I remember how it was -- JR
A Family-Style US Constitution Course for Kids: ‘Parents Shouldn’t Rely on Schools to Do This’
A U.S. Constitution and government course for children that has been in the making for over two years was released Sept. 13 by homeschool curriculum company The Good and the Beautiful (TGATB).
The family-style course, titled “US Constitution and Government,” has been created as an open-and-go resource for 4th–8th graders, is suitable for parents to teach on weekends or school breaks, and its timing couldn’t be more relevant, say the curriculum developers.
“[The course] is ready at a time when the founding of our country is being undermined, socialism and communism are openly and unashamedly promoted, and freedom seems to be on the decline,” Heather Hawkins, a lead writer and researcher for the course, told The Epoch Times.
There is not only a dire need to teach our children constitutional principles, but an urgency as well … They are not taught that our natural rights come from our Creator and that individual liberties are what drive a creative, innovative, and compassionate society.
TGATB founder and owner Jenny Phillips believes it is a parent’s responsibility and privilege to teach their children “the amazing story” of the founding of the United States and wants children everywhere to understand “the principles of freedom that have guided this country and made it a light to all the world.”
“Parents shouldn’t rely on schools to do this,” she said.
“With so much misinformation being spread in our world today, we focused on creating a course based on source documents and accurate information,” said Phillips, who employed a large team of writers, expert reviewers and fact-checkers, editors, illustrators, and designers to develop the “groundbreaking” curriculum, now available as a history course set on the company’s website.
The full course set consists of a 32-lesson full-color course book—which explains the text and context of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and all 27 Amendments—short inspirational audio biographies of the Founding Fathers and Mothers, a student journal, and an adventure story, “Mystery on Constitution Island,” written just for the course.
Teaching the ‘Legacy of Freedom’
Though there are existing U.S. government courses written for high schoolers in the homeschool curriculum arena, Hawkins, of TGATB’s Curriculum Development Team, says there’s been a big hole in the market for courses aimed at the middle grades, yet a “proper understanding of the role of government” by this age group is necessary for the safeguarding of freedom and human rights.
“Children in public schools today are often not taught about the legacy of freedom that our founding documents have,” Hawkins said. “They are not taught that our natural rights come from our Creator and that individual liberties are what drive a creative, innovative, and compassionate society that can impart good all around the world.”
The course teaches children not just to know the liberties that “Nature and Nature’s God” has given them, Hawkins said, but to appreciate and to love them. “The continuation of freedom and human rights depends on our recognizing the proper relationship between us and God and between us and government,” she added.
“If people believe they receive their rights from the government, then they will look to the government for all of their needs. If people read and study the founding documents, they will very quickly realize that the prevailing view of government for much of our country’s existence was that our natural rights come from God and the government’s role is to protect those rights.”
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Free College? Who Needs the Feds? Markets Will Provide
In their flurry to produce trillions of dollars of new “infrastructure” and “stimulus” for taxpayers, progressive politicians have put prominent emphasis on “free college.” Joe Biden promised free two years of community college, while Bernie Sanders and others want to provide four years tuition free. Congress is wrestling mightily with this and other entitlement issues in the coming days and weeks.
Yet behind the scenes and quietly, many of America’s leading companies are moving to provide essentially free college opportunities for millions of Americans: their employees. Wal-Mart, which has had an extremely low cost program for employees in a few majors at a small number of colleges, is expanding the number of majors and schools, and is dropping a one dollar per day charge to the employee-student.
Not to be outdone, Amazon is enthusiastically jumping onto the “free college for employees” bandwagon. Some 750,000 workers who have been employed for at least 90 days are eligible to participate in studying subjects like IT engineering or data center technology. Many other iconic American corporations have joined the movement, such as Target, Chipotle, McDonalds, Starbucks, etc.
Are American companies suddenly becoming altruistic, wanting to do something special to advance the public good? Not really. They are responding to incredibly tight labor markets. There are record numbers of vacant jobs open—far more than the number unemployed. Big firms like Wal-Mart and Amazon are desperate for dependable workers. They have been raising wages considerably and upping fringe benefits. Since many of the potential new workers are young individuals without college degrees, the offer of “free college” is enticing. Markets are working as they almost always do, reallocating resources to where society says they are needed. The invisible hand of the market is accomplishing much of what D.C. politicians are haggling about, probably quicker and more efficiently.
To be sure, working at Wal-Mart or Amazon won’t get you a free college education at a spiffy private school, studying something academically trendy but vocationally nearly useless, such as gender studies. There are three things in common with many of these company sponsored programs: they are generally on-line (remote instruction), often limited to certain majors that the company wants employees to have, and they are limited to a modest number of respectable but not superlative schools.
There is something paradoxical about all of this. The same tight labor market is leading companies to reduce educational requirements in order to widen the pool of applicants. Some major high tech companies no longer formally require degrees. A computer nerd who dropped out of college but who is a whiz at programming now can potentially get a good, high paying job at some prominent firms. Yet at the same time, other companies (and maybe even the same company) are saying “we will pay you to get a college degree.” Or, perhaps coming soon, “we will pay your tuition at a non-degree coding academy if you agree to work for us for two years after getting your coding certificate.”
The real story here: “credentials still matter.” Companies are desperate for workers, so they are forced to pay less attention to degrees, and for unskilled workers at companies like Amazon they will dangle a potential credential (college degree) in front of them in order to entice them to keep working. At the same time, however, more and more Americans are disillusioned by college—a decade of declining enrollments, exacerbated by the pandemic shows Americans are questioning the value proposition of a college degree.
Meanwhile back in Washington, D.C., Democrats may soon face a realization that they might be able to get a $1.5 trillion dollar program through Congress but not one over twice that large. What to cut out to get to the lower figure? My guess is some new entitlements (child care allowances, family leave, etc.) get pared back, but also generous “free college” provisions as well. The corporate provision of college tuition fringe benefits might provide a rationale for mainstream Democrats to give way on free tuition or, for the most progressive ones, to demand that companies be required to provide tuition benefits for full time employees. But right now, markets are working to provide that benefit anyway.
https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=13761
****************************************Maspeth HS diplomas ‘not worth the paper’ they’re printed on
Says The Special Commissioner of Investigation for the NYC Schools District
Maspeth High School created fake classes, awarded bogus credits, and fixed grades to push students to graduate — “even if the diploma was not worth the paper on which it was printed,” an explosive investigative report charges.
Principal Khurshid Abdul-Mutakabbir demanded that teachers pass students no matter how little they learned, says the 32-page report by the Special Commissioner of Investigation for city schools, Anastasia Coleman.
“I don’t care if a kid shows up at 7:44 and you dismiss at 7:45 — it’s your job to give that kid credit,” the principal is quoted as telling a teacher.
Abdul-Mutakabbir told the teacher he would give the lagging student a diploma “not worth the paper on which it was printed” and let him “have fun working at Taco Bell,” the report says.
The teacher “felt threatened and changed each student’s failing grade to a passing one.”
The SCI report confirms a series of Post exposes in 2019 describing a culture of cheating in which students could skip classes and do little or no work, but still pass.
Kids nicknamed the no-fail rule “the Maspeth Minimum.”
Chancellor Meisha Porter, who received the SCI report on June 4, removed Abdul-Mutakabbir from the 1,200-student school and city payroll in July pending a termination hearing set for next month.
But she left Maspeth assistant principals Stefan Singh and Jesse Pachter — the principal’s chief lieutenants — on the job.
Singh and Pachter executed the principal’s orders, informants said, and helped create classes to grant credits to students who didn’t have to show up — because the classes weren’t even held, according to the report.
Abdul-Mutakabbir, Singh and Pachter all refused to answer questions by investigators, citing a right to remain silent, SCI says.
In addition, three teachers in the principal’s “clique” – a favored few who followed orders and got lucrative overtime assignments — also remain.
One of them, Danny Sepulveda, a wrestling coach, was caught on video slamming a skinny young teen onto a floor mat and putting him into a headlock. Witnesses called it bullying. SCI called it “aggressive” and dangerous.
In addition, Sepulveda “likely provided answers to students while proctoring a Regents exam,” the report says.
SCI obtained messages from a teacher to Sepulveda about a girl who did little in class but scored high on the test. “Giving that many answers to her was outrageous,” the teacher texted.
Sepulveda defended helping kids pass the exams, which were required to graduate. “She was smart enough to realize what was happening and took advantage lol. No other kid in that room got that many.”
Among a raft of other wrongdoing, SCI found the school did not properly voucher drugs and weapons in what whistleblowers called a contraband cover-up.
“This is more like an organized crime ring than a school administration,” said City Councilman Robert Holden (D-Queens).
Holden first met with a group of fed-up Maspeth teachers — some who had left rather than be complicit in the corruption — in the summer of 2019. The whistleblowers turned over stacks of evidence.
But under Mayor de Blasio and ex-Chancellor Richard Carranza, the city Department of Education’s own investigation — a report it’s withholding — as well as SCI’s took two years while Abdul-Mutakabbir, Singh and Pachter continued to run the school.
Holden is outraged by the official foot-dragging. “If somebody refuses to be interviewed by an investigative body, they should be suspended immediately,” he said.
Among the SCI’s findings of academic fraud:
Maspeth enrolled students in numerous classes scheduled during “zero (before school), eighth, ninth and tenth periods — all of which were not actual class times.
Students on the rosters “did not actually attend any classes or submit any work.”
Singh set up 9th-period classes for about 20 juniors and 15 to 20 seniors in English, government and economics worth a total of four credits. The kids checked in but rarely met.
Maspeth repeatedly sought to have troubled students with attendance, behavioral or academic issues graduate early — sometimes as soon as the end of their junior year — “to get them out.”
Thomas Creighton, who spoke to investigators, told The Post he spent 11th and 12th grades drunk or stoned, rarely attended classes and did no homework his senior year. Finally, the school gave him “a few worksheets” to complete in a week. He had a pal fill them in, and received a diploma six months early.
Upset about his quick dismissal, Creighton’s parents asked to see his classwork. The school had nothing to show, but insisted he had earned a passing 65 in all classes.
“I was looking for some school authority to push back and let him know that there were consequences to his actions,” said his mother, Annmarie. “But nothing happened.”
Another student told SCI that Pachter or Sepulveda said it was too late to join a government class, and was put in a different one. A week later, the teen was told “there was no need for him to stay and he could complete his assignments at home.” The boy felt he was “probably pushed out” after being accused of selling drugs in school. He was offered an early diploma.
A girl said she was told to report to the office for one period a week to fulfill a class requirement.
Another girl said she was told “it was fine” if she didn’t come to class: “I kind of got princess treatment there.” She received “a list of assignments with little structure and no deadlines.”
In other cases, Sepulveda told colleagues that several students “cut a deal” with Singh and Pachter to come to school once a month to pick up “a packet of work.” The students were all chronically absent, yet graduated in summer 2019.
Pachter handed one staffer a list of problem students at risk of not graduating, asking to ensure they got enough credits “so they would no longer have to be dealt with.”
The DOE’s own Office of Special Investigations conducted a separate probe of Maspeth, but refused to release its report pending a termination hearing for Abdul-Mutakabbir set for next month.
“We did not hesitate to take action at Maspeth High School as soon as the SCI report was completed. Our schools must uphold the highest ethical standards, and we’re taking action against any employee found to have engaged in misconduct,” DOE spokeswoman Katie O’Hanlon said.
https://nypost.com/2021/09/18/maspeth-hs-diplomas-not-worth-the-paper-theyre-printed-on/
***********************************My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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