Tag Archives: education

Government School = War on Six-Year-Old Down’s Syndrome Children

07 Friday Feb 2020

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Literally calling the armed police on one for nothing.

The mother of a 6-year-old with Down syndrome says the Tredyffrin-Easttown School District mishandled an incident involving her daughter after she pretended to shoot her teacher with her finger. Maggie Gaines says 6-year-old Margot, a student at Valley Forge Elementary School, now has a police report on file.

In November, Margot became frustrated and made a gesture that sparked a disciplinary investigation.

The Tredyffrin-Easttown School District calls it a threat assessment.

It was concluded nobody was in harm’s way as a result of Margot’s statement and her words were labeled a transient threat, which Gaines explains was an expression of anger.

However, the district said its policy still called for the police to be contacted.

A transient threat to their policy of complete and utter uselessness.

Again, read THE SUBSTITUTE. This episode is what happens when fear barely edges idiocy as the driving force in “education.” The 10,001 fears of the moronic feminists, homos, and communists who run the educational concentration camps manifested in a baby with a case of silly frustration. So they say. Odds are, the girl was sufficiently threatened by something as to make use of the only defensive weapon she had, her finger.

This one makes me even angrier than most of these “=” stories. Ordinarily, this is where I have the honor of digitally bodyslamming a school or school system with their own reported statistics. FOR ONCE, we have stumbled across an institution that allegedly performs about as well as could be expected. My (fast and lazy) research shows that VFES runs way ahead of the rest of PA, scoring what is generally considered “passing” averages in overall proficiency assessments: 75% in math, 90% in English, and an amazing 95% in science. Although, given that this school calls the cops on special needs toddlers, and thus might be open to suspicions of other things like score inflation, I’ll give them the high marks. But, not congratulations. In a way, it makes things worse – if a “good” school treats children like this, then…

More statistics follow, generalized, as I know nothing about this particular little victim beyond that she looks adorable:

Average weight of a six-year-old girl: 45 pounds – less than the mass of six gallons of milk; somewhere on this site, there’s a picture of me single-arm curling more weight.

Average IQ of an adult with Down’s: 50 – about that of a younger child, for an adult; here, we’re already dealing with a younger child.

Total number of people EVER killed or harmed by a pointed finger “gun” – 0.000.

Were this a standalone event, they’d be due some measure of deference. It’s not. This is a case of the system working perfectly as planned. Get out of it.

Government School = War on Christianity

06 Thursday Feb 2020

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The state schools most parents send their children off to every day are vehemently anti-Christian. The assertion of evolution uber alles is but one example.

For nearly 100 years the American State has been waging war on Creationism and promoting Evolutionism. This war has primarily been waged in the arena of public education, but also in everyday life in which the State’s representatives consistently mock those who adhere to Creationism. The State has declared that it is unconstitutional to teach Creationism in public school, which is quite curious considering the fact that the people who wrote the Constitution were creationists themselves. Thus, the question presented to us is why does the State promote evolution? The answer is quite simple: the theory of Darwinian Evolution is incompatible with Christianity and thus the promotion of evolution is simply part of the State’s war on the Christian faith. States have always hated anything that competes with them in regards to loyalty from the citizenry. Christians have long held that they will “obey God rather than men” and this has always irritated the State. Throughout much of history this has not been a problem for States since they were intermingled with religion and the leaders of the States were considered divine or at the very least divinely appointed. However, once Church and State separated, the State realized they had competition from the Church and could not be all-powerful as long the Church was around. Thus, the campaign to tear down religion, particularly Christianity, began. After all, Karl Marx himself understood the significance of Darwin in his attempt to create an all-powerful State, saying “Darwin’s work is most important and suits my purpose in that it provides a basis in natural science for the historical class struggle.” Engels, who co-wrote The Communist Manifesto, made it even clearer: “There was one aspect of teleology that had yet to be demolished, and that has now been done.” This meant that the idea of a divine purpose in nature, teleology, was destroyed by Darwin.

The reason the State has been effective in this arena is because it is true that if one accepts the theory of evolution, they must reject Christianity. The two are incompatible and thus Christians ought to reject Darwinian Evolutionism. In order to demonstrate why the State has chose to promote evolution so vehemently, I will make a brief argument as to why it is incompatible with Christianity.

How this was ever tolerated when the nation was a nation and solidly Christian remains a mystery. Now, the effects are evident. I’d guess that a slight majority of students are still nominally Christian. The second-largest group, however, would be atheists/pagans/satanists. If I had to assign percentages, they would be something like 55% Godly, 35% worldly, and 10% “other.” Give that another decade and the war may be won by the enemy.

Christianity is the only religion they are intent on destroying. Interestingly, they do so by promoting a false religion. For 100 years, the evil-doers have violated their own cherished if fictional wall of separation. Good luck trying to enjoin that activity. Even if your child has an ironclad faith, she will still be under constant attack and/or suspicion. Get her out.

2019 NEAP Reading “High” lights

01 Saturday Feb 2020

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Not too good.

The reading assessments at grades 4 and 8 were administered on tablet computers between January and March 2019. Representative samples of 150,600 fourth-graders from 8,300 schools and 143,100 eighth-graders from 6,950 schools participated.

Results are reported as average scores on a 0 to 500 scale and as percentages of students performing at or above the NAEP achievement levels: NAEP Basic, NAEP Proficient, and NAEP Advanced.

If I understand the data correctly, then the student corps are from a mixture of public and private schools. The private schools score slightly better than the public in almost all categories, reading included, mainly by pulling the two lower quintiles up a little higher. Considering just the public schools, the overall averages are a hair lower. As is, in toto, there was a small dropoff from 2017 to 2019 for grades 4 and 8. Precisely one state, MS, saw averages rise by any appreciable measure. Yay?

THIS GRAPH:

Screenshot 2020-02-01 at 3.06.07 PM

The five crooked blue lines are the quintile averages. They’re broken before 1998 to indicate that is when major “accommodations” began. The total period is from 1992 until 2019 – this is the era of major overhauls, fads, and money spending – the era when all the stops were pulled out. The result – virtually no change at all. And note, the top quintile has never averaged at the “advanced” level, which is a ridiculously low 270 of 500 (54%). 3/5ths of students fall below the vaunted “proficient” rating, which is a mere 240- of 500 (48%). What’s considered “basic” is only 210- of 500 (42%). 2/5ths are below that level. It looks like all the fads were able to do was temporarily cause a microscopic boost across all levels which now erodes. These stellar trends continue through the high school grades. All of this nothing for the low price of about $12,000 per student per year.

This is a partial explanation of why many or most high school students read at an elementary level – if that. Assuming that the average English speaker has an active vocabulary of 20,000 words and a passive (rarely used) vocabulary of maybe another 20,000, then most of these measured students (if this correlation holds) effectively have their vocabularies cut in half or worse. The lowest quintile has mastered perhaps something like 6-7,000 words in the active range, on par with most eight years olds. Add another 1,000 words or so for the 2nd quintile; another 1,000 or so for the 3rd quintile. Three quintiles below what’s considered the fluency threshold for learning any language (10,000 words).

This does not bode well. Look for more of the same results in 2020, 2021, 2025, 2033, etc. until the bottom falls out. Perhaps the ghost of Rudolf Flesch could write up Johnny Ain’t Gonna Read. Maybe, just maybe all the fads and the money were not as promised. Maybe go old school again?

 

Hit the (Text) Books

29 Wednesday Jan 2020

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Just not at Bethel U. (MN) where they’re getting rid of them.

A new initiative to reduce or eliminate textbook costs has quickly taken off in Bethel’s College of Adult & Professional Studies, improving educational accessibility and affordability for hundreds of students. Initially a collaboration between the Bethel University Library and the Office of Academic Affairs, the Zero Cost Course Resources Initiative aligns with a national trend in higher education to help make courses more affordable.

Funded by a two-year Strategic Growth Award grant from the Bethel University Foundation, the initiative replaces traditional textbooks with Open Educational Resources (OER) and eResources from the Bethel University Library. Faculty and staff launched a pilot run with the Associate of Arts and Associate of Science degrees in summer 2018, and the B.A. in Human Services, B.A. in Psychology, Bethel Distinctives courses, and the graduate-level International Baccalaureate Certificate in Teaching and Learning have since followed suit. All are set to offer entirely free course resources by spring 2020, saving students approximately $1,300 per year in textbook costs.

A cost-saving measure! And, why not? At Bethel, the annual tuition is $37,000 – all for a solid “F” rating, much like Harvard, on the 2019 ACTA index.

Screenshot 2020-01-29 at 3.09.29 PM

Remember college textbooks? They were expensive, even way back when. $100 new, to be resold after the course was over for $10-15. I get the money angle. There is a better way to teach most subjects, using original sources and the Great Book program that a few of the A-schools still use. I doubt that’s going to be the case at Bethel.

OER? Sounds like more U of BS.

The Seven Laws and the Turnaround of Education 2020 – from TPC

28 Tuesday Jan 2020

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The Seven Laws and the Turnaround of Education 2020

In 1886, John Milton Gregory propounded Seven Laws of Teaching. These have, today, been universally dismissed by the credential-heavy, intelligence-absent cabal that is state education.

In their defense, whatever else they may be, the students today are eager to learn, at least in the very early years. That’s one of two shining points of pride in the school systems, the other being the dedication of most of the teachers. The shame enters with the handcuffing of the teachers and the deliberate dulling of the adventurous young brains. The system has departed, willfully, from the rules with predictable results.

Here follows a brief summary examination of Gregory’s Laws versus modern reality.

Law One. The teacher possesses complete knowledge of the subject and teaches from literal authority. From thence, the knowledge passes from leader to pupil without diffidence or degradation. Again, today, the teachers generally know and the students, initially, want to understand. The disconnect comes from a foremost emphasis on pedagogy, on the systematization of everything of procedure at the expense of everything material, wherein quality control kills quality.

Law Two. Keep the class centered on the lesson. Do not proceed without the full attention of the students. This is today, completely lost after maybe the fifth grade. So many years of command and control have turned off the child’s mind at the worst time – when hormones commence natural interference. Strategically, all is already lost. Tactically, more attention is paid to phones and games and other instruments of immediate satisfaction than to the lecturing or questioning instructor. The repeated Socratic inquiry is met with blank stares and grunts of “Huh? What?” 

Law Three. Communicate clearly in a language known to both student and teacher. This is a challenge under any circumstances, given the gap between the ages and experiences of the two groups. It is made much worse today by the general loss of literacy skills (reading and writing) and SPEAKING skills among both groups. In the near future, any instruction may be impossible as the grunting and distracted students of today attempt to educate future generations of even more confused grunters.

Law Four. Through easy, natural steps, build new knowledge upon that which is already known. We used to call this cumulative learning or, simply, building blocks. Today, there is, at just about any given level, nothing upon which to build upon. Without Sally, Dick, and Jane, there is no progression to Bunyan, Shakespear, or Flaubert. Without 2+2, there is no quadratic expression nor slope differentiation.

Law Five. Using the child’s natural curiosity, push him to explore and understand the truth as, or even before it is presented. Channel the energies, so to speak. Elementary-aged children still constantly exhibit the natural inclination to gain the wonders of the universe. However, in a system bent on crushing such possibility and replacing it with fear and mediocre complacency, there is little to channel even if there is a direction in which to flow.

Law Six. Mandate the reproduction of acquired knowledge, by the student, in a manner of her expression and with words of her own. The children should make the subject matter, whatever it is, their own. This step requires subject matter, energy, interest, and common language, all woefully lacking today.

Law Seven. Review, review, REVIEW! Build what follows upon what already exists and is plainly understood. This is replaced today with TEST, TEST, TEST! While a test, generally at the end of a study, serves to confirm understanding, we have reached the point where the test itself is the course of study. The French concept of le Bac comes to mind as a proper example – the finality of enterprise with confirmation of success or suggestion of needful remediation. In American schools, there’s the teacher’s biology test, the local system’s assessment of skills gained from the teacher’s biology class, the state’s standardized test of the same, outside standardized testing of the same, and more, in addition to testing of the teacher’s test. And, of the teacher. Test overload, with or more likely without underlying factual comprehension.

Why are these laws out of fashion? Simply put, it’s because they are aimed at literal education. That’s not the goal of modern schools. They serve two purposes: 1) fostering listless conformity, and 2) providing make-work for nit-to-mid wits. As when any industry descends from an enterprise into a racket, two classes of people evolve – doers and parasites. Given enough time, the parasites take over, outnumbering and overpowering the doers. In education, the doers are the teachers. The parasites are the educrats, administrators, and hangers-on.

…

READ AT TPC

Yale Puts the “Liberal” in Liberal Arts, Takes Away the Art

26 Sunday Jan 2020

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Yalies, say goodbye to Art 101:

Yale will stop teaching a storied introductory survey course in art history, citing the impossibility of adequately covering the entire field — and its varied cultural backgrounds — in one course.

Decades old and once taught by famous Yale professors like Vincent Scully, “Introduction to Art History: Renaissance to the Present” was once touted to be one of Yale College’s quintessential classes. But this change is the latest response to student uneasiness over an idealized Western “canon” — a product of an overwhelmingly white, straight, European and male cadre of artists.

This spring, the final rendition of the course will seek to question the idea of Western art itself — a marked difference from the course’s focus at its inception. Art history department chair and the course’s instructor Tim Barringer told the News that he plans to demonstrate that a class about the history of art does not just mean Western art. Rather, when there are so many other regions, genres and traditions — all “equally deserving of study” — putting European art on a pedestal is “problematic,” he said.

It must be problematic to teach and showcase the masterpieces from a civilization you’re actively trying to destroy. Yale, which by the way, rates a solid “C” in ACTA’s 2019 “What Will They Learn” Guide, charges about $53,000 per year in tuition and fees. What a deal! Of course, if they keep this up and abolish composition and science (highly problematic, you know), then they may join Harvard with an “F.”

The art of the steal?

The “Virtual Earthquake” of Religious School Funding

24 Friday Jan 2020

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The Supreme Court takes up a Montana law prohibiting state funds from going to religious (Christian) schools.

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said such a ruling would be a ‘‘virtual earthquake,’’ devastating to the way states fund public education.

And Montana told the court that, as in 37 other states, it is reasonable for its constitution to prohibit direct or indirect aid to religious organizations.

‘‘The No-Aid Clause does not prohibit any religious practice,’’ Montana said in its brief. ‘‘Nor does it authorize any discriminatory benefits program. It simply says that Montana will not financially aid religious schools.’’

The focus should be on a wall between government and education. While a ruling for the Christians would be a welcomed respite, they should avoid any contact with the state, even with the money originally stolen from them. Earthquake? Really? Why any of this is a concern to “Mrs.” Weingarten is a mystery; her country funds its chosen religious majority schools because that is what its citizens want. Why can’t Americans have the same choice?

“Phoney Packs” in Phony Schools

22 Wednesday Jan 2020

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READ THIS about our government schools.

Before class each day, a high-school teacher in Indianapolis grabs a clear plastic bag and fastens it to her waist with a ribbon. The homemade pouch is a repository for phones that are either confiscated or handed over voluntarily by students who don’t want to be tempted to tap or swipe during class.

She calls it the “phoney pack,” and the magic of the makeshift vault isn’t that it keeps devices out of reach. It’s that it lowers students’ anxiety by keeping their phones in view.

Smartphones have long been a scourge for teachers and administrators, who have employed a range of strict measures to keep them out of the classroom. But it turns out that getting rid of phones introduced another distraction: withdrawal pangs.

…

Magic vaults and Harry Potter. Holy sh- Okay, to be fair, this isn’t just a public school problem. What we see here – and the problem is real – is the intersection of the death of education and the extremely addictive nature of the phones. Two-thirds of humans are genetically predisposed to mind control and brainwashing and that is exactly what the phones were made to do. The communicating thing is secondary if that (spying might be second). (Thanks to my Tom I. CIA research for that depressing stat!)

I have already started a good draft (possibly, probably for TPC) about the schools and the decline in teaching methods. It’s based on Gregory’s Seven Laws of Teaching and the departure therefrom. Here’s a pertinent preview:

Law Two. Keep the class centered on the lesson. Do not proceed without the full attention of the students. This is today, completely lost after maybe the fifth grade. So many years of command and control have turned off the child’s mind at the worst time – when hormones commence natural interference. Strategically, all is already lost. Tactically, more attention is paid to phones and games and other instruments of immediate satisfaction than to the lecturing or questioning instructor. Repeated Socratic inquiry is met with blank stares and grunts of “Huh? What?”

All teachers, in all kinds of schools, are familiar with the phone plague. In toto, this is the price we pay for accepting the gradual decline of society – to the pitiful point where 2/3rds would rather drool over a damned little screen (like YOU, right now! …sorry…) that interact with reality. The new reality is partly to blame. Who wouldn’t want to hide in digital la-la land?

But … the WSJ article is about the schools and with my kind of liking to do this, I’m going to pick one of the mentioned schools randomly for a standardized assessment. Hang on. Gotta go back to the article…

It’s South Bronx Early College Academy Charter School!

This is a newer public charter middle school in the great metropolis of NYC. I hate to pick on 6th through 8th graders, but I said random and this is more about the NYC schools than the kids.

Performs better than 17% of other NY State middle schools! And, that’s up from 4.5% a few years earlier. 20.84% average test scores. With 19% proficiency in English. That last stat leads me to think the inmates wouldn’t necessarily appreciate which great American novel gave us so many uses of the word “phony.”

Phony or phoney – not sure which is the worst problem here.

A little known fact: Holden Caufield, not getting the most out of Pencey Prep and having never heard of charter schools, homeschooled his four kids in the 1970s and 80s. True. Check your phoneys to verify.

 

Public School is NOT O-K

19 Sunday Jan 2020

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At least they don’t want the hand sign on a hat.

High School Student Threatened with Hate Crime Charge Over Infowars “OK” Baseball

A student at a high school in Missouri was accused of promoting white supremacy due to a baseball cap sold by Infowars, which features the OK hand gesture.

Parents of the Lebanon High School student say their son had his hat confiscated after administrators claimed it displayed a hate symbol.

“So yesterday I got a text from my son saying that his hat was confiscated due to the fact that it means white supremacy,” the boy’s mother wrote on Facebook, alongside an image of the hat sold at Infowarsstore.com for $14.95.

The student’s mother claimed she was unable to obtain documentation of the offense due to a delay in an update to the school server, but upon visiting the school to retrieve the hat, the boy’s father says a principal there referred to his son as a white supremacist.

“The principal even told my son that he was in fact a ‘White supremacist,’” the boy’s father described in a separate Facebook post, claiming the school was “Thus slandering and defaming the boy further! All this because my son chose to wear this baseball hat!”

According to the father, the boy thought the gesture meant that something was good.

Furthermore, the father claims school officials threatened to have his son “arrested for disturbing the peace” if he brought the hat back to school.

When asked whether his son’s rights were protected under the First Amendment, he says he was told “the constitution has no place in schools.”

Threats with no documentation? Shocking! No, the cornsternation, just like God, has no place in the “schools.” Neither do the children. Get them out!

This may be the same Lebanon High(only seems to be the one) with the 2019 Test Score Average of 31.21%. Not even a third. The same school performing better than 26.5% of high schools in MO. Wow! With the 31.4% end of course Algebra average. Very impressive. With no real problems to worry about, they have plenty of time to hate on hats. Good on ya, “school!” In their defense, they probably have plenty of hate built up – their “transformation” has been a little slow and weak.

Contrast this tyrannical idiocy with, say, homeschooling or Classical Christian Education.

Monday Morning Laughs and Learning

13 Monday Jan 2020

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I forgot to mention this when it happened a little while back: I have adjusted my big mandatory four daily comic strips. I switched out Get Fuzzy for Dustin. It’s now:

Garfield;

Pearls;

Dustin; and

Dilbert

Not that big a deal. I still read Fuzzy from time to time along with some others. It’s just that without any new strips in, what(?), a year or three, they were getting a bit old.

In other news, as a full-time meddler and part-time Francophile, I discovered – not at all to my surprise – that the annual tuition at a very good French state university costs about the same as, maybe even a little less than, my QUARTERLY tuition at UGA almost thirty years ago (ouch!). Yes, there are subsidies. They opted for an educated citizenry without a student loan usury crisis. Yet somehow they still manage to have long vacations, first-class highways, skyscrapers, GUNS (yes), nuclear-powered and armed warships, and a France that’s still, grabblers’ antics aside, almost 95% French. But hey, we got us freedom fries, right?!