GCSEs at A*-to-C grade (65 per cent compared to 59 per cent in the rest of England); and in terms of the proportion of primary children achieving at least Level 4 in English and Maths SAT tests, London schools do marginally better than other regions.

And the performance of children receiving free-school meals (used as a proxy measure of poverty) is 50 per cent better in London than outside the capital. London, however, is not alone in raising its performance levels. From 1998 to 2013, the percentage of pupils achieving five GCSEs at A*-to-C grade rose from 32 to 65 per cent in London; outside of London, the percentage of pupils achieving five GCSEs at A*-to-C grade rose from 34 to 59 per cent. Yet, at the same time, London schools are clearly outperforming those outside the capital. What explains this transformation?

Lessons from London Schools reveals that several initiatives have worked in combination to change the culture of schooling in the capital. These include: London Challenge (2003-2010); Building Schools for the Future (2005-2010); Teach First (launched in 2002); allowing schools to become academies; and the support provided by the Local Education Authority.

London Challenge, a leadership-training scheme for senior managers and teachers, was particularly significant. While London Challenge initially focused on five inner-London boroughs (Islington, Hackney, Haringey, Southwark and Lambeth), it encouraged schools across the capital to form clusters for sharing ideas, resources and exemplary practices. A key message of the programme was that poverty was not an excuse for failure; there was no hiding place for underachievement. Teachers and schools were encouraged to measure and track pupil performance as they worked towards agreed targets. Interventions were planned for pupils who were in danger of not meeting targets (for example, holding crash courses in relevant subjects during the holidays to get pupils through GCSE exams).

The performance agenda was also driven by Ofsted and the Department for Education and Skills, with the publication of results, league tables and Ofsted reports. Allowing schools to become academies has also given heads more control over budgets and resources. Again, this flexibility has contributed to structural change and the adoption of new practices. London Challenge has since been exported to Manchester and the West Midlands.

Challenging the link between poverty and educational underachievement may well be a positive outcome of London Challenge and other interventions like Teach First. Many London schools are smarter places to work and both staff and children are motivated and proud of their schools. As examination results show, more children are taking and passing exams that will help them to get jobs, access further education or get on to training schemes. This is worthy of recognition.

However, the focus on poverty and social outcomes in Lessons from London Schools is indicative of the instrumental thinking that has increasingly been applied to education over the past 15 years or so. Rather than a journey of exploration into different realms of knowledge and human experience, education is discussed in terms of achieving extrinsic outcomes (skills, examination results, behaviours, dispositions, social mobility etc.). Here, schooling has become more about social inclusion than education. The aim has simply been to prevent young people from becoming NEETs (not in education, employment or training) and drifting into anti-social behaviour.

Undoubtedly, London schools have become much better at delivering outcomes and results. New models of leadership and performance management have borrowed heavily from the business world. School management has become more top-down. Passing exams, collecting performance data and meeting Ofsted criteria all drive much of what teachers do in the classroom. Lessons have become formulaic and focused on delivering measurable learning objectives. Assessment for learning is de rigueur, which means teachers are constantly evaluating whether pupils have met expected outcomes.

As educationalist Gert Biesta observes, the problem with the instrumental approach is that education is not a causal process: intervention X does not necessarily lead to outcome Y. Rather, Biesta describes education as a process of symbolically mediated interaction. Teachers can provide learning opportunities, but because humans are subjective beings they may learn different things from the same lesson. When teaching and schooling become focused on delivering set outcomes, there is a danger that this is all they do. The success of teaching becomes a question of ticking boxes rather than exploring knowledge. An ‘effective’ lesson is one in which learning objectives have been met regardless of whether or not pupils have been introduced to new and challenging ideas or concepts. Where schools have been transformed into systems for delivering outcomes, they may well lose sight of education proper.

This is the second problem with the instrumentalist approach: In seeking ‘improvement’ and ‘effectiveness’, as measured through data, it is presumed that the purpose of education is a given. Rarely is the question asked, ‘Improvement for what?’. As a result, the curriculum, what is being taught, is infrequently discussed. Tellingly, while Lessons from London Schools is penned in the language of ‘systems’, ‘effectiveness’ and ‘data management’, it has nothing to say on the curriculum. What is missed in the narrative of London schools’ success is how the curriculum, and what is assessed, has changed since the early 1990s.

Given their prominence as a measure of the success in secondary schools, it is worth focusing on how GCSEs have changed. Nationally, the trend is one of grade inflation, increasing pass rates and the hollowing out of academic or theoretical knowledge. In the late 1980s, about 40 per cent of GCSE entries were awarded C or above. This percentage rose steadily from the 1980s onwards and, by 2011, peaked at 70 per cent. While a small increase in the pass rate could be down to better teaching and studying by pupils, it is clear that a more fundamental change has taken place: exams have been made easier to pass.

In the 2000s, examination boards are said to have engaged in a ‘race to the bottom’ in an effort to increase custom. When I was teaching GCSE geography at a London school, I recall one examination board enticing teachers with the claim that the new syllabus contained ‘the same core geography but in less depth’. GCSEs have been made easier to pass by reducing the quantity of knowledge in the syllabus; reducing the length of exams; examining modules one at a time rather than through terminal exams at the end of the course; awarding marks for opinions and regurgitating simple facts rather than showing understanding through extended written answers; and deprioritising knowledge of concepts and vocabulary. As one teacher explained, ‘marks are awarded to pupils whether they demonstrate understanding of concepts and specialist vocabulary or not’.

That GCSEs are no longer a serious measure of educational achievement is one reason why the Department for Education is trying to reform them. While it is a positive step to revamp the knowledge content of GCSEs and return to terminal examinations, by itself, it will not reverse the cultural change that has taken place within the education and assessment system which seeks to reward children for effort and basic skills rather than demanding that they show mastery of theoretical knowledge and can explore difficult ideas. For now at least, if you want to know if children have achieved knowledge and understanding of an academic discipline, A-levels are a better starting point as they have retained a stronger disciplinary basis (although current A-level reform may change that).

Of course, some of the trends discussed thus far are national. So, what is distinctive about London? Lessons from London Schools delves into questions of gentrification, immigration, ethnic diversity and what it calls the ‘London effect’. The authors rightly note that each of these factors may well have contributed to the improved performance of London schools, but they do not find them causal. Some boroughs like Hackney have experienced significant gentrification since the 1990s. Children of middle-class parents tend to have a higher starting point in terms of what they know and can do, thus improving local school results.

The impact of immigration on schools is something that deserves more research. One recent study found that children from ethnic minority backgrounds perform better than white-British pupils in GCSEs. Ethnic minorities may or may not be more motivated to succeed than British children, but then London is no stranger to either immigration or ethnic diversity.

One trend that may be becoming more significant is what the report calls the London effect. Here, the authors cite studies suggesting that children in London aspire to more ambitious jobs and careers than those outside the capital. This does fit the pattern of the changing geography of England with more and better jobs being found in London than elsewhere (with some notable exceptions like Manchester and Birmingham). There is a growing economic and cultural gap between London and the rest of England, so perhaps we should not be surprised that this is also the case with school results.

The movement to transform London’s schools has also given rise to some experimentation and curriculum innovation. Academies and free schools have more autonomy to determine their own curriculum. The East London Science School and Pimlico Academy are two examples of schools implementing their own knowledge-led curriculum, albeit in different ways. The Greater London Authority has also initiated some positive schemes to support subject-based teaching through the London Schools Excellence Fund and its new London Curriculum. With private schools also doing their own thing (and teaching to international GCSE specifications), the educational picture across London is much less uniform that it used to be.

Nevertheless, I tend to agree with Lessons from London Schools that the main driver of change has been interventions like London Challenge, Teach First and the establishment of academies, combined with the accountability measures imposed by Ofsted and the government.

While schools in other parts of the country have also changed, London has been the main focus of the political will to transform schools – hence its schools have changed the most. While schools may look better, and more pupils may be engaged in ‘learning’, there has been a fundamental transformation in the nature of teaching whereby data is valued more than education. The growth of instrumental thinking in education is itself a reflection of the declining value of academic knowledge, of engaging children in what Michael Oakeshott and Richard Pring describe as worthwhile knowledge through an engagement with the bests aspect of our culture. The content of the curriculum is thus a moral question. It is this moral language that school leaders and teachers need to re-discover to arrest the drift into instrumentalism. Now that really would transform schools for the better.

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Boehner’s Opportunity to Lead Again on School Choice

Once a leader on school choice, will Boehner be again?
Lately, we’ve seen a seemingly endless assault on education freedom, in the form of misguided proposals from a president bent on cramming backwards education policy down the country’s throat. Fortunately, Republicans have a two-chamber majority now, and a Speaker of the House with a history leading the charge to promote school choice.

When Barack Obama assumed office in 2009, one of his first actions was to put an end to the popular and successful D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program that provided disadvantaged students with greater choice in education.

Despite multiple studies indicating that the program increased graduation rates, reading scores, and parental satisfaction, the president has consistently been critical of D.C. vouchers. Enter Speaker John Boehner who attended Obama’s 2011 State of the Union speech in the company of parents, children and teachers who had benefited from the program. The following day, the Speaker introduced a bill to restore the program, a bill which ultimately passed.

Dissatisfied with this, Obama proceeded to cut the program’s funding in 2012, but scholarships are still being issued today, albeit in limited numbers. In the 2014-2015 school year, only about 10 percent of new applicants received vouchers to attend schools of their choice.

With the new Republican majority in Congress, Speaker Boehner has an opportunity to once again emerge as a champion of school choice, and a reformer of the country’s education system. With the Obama administration continually extending its reach to meddle in the field of education, it’s more important than ever that we have principled and bold reformers in the House and Senate who are willing to stand up to an out of control Department of Education.

This year, education is once again going to be a major theme in the president’s State of the Union address. It would be great if the Speaker would continue his tradition of fighting for school choice in an era marked by calls for greater centralization and conformity.

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