Archive for the ‘Education’ Category:
It’s funny how our politicians always assume that we are all less intelligent than they are. Consider this little note on the Session Daily about education “reform” in Minnesota. In it:
Full implementation of the bill would cost between $2 billion and 2.5 billion, said Greiling, the sponsor of HF2. However, she said it could begin with “just one penny” because it offers a “scalable” plan intended to be “phased in” as funding is secured. It has been referred to the House Finance Committee.
Yes, the plan is “scalable” in that it ranges from doing nothing to improve education (which could be done for free — get rid of the under-performing teachers and administrators) to spending a whole heck of a lot more money to make the odd school a little higher-performing. We all know from years and years of this that they will take that odd example (that could just be a statististical blip) and use it to get another $4 billion in 4 or 5 years (again, in the name of “education reform”). If you can’t smell the baloney in this, then maybe the politician was right about you. Not me, though.
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School voucher systems work — who’d thunk?
Critics said the programme would take money from a school district that was poor already. One teacher wrote an angry editorial comparing Horizon to Napoleon’s invasion of Russia, destined for “history’s trash heap of bad ideas”. But a report published in September by the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), a conservative think-tank, argues that the programme was a hit over its ten-year span. More than 4,000 students claimed the vouchers; their test scores jumped, and only two dropped out.
Of course, it doesn’t matter because the liberals are determined on making sure that education isn’t equal for everyone. That would mean that teachers and administrators would be held accountable and we can’t have that.
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The Wall Street Journal, today, points out something that is curiously missing from either of Barrack Obama’s memoirs: his ties with Bill Ayers. This is something that is scary on two levels:
- Any affiliiation with a terrorist is scary
- Obama’s apparent mindset on education considering his affiliation with Ayers
From 1995 to 1999, he led an education foundation called the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC), and remained on the board until 2001. The group poured more than $100 million into the hands of community organizers and radical education activists.
Please read the article. This is a very scary affiliation and probably reason alone for many to steer clear of the butcher.
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Filed under Commentary, Education, Politics
Tags:2008, bill ayers, community organizer, ecuation, Election, mccain, obama, radical, terorrist
It’s been several weeks since Election Day and I am still hearing various reasons behind why the Republicans lost big. There are some ridiculous reasons, some amusing, and some that probably have some truth to them. One that keeps being repeated is that voters became disenchanted with the “extremism” of the Republican Party. I think that misses the boat. In fact, I think that it’s quite close to the opposite of the problem. The Republican Party was more extreme in 2004 than it was in 2006 and they won. Instead, I think they looked too much like the other guy. When it comes to voting, I’m pro-choice. No, I’d never dream of voting for anyone who was wrong on the five non-negotiables if there is an alternative out there. Rather, I am in favor of being able to choose between good and bad. I want to choose the good candidate over the bad candidate. I want to choose the better candidate over the worse candidate. Mostly, I’d like to pick the great candidate over the very good candidate. Unfortunately we rarely get that choice. We are usually picking the decent candidate over the brutal candidate. And, in the case of the 2006 midterms, there were too many spots across the country that the Republican Party allowed a battle of two brutal candidates.
Hopefully 2006 will help the party clean house of the worst of its politicians. Hopefully it will re-engage with a morally superior agenda heading into 2008. Hopefully they will, once again, become the party in favor of life (even when politically difficult to do so), and educational choice for all (not just the upper class, like the left apparently wants it). Hopefully they will be the party of smaller government, lower taxes, and fiscal responsibility once again. Hopefully they will be the party standing for constructionist judges, something we heard nothing about on the campaign trails leading up to November. Hopefully they give us a clear choice, much like they did in 2000, 2002, and 2004. If they don’t, they can be prepared for an 8-year setback, beginning with the election of a truly extremist President Obama or President Clinton.
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“We are not a university that countenances disrespect of any point of view,” Bruininks said. But he added, “When people try to suppress expression, they start with the university and start with the arts.”
Alright, Bob. Keep that in mind when an anti-Muslim or anti-Judaism drama is set to show on campus. My guess is that you will gutlessly pull the plug on that one.
I’m sure Minnesotans are happy their tax dollars are going to such fine, fine causes.
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A [tag]21-year-old[/tag] [tag]film student[/tag] from [tag]Los Angeles[/tag] who dipped into a [tag]college fund[/tag] and his parents’ wallets for his entry stakes has become the youngest player to win a World Series of Poker event.
[tag]Jeff Madsen[/tag], at 21 years, 1 month, 9 days old, outlasted 1,578 players in a three-day, $2,000 buy-in no-limit hold’em event, to earn $660,948 and his first [tag]World Series of Poker[/tag] bracelet late Sunday night.
“I convinced them that I was going to play well,” Madsen said of his parents, who put up $3,500 to help him buy into several events. He took $6,000 more out of a fund his grandfather started to help pay for college to buy into other events.
It doesn’t seem like the best idea in the world. For every story like this I’m sure there are a thousand more about the kid who took out 6k from his college fund and lost it. Very interesting that his parents let him do this. Perhaps very telling, too.
via Fox Sports
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E.J. Dionne, one of the more ignorant columnists in the United States, hits us up again today. Dionne, amazingly, concedes very early that some of the right-to-lifers talking about the Schiavo case had grounds to stand on:
Nothing in the autopsy report prevents those who opposed removing Schiavo’s feeding tube from continuing to insist they were right. It’s legitimate and honorable to argue on philosophical grounds that every medical decision in a tragic circumstance such as Schiavo’s should be made on the side of keeping the sick person alive.
But then the attack begins:
“As I understand it,” Frist said on the Senate floor, “Terri’s husband will not divorce Terri and will not allow her parents to take care of her. Terri’s husband, who I have not met, does have a girlfriend he lives with and they have children of their own.” No accusation here, just a brisk walk through innuendo city.
Well, is it not true? Isn’t there a HUGE conflict of interest in this case that raises all kinds of flags, from bright orange to purple?
Right-to-life politicians have done terrible damage to a serious cause. They claimed to know what they did not, and could not, know. They were willing to imply, without proof, terrible things about a husband who was getting in their way. Instead of making the hard and morally challenging case for keeping Terri Schiavo on life support, they spun an emotional narrative that they thought would play well on cable TV and talk radio.
Isn’t that exactly what the other side is doing. How could they possibly know that she was brain dead and that she wouldn’t recover? They were willing to imply, without proof, that Terri was in a state so as to conveniently kill her off. And what is this “emotional narrative” he speaks of. A woman’s life was at stake here. The narrative was emotional far before any Senator or misguided columnist spoke out.
No, we should not move on. We should remember that some politicians will say whatever is necessary to advance their immediate purposes. Apologies, anyone?
Well, that’s true and there’s no better case study than that of the Democratic Party. I seem to recall a Senator running from President who said he “morally opposes” abortion but that he couldn’t impose his belief on others. Yet, one can be sure that he would have taken my tax dollars to use in whatever way he and his party saw fit. If that isn’t imposition, I don’t know what is. If that isn’t someone saying whatever is necessary to advance their immediate purposes, I don’t know what is.
Terri Schiavo is dead. Apologies, anyone?
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Amy Welborn points out that school vouchers are helping the Washington D.C. archdiocesan schools.
The Washington Post article Welborn refers to has the following quote:
“The private schools are getting special treatment — they’re getting the [public] money but not being held to the same standard,” said Tanya Clay, deputy director of public policy at People for the American Way, which opposes vouchers.
Isn’t accountability the whole point of school vouchers? It seems to me that if the Catholic schools aren’t up to the standards of the private schools, that the parents and kids can take their voucher elsewhere. That is ultimate accountability — far more rewarding or damning than a statistic. In fact, the statistics often don’t mean anything at all. What good is Math or Science without a well-based education in morality and ethics?
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My brother, Dan, has often made points to me about how people and organizations often if not always do a better job with social and educational “service” to a nation’s people. One of the biggies is in terms of public education. David Gelernter of the L.A. Times writes that it is time to phase public schools out as painlessly as possible.
What gives public schools the right to exist? After all, they are no part of the nation’s constitutional framework. Neither the Constitution nor Bill of Rights requires public schools. And in one sense they are foreign to American tradition. Europeans are inspired by state institutions. Americans are apt to be inspired by private enterprise, entrepreneurship, choice.
The wealthy or upper middle-class are always going to have the option to send their kids to a private school if their local public school is insufficient. However, if we are truly concerned for the impoverished, it’s past due-time that we give them a choice of schools. If nothing else it will make the public schools raise their standards in order to survive.
Update: David Gelernter is a Yale professor of Computer Science. The Java programming language is inspired by some of Gelernter’s own code, “Linda”.
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Thomas Sowell has a great article about the Ward Churchill saga at the University of Colorado. Churchill, as you might know, was the professor who compared 9.11 victims with the nazis.
Sowell’s makes the point that freedom of speech does not equal the right to an audience, nor does it equal an exemption from consequence.
Sowell:
Too many people — some of them judges — seem to think that freedom of speech means freedom from consequences for what you have said. If you believe that, try insulting your boss when you go to work tomorrow. Better yet, try insulting your spouse before going to bed tonight.
The big problem with the situation, according to Sowell, is that in Churchill’s case and in the case of many, if not most teachers and professors, there were no rules or guidelines broken constituting grounds for termination.
Sowell:
Should a professor of accounting or chemistry be fired for using up class time to sound off about homelessness or the war in Iraq? Yes!
I’ve stated on many occassions that I’m tired of the celebrity types that feel the need to use their stage to make political statements. In this case, however, the teacher or professor is on a stage that we cannot, as easily, avoid. I may choose not to support an actor or a musician by purchasing their product. A student in a public high school, on the other hand, doesn’t have an easy exit from the bullyish teacher. In some cases the students are not properly trained in critical thinking when these situations arise, even if they had the opportunity to patronize another institution.
Schools, colleges, and universities have a duty at the administrative level to create an atmosphere of training as opposed to propagandizing. Guidelines, rules, and constitutions should be put in place to protect the institution from the math teacher who decides he is a political pundit on any given day.
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