This may come as a bit of a traumatic shock to readers of the this blog, but it’s become known to the Houston Chronicle that the vast majority of political donations made by Texas’ college professors go to left-wing candidates. Texas faculty member’s candidate of choice for president? Hillary Rodham Clinton. Faculty members have contributed…
Category: Education
The New Anti-Intellectualism
From the Wall Street Journal: Often it seems as though American higher education exists only to provide gag material for the outside world. The latest spectacle is an Ivy League professor threatening to sue her students because, she claims, their "anti-intellectualism" violated her civil rights. Priya Venkatesan taught English at Dartmouth College. She maintains that…
Principal Busts Dope Dealing Delinquent
In New Hampshire, Concord High School principal Jean Barker turned the tables on a student arranging to sell drugs via text messages by setting up a mini-string operation that lead to the student’s arrest. That’s what I call excellence in education! Unsurprisingly, there are plenty of frivolous people willing to to take the drug pusher’s…
1st Grade Harassment
In pointing out another case of legalistic lunacy, Susan Duclos writes: The "zero tolerance" policy at some school and in some states, reaches levels of complete incompetence when a 6 years gets written up as a sexual offender for copying what another kid did and playfully smacking little Katherine DeLeon on the bottom twice. ……
Abortion Bills Stall in Congress
Samantha Torrence says: "One of the major societal epidemics in America today is the lack of respect for not only the sanctity of life, but a lack of love for our own children." No surprise that this comes during an epidemic of self-indulgent, irresponsible behavior. Suffering the consequences for one’s actions, it seems, is no…
No Right to Home School
Michelle Malkin has this story about a California court that has issued an outrageously harsh – and grotesquely incorrect – indictment against the practice of home-schooling. From the LA Times: "Parents do not have a constitutional right to home school their children," wrote Justice H. Walter Croskey in a Feb. 28 opinion signed by the…
Judge Says Silence OK
From the Houston Chronicle: A mandatory moment of silence for Texas schoolchildren has a secular purpose of encouraging thoughtful contemplation and does not advance or inhibit religion, a federal judge said this week in a ruling upholding the 2003 state law. U.S. District Judge Barbara M.G. Lynn of Dallas ruled in a lawsuit brought by…
Should Schools Dispense Birth Control?
Demonstrating that a lot of Americans aren’t too bright, 30% of those surveyed by AP said that public schools should give out birth control to students regardless of whether their parents have given their consent or not. (The media is reporting 67% of parents agree with the idea, but that includes the 37% who think that…
Of Youth and Discipline
The NY Times Board wrote today: The Government Accountability Office exposed a national outrage earlier this month in a report that found thousands of allegations of abuse and neglect at treatment programs that sell military-style discipline as a way to set delinquent youngsters straight — sometimes known as boot camps. The GAO report, unveiled at…
School Vouchers: Solution or Problem?
Megan McArdle says she doesn’t get angry about politics often. But fail to mention the V-word when discussing education reform and you might get on her list pretty quick! every time I see some middle class parent prattling about vouchers "destroying" the public schools by "cherry picking" the best students, when they’ve made damn sure…