Filed on May 21, 2004 at 6:25 pm under by dcobranchi
A commencement speaker literally had the plug pulled on his graduation speech. He had the gall to refer to the school as a prison.
It was not the speech that school officials approved.
So they pulled the plug on Nicholas Noel’s commencement speech to fellow graduates Wednesday night when in the fourth sentence the senior class president referred to Grand Rapids Union High School as a “prison.”
As more than 1,000 people watched, power to the microphone was cut and Noel returned to his seat at Ford Fieldhouse. Officials later refused to give him his diploma, although a school spokeswoman said he would receive it soon.
…He said the rest of his speech would have been positive if he had been allowed to finish it. A copy of his written speech goes on to call Union a “foul institution” and a “horribly irresponsible and depraved place to learn these life lessons….”
But it also said Union’s mix of cultures provides “bizarre training” for the real world. He wraps up by quoting Hunter S. Thompson: “Who is the happier man, He who has braved the storm of life and lived. Or he who has stayed securely on the shore and merely existed.”
I can empathize. My own graduation speech (many moons ago) used a similar quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Whoso would be a man must first be a nonconformist.” The big difference was I didn’t try to pull a fast one. At least the kid has a sense of humor about the whole thing:
Noel was allowed to stay on the stage, however, and even introduced other speakers, including Principal Janice Johnson. There was scattered laughter when he described her as a “strong supporter of the First Amendment and freedom of speech.”
Hat tip towards Skip Oliva.
Filed on at 6:15 pm under by dcobranchi
From Virginia Governor Mark Warner’s letter explaining his veto of VA’s homeschool freedom bill:
Through the Federal No Child Left Behind Act, we have raised the standards for our public school teachers. This bill would effectively lower the criteria to home school, and thus retreat from the needed assurance of an adequate education for every child.
I am committed to high standards for our teachers as well as our home educators. Accordingly, I have vetoed this bill.
Link via VHEA.
Filed on at 12:25 pm under by dcobranchi
Bill Hobbs sent word that his sister has opened up an online store (consignment shop?) for home educators. The Apple family are longtime homeschoolers in southeastern PA. Check ’em out.
Filed on at 7:11 am under by dcobranchi
An interesting analogy in this Letter to the Editor.
UPDATE: Here’s another letter in response to the same Op/Ed (blogged here).
Filed on at 6:58 am under by dcobranchi
This is a local story. Sorry for the distraction.
Fred Fitzgerald has lived in New Castle for more than two years and in that time, he said he has not seen, heard or received mail from his representative on New Castle County Council.
So the 48-year-old Republican is running for a council seat because he thinks residents deserve a council member who is more accountable to them.
If elected, Fitzgerald said his first priority would be to make sure residents know what he is doing to earn the $33,808 annual salary he would receive. He said he would send out monthly newsletters.
He can send out anything he likes as long as I don’t have to pay for his campaign literature information.
Filed on at 6:41 am under by dcobranchi
H&OES defending the g-schools against a detractor.
Diane at Nobody Knows Anything sent a link to an LA Times diatribe against the five-paragraph essay and computer-grading.
The thoroughly modern grade-A public-school prose style is not creative or interesting enough even to be wrong. The people who create and enforce the templates are, not to put too fine a point on it, people without understanding or imagination, lobotomized weasels for whom any effort of thought exceeds their strength. I recently read one of the many boilerplate descriptions of how students should write their essays. “The penultimate sentence,” it said, “should restate your basic thesis of the essay.” Well, who says? And why?
The teaching of writing as a machine procedure gains momentum by the day. In Indiana this year, the junior-year English essay will be graded by computer, and similar experiments have been tried in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Oregon. The SAT and the ACT are planning to test the new computer-grading software as well. That is a reductio ad absurdum of the entire idea of learning. If this is knowledge, then truth and beauty reside only in ignorance.
I think the author, who teaches at Dickinson College, is just plain wrong here and doesn’t understand how to teach. Sure, the five-paragraph essay is formulaic and can lead to stilted writing. Just like don’t start a sentence with a conjunction is formulaic. Did you catch that last sentence? I broke the rule. Intentionally. I don’t kid myself that I’m a good writer, but I know (most of) the rules and how they can be bent or broken. But, the rules have to be learned first. And that means formulae and essays that may be just plain boring. It’s a process: crawl, walk, run. The professor doesn’t seem to care about seeing that his charges actually learn how to write; he just doesn’t want to read bad essays.
I am not particularly concerned about the youth of today; if the world goes to hell I don’t really care. But I do care about coming to the middle of a semester and being forced, in order to make a living, to read 35 five-page papers written by thoroughly fried lamb chops whose writing style has been nurtured over the years by a computer.
I’d suggest that Crispin Sartwell is in the wrong line of work. Since he only wants to read great essays by polished writers, perhaps the position as Editorial Page editor of a major metropolitan newspaper would be more up his alley. I wonder if the LA Times is hiring.
Filed on May 20, 2004 at 6:20 pm under by dcobranchi
Another day, another teacher sex scandal.
PHILADELPHIA (AP) – Police are investigating allegations that a first-year teacher at Martin Luther King Jr. High School had sex with two male students and solicited sex from another, authorities said.
The incidents are alleged to have occurred on school grounds.
Police said one of the 36-year-old woman’s alleged victims told school officials about the affairs. The boy came forward after being disciplined by the teacher on an unrelated matter, police said.
Police said the alleged victims are two boys age 17, and a 16-year-old. The boys alleged the sex took place while they were serving detention.
The teacher has been temporarily transferred to the regional office pending an investigation.
UPDATE: It gets better.
A male athlete accused a female rookie teacher at Martin Luther King High School of paying him to have sex with her, police said yesterday… Former Home and School Association President Rosalind McKelvey said the accused teacher has a good reputation with parents because of her work with students after class to bring their grades up.
I’m just gonna walk away from that one. It’d be way too easy.
Filed on at 6:14 pm under by dcobranchi
College sports and an antitrust lawsuit. Man, it doesn’t get any better than this.
A class-action lawsuit against the N.C.A.A., contending that major college football teams violate antitrust laws by refusing to give athletic scholarships to all walk-on players, was filed yesterday in a United States District Court in Seattle.
The suit was brought by Andy Carroll, 28, a 2000 graduate of the University of Washington, who comes from Seattle and is a real estate salesman in that area. As a walk-on, he played running back, wide receiver and on special teams from 1997 through 1999.
Filed on at 5:50 pm under by dcobranchi
The Happy Homeschooler scooped me (and then rubbed it in via email). THH found a neat tale of a homeless father and daughter who not only survived but thrived. The police did an admirable job of not harassing the family and actually helping them get back on their feet. The girl was homeschooled (so to speak) with a couple of volumes from an old encyclopedia. This sentence sounds familiar.
They (the police) said the 12-year-old girl was well-spoken beyond her years.
Even home(less)schooling works!
Filed on at 5:19 am under by dcobranchi
The family of 12 lost their home in a fire. They’re re-building.
To join the effort to help the Mason family rebuild their Catholic home, you can make contributions at the Catholic Shop or send a check to St. Andrew the Apostle Church, 6720 Union Mill Road, Clifton, VA 20124-1115. Note “Mason Family Fire Fund” on the memo line.
Filed on at 5:14 am under by dcobranchi
The teacher’s union in New York wants to force all homeschoolers to pass the state accountability tests before they would be allowed to enroll in college.
In a letter to members of the state’s education policy-making board, [Antonia Cortese, first vice president of New York State United Teachers] said the statewide union believes Regents should bring home-schooling regulations into alignment with the Regents higher standards by requiring that home-schooled students pass the required Regents Exams in order to earn a high school diploma.
Cortese said NYSUT is also concerned about a Regents proposal that would create additional options for home-schooled students to go to college and be eligible for a college degree without obtaining even a high school equivalency diploma.
She called the proposal “inconsistent” with the Regents higher standards and assessments, which NYSUT has championed.
…Under existing regulations, no student in New York state is eligible to earn a college degree without completing a four-year high school course of study or its equivalent.
While the statewide union believes that students should attend public schools, “NYSUT recognizes that parents have the option to choose home-schooling,” Cortese said. “But that shouldn’t mean abandoning Regents standards.”
I hope the Regents don’t bow to this union pressure and do the right thing to fix the existing law.
Filed on at 5:01 am under by dcobranchi
A FL homeschooler has achieved perfection on the SAT. Not just 1600. That’s the equivalent of a no-hitter. She didn’t miss a single question. Not bad, at all.
Filed on at 4:53 am under by dcobranchi
I like this graf about an informational meeting in CT:
All forms of home schooling will be discussed, such as; eclectic, traditional, unschooling (child-led) and classical education. Home schooling in Connecticut is not related to, and should not be confused with any of the following; virtual schools, private schools, charter schools, cooperative schools and publicly funded parent-directed at-home instruction.
Filed on at 4:49 am under by dcobranchi
The TN lottery is in the news again. A Senate committee has marked up a bill that would increase the score a student would need on the ACT in order to qualify for the scholarship. If the bill passes, students would have to score a 23 or have a 3.0 GPA. The current reg has a required score of 19 (except for homeschoolers who must record a 23).
I have no particluar problem with raising the scores required; 19 seems awfully low. I do have a problem with how they treated homeschoolers. The bill was originally a technical fix of a flaw in the law. Homeschoolers were being held to a higher standard than g-schoolers. As a technical fix, it should have been a piece of cake. Now, the bill’s become a bit more controversial. If it fails, homeschoolers would still face unequal treatment for another year.
So, we can root for the bill to pass or, failing that, for TN home educators to lobby for a new technical fix.
Filed on May 19, 2004 at 6:31 am under by dcobranchi
I’ve added Eduwonk to the list. Unfortunately, no RSS feed.
Filed on at 5:07 am under by dcobranchi
Joanne Jacobs has some info.
Filed on at 4:34 am under by dcobranchi
Absolute proof that reality television is on its way out.
Filed on at 3:58 am under by dcobranchi
I can’t tell if this letter is for real. If so, Earle Sedden needs help.
Soldiers should be violent with enemies
As a 34-year retired senior noncommissioned officer, I support the actions of the soldiers accused of mistreating enemy Iraqi prisoners. Why is the Bush administration condemning these fine soldiers. Could it be that this is an election year?
I believe as long as you stay close to the Geneva Conventions, you should use whatever means available to question and get information from enemy prisoners. And you can use your imagination to get the prisoners to cooperate. In my 34 years in the military, I never saw a copy of the Geneva Conventions.
One of the prerequisites of a combat soldier is to be physically violent. Do not take photographs, do not talk to anyone about your treatment of prisoners and be sure to kill witnesses. It worked in Vietnam.
Earle H. Sedden, New Castle
Filed on at 3:32 am under by dcobranchi
I found this kind of funny:
The Quick Poll, which usually appears on Wednesdays in The Island Packet, will not appear today after the results of the latest poll were skewed by vote tampering, rendering the data useless, even for an unscientific Internet poll. Because of the tampering, The Packet has decided not to report the results.
The question was, “Do you support Gov. Mark Sanford’s proposal to offer income and property tax credits of up to $4,600 for parents to pay for private schools or to pay for home-schooling?”
The implication being that, absent “vote tampering,” the data would have been useful. Naive, to say the least.
Filed on May 18, 2004 at 8:45 pm under by dcobranchi
…the principal’s a fascist and an idiot, too.
Diane Patterson forwarded a link to an outrageous tale of a g-school principal who would have felt right at home in the Third Reich. An excerpt wouldn’t do it justice. You’ll have to read the whole thing.
Filed on at 2:10 pm under by dcobranchi
Please check the update here.
Filed on at 6:52 am under by dcobranchi
That’s the title of this short transcript from a local news program. The entire piece is “anti” resolution. A great quote:
[School Board member] Duke spent 12 years as a teacher and three years as an assistant principal. While public schools must separate church and state, she says God is represented in public classrooms.
“We have teachers that are there everyday that are examples, role models, living their faith right in front of these children,” she says. “What better example can you have?”
Do you mean teachers like this? (Sorry- couldn’t resist.)
Filed on at 6:40 am under by dcobranchi
This ChronWatch columnist needs to blog for a while. This is unforgivable:
At least one media source cites the statistics quoted herein as proof that court-ordered busing needs to be resumed in areas where it has been abandoned and students removed from private schools and bused to the geographic public school they ”should” attend. While I don’t have any children of my own, talk about fodder for parents to fight to death! Try forcing children – black or white – from private schools and we’ll see an explosion of home schooling. Though it is humorous that one of the solutions offered is a return to busing.
I’ll see if I can find the reference.
UPDATE: This you won’t believe. I’m not going to cut & paste ’cause I think you need to see everything in context. The first post in the thread is a copy of the column I linked to above. Start with my first post and scroll down. Did I deserve that?
Filed on at 6:32 am under by dcobranchi
The edu-crat that DC was recruiting signed for a mere $480,000 per year with the Miami schools. $120,000 hazardous duty pay was apparently insufficient.
Filed on at 6:07 am under by dcobranchi
Joanne Jacobs found a truly bizarre story of a teacher and her favorite axe.
BTW, I almost titled this “IN THE SUITCASE ON THE LEFT.” Props to whomever comes up with the obscure reference.
Filed on at 5:43 am under by dcobranchi
This is one of those “Thank God nothing happened” stories:
Police charged a Wilmington day care operator with child endangerment Monday, saying she left seven infants and toddlers alone in her home for 45 minutes, including one girl bound in a car seat with nylon stockings.
The children, ages 10 months to 3 1/2 years old, were not injured.
…”Anything could have happened,” said Karen Goldsboro, whose 3 1/2 -year-old son Andre was the oldest child in the home when police arrived. “That was very careless, but otherwise she’s a great woman. She treats the kids like they’re her own grandchildren. My heart is pounding right now just thinking about what could’ve happened.”
Filed on May 17, 2004 at 7:26 pm under by dcobranchi
The camera deal is kaput. Here’s the backstory.
I ordered the camera Thursday evening. Friday morning the company called to “confirm” the order. The guy was good; I ended up ordering a 256 MB memory card or $49.99 and a 5 year extended warranty for $45. Saturday I got an email saying the camera was back-ordered. I called them today to find an expected shipping date.
Me: When do you expect to ship?
Them: Approximately 4-6 weeks. It ships from overseas.
M: You mean this is grey-market? That’s nowhere on your website.
T: Yes. Grey-market. But we can sell you a US market camera for $299.
M: What’s the difference, other than $65?
T: The US camera comes with the memory card, software, batteries, and all the cables.
M: That’s the standard Olympus package. They’re not included with the camera?
T: Only the US. The grey-market is for the camera only.
M: Well, what about the additional memory card? Is that ok? I was quoted a price of $49.99 for a 256 MB card.
T: Oh no. That’s the price for a Compact Flash card. The XD card is $117.
At that point I cancelled the whole thing.
Filed on at 6:06 pm under by dcobranchi
The CS Monitor has a nice piece about a Sudbury-type school in the DC area. Interestingly, unschooling is not even mentioned.
Filed on at 12:36 pm under by dcobranchi
Oregon home educators take note- your state legislators want to take away your freedoms.
From: Christine Webb
Contact: retromom@earthlink.net
Topic: Proposed tighter regulations on Oregon home educators
Homeschoolers, our homeschooling rights in Oregon are in serious jeopardy. Please read the following exerpt from an alert written by Rodger Williams and plan to attend the meeting of the Senate Education Committee, on Wednesday, May 19, at 11:00 am, in Room B of the State Capitol in Salem
*****************
Alert:
The Interim Senate Education Committee of the Oregon legislature is seriously considering increased homeschool regulations based on testimony of a truant officer from Lane County. The Committee has given the Oregon Christian Home Education Association Network and the Oregon Home Education Network a chance to respond to the truant officer’s testimony this coming Wednesday.
Action:
1) Home educators need to come to Salem in large numbers Wednesday, May 19th at 11:00 a.m. to support home education freedoms.
The Oregon Senate Interim Education Committee is considering this request by a truant officer from the Springfield School District:
“In addition to the testing at grades 3, 5, 8 and 10, we [school districts] need [from home educators]
– one, the parent’s list of materials to be used
– two, the time and place of instruction
– and last but not least, the instructor should have the equivalent of a high school education.”
Your curriculum, your schedule, and your credentials. The Committee is taking this very seriously.
Here are some more quotes from the truant officer:
“I started teaching in Springfield District 40 years ago. I am now finding that truancy spans generations, dominated by school dropouts where not a single individual has earned a high school diploma. I’m dealing with parents — in one case a grandparent –that I dealt with years ago as a teacher, a counselor or
administrator in Springfield.
On a particularly disheartening home visit to a run down trailer park, the poorly-kempt seemingly older woman I was talking with suddenly said, “You don’t remember me, Mr. Davis. I used to be pretty. I’m Joannie.” Years before, she was an 8th grader at Briggs Middle School where I was Assistant Principal. Joannie went on to tell me about her life as a high school dropout, drug abuser, teen parent, and now the 41 year old grandmother of a third grader that she planned to home school.
It is unthinkable that these poorly educated, and in many cases illiterate, individuals are capable of providing an appropriate homeschooling program for their children. Yet, they are registered to do so….
I could spend a day telling you tragic stories about young children and adolescents who simply will not have the opportunity for education, and will continue the cycle of poverty, criminal activity and illiteracy that dominates their families….
Unfortunately, parents have learned that they can avoid any type of legal hassle by simply putting their signature on a form indicating their intent to enroll in home school…. A parent [can] escape all accountability by filling out this form. All ittakes is one signature — and you are a home schooler…. I would say 30 to 40 percent of the home school people do a fabulous job. Then we have a little gray area of 20 to 30 percent, maybe. And the rest really don’t do it. They just don’t. [emphasis added] And I’m talking about the community where I live, Springfield. These kids aren’t getting any education — none.”
Note that this is not about helping public school dropouts to appreciate the benefits of school better, so that they will have an attitude conducive to education. No, this is a bold attempt to blame home educators for a public school problem — a failure so ugly and apparent that they are willing to try solving their problem at the expense of others doing a fine job in their own education arena.
This is also not about the teaching credentials of those parents without a high school diploma. Research indicates that home educating parents without a high school diploma have astonishingly good teaching results compared to the public school system (http://www.hslda.org/docs/study/ray1997/07.asp). These parents’ children score 30 percentiles higher on standardized tests than public
school students do. (I think it is because, in home education, the parent learns one step ahead of the child when necessary. So two people are better educated, not just one.) No, this is an attempt to exert more state control on you and me and on our children.
You can hear the complete audio recording of the truant officer’s testimony before the Committee at http://www.leg.state.or.us/listn/archive/archive.2003i/SED-200403110853.ram
You will need RealPlayer installed to hear it. The truant officer’s testimony starts 1 hour and 14 minutes into the hearing.
The Senate Education Committee meets this Wednesday, May 19, at 11:00 am in Room B of the State Capitol to consider these issues raised by the Springfield truant officer. The agenda is online at http://www.leg.state.or.us/03reg/agenda/webagendas.htm.
This hearing is not about a specific bill, yet. It is certainly headed that way, though.
OCEANetwork and the Oregon Home Education Network are scheduled to testify on behalf of the interests of Oregon home educators. We would appreciate your being there to support us. You need to pack the hearing room and overflow rooms. You need to send a clear message that Oregon home educators do not want to be penalized for public school problems.
Thank you for your dedication to defending and furthering home education freedoms here in Oregon.
Rodger Williams
OCEANetwork Legislative Coordinator
P.S. This attack on home education freedoms will succeed or fail based on the makeup of the next Legislature. Please consider getting involved in electing good legislators for us to work with. Thank you.
Filed on at 3:26 am under by dcobranchi
The New York Times trumpets a significant decrease in the number of New Yorkers who smoke:
After a decade of only limited progress, New York City has just recorded an 11 percent decline in the number of adults who smoke, in little more than a year.
…New York City raised its own cigarette tax in mid-2002 from 8 cents a pack to $1.50 a pack, and both state and federal taxes increased as well in recent years, driving the total tax on cigarettes to $3.39 by mid-2002. A brand-name pack now retails for $7 to $8 in the city, too expensive for many poor people or teenagers to afford.
Simple economics but so paternalistic. The poor and teenagers are too stupid to recognize that smoking is bad for them. So, let’s just raise their taxes to “encourage” the proper behavior. The paper then goes off on a little throwaway about the next line of attack on adults:
All this shows how effective vigorous government action can be in breaking a harmful addiction. That makes it all the more frustrating that so many state and local governments — lured by the possibilities of revenue from slot machines, lotteries and casinos — are doing everything they can to make addictive gambling more convenient and irresistible.
Geez! We’re talking about adults here. If people want to gamble (with their own money) that should be entirely within their prerogative. In fact, I think the state monopoly on lotteries is immoral. Anyone should be able to run a numbers game if they want to compete with Powerball.
For the record- I don’t gamble. Not even lotteries or 50-50 for local charities. I’ll give the guy selling the tickets $5, but I won’t buy $5 worth of “chances.” Just a(nother) quirk in my personality, I guess.
Filed on at 2:32 am under by dcobranchi
I’ve just cleaned up the blogroll, eliminating some dead blogs. If I have deleted any that you think should stay, drop me a comment below. I’ve also added a couple of leftish political blogs to balance out Instapundit’s.
Filed on May 16, 2004 at 7:31 pm under by dcobranchi
Chris O’Donell just posted a link to a simple fix that may beat the comment spammers. I’ve already implememented it. Keep your fingers crossed.
Filed on at 3:06 pm under by dcobranchi
Hey- I just realized that the previous post was number 3000 on H&OES. 3000 posts in two years. Whew! BTW, I missed my blogiversary on May 9th.
Filed on at 8:19 am under by dcobranchi
OTOH, Utah thinks kids can’t read because taxes are too low:
Residents statewide could be paying higher property taxes to help children read.
Filed on at 8:17 am under by dcobranchi
I really thought I’d seen every possible excuse for the poor performance of the g-schools. I was wrong. The NY Daily News has discovered that kids aren’t learning to read because they haven’t been to the eye doctor.
The plan under consideration would send Health Department workers into summer schools to administer five tests that check near and far vision, eye coordination and color blindness. The kids would be sent home with a report and a form for an eye doctor to send back after glasses are prescribed. If those forms don’t come back, the department would take the crucial step of following up with parents.
This is essential for making sure children who need glasses actually get them. As things stand now, 80% of the kindergartners and first-graders who flunk Health Department vision tests never see an eye doctor.
…Third-graders who for the first time can see words that don’t blur on the page could improve their reading enough over the summer to be fourth-graders come September.
Filed on at 8:02 am under by dcobranchi
Received this comment on an old thread about NEA President Reg Weaver:
Dr. Weaver,
I watched cspan tv Saturday while you folks discussed equality of education for youth. I have been assembling math-science education media for over 25 years. I feel the solutions I have answer the problems you discussed. If you are interested in what I have, please contact me.
Sincerely,
Charles Tinney, PhD
email: ptinney@stompit.net
phone: 435-245-3656
I have no idea why Charles Tinney thinks Reg visits H&OES, nor how he’d stumble across a comment in a long-dead thread. Maybe Tinney was tuned to the Cartoon Network instead of C-Span?
Filed on May 15, 2004 at 6:05 pm under by dcobranchi
Joanne Jacobs has a list of the 101 books high-school grads should have read. Between the two of us, we have about 100 covered.
Filed on at 5:56 pm under by dcobranchi
Let’s see how well y’all know state homeschooling laws. Without looking at the byline, try to identify the state where this homeschool grad is from:
He entered college in fall 2001 at an age when his fellow 14-year-olds were entering their freshman year of high school.
Burns was taking classes at Alfred State for two years before he was able to enroll, because he didn’t have a high school diploma or transcript.
Finally, the local school superintendent provided a letter stating Burns had completed the standard home-schooling curriculum.
There’s a big hint in that last ‘graf.
Filed on at 12:41 pm under by dcobranchi
Actually- probably not, though H&OES does have a link on the News-Journal’s blogroll. That won’t stop me from calling them the News-Urinal when they deserve it, though.
Filed on at 11:57 am under by dcobranchi
…or, rather, they are thought by their governor to be too dumb to teach it.
Vilsack, a Democrat, tossed aside a bill that would have exempted environmental testing services from state sales tax. He vetoed bills aimed at setting tougher penalties for violent crimes against an unborn fetus, closing election polls earlier and limiting his ability to transfer dollars within the state budget.
Republican-backed legislation intended to encourage Iowans to buy long-term care insurance, seek pre-marital counseling and allowing home-school parents to teach driver’s education also went down in a hail of Vilsack’s vetoes… Lawmakers tried to allow parents of home-schooled children to teach a certified driver’s education course. Vilsack argued the bill “creates a dual system that creates the risk of inconsistency in training.”
There’s that hobgoblin again.
Filed on May 14, 2004 at 9:08 pm under by dcobranchi
The lede says it all:
One thing that has never sat well with me is the concept of home-schooling children for religious reasons.
The column is one big anecdote about how the writer survived the g-schools with his faith intact, and, therefore, your kids should, too.
Yes, attending school forces children to regularly face the sinful influences that any good parent wants children to avoid. And, yes, there’s a good chance that these children will even engage in some of these sinful practices while they are young. But no child can be completely without sin, despite the best efforts of overprotective parents. If children are taught at home how to be good Christians, when they are old, they will not depart from those teachings.
I’ve got a verse, too: “Do not test the Lord your God…” –Deut. 6:16
Filed on at 8:51 pm under by dcobranchi
If a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds, what is a foolish inconsistency?
I embrace private Christian schools and families who choose to home-school their children for religious reasons. But I also embrace public schools, where kids can learn to respect each other, no matter their differences.
People shouldn’t be yanking their children from public schools because they can’t begin the day by praying publicly to Christ. They should be thanking God for the chance to send their children to public schools, where they can get an education and help build a more inclusive world.
I’m pretty sure that’s not what it means to give thanks in all things.
Filed on at 6:22 am under by dcobranchi
I’m up in Joisey today. See y’all this evening.
Filed on at 4:46 am under by dcobranchi
The News-Journal today endorses the kind of project that, were it anywhere else in the country, it would normally protest:
Rep. Castle wants $150,000 from the [Army Corps of Engineers] to study how the [Chesapeke & Delaware Canal] could become a regional tourist attraction. The first stage of the project would determine the cost and feasibility of making the canal and adjacent land accessible for hikers, bikers, runners, birders, painters and more fishermen. The money would be well spent.
…Rep. Castle and Sens. Joseph Biden and Thomas Carper should use their influence to see this project through. It could turn the C&D Canal into an attractive travelers’ destination and bring welcome economic growth.
Pork is pork. Even when it’s home-grown.
Filed on May 13, 2004 at 6:15 pm under by dcobranchi
I just bought this camera for myself as a birthday present. (Yes, Chris, it’s all your fault. I was very envious of that zoom.) I’ve been completely happy with my Camedia D-340R, so I decided to stick with Olympus. The “problem” is that I don’t know anything about the company that sold it to me. I found it through Froogle which is fast becoming my preferred means to shop online. Now I’ve got to find some memory for the thing; it comes with a puny 16 MB card.
Filed on at 5:12 pm under by dcobranchi
Kimberly Swygert found another perv in the schools. This one writes bad poetry, too.
“The smell of your cologne mixed w/sweat/ The sounds you make while – / The touch of your hands/ The taste of your mouth,/ There’s more, but I won’t embarrass myself by mentioning them.”
The female teacher even stalked the student after they “broke up.”
As a bonus, we get the H&OES understatement of the day:
An attorney for the Dougherty County School Board, Tommy Coleman, said the romantic relationship was widely suspected at the 1,000-student school.
“These kinds of things can really disrupt a school,” he said.
Filed on at 8:50 am under by dcobranchi
Mafia in Scotland’s schools?
Peter Peacock, the education minister, yesterday denied he planned to send “hit squads” into failing schools in an effort to raise standards.
After Columbine that ‘graf would never play in the US.
Filed on at 8:45 am under by dcobranchi
I applaud NYC’s educrats for trying something (anything) to fix their worst schools:
The Bloomberg administration is considering a plan to pay the city’s best math teachers to transfer into low-performing high schools.
A $1 million grant from City College would be used to pay at least 20 star math instructors an additional $10,000 each as an incentive to relocate to the troubled schools, which have a shortage of math instructors.
The “master” teachers (I’m sure they’ll change the name in the spirit of political correctness) will also act as mentors to rookies at their new schools. At first glance, this seems like the kind of program that might actually work. Of course, the devil is in the details.
Filed on at 8:28 am under by dcobranchi
From EducationNews.org:
There is a critical shortage of qualified teachers across the United States. In states that are experiencing rapid population growth, such as Florida, the problem is even more severe, especially in the areas of math, science, and special education. Workforce projections have warned for years that our Colleges of Education cannot produce enough well-trained graduates to fill these needs, even when they are working at full capacity.
OTOH, poorly-trained ones are no problem.
(Sorry- couldn’t resist)
Filed on at 8:23 am under by dcobranchi
Should the new superintendent of the worst-performing schools in the country really expect to get $600,000 per year? Before proving herself on the job? And, what if she is an utter failure? Will we pay the next person a mill a year to fail?
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