The blogspot version of this blog is HERE. The Blogroll. My Home Page. Email John Ray here. Other mirror sites: Political Correctness Watch, Dissecting Leftism, Greenie Watch, Australian Politics, Socialized Medicine, Tongue Tied, Food & Health Skeptic Immigration Watch and Gun Watch. For a list of backups viewable in China, see here. (Click "Refresh" on your browser if background colour is missing). The archive for this mirror site is accessible here or here.
****************************************************************************************



31 October, 2008

Education: Obama says schools need more money, McCain wants more accountability

Though education has not figured prominently in the campaign, John McCain and Barack Obama have their proposals. Each falls squarely within their respective party's established political framework: Boiled down, Mr. Obama believes that schools require more resources and federal support, while Mr. McCain wants to introduce to the education system more choice and accountability.

School choice. Mr. McCain would pursue education reforms that institute equality of choice in the K-12 system. He would allow parents whose kids are locked into failing public schools to opt out, whether in favor of another public school, a charter school or through voucher or scholarship programs for private options. Parents, he believes, ought to have more control over their education dollars. Teachers' unions and school administrators find none of this amenable. Mr. McCain supports merit pay for teachers and would establish a bonus program for high-performing educators, as well as devote more funds toward attracting successful college graduates into the field. He would also give principals more control over their schools, including spending decisions, instead of district school boards.

Teachers. Mr. Obama prefers that students stay within the current system, though he acknowledges its many problems. A mainstay of his campaign is his promise to completely underwrite training costs in teacher preparation. He also supports continuing education and mentoring programs for current teachers. So that there is a "guarantee of quality," he backs mandatory professional accrediting for educators and proposes a "career ladder initiative" to reform teacher compensation and tenure to recognize expertise. During a recent speech to the American Federation of Teachers, Mr. Obama disparaged "tired rhetoric about vouchers and school choice."

No Child Left Behind. The 2001 legislation that introduced national performance standards and accountability to the schools remains a political live wire, particularly in regard to weak enforcement by the Department of Education. Mr. McCain has offered few specific reforms but generally supports the law's broad contours as a good start. Many of Mr. Obama's reform ideas would result in essentially suspending the law's accountability provisions, though not the Washington funding, which he says he would increase.

Early childhood education. Mr. Obama supports a universal preschool policy and says that his "zero-to-five" early education agenda "begins at birth." He would increase federal outlays for universal preschool education by $10 billion annually, handing the states block grants devoted to infants and toddlers. Mr. Obama also wants to expand eligibility for Head Start, the four-decade-old federal preschool program for low-income kids. Mr. McCain believes there is already a profusion of federal programs devoted to early child care and preschool, including Head Start and its many offshoots. He would try to better coordinate the programs and focus them on outcomes to reduce waste. To reward success, Mr. McCain wants to establish "centers of excellence," which would receive more Head Start funding and serve as models for underperforming institutions.

Public service. Though both candidates call on listeners to devote themselves to "causes greater than self-interest," Mr. Obama would see to it that they do, with a plan for "universal voluntary citizen service." In addition to doubling the size of the Peace Corps, he would create a Classroom Corps, a Health Corps, a Homeland Security Corps and a Clean Energy Corps, plus a Green Jobs Corps. Mr. Obama proposes a fully refundable tax credit of $4,000 for college students who complete 100 hours of community service a year ($40 an hour). He would make federal education aid conditional on high schools requiring students to perform 50 hours of service a year.

Higher education. Mr. Obama suggests expanding federal student aid programs, including Pell Grants, and says he will streamline college tax benefits, which are so complicated many students and families don't end up claiming them. Mr. McCain likes the tax simplification part. He also believes that earmarks have compromised the integrity of government-financed research at the nation's universities and promises to eliminate them (the earmarks, not the universities).

Source




BRITISH ACADEMICS THREATEN TO SUE UNION OVER ISRAEL BOYCOTT

The University and College Union (UCU) is facing a court threat if it doesn't retract its decision to encourage members to question the ethics of contacts with universities in Israel. A group of as yet anonymous litigants, who are UCU members, are demanding repayment of any union funds spent on carrying out a national conference resolution which asked academics to consider the moral and political implications of their links with Israeli institutions. Via their solicitors, Mishcon de Reya, the litigants warn UCU that they will sue its four trustees individually for recovery of the money.

A year ago UCU accepted legal advice that its 2007 national conference motion for an academic boycott of Israel was unlawful and could not be implemented. At this year's conference in May, lecturers voted overwhelmingly to call on colleagues to "consider the moral and political implications of educational links with Israeli institutions, and to discuss the occupation with individuals and institutions concerned, including Israeli colleagues with whom they are collaborating".

Their general secretary, Sally Hunt, had warned delegates before the debate that UCU would need to take legal advice on what steps it could take to carry out the motion. The motion sparked off a heated debate and a succession of resignations from UCU members.

In a House of Lords debate, the former independent adjudicator for higher education, Baroness Deech, called on universities to derecognise the union. "These efforts to boycott, or to come as close as possible to a boycott, are contrary to race relations legislation and ultra vires the powers of the union," Deech said. "The UCU has created an atmosphere hostile to Jewish academics and to quality academic research and freedom in this country," Deech added.

On September 26, Mishcon de Reya wrote to Hunt warning her that unless UCU accepted within 14 days that the latest conference resolution was "ultra vires" - beyond its powers - a group of unnamed members would take it to court. As UCU members, its clients were entitled to sue the union and its trustees - Professor Neil Macfarlane, Fawzi Ibrahim, Dr Dennis Wright and Paul Russell - to force it to declare the resolution null and void, the letter said. And they would sue the trustees for the repayment of any money spent on implementing the resolution. If legal action is taken, the union members taking it will be identified, their solicitors say. The 14-day deadline for UCU to reply passed on Friday.

Source





30 October, 2008

British high school exams COULD be dumbed down unless watchdog steps in

What? Dumbed down any further?

Standards in GCSEs and A levels risk being dumbed down unless the new independent examinations watchdog is given statutory powers to force exam boards to maintain them, the Government has been warned.

In a highly unusual intervention into the debate about exam standards, Mike Cresswell, director-general of AQA, Britain's biggest exam board, has broken ranks with its rivals. In an interview with The Times, he has given warning that public confidence in the quality of GCSE and A level qualifications cannot be maintained unless the new exams watchdog, Ofqual, has sufficient muscle to prevent exam boards lowering their standards.

Ofqual was created by Gordon Brown and made independent from government precisely to put an end to the debate about the dumbing down of public examinations and to ensure that there could be no suspicion of government pressure on exam boards to set standards at particular levels. But Dr Cresswell believes there is a "major omission" from the proposals for Ofqual's powers. While it is empowered to force exam boards to follow certain procedures in the way they set and mark exams, it has no powers over what level they set standards at.

"Ofqual needs to be given an explicit statutory power to enable it, if necessary, to direct an awarding body to set standards at a particular level," Dr Cresswell said. "It needs to have this power so that it can give credible public assurance that standards are comparable between awarding bodies and maintained over time." Without statutory powers of intervention, Ofqual would be left to the mercy of exam boards, he added. "A regulator who is there to uphold public confidence in standards can't be in a position where it has to negotiate with the exam boards over standards."

Dr Cresswell added: "The awarding bodies compete for entries. They don't compete on standards. If Ofqual had this power [to enforce standards], it would make it much more difficult for that to ever begin."

The main exam boards work closely together in developing qualifications, but there is a tension in their relationship, as they are competing with each other within a finite but lucrative market place. Schools and colleges pay about 400 pounds million a year in fees to exam boards. Mr Cresswell's warning comes after a disagreement this summer between England's three exam boards, which set their own GCSE and A-level papers, about standards in the new GCSE single science exam. The three boards met in August to discuss grade boundaries. They failed to come to an agreement over the mark needed to get a C, officially a good pass. One of AQA's rival boards awarded Cs in one paper to pupils who got only 20 per cent of questions correct and would not back down from this position. Negotiations between the boards broke down.

AQA was eventually persuaded by Ofqual to reduce its own grade boundaries to bring it into line with the other boards, even though it did not think this sufficient to maintain standards. Dr Cresswell agreed to the move "under protest" because he did not want to disadvantage the half-million pupils who had taken his board's science exam. "Plainly, we couldn't possibly have a situation where children doing our exam would be judged against harsher standards than children doing other boards," he said.

Yesterday was the last day for submissions on what monitoring and enforcement powers Ofqual should have. Dr Cresswell has written to the Government to express his concerns and to request a meeting with Jim Knight, the Schools Minister.

Source




Reagan Didn't Graduate from Harvard

One of the first attacks launched at Governor Sarah Palin when she was announced as Senator John McCain's running mate was that she was not smart enough to be one step away from the presidency. Why? Because she doesn't have an Ivy League education. Rather than criticizing her position on taxes, energy independence or the War in Iraq, college students in particular focus on her University of Idaho degree. It has become a rallying cry for my fellow students at schools ranked better than the University of Idaho and flung as an insult into heated debates.

These same students conveniently forget that after graduating from the University of Delaware, Senator Joe Biden went on to graduate 76th in a class of 85 from Syracuse University College of Law where he infamously plagiarized a law review article for one of his papers. They also forget that Senator Barack Obama attended Occidental College in Los Angeles before Columbia University.

Too many people are resorting to this elementary school tactic of calling someone stupid as a trump card during election discussions. After listening to a fellow student mock Gov. Palin's education, I decided to test her theory using the presidency, since that is the position for which these students claim she is not qualified.

Is a degree from a top American college a prerequisite to becoming a successful president? No. Abraham Lincoln led our country through one of its most tumultuous times and is admired as one of our best presidents. He did not even go to college. He is not alone. Eight American presidents did not earn a college degree, Andrew Jackson, William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore, Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, Grover Cleveland and Harry Truman. Almost 20% of our presidents have not graduated from college.

One of our best presidents of the 20th century graduated from a small school in Illinois, Eureka College, which most Americans probably have never heard of. Eureka College, which currently has an enrollment of about 600 students, did not make the Princeton Review's 2009 Best 368 Colleges.

Furthermore, even some presidents who have earned degrees from top schools have been criticized as being among the worst presidents in American history.

Many liberals decry George W. Bush as the worst president in the last 50 years. Where did he earn his undergraduate degree? Yale. On the flip side, many conservatives hold a similarly negative view of Jimmy Carter. Where did he graduate? The U.S. Naval Academy. Yale and the U.S. Naval Academy are two of the top institutions of higher learning in the United States.

There is no specific educational pedigree that is determinative of the success or popularity of an American president or vice president. Our past presidents and vice presidents have earned degrees from a wide range of schools. The most popular schools for presidents include Harvard with five, William and Mary with four, Yale with three and Princeton and the Military Academy with two each. Among others, past presidents have attended Dickinson College, Union College and Miami University.

The best education is not only obtained from classroom lectures. Much can be gained from independent study and a true love of learning. In an October 22nd People Magazine interview, Gov. Palin said, "I'm a voracious reader, always have been. I appreciate a lot of information. I think that comes from growing up in a family of schoolteachers also where reading and seizing educational opportunities was top on my parents' agenda. That was instilled in me."

Besides having a deep philosophical understanding of ideas, it is also important that one has tested those ideas in practice, learning how to implement the ideas effectively. Maybe this is difficult for my fellow students to understand as they have had little opportunity to put their ideas in practice. But Gov. Palin has done that. She has made spending decisions. She has stood up to corruption. She has vetoed bills.

Too many students are ignoring the real differences between the candidates on the economy, health care and foreign policy, and resorting to personal attacks. In one way this is a victory for Gov. Palin as they concede issue appeals. But at the same time, it is deeply problematic that students are falling for the empty insults and rhetoric.

Source





29 October, 2008

How I Bombed an Abortion Clinic and Still Got Tenure

by Mike S. Adams

Ann Potts, an Assistant Professor in the Watson School of Education, has disgraced The University of North Carolina at Wilmington by signing a petition in support of unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers - himself an education professor at The University of Illinois at Chicago. The real disgrace is actually twofold: First, there is her willingness to support Ayers. Second, there is her unwillingness to support me for engaging in similar actions years ago in pursuit of a very different political agenda.

Some years ago I was involved with a radical anti-abortion group that was frustrated with efforts to overturn Roe v. Wade. We targeted two abortion clinics - one in Birmingham and the other in Atlanta - for bombings. We successfully carried out both of those bombings without killing anyone on the premises. We wanted to send our message - at least initially - without any unnecessary bloodshed.

After we carried out the bombings in Birmingham and Atlanta we gathered together in Charlotte, North Carolina for the express purpose of making a number of bombs that would be used in additional attacks on abortion clinics throughout the Southeast. Regrettably, an accident occurred during the construction of those additional bombs. Several members of our group died during the unexpected blast. Shortly thereafter, I left the group and decided to enter the field of higher education.

I want to make one thing perfectly clear: I do not regret my decision to engage in the bombings of those abortion clinics. In fact, I regret that we did not do more.

Some people on the Far Left in America are trying to hold the Pro Life movement accountable for actions I engaged in before Sarah Palin was even involved in politics. And no one in academia is willing to offer me forgiveness for actions I've never said I regretted. Ann Potts' name is not on a petition of my academic supporters for one simple reason: I don't have any.

For those who are not Swift enough to grasp satire let me explain something: You are presently reading satire.

Put simply, there is no chance that an unrepentant right-wing domestic terrorist could ever land a job in higher education in America. The "liberal" would prevent the white male abortion clinic bomber from teaching on the basis of identity politics. The conservative would arrive at the same conclusion on the basis of principle.

Lest you think that I am exaggerating turn back the clock eighteen months to the last time I spoke out against an academic leftist who supports violence as a means of disseminating his political views. Some readers remember when Kent State professor Julio Pino (jpino@kent.edu) publicly advocated the bombing of innocent Jews by Palestinian children.

I spoke out against Pino's advocacy of violence by writing a column called "How to Bomb a Gay Bathhouse." This was shortly after the controversy involving Ann Coulter's use of the term "fag" to describe John Edwards. In that column, I suggested that Kent State hire Ann Coulter and allow her to construct a website advocating violence against gays since they were silent on the issue of Pino's advocacy of violence against Jews.

When columnist Andrew Sullivan read my column there was much lisping and gnashing of teeth. Too dense and emotionally unstable to understand the satire, Sullivan dubbed me an "ugly bigot" and ran excerpts of my column on his website. And, even after having the satire explained to them, our student newspaper ran an editorial suggesting that I advocated domestic terrorism. The chancellor's assistant, Cindy Lawson, made the dim-witted remark that my column was deplorable even if satire. Apparently, it was deplorable if advocating violence, but still deplorable if doing the opposite.

The way people to my left reacted to my column showed a great desire to find a conservative who advocates domestic terrorism - even in the absence of any evidence he's engaged in terrorism - and to punish him for his advocacy of violence.

But, in the case of William Ayers (bayers@uic.edu), we have a leftist who not only advocates domestic terrorism but has actually carried out acts of terror in his own country. And those who accused me of advocating violence are now either a) unwilling to talk about Ayers, or b) actually willing to sign a petition supporting him.

Ann Potts, who taught at Virginia Tech when a student opened fire and killed nearly three dozen, is a reminder of just how intellectually and morally challenged one can be and still survive in the field of education. Her unrepentant idiocy is a call for the overthrow of the government-run education system - by non-violent means, of course.

Source




Mo. students face punishment for `Hit a Jew Day'

Deplorable though their actions were, I doubt that these students knew of the wider context for their actions

At least four students from a suburban St. Louis middle school face punishment for allegedly hitting Jewish classmates during what they called "Hit a Jew Day." The incident happened last week at Parkway West Middle School in Chesterfield. District officials said Thursday they believe that fewer than 10 children of the district's 35 Jewish students were struck. District spokesman Paul Tandy said that in most cases, the students were hit on the back of their shoulders but one student was slapped in the face.

It began with an unofficial "Spirit Week" among sixth-graders that started harmlessly enough with a "Hug a Friend Day." Then there was "High Five Day." Soon, though, the days moved from friendly to silly. Next there was "Hit a Tall Person Day" and, finally, "Hit a Jew Day."

District officials believe a handful of children were directly involved. Those who actually struck classmates could face suspension and required counseling, Tandy said. Others who weren't directly involved but taunted Jewish students or egged on classmates could face lesser penalties.

"There is a mix of sadness and outrage," Tandy said. "The concern is a lot of kids knew about it and they didn't take action or say anything."

Karen Aroesty, St. Louis regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, said this was more than a case of bullying. Officials from the group will meet Friday with district leaders to discuss the matter.

Source




Australia: Violence and bullying sweep Victoria's state schools

Frightened students, teachers and principals are reporting more than 12 assaults a week in state schools. Education Department records show 1227 allegations of assault involving state school students and staff have been filed in just over two school years. A further 247 sex abuse cases were alleged. Prep students have been removed from classes following harassment complaints, and threatening gangs and intruders have triggered emergency lockdowns. And 11 departmental employees have been accused of assaulting pupils.

Departmental records obtained under Freedom of Information reveal 890 reports of assaults on students at government schools, camps or excursions from 2006 to April this year. Children as young as six were among the victims, and staff were on the receiving end 337 times. The figures have spurred calls for upgraded protection, more parental control and extra welfare officers.

In the latest vicious attack last month, older invaders are said to have bashed several teenagers with a baseball bat at Keilor Downs Secondary College. Other cases alleged include:

A BOY, 15, rushed to hospital after a machete attack and fight with a former pupil from Copperfield College, St Albans.

A GIRL, 14, stabbed in the stomach with a pocket knife while visiting North Geelong Secondary College.

A BOY, 14, treated for cracked ribs after bullying at Craigieburn Secondary College.

A YEAR 8 student gashed after being shoved through a window at Cranbourne Secondary College.

A GIRL who changed into the jumper of a rival school in the western suburbs before sneaking in and attacking a female student.

BRUTAL brawls and racial feuds filmed and posted on the internet.

ANGRY parents kicking or punching school staff.

Department spokeswoman Helen Stevanovich said values and drug education, and anti-bullying and peer support programs, aimed to counter conflict and promote safety. But Opposition Leader Ted Baillieu accused the Government of downplaying a disturbing problem. He said a vital police-in-schools initiative had been scrapped. "School-aged children must understand that violence or bullying of any kind is unacceptable, and without suitable programs these incidents will continue to occur," he said.

Victorian Principals Association president Fred Ackerman said staff were taking more stress leave or retiring early, and parents and teachers needed to work together to tackle declining behaviour. "Proper role-modelling has deteriorated over time, with parents either shirking responsibility or being time-poor. Society is now reaping the repercussions," he said. "More kids seem to have an inability to deal with anger and are playing out what they see in society and films and TV," Mr Ackerman said. He said schools were now more likely to report crime and were boosting safety through camera surveillance, high fences, visitor clearances and staff training to defuse conflict.

But the Herald Sun has been told some schools in areas with stretched police resources don't report all incidents because of poor response times. Police handled a total of 8572 offences, including 502 assaults, in and around public and private schools, universities, TAFEs and other education locations last financial year. This was a 16 per cent drop on five years ago. There were 726 alleged crimes against the person, up from 636 in 2003-04. These included assaults, 17 rapes and 183 other sex offences.

Australian Education Union state president Mary Bluett said major assaults often involved intruders trying to "settle a score", but adopting US-style metal detectors would create a damaging climate of fear. "Compared to the broader society, schools are peaceful," Ms Bluett said.

Source





28 October, 2008

Science comprehension slipping badly among British pupils

Given the way science teaching has been dumbed down almost to vanishing point, this is no surprise. The article below is written as if it were IQ being tested but that is careless. The researcher in fact makes the point that on a task which relies on IQ rather than specific knowledge, there has been no change. It is the teaching that has deteriorated. The kids all know about global warming, the desirability of a low-fat diet and other myths but would they be able to explain the periodic table to you?

Bright teenagers are a disappearing breed, an alarming new study has revealed. The intellectual ability of the country's cleverest youngsters has declined radically, almost certainly due to the rise of TV and computer games and over-testing in schools. The 'high-level thinking' skills of 14-year-olds are now on a par with those of 12-year-olds in 1976.

The findings contradict national results which have shown a growth in top grades in SATs at 14, GCSEs and A-levels. But Michael Shayer, the professor of applied psychology who led the study, believes that is the result of exam standards 'edging down'. His team of researchers at London's King's College tested 800 13 and 14-year-olds and compared the results with a similar exercise in 1976.

The tests were intended to measure understanding of abstract scientific concepts such as volume, density, quantity and weight, which set pupils up for success not only in maths and science but also in English and history. One test asked pupils to study a pendulum swinging on a string and investigate the factors that cause it to change speed. A second involved weights on a beam. In the pendulum test, average achievement was much the same as in 1976.

But the proportion of teenagers reaching top grades, demanding a 'higher level of thinking', slumped dramatically. Just over one in ten were at that level, down from one in four in 1976. In the second test, assessing mathematical thinking skills, just one in 20 pupils were achieving the high grades - down from one in five in 1976.

Professor Shayer said: 'The pendulum test does not require any knowledge of science at all. 'It looks at how people can deal with complex information and sort it out for themselves.' He believes most of the downturn has occurred over the last ten to 15 years. It may have been hastened by the introduction of national curriculum testing and accompanying targets, which have cut the time available for teaching which develops more advanced skills.

Critics say schools concentrate instead on drilling children for the tests. 'The moment you introduce targets, people will find the most economical strategies to achieve them,' said Professor Shayer. 'In the case of education, I'm sure this has had an effect on driving schools away from developing higher levels of understanding.' He added that while the numeracy hour in primary schools appears to have led to some gains, it has 'squeezed out a lot of things teachers might otherwise be doing'.

Professor Shayer believes the decline in brainpower is also linked to changes in children's leisure activities. The advent of multi-channel TV has encouraged passive viewing while computer games, particularly for boys, are feared to have supplanted time spent playing with tools, gadgets and other mechanisms.

Professor Shayer warned that without the development of higher-order thinking skills, the future supply of scientists will be compromised. 'We don't even have enough scientists now,' he said.

Previous research by Professor Shayer has shown that 11-year-olds' grasp of concepts such as volume, density, quantity and weight appears to have declined over the last 30 years. Their mental abilities were up to three years behind youngsters tested in in 1975.

His latest findings, due to appear in the British Journal of Educational Psychology, come in the wake of a report by Dr Aric Sigman which linked the decline in intellectual ability to a shift away from art and craft skills in both schools and the home. Dr Sigman said practical activities such as building models and sandcastles, making dens, using tools, playing with building blocks, knitting, sewing and woodwork were being neglected. Yet they helped develop vital skills such as understanding dimension, volume and density.

Earlier this month the Government bowed to mounting pressure and scrapped SATs for 14-year-olds. Ministers have also created an independent exams watchdog and promised a return to traditional, open-ended questions at A-level plus a new A* grade to mark out the brightest students. A spokesman for the Department for Children said last night: 'Good teachers do not need to teach to the test and there is no evidence that such practice is widespread. 'We have already taken steps to reduce the testing burden, but targets and testing are integral features of any work to drive up standards.'

Last month an Ofsted report said millions of teenagers were finishing compulsory education with a weak grasp of maths because half of the country's schools fail to teach the subject as well as they could. Inspectors said teachers were increasingly drilling pupils to pass exams instead of encouraging them to understand crucial concepts. The report said: 'It is of vital importance to shift from a narrow emphasis towards a focus on pupils' mathematical understanding.'



Source




Australia: Stupid Leftist school "discipline" system a failure

All they do is nag misbehaving kids

A battle is brewing to contain a 26 per cent spike in students being suspended from Queensland schools over the past three years. The alarming wave of aggressive and disrespectful behaviour from southeast and north Queensland students comes as the Government pours another $28.6 million into "positive behaviour strategies" this financial year.

Education Queensland's prolonged trial of the Schoolwide Positive Behaviour Support program now runs in one in six of Queensland's 1250 state schools. But an arsenal of strategies including the costly SWPBS appears to have done little yet to curb problem behaviour. Brisbane and Sunshine Coast schools issued 31 per cent more suspensions and 11 per cent more expulsions in 2007-08 than in 2005-06. During the same period, suspensions rose 25 per cent at Gold Coast and Ipswich region schools, and 22 per cent in and around Townsville.

Last week, The Courier-Mail received a flood of messages from readers concerned about "soft" disciplinary codes, particularly the inability of teachers to use the threat of force, or simple punishments to exert control. The Responsible Thinking Classrooms approach was criticised. This is where bullies and other troublemakers go for "time out" after being asked a series of questions.

In such scenarios troublemakers are asked: "What are you doing? What are the rules? What happens when you break the rules? Is that what you want to happen? What do you want now? What will happen if you disrupt again?". The effectiveness of Positive Learning Centres, where suspended students undergo behaviour programs at one of 14 non-school facilities, also came under fire. The new SWPBS program includes the RTC time-out approach but academics, psychologists and politicians yesterday said it did not work in many instances.

While Griffith University school of education's Fiona Bryer backed the latest schoolwide approach for being evidence-based, she questioned the use of RTCs. "If this is repeated and there's no change in student behaviour then the student definitely wins," Dr Bryer said. The education behavioural specialist said she was "definitely anti-punishment" but said errant students needed clearly defined consequences. Dr Bryer said parents and teachers needed to be trained in proven behavioural techniques and it was critical the Government shared and acted on the data collated from SWPBS.

Psychologist Michael Carr-Greg said time-outs and talks might work for some, but it was important to get a primary schooler's behaviour corrected before high school.

A spokeswoman for Education Minister Rod Welford said positive results had been gleaned from the SWPBS trials. "Data shows that the program helps reduce problem behaviour and increases academic performance," she said.

Opposition education spokesman John-Paul Langbroek said the statistics on suspensions called for change. "What's happening at the moment isn't working," he said. Mr Langbroek said if elected the state Liberal National Party would employ 50 new teachers trained in behaviour management at a cost of $16 million over four years, to combat the problem.

Source





27 October, 2008

NEA hugely politicized

NEA members and families are a unique and rich voting bloc poised to make a difference in November. With less than two weeks remaining in the 2008 campaign, the National Education Association is fully engaged in an unprecedented effort to mobilize its members and their families to elect friends of public education at the national, state and local levels.

"Watch NEA members and their families on election night if you want to know the outcome of races across the country," said NEA President Dennis Van Roekel. "Our members are in every precinct, county, congressional district and state. Given our unique demographic makeup - women, rural and suburban members - we are the typical swing voter of the 2008 election." Swing voters?? What a laugh. Obamatrons, more likely] NEA is a huge voting bloc with 3.2 million members. When immediate family members are factored in, that audience grows to more than 5 million potential voters.

"In the last two weeks of the campaign, our focus is on getting our members and their families to the polls," said Van Roekel. "We are uniquely positioned to make a difference in closely contested races up and down the ticket."

In 15 presidential battleground states targeted by NEA, members and their families comprise 2.3 million potential voters. And in what the campaign experts identify as states rich with swing voters that could tip the election, NEA is poised to capitalize on the strength of its members. In Florida, NEA members and their families include 309,915 potential voters; North Carolina, 128,769; Colorado, 78,499; and New Hampshire, 34,904.

The number of NEA members and their families eligible to vote are equally impressive when other targeted races are considered. In four gubernatorial races targeted by NEA - Indiana, North Carolina, Missouri, and Washington - there are almost half a million possible voters comprised of members and their families. In 11 Senate races targeted by NEA, almost three-fourths of a million voters are up for grabs. Similarly, in 54 congressional races targeted by NEA, there are almost 900,000 potential voters among members and their families.

In addition to traditional phone banking and canvassing operations running through Election Day, NEA members from non- targeted or battleground states are volunteering to canvass and make calls to voters in battleground states. Two hundred California Teachers Association members, for example, made calls to northern Nevada during a recent meeting. Members from Illinois volunteered in Iowa and Indiana, and New Jersey members drove to Pennsylvania recently. This weekend, members from Delaware and Maryland are canvassing and phone banking in the battleground state of Pennsylvania.

NEA also is employing multifaceted, personalized communication tools based on micro-targeting models. NEA is communicating with members and their families in unprecedented ways - via Web sites, emails, blogs, mail and cable ads. For example, in October, NEA launched a new Web site and distributed a mailer to undecided members in battleground states pointing out Sen. McCain's wrongheaded prescription plan for what ails America's health care system. The Web site, www.mccainhealthcaretax.com , enables members and their families to check the facts about McCain's plan and lobby him to change his position. More generally, NEA and its affiliates to date have:

-- Distributed more than 21.3 million pieces of mail

-- Made more than 2.1 million phone calls

-- Sent more than 1.3 million emails to members in battleground states

-- Began defining John McCain in the spring, sending 2 million pieces of mail before Labor Day.

The National Education Association is the nation's largest professional employee organization, representing 3.2 million elementary and secondary teachers, higher education faculty, education support professionals, school administrators, retired educators and students preparing to become teachers.

Source




Britain: Must they know about sex at five?

One thing stumps me about the news that the Government is to provide compulsory "sex and relationships" lessons for children from the age of five: how much can there really be to say?

On the subject of relationships, obviously, one could go on forever, recommending lengthy homework on everything from Jane Austen to Leonard Cohen lyrics. On sex, I would have thought there was rather less to discuss: one could surely exhaust the topics of contraception, pregnancy, abortion and sexually transmitted diseases in a matter of weeks at the age of 11, perhaps with a brief refresher course at 13. After that, in what precise style young people proceed with sex in later life is surely a matter for them: there must be some areas to which even the omnipresent hand of the nanny state does not reach.

The news that there will now be a "naming of parts" session for five-year-olds, however - in which they learn the correct words for genitals and the differences between the sexes - gives me the creeps. By the age of five, many children have their own names for their private parts, often of a friendly, silly variety that will do them perfectly well until they are older. Is there really any point in school insisting on teaching them otherwise?

If a friend or relative suddenly insisted on lecturing your five-year-old about the official name for their genitals, apropos of nothing, I imagine they would be asked to shut up pretty sharpish. I am at something of a loss as to why this interference should be thought preferable coming from a primary teacher. And yet a sex education comic - Let's Grow With Nisha and Joe - is already being promoted to primary schools. We learned to read with Dick and Dora: I shudder to think what they would do with that pair today.

The great irony in the Government setting itself up as the supreme educator on sexual and emotional matters is that, when it is given the task of actually looking after confused and vulnerable children all by itself, it is the worst parent imaginable. Girls who have grown up in care are sexually active earlier than other teenagers, and are 2.5 times more likely to become pregnant. A quarter of girls leaving care are already mothers or pregnant.

These girls are subjected to the same sex education at school as everyone else: I would be extremely surprised if any of them did not know in theory how to avoid having a baby. The real point, surely, is that they do not greatly want to avoid it. The emotional isolation they experience during their period in the unfeeling British care system means that they gravitate towards men as a source of affection and attention. The prospect of motherhood then offers them both an acknowledged social status and perhaps a reason for continued financial support from the state. Their early pregnancy is entirely logical, for any state that cares to read its own shortcomings written in the logic.

This, to a lesser degree, holds true for very many teenage girls who "accidentally" find themselves pregnant. The phenomenon is not helped by the fact that at the moment there is a wealth of information on what it means to have sex and very little on what it means to be in sole charge of a small baby that cries round the clock.

I believe in the good sense of basic sex education at school for older children, even if my own was pretty much confined to a terrifying film of a woman giving birth, and a hilarious, crackling 1960s film about male puberty called From Boy to Man. (We never got to see From Girl to Woman, despite being primed for yet more helpless laughter: the projector broke.)

There is a danger, however, that any philosophy that mainly concentrates on the somewhat deceptive notion of "safe sex" and the judicious use of contraception is in fact misleading. If a teenager doesn't think that he or she is ready for the life-changing complications that might arise from sex - and few are - then the best advice is not to do it at all. Otherwise, they should be warned that contraception is very far from infallible, and they would be advised to double up on their methods.

I yearn for the day when "sex and relationships" lessons actually do something to make teenage behaviour wiser, and when lessons include: "Just because he sleeps with you doesn't mean he loves you" and "New mum Mary can't go out for two years. It's 3am and the baby's screaming with colic." Sadly, the glum news that Jim Knight, the Schools Minister, has decided instead to start badgering the nation's five-year-olds into naming their private parts doesn't lead me to think that will happen any time soon.

More here





26 October, 2008

Big Labor Does Gay Marriage

Because a teachers' union has other priorities besides education

Here's a pop quiz: Who's donated the most money to an effort in California to defeat Proposition 8, an initiative on the November 4 ballot that would define marriage as between a man and a woman in the state?

A) Gay-advocacy organizations

B) Civil-rights groups

C) The California Teachers Association

If you guessed "C," you understand the nature of modern liberal politics. And if you didn't, perhaps you're wondering what exactly gay marriage has to do with K-12 public education. The high school dropout rate is 1-in-4 in California and 1-in-3 in the Los Angeles public school system, odds that worsen considerably among black and Hispanic children. So you might think the CTA, the state's largest teachers' union, would have other priorities.

Yet last week the union donated $1 million to the "No on Proposition 8" campaign. Of the roughly $3 million raised by opponents of the measure so far, $1.25 million has come from the teachers' union. "What does this cause have to do with education?" said Randy Peart, a public school teacher in San Juan who was contacted by a local television station. "Why not put that money into classrooms, into making a better place for these kids?"

In fact, the CTA and its parent organization, the National Education Association, have used tens of millions of dollars in mandatory teachers' dues to advance all manner of left-wing political causes. And members like Ms. Peart are right to ask questions. In some years barely a third of the NEA's budget has gone toward improving the lot of teachers themselves.

In addition to vigorously fighting school choice and other reforms that benefit underprivileged children but threaten the public education monopoly, the NEA has directly (or via state affiliates) bankrolled Acorn, the Democratic Leadership Council, the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation and, naturally, the Human Rights Campaign, which lobbies for "lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equal rights." Public school teachers of America, take note. This is your dues money at work.

Source




British exam board told to dumb down High School science exam to make it easier to pass

20% is a "pass" in some British exams. In other words, you pass while having learned virtually nothing about the subject

England's largest exam board has been forced to make its science GCSE easier because it was too difficult for pupils to get a good pass. The Assessment and Qualifications Alliance said it had lowered the mark needed to achieve a grade C in the exam 'under protest'. It had reluctantly agreed to a request from England's new qualifications regulator, Ofqual, to bring it into line with the level set by rival exam boards. This is the first time that an exam board has publicly questioned the standard of one of its own papers. The step also casts serious doubt on Government claims that exam standards are being maintained.

The controversy relates to a new GCSE science exam taken by more than half a million pupils this summer. It had already been attacked for reducing the factual knowledge required. But it has now emerged that in early August, England's three exam boards asked Ofqual to adjudicate after they failed to reach agreement on setting comparable grade boundaries. The Times Educational Supplement claims that rival board Edexcel awarded C grades in a paper for one of its new science courses to pupils scoring only 20 per cent.

On August 7, just two weeks before results were due to be published, Ofqual wrote to AQA asking it to reduce the boundary for the grade C below what the board had calculated was necessary to maintain standards. Ofqual said the 'least problematic solution' was for AQA to bring its grade C into line with the others.

On August 12, Mike Cresswell, AQA director general, replied, saying: 'AQA is extremely reluctant to adopt a standard which is less comparable with the past than it needs to be.' Ofqual wrote back claiming that all the exam boards believed their grade boundaries maintained standards. Dr Cresswell told the TES: 'We would have preferred a solution that promoted standards that were a little more consistent with those of 2007.'

Professor Alan Smithers, of the Centre for Education and Employment Research at Buckingham University, said Ofqual was failing in its duty to maintain standards 'by accepting the lowest common denominator on offer'.

Source





25 October, 2008

Anatomy of an Evil Agenda

Teaching for "social justice", a la William Ayers, is intended to subvert more than educate

William Ayers has received considerable attention recently, due to his association with presidential candidate Barack Obama. Ayers' past as a member of the violent radical Weatherman faction in the 1960s is well-known. He does not repudiate his bomb-building escapades in the 1960s-he continues to refer to himself as "a radical, Leftist, small `c' communist," (as he did in 1995). Yet somehow, despite that past, and despite the occasional nose-thumbing incident, such as stomping on the American flag in 2001, he has achieved a level of respectability as a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

While some, like the New York Times' Frank Rich, might describe him as somebody involved "in education reform," the facts are that he has merely traded in his bombs for books. Quite possibly he is doing far more damage with the latter than he ever did with the former.

Ayers is an ardent and leading proponent of the American version of the "Social Justice" (or critical pedagogy) movement in education. While this philosophy might sound benevolent, it is in fact a thinly veiled mechanism intended to bring about world-wide socialism. Not only has Ayers gained entry into the educational mainstream, but the concept of Teaching for Social Justice, (the title of a popular 1998 book of essays edited by Ayers) is rapidly gaining acceptance throughout the education school establishment.

The sacred scroll of the social-justice-in-education movement is the book Pedagogy of the Oppressed, written by Paolo Freire in 1968. Freire was a Brazilian educator who developed his theories as a teacher in the impoverished hinterlands of northeast Brazil. His work has been closely linked with the liberation theology movement, which blends elements of Marxism with Catholicism. Liberation theology began in Brazil in the 1950s, spread throughout Latin America, and has been soundly condemned by the last two Popes.

Freire's book begins with a philosophical exposition on the nature of social justice. It takes some doing to cut through his dense prose, but it is necessary to understand both the movement and the pedagogy. His writing on social justice, as can be seen below, leaves no doubt that his book is a call for subversion and revolution. He then describes the foundation for his new "pedagogy." This Clarion Call article provides a concise explanation of his theory's main points, followed by some greater detail and concrete examples of the pedagogy gleaned from Ayers' Teaching for Social Justice." These later examples will reveal just how dangerous this movement is, and just how unhinged many of its proponents are.

There are four states of human existence in Freire's world. He divides the world into two primary types: oppressors and oppressed-mirroring the communist division into opposing classes of bourgeois and proletariat. There are also former oppressors who have chosen to identify with the oppressed-we are all familiar with the well-heeled revolutionaries who claim to be for the "people" (such as Ayers). Such radicals cannot, according to Freire, attempt to improve the lot of the oppressed by acting as an elite leadership seeking followers. They must instead strive for solidarity with the oppressed by sharing their existence and by learning to see the world through the eyes of the oppressed by a process of "dialogue." Only by doing so can they earn the right to share their own knowledge and experiences to enlighten the oppressed.

The ultimate goal of the oppressed is to achieve the final state, that of "humanity," (a heightened state of consciousness in which the concept of justice is the primary concern). To achieve humanity, the oppressed must raise their consciousness through dialogue with the world, then throw off their oppressors by their own efforts. Gradual reform by a benevolent government born of oppression does not help--Freire insists that it is based on a "false charity" intended to maintain the power of the oppressors. Freire regarded traditional education as an important means by which the oppressors retain authority-he wanted instead to create a pedagogy to subvert and take control away from them.

Following from the idea that there can be no gradual reform by an oppressive regime, there can only be oppression or the process of revolution. Freire did not specify that a takeover must be violent, but violence is considered acceptable-he stated that the existence of oppressors is the result of violence, therefore any violence done in return is justified: "With the establishment of oppression, violence has already begun. Never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed."

And the uprising is absolved of excesses conducted in the founding of the new regime: "[T]he restraints imposed by the former oppressed on their oppressors, so that they cannot reassume their former position, does not constitute oppression."

Social justice, as defined by Freire, is a permanent process, not a final destination. For the oppressed cannot, upon achieving their liberation, develop the same sort of domineering bureaucracy and regulations as their former oppressors, or they will become oppressors themselves. They must instead continue the process of social justice, striving for further humanity and throwing off oppression wherever it exists.

This bears an eerie resemblance to the Maoist concept of "permanent revolution," possibly the worst form of governance ever created. In its most complete implementation, it cut the population of Cambodia literally in half in just a few years through genocide, forced labor, economic decline, and the voluntary exile of anybody who could escape. Maosim was popular among leftist Latin American intellectuals when Freire wrote his book-around the same time, a Peruvian professor founded the ultra-violent Maoist revolutionary group Sendero Luminosa (Shining Path) which continues to this day.

Traditional education was described by Freire as a "banking model," in which teachers "deposit" selected information "into" passive students. "Knowledge [in an oppressive society] is a gift bestowed by those who consider themselves knowledgeable upon those whom they consider to know nothing," he said of this model. "Projecting an absolute ignorance onto others [is a] characteristic of the ideology of oppression..."

The central element of teaching for social justice is intended to address the supposed tyranny of the banking model--teachers must learn from their students, much as well-heeled revolutionaries must learn from the oppressed people they wish to liberate. "Through dialogue, the teacher-of-the-students and the students-of-the-teacher cease to exist and a new term emerges: teacher-student and student-teachers" who are "jointly responsible for a process in which both grow," Freire explained.

He described the mechanics of this joint process: "The teacher presents the material to the students for their consideration, and reconsiders her earlier considerations as the students express their own." A classroom run according to such consensus-building is likely to descend into chaos. This seemed not to worry Freire-he was more concerned that a disciplined approach to teaching could be part of the oppressors' supposed plot to control the masses.

Some other important principle of Freire's pedagogy are that teaching must be relevant to the lives of students, and that students and teachers alike must act upon their new sensibilities to achieve "humanity." He suggested that "students, as they are increasingly posed with problems relating to themselves in the world," will feel increasingly challenged and obliged to respond to that challenge."

Yet, with a remarkable lack of self-awareness, or perhaps intentional disguise, he provided his readers with few examples to which they can relate-he never gave us a clear impression exactly who the oppressors are. It may be that, in rural 1960s Brazil, the gap between rich and poor was so stark that there was no cause to explain. But it is far more difficult for a resident of a prosperous modern welfare-state with a high degree of social mobility like the United States to derive meaning from "Pedagogy for the Oppressed" without concrete examples.

That missing context and clarity is provided by Freire's American followers. Maxine Greene, Ayers' former teacher at Columbia who introduced him to Freire's theories, very clearly stated who is responsible for the world's inhumanity in Teaching for Social Justice, for which she wrote an introduction. The oppressors are "ordinarily the white, the privileged, the male."

Race (specifically, the inhumanity of whites) is one of the dominant themes of Teaching for Social Justice. America's "oppressed" largely come from the inner-city minority underclass. Rachel Koch, another contributor to the book wrote, "[M]ost white people have been indoctrinated into identification with the upper-class white elites who oppress them too. As bell hooks has pointed out, in our society all whites are bonded together through white supremacy."

Race is not the only criterion for oppression, however. Greene also described oppression as what many might feel is the best of America: "the drumbeat of the free market, of individual responsibility, of the uses of efficiency, of character education and training in the `virtues.'"

Greene nearly indicates that almost anything can be defined as oppression, as long as the person defining it is sympathetic to the cause of social justice. She offered some concrete examples that range from the out-of-date to the silly. Real past injustices, such as Frederick Douglass' experiences with slavery in the early 19th century, are equated to an American woman poet in 1994 claiming to suffer an "imposed passivity" and "media indoctrination" and feelings of being controlled by the "airwaves and classrooms."

This blurring of emotions and facts is common in the social justice movement, and extends to the classroom as well. Several contributors to Teaching for Social Justice" described their use of the "storyline method," in which all the children in their class communally create a narrative on a topic relevant to their lives, and "academic skills such as writing, computation and research are woven throughout this integrated approach." That topic chosen was homelessness-the children all created homeless characters for themselves.....

More here




California school holds surprise 'Gay' Day for kindergartners

Parents outraged at public elementary's secretive 'coming out' event

Some parents are shocked to find their children are learning to be homosexual allies and will participate in "Coming Out Day" at a public elementary school tomorrow - and they claim the school failed to notify parents. One mother of a kindergartner who attends Faith Ringgold School of Art and Science, a K-8 charter school in Hayward, Calif., said she asked her 5-year-old daughter what she was learning at school. The little girl replied, "We're learning to be allies."

The mother also said a Gay Straight Alliance club regularly meets in the kindergarten classroom during lunch. According to a Pacific Justice Institute report, Faith Ringgold opted not to inform the parents of its pro-homosexual activities beforehand. The school is celebrating "Gay and Lesbian History Month" and is in the process of observing "Ally Week," a pro-"gay" occasion usually geared toward high school students.

The school is scheduled to host discussions about families and has posted fliers on school grounds portraying only homosexuals. According to the report, a "TransAction Gender-Bender Read-Aloud" will take place Nov. 20. Students will listen to traditional stories with "gay" or transgender twists, to include "Jane and the Beanstalk."

Some parents only recently noticed posters promoting the school's "Coming Out Day" tomorrow - celebrated 12 days after the national "Coming Out Day" usually observed on Oct. 11. When WND contacted the school to confirm the event, a female representative replied, "Yes, it is scheduled on our calendar."

When asked if the school made any efforts to inform parents, she refused to answer and said Hayward Unified School District would have to respond to additional questions. However, the district did not answer its phones or e-mails, and a voicemail recording would not take messages. "Coming Out Day" is not listed on the district's online school calendar.

Some of the parents contacted Pacific Justice Institute for representation when they learned the school was pushing pro-"gay" events for young children without warning. Brad Dacus, president of Pacific Justice Institute, said opponents of California's proposed ban on same-sex marriage, or Proposition 8, often say the measure would not have an effect on public schools - but this is one of many recent developments that prove otherwise.

"Do we need any further proof that gay activists will target children as early as possible?" he asked. "Opponents of traditional marriage keep telling us that Prop. 8 has nothing to do with education. In reality, they want to push the gay lifestyle on kindergartners, and we can only imagine how much worse it will be if Prop. 8 is defeated. This is not a scenario most Californians want replayed in their elementary schools."

Source





24 October, 2008

Effective Interactions With African-American Males

There is a new course being offered at UNC-Wilmington in the spring semester of 2009. Before I go any further, let me assure you that I'm not making this up. The course, called "Effective Interactions with African-American Males," is offered for credit in both the Social Work and Education departments. Unbelievably, it is offered, not just for senior credit, but for potential graduate credit, too. A brief course description may help readers understand why I've asserted for years that social work and education are in a tight race to determine which can become the most intellectually vacuous and least relevant discipline in academia. I've reprinted each of the two paragraphs of the course description with a few questions for the professor (Dr. Lethardus Goggins II) following each paragraph:

"Using an African-centered philosophical worldview and a racial socialization framework, this class will use participatory education to equip undergraduate and/or graduate students, to "better" understand and effectively work alongside and with young adult African-American men. The core tenets underlying this class are racial oppression exists, matters, is ubiquitous and pernicious and that those most affected are often ignorant of this reality."

1. A university course using an "African-centered worldview" is deemed to be chic. Could a course call itself "white-centered" or even "European-centered" and garner the same enthusiasm from the diversity crowd?

2. If your answer to #1 was "no," is the diversity crowd really diverse?

3. Does "racial socialization" include constant discussion of race on behalf of social work professors? If they could ever shut up, could we as a country experience "racial un-socialization"? Wouldn't that be better?

4. Why the derisive quotes around "better"? Is there some suggestion that whites are not at all good at understanding and working around black males?

5. What if I am a postmodernist and believe that racial oppression really isn't an objective truth? What if my truth is that racial oppression exists only in social work and education classes?

6. Are the terms "ubiquitous" and "pernicious" African-centered or European-centered? What about the term "ignorant"?

7. Blacks (about 12% of the population) usually choose a white victim when committing armed robbery. Aside from carrying a handgun, how do whites make those interactions with African-American males more effective?

"Students will critically examine the social and emotional effects of racism on academic, occupational, cultural and relational well-being of African-American males. Students will discuss relevant readings, media analysis, community-based research, and self-reflection. Students will also examine and develop strategies to restore a healthy definition of African-American manhood and its significance for self, family, and community relationships; culminating in a community restoration initiative proposal."

8. Will students in "Effective Interactions with African-American Males" critically examine split infinitives?

9. Will the "relevant readings" in this course include articles by Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, and John McWhorter?

10. How much class time will be spent on self-reflection?

11. Does today's college student really need to spend more time thinking about himself?

12. Does self-reflection ever lead to self-absorption? Does it ever lead to greater social consciousness, or concern for others?

13. Has there not already been enough talk about African American males' "manhood"? Isn't most of it stereotypical?

14. What would happen if you talked to a member of the Crips or the Bloods about "self," "family," and "community relationships"? Do you think he might pop a cap in your ass? Do you think he might make you his girlfriend?

15. How do I learn more about this "community restoration initiative proposal"? Will it be submitted to a community organizer?

16. And, finally, why were copies of your new course description sent to the Upperman African American Cultural Center? How can we have effective interactions with you when you continue to segregate yourselves from us?

I once believed the diversity crowd when it claimed an interest in bringing blacks and whites together for more meaningful interaction. Now I see them as specious and downright deceptive. I almost detect a colored quality in their statements.

Source




Bill Ayers' Scary Plans for Public Schools

Will William Ayers be secretary of education in a Barack Obama administration? All parents should ponder that possibility before making their choice for president on Nov. 4. After all, Ayers is a friend of Obama, and professor Ayers's expertise is training teachers and developing public school curriculum. That's been his mission since he gave up planting bombs in government buildings (including the U.S. Capitol and the Pentagon) and assaulting police officers.

Ayers brashly admitted that he was "guilty as hell" in planting bombs in the 1970s, and that he has no regrets and feels that he and his Weather Underground associates "didn't do enough." After successfully avoiding trial and prison because of legal technicalities, he picked up his Ph.D. at Columbia Teachers College for a second career, landing a tenured job as distinguished professor of education at the University of Illinois in Chicago.

Ayers's political views are as radical now as they were in the 1970s. "Viva President Chavez!" he exclaimed in a speech in Venezuela in 2006, in which he also declared, "education is the motor-force of revolution."

From his prestigious and safe university position, Ayers has been teaching teachers and students in rebellion against American capitalism and what he calls "imperialism" and "oppression." The code words for the Ayers curriculum are "social justice," a "transformative" vision, "critical pedagogy," "liberation," "capitalist injustices," "critical race theory," "queer theory," and of course multiculturalism and feminism.

That language is typical in the readings that Ayers assigns in his university courses. He admits he is a "communist street fighter" who has been influenced by Karl Marx, as well as Che Guevara, Ho Chi Minh and Malcolm X.

Ayers speaks openly of his desire to use America's public school classrooms to train a generation of revolutionaries who will overturn the U.S. social and economic regime. He teaches that America is oppressive and unjust, socialism is the solution, and wealth and resources should be redistributed.

In Ayers's course called "On Urban Education," he calls for a "distribution of material and human resources." His left-wing notions would be very compatible with those of Obama, who publicly told Joe the Plumber that we should "spread the wealth."

Ayers's books are among the most widely used in America's education schools. Ayers even uses science and math courses as part of his "transformative" political strategy to teach that the American economic system is unjust.

Ayers is an endorser of a book called "Queering Elementary Education" by William J. Letts IV and James T. Sears, a collection of essays to teach adults and children to "think queerly." The blurb on the cover quotes Ayers as saying this is "a book for all teachers . and, yes, it has an agenda."

Unfortunately, Ayers's far-out education theories are already having an effect in education schools. One after another, teachers colleges are using their courses to promote socialist notions of wealth distribution, "social justice," diversity and environmentalism, and to punish students who resist this indoctrination by giving them low grades or even denying them graduation.

The U.S. Department of Education lists 15 high schools whose mission statements declare that their curricula center on "social justice."

Propaganda about Obama is already finding favor with textbook publishers. The McDougal Littell 8th-grade advanced-English literature book (copyright 2008, Houghton Mifflin Co.) has 15 pages featuring Obama and his "life of service."

Most of Ayers's socialist propaganda is financed with taxpayer money at state universities and teachers colleges. Some of the schools that have adopted Ayers-style pedagogy have received grants from ACORN or from Bill Gates' charitable foundation.

You might assume that Ayers's political ideas would put him on the outer fringe of the left-wing education establishment. However, his peers recently elected him to serve as vice president for curriculum in the American Education Research Association, the largest organization of education school professors and researchers.

Is an appointment to the U.S. Department of Education his next career advancement? Is Ayers's transformative public school curriculum the kind of "change" Obama will bring us?

Source





23 October, 2008

Quis docebit ipsos magistes?

Literacy tests for trainee British teachers show that those who can't spell, teach

Thousands of trainee teachers are struggling to pass literacy tests that require them to spell words such as anxiety, relieved and mathematical. More than 11,000 trainee teachers, just over a quarter of the annual intake, failed to pass the literacy test last year at their first attempt, an increase of 16 per cent since 2001. The findings have prompted concern that new teachers may be struggling with the basic skills they will be charged with passing on to pupils.

David Laws, the Liberal Democrat schools spokesman, said: "Spelling is a key basic skill. We need a renewed focus on getting the basics right. "As the number of applicants being accepted on to teaching courses rises, we need to be sure that this isn't being coupled with a decline in standards. The existing minimum qualifications for people wanting to become teachers are too low." Mr Laws said that the economic slowdown should be used as an opportunity to promote teaching as a profession and attract top graduates.

The tests, which are taken online by students training for primary and secondary schools, are designed to raise standards in the profession. Trainees can take them as many times as they want.

Although teachers must have good GCSE passes in English, maths and science and a degree to work in English state schools, the tests were introduced in 2000/01 amid concerns that teacher training did not provide a sufficient grounding in the basics. The figures, obtained by the Liberal Democrats in a Commons written answer, show that the failure rate in numeracy has also risen since the tests were first introduced. Last year 20,000 trainee teachers failed to pass the numeracy test at the first attempt. On average, around half the students had to take the test twice before passing. In ICT, 4,000 failed the test first time.

Research this year from the Spelling Society found that more than half of adults could not spell embarrassed or millennium. A quarter struggled with definitely, accidentally and separate.

The survey found that Britons blame the current state of poor spelling on parents and teachers, with three out of four people believing that spelling among children is worse now than it was ten years ago.

The Department for Children, Schools and Families said that the quality of teacher training had never been higher. "The vast majority of trainee teachers pass all three tests first time round and the bottom line is that no one can start teaching until they have passed them," the department said. "More top-quality teachers than ever before are entering the profession from industry, the public sector and universities, thanks to highest-ever pay levels, golden hellos, better behaviour and discipline, and slashed paperwork."

The Training and Development Agency for Schools said that the average pass rate across all three subjects was more than 83 per cent.

Source




DYSFUNCTIONAL EDUCATION IN AUSTRALIA

Three current articles below

Literacy skills shock for NSW public schools

Only North shore (affluent area) kids do well. Once again "modern" methods fail the poor

One in five children at NSW public schools is at or below minimum literacy levels, with little real improvement despite a large increase in Government spending, a new report has found. And children in country areas generally fare worse than their city cousins, with the gap increasing. "Compared to 10 years ago, the NSW Government has spent over three times more money on improving literacy and numeracy, yet there has been little real improvement," NSW Auditor-General Peter Achterstraat said in his report. "The problem is that children that are at risk are not being adequately identified and are difficult to track through the education system."

The report found that the NSW Department of Education should have a greater focus on the child at risk, not on the school in which he or she is enrolled, and that there needs to be better training for teachers of those children most at risk. "Our children are the most important asset that our society has, and if we don't focus more closely on them now as individuals, then we are failing in our responsibility to the next generation," Mr Achterstraat said. "Just as importantly, we have a responsibility to the community in planning a better future for NSW."

The report found that the percentage of students below the minimum level for literacy was 14 per cent for western NSW, the worst in the state, followed by 12.2 per cent in New England and 11.4 per cent in both the Riverina and on the North Coast. The best area for literacy was northern Sydney's 1.4 per cent, in contrast to 10.8 per cent in the city's south-west.

With numeracy, the percentage of students below the minimum level was 13.5 per cent in western NSW, while the best was 2 per cent in northern Sydney, and 10.8 per cent in the south-west of the city. In broad terms, indigenous students were two to three times worse than other students.

Source




Out of control schools in poor area

Nothing that old-fashioned discipline wouldn't cure.

UP to 22 students a day are suspended from a school in Brisbane's south which can't cope with soaring levels of violent and extreme behaviour. The Queensland Teachers' Union made the shocking claim as 3000 of its members continued rolling strikes to highlight disadvantage at 54 Logan-Albert-Beaudesert schools. [A lower socio-economic area]

The union said inadequate funding contributed to escalating violence at schools in the region where students regularly assaulted or threatened staff and their peers. Smoking, drugs, truancy, abusive language and unsafe behaviours like tackling were other common triggers for suspension. The Courier-Mail recently reported suspensions were up 25 per cent at Gold Coast and Ipswich schools, which includes those in Logan and Beaudesert, since 2005-06.

"A Logan high school has had up to 22 suspensions a day," former Logan teacher and QTU organiser Penny Spalding said. "For some of those schools it's not uncommon, so (an administrator's and teacher's) workload is tremendous. "It's getting worse and I think society understands teenage behaviour is getting more challenging."

QTU president Steve Ryan said this week's strikes, which end today, were aimed at drawing an additional $40 million from the Government in a "needs-based" approach to unique problems facing Logan-Albert and Beaudesert schools.

Education Queensland said yesterday it could not confirm nor deny that a Logan school handed out 22 suspensions a day because it had no school-by-school data. A spokeswoman for Education Minister Rod Welford said he recognised the challenges of schools in low socio-economic areas. She said the department had invested $1.7 million to tackle truancy and improve outcomes at large state schools in economically disadvantaged areas.

It is common practice to put suspended students into out-of-school Positive Learning Centres, where trained behavioural teachers implement behaviour modification programs. However, when a student's behaviour disrupts the class but does not warrant suspension they are often sent to what Education Queensland has dubbed Responsible Thinking Classrooms. "Schools are having to beg, borrow and steal to run them," Ms Spalding said. "They are the lifeline of some of these Logan schools."

The union claimed the region's schools needed more behaviour management resources and staff, particularly for Prep to Year 3 and Year 8 classes. A Queensland Teachers' Union spokeswoman said the parents of some Logan/Beaudesert region students spoke little English and were not involved enough in their child's education, both traits associated with low socio-economic areas.

Source




Leftist bigotry in schools

At one of Sydney's best private girls schools, Year 8 geography students opened their term three materials on changing global relationships to read the following definition: "Globalisation is what happens when you lose your job in Brunswick, Bankstown or Elizabeth because the company for which you work has been bought out by the Australian subsidiary of a Dallas-based transnational company that has decided to relocate its production of T-shirts to Mexico because of cheaper wage costs and lower health and safety standards."

Assuming it was a scholarly attempt to provoke robust debate, I searched the students' materials for the other side to the globalisation and free-trade story. Alas, there wasn't one. No facts explaining how globalisation and trade have lifted millions of people out of poverty, improving living standards, mortality rates, education, training and the like.

The geography teacher who stands in front of his teenage students is surely entitled to his view that globalisation is an evil force. He is not, however, entitled to use his position to indoctrinate his young charges. And that is why, as his students edge towards their final school years, facing assessments and exams that will determine their future, they should have a copy of Mark Lopez's The Little Black Schoolbook tucked away in their schoolbags. Launched last week in Melbourne, Lopez's book is aimed at exposing the bias within the classroom so that students can turn it to their advantage rather than bombing in exams by courageously trying to tackle the received political wisdom in schools and universities.

Expect howls of derision from critics who deny that teachers express and impose political orthodoxy in the classroom. But Lopez, a high school tutor, has seen many of his students submit brilliant work only to receive mediocre marks because an essay did not accord with their teacher's views on a subject. Just as I, and many parents, have watched in disbelief when students have crafted thoughtful opposition to orthodoxies such as Al Gore's position on climate change, only to be marked down for no other reason than the teacher's personal views.

Just as we have read about it in this newspaper, where educators such as Kevin Donnelly have exposed education bureaucrats politicising school curriculums by requiring a "critical-postmodernist pedagogy".

Refreshingly, Lopez's book is not a whinge about the classroom being infected with Marxist, feminist and postmodern perspectives. Instead it offers up constructive lessons for students to beat the bias in the system. That means more than learning conventional study skills. It means being street-smart enough to recognise the limitations of some teachers. And it means knowing that some teachers will ask for a well-argued essay but reward essays that reflect their own biases.

One of his Year 12 students was asked to do a research essay on Lenin's New Economic Policy. His first draft was a well-researched, well-argued essay that received a C. Lopez told his student to go back to his notes, work out his teacher's understanding of the topic and then redraft the essay to omit everything that differed from his teacher's opinions. The teacher awarded the redraft an A grade.

In many respects, Lopez's book is a depressing read. We should not need a book that advises students that "your campaign for straight As must begin by establishing a psychological profile of your examiner. Make your teacher's bias your friend, because if you do not it will be a formidable enemy."

We should not need a book that explains the continuing effect of the 1960s counter-culture on teaching and school curriculums. Or a book that draws on real-life experiences within the education system to help students identify how political ideology affects the examination and assessment, how to hunt for clues from prescribed reading materials and decipher questions to work out what answer would align with a teacher's views.

Or a book that helps students identify the politically correct answers: if you are asked to take a side in the "women in combat" debate, argue in favour, using feminist grounds of equal opportunity. "In a dispute between animal rights groups and duck hunters, if you side with the hunters you are a dead duck," he writes.

But students do need precisely such a book. Better to be aware of the realities and learn to play the game. Those who have used Lopez's advice have used it wisely. "Rather than being buffeted by fate, these students took responsibility for their education and succeeded," he writes.

Neither should we need a Senate hearing into academic freedom. But, again, reality trumps hope. In his submission to the inquiry a few weeks ago, historian Keith Windschuttle revealed why he is detested by his academic opponents. There is no emotion, no hyperbole from Windschuttle. Just a devastating list of facts, quoting academics to prove the politicisation of scholarship and skewering any pretence of objectivity. He cites Australian historian Henry Reynolds, who admits that his first major work, The Other Side of the Frontier, "was not conceived, researched or written in a mood of detached scholarship". And this from Reynolds: "History should not only be relevant but politically utilitarian."

Windschuttle exposes feminist historian Marilyn Lake for admitting "the writing of history is a political activity". He reveals how the search for truth was abandoned by academics who treat the alleged genocidal activities in Australia as equivalent to the Nazi Holocaust. Name after name, extract after extract, the bias of history teaching by prominent Australian academics is laid bare.

The inquiry is a Stalinist exercise, say critics. Wrong. Windschuttle is no fan of government intervention. He told The Australian that it is a fundamental tenet of Western civilisation that institutions must remain independent of the state. The purpose of the inquiry, like Lopez's book, is to expose political orthodoxy in the education system. Sunlight, after all, can be a powerful disinfectant.

We should name and shame academics who breach their scholarly duty to objectivity. And university vice-chancellors with spine should do more to promote intellectual diversity rather than caving in to the rigid orthodoxy of political academics.

That said, overzealousness won't help the cause of exposing classroom indoctrination. Nitpicking over trivial episodes won't either. It will only serve to undermine the genuine cases of blatant political bias that should be exposed.

In an ideal world, the classroom and lecture theatre would not be used as tools of indoctrination. In the real world, it happens too often. Students may as well know about it, understand why it exists and learn how to play the game to win. If that process improves the education system by reminding educators that they, too, are being assessed for their intellectual rigour or lack of it, so much the better.

Source





22 October, 2008

Obama ubiquitous in American schools

The Obama Campaign has infiltrated college and graduate school campuses throughout the United States. One day last week, on my way to class I was asked if I wanted to sign-up to volunteer for the Obama Campaign. On my way to my seat, I passed a student with an Obama button pinned to her shirt. Before my evening seminar, one of my fellow classmates handed out Obama bumper stickers.

Even away from law school in the comfort of my home I am told that as a young person I should be voting for Obama. In a spoof of ads encouraging parents to talk to their children about drugs, smoking and sex, Penn Badgley and Blake Lively, stars of Gossip Girl, along with some other young people implore young people to, "talk to your parents about John McCain." Sponsored by MoveOn.org, the ad opens with Badgley saying, "Mom, Dad, I found this in your room today," as he holds up a trucker hat that reads, "Drill Baby Drill, McCain-Palin 2008." It ends with Lively offering, "And if you're ever out somewhere and you're considering voting for McCain, just call me, and I'll pick you up. No questions asked."

Students are being pressured by their peers and young Hollywood actors to vote for Obama. Voting for Obama is being sold as the cool thing to do. According to the ad, it is time for young people to even have "The Talk" with their parents to convince them to vote for Obama. It should be the other way around: Parents should be initiating another version of "The Talk" with their college-aged children, but this time not about drugs, alcohol or sex-instead, about the upcoming election.

And if parents think this is a difficult topic to cover, author Hugh Hewitt has articulated the case for young people to think again about voting for Barack Obama in his pamphlet, Letter to a Young Obama Supporter.

Hewitt approaches this topic with the seriousness it deserves, laying out the arguments specifically to appeal to young people. He writes, "There are tremendously appealing reasons to support Senator Obama, especially for young people who think the country is broken, its politics bitter and boring, elected officials stupid and President Bush and Vice President Cheney at best incompetent and at worst evil. The only way to change a young voter's mind about supporting Obama will be to sincerely and persuasively explain to them why the charismatic senator from Illinois would be a disaster as the president and how that will gravely impact their future. In short, you have to make an adult case to your adult children based on the facts."

Ultimately, Hewitt argues that Obama is not ready to be President in a time of war and economic uncertainty. His writing style is easy to digest and he gets straight to the point, "Let me be blunt: The government never gives productive people their money back in equivalent economic benefits."

Rather than writing in the abstract, Hewitt uses examples that resonate with young voters. For instance, instead of getting bogged down in the details of Social Security and Medicare, he addresses these topics by asking, "In fact, if your parents are relatively healthy and relatively young, the retirement system isn't even going to be able to keep the commitments it made to them unless those changes are made. Are you ready to step in? Are you ready to have them move in with you?" This question should wake up young people.

Discussing politics can be challenging. But parents should not leave it to other students or Hollywood actors to educate their children on sensitive topics. They should play an active role in educating their children on the candidates. We may roll our eyes, but we are listening.

Source




Lockstep Leftism in Australian academe

Have a different opinion? Think again. The debate is over. A highly politicised ideological bias exists in academia - one harmful to students, damaging to standards and which threatens intellectual diversity - according to the majority of submissions to the Senate's academic freedom inquiry. In nearly all cases, this bias comes from one direction - the left. A prominent academic, Mervyn Bendle, in his submission says it "dominates research programs, publications and textbooks at all levels and therefore influences every aspect of education in Australia".

Pick any controversial issue today - Work Choices, anti-terror laws, Israel-Palestine, or climate change - and in academia these issues have been decided. There is only one accepted view on each - no debate is allowed.

Ask the Cardinal Newman Society at the University of Queensland. Earlier this year it had stalls outlining pregnancy-support options for women - a move that contradicted the student union's policy of safe, free abortion on demand. The Catholic student group was reprimanded, threatened with disaffiliation and faced formal disciplinary proceedings.

Heaven help anyone on campus, academic or student, who dares to question what Dr Bendle calls a "radical orthodoxy", characterised by "theories associated with neo-Marxism, postmodernism, feminism, radical environmentalism, anti-Americanism, anti-Christianity, and related ideologies". Bendle argues this entrenched left-wing culture has its roots in the counterculture of the 1960s. Yesterday's radicals are today's establishment, and now they will tolerate no dissent. Resistance is futile. You will be indoctrinated.

No recent research has been conducted into the ideological leanings of Australian educators, but in the US a 1999 study found more than 70 per cent of academics identified as left wing, compared to only 15 per cent as conservative. In some humanities departments, conservatives are outnumbered by up to 30 to one. The situation is so bad the University of Colorado recently debated creating a "chair of conservative thought" in a desperate attempt to restore some balance.

The scarcity of conservative intellectuals explains the barrage of attacks that emanated from academia during almost the entire term of the former government. These criticisms were on a wide range of different issues, from immigration to industrial relations. Some were justified, yet were almost always from a critical left-wing perspective. This lack of balance demonstrates the much-touted commitment to "diversity" mouthed by all academic institutions is only skin deep. Gender, ethnic and sexual diversity are all the rage, but intellectual diversity is ignored.

Many Australian educators are activists masquerading as academics, agitating for radical far-left causes well outside, and profoundly hostile to, the values of mainstream Australia. One example is Damien Riggs, of the University of Adelaide, who heads an association of academics that seek to "expose and challenge white-race privilege in Australia and elsewhere". His area of interest is "what it means to speak as a white queer person in a colonial nation".

Academics, like any other citizens, are perfectly entitled to their political opinions, however bizarre. The problem arises when these political views influence the content of their teaching. Take the former education union president Pat Byrne who in 2005 boasted that so-called progressive educators "had succeeded in influencing curriculum development in schools, education departments and universities".

Then there are the hundreds of subjects in the humanities, most of which reflect the Marxist obsessions of their lecturers. One subject on tourism "explores travel through themes such as gender, class, race, imperialism, war and . sexuality". Another on design considers "how architecture perpetuates the social order of gender".

One former trainee teacher, Beccy Merzi, told the inquiry: "I became so fed up and disgusted by the continual barrage of criticism of mainstream values, the lack of focus on practical ways of teaching, and the continual focus on minority groups, postmodernism, gender, queer and other studies that I abandoned my teaching degree. "

But it's not only the course content that is biased - it's lecturers' conduct. Submission after submission documented educators using their classrooms to promote their political views and belittling or marking down students who disagreed. "I have been abused and mocked by a lecturer in front of others for refusing to acknowledge the 'genocide occurring in Lebanon' during the Israeli-Lebanese war," one student, Joshua Koonin, told the inquiry.

It's high time that educators learnt that the principles of academic freedom apply equally to students as they do to their lecturers.

Source




Unbalanced history teaching in Australian schools

A column about Australia by David Dale. (For non-Australian readers, witchetty grubs were traditionally regarded as a delicacy by Aborigines; 1770 was the first landing on the Eastern Australian coast by the British)

Think the unthinkable and say the unsayable. That's this column's readers. In recent days, they have advanced these propositions: 1) The best way to make school history lessons more interesting is to teach less about boomerangs and witchetty grubs and more about the Chinese communist party; 2) the best way to make the planet healthier and happier is not eating more kangaroos but eating vegans, ideally with ginger and black bean sauce. Yes, that was vegans, not veggies.

The way this column works is that we raise questions about national identity, and the readers answer them, usually by shredding conventional wisdoms. When I observed that Australian history, as traditionally taught, was likely to leave students with the impression that they lived in one of the most boring countries on earth, 57 readers replied.

Many urged the inclusion of more information about the people who were here before 1770. But Kate, who finished high school in 2005, complained: "Every year between year 3 and year 10 it was witchetty grubs, boomerangs, dispossession or reconciliation depending on how old you were. These are all very valuable topics and should be studied, but on and off for SEVEN YEARS? The statement that we were about to study either Australian or Aboriginal history was usually met with a groan.

"My favourite topics were the Cold War (and the Cuban Missile Crisis), the historiography (not history) of the Crusades, China under the CCP and the Industrial Revolution. Everything I've learnt in those subjects I've used a hundredfold since entering university. No one has asked me about witchetty grubs though...."

More here





21 October, 2008

Australia: 'Activist' academics black-list under fire

Academics named as militant left-wing ideologues in a black list tabled in federal parliament claim they are victims of a Young Liberals "witch-hunt". While many of the black-listed academics admit that humanities and social science faculties are dominated by progressives, they say bias is not a serious problem in Australian universities. The list of more than 30 academics who are described as "unashamed activists for political and ideological causes such as radical feminism, animal rights and gay rights" has been published on the Young Liberals' website. It was submitted to a Senate inquiry on academic freedom in schools and universities.

Among those on the Young Liberals' list are controversial philosopher Peter Singer, feminist and activist Eva Cox, former ABC Four Corners producer and now journalism lecturer Peter Manning, and UNSW's Sarah Maddison. [What? The openly Communist Hannah Middleton is missed out?]

"The way they've gone about this has the smell of a witch-hunt," said Dr Maddison, senior associate dean in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of NSW. "They don't want to create public discussion about the quality of education, they want to score political points." Dr Maddison - an expert in women's rights and indigenous politics - said "there is probably a grain of truth" in the notion that humanities academics are more left-wing than the general population. Regular student feedback surveys and existing grievance policies already protected against bias, she said. [How?]

UNSW deputy vice-chancellor (academic) Richard Henry said he had full confidence in the independence and integrity of his staff. "It's ironic that in the name of academic freedom people have created a black list that decreases academic freedom." He said the Senate inquiry into academic freedom - due to report on November 11 - was a waste of taxpayers' money.

Young Liberals national president Noel McCoy, who compiled the list from student complaints and his own Google searching, disagreed. "We don't want a dependent society of zombies who have only had the opportunity to hear one set of ideas," he said. Mr McCoy said that 49 out of the 68 submissions to the inquiry argued that bias was a problem in Australian schools and universities.

Wendy Bacon, program director of journalism at Sydney's University of Technology, said the list was about "mud-slinging and branding", not academic freedom. [Wendy comes from an old Communist family and has been far-Left as long as anyone can remember]

Source




I am guilty as charged of bias and prejudice

By Peter Slezak

Sleazy Peter is not joking in the article excerpted below. He is indeed a far-Leftist bigot, though one with a nice voice. He is even one of those most execrable characters: An anti-Israel Jew. But everything he says below is reasonable -- on one condition: That viewpoints opposed to his are also frequently presented to students. That does not happen, of course. If he really believed in the sorts of things he advocates below, he would be preaching conservatism and reaction to his students -- because no-one else is. When will his students hear a lecture from Peter on the good points of the old White Australia policy, for instance? There is a philosophically-sophisticated lecture outline for him here. Such a lecture would be a REAL Socratic challenge to authority

I should probably be writing under a pseudonym. If submissions to the [Australian] Senate inquiry into bias and academic freedom are taken seriously, I'm in trouble. As a university lecturer, I confess my teaching and publications are thoroughly biased, riddled with prejudice and entirely lacking in even-handedness.

I am undeniably guilty of the sins the submissions warn against. My reading lists are not representative of all points of view. My lectures not only criticise but sometimes ridicule views I regard as misguided and pernicious nonsense - often the views of other colleagues. I vigorously assert my prejudices without any pretence of neutrality. I confront my students and provoke them to defend their views, especially when I disagree with them, which is most of the time. In short, I am precisely the kind of academic who some submissions propose to deal with by means that include disciplinary procedures and even sacking.....

Like regular charges of left-wing bias against the ABC, the moral panic evident in submissions to the Senate inquiry rests on a certain implicit, though questionable, assumption - namely, that only deviation from prevailing orthodoxy constitutes bias. Conventional views are presumed neutral, and the possibility is never entertained they may be invisibly, systematically biased in the other direction. It follows that the regular complaints of bias and proposed remedies are a form of harassment designed to maintain doctrinal conformity....

However, the highest educational ideals require precisely the reverse attitude - that is, encouraging the exploration of alternatives to preferred, taken-for-granted views. As Bertrand Russell remarked, education should make students think, not to think what their teacher (or government) thinks.....

In his classic 1859 essay On Liberty, J.S. Mill famously articulated the principles at stake: the need to protect and, indeed, encourage unpopular opinion against the "tyranny of the majority". This tyranny may be "more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since... it leaves fewer means of escape .... enslaving the soul itself".

Mill argues counter-intuitively that preventing opinions from being heard because they are regarded as not merely false but immoral, impious or pernicious is the case that is "most fatal", for "these are exactly the occasions on which the men of one generation commit those dreadful mistakes, which excite the astonishment and horror of posterity".

Socrates and Christ were put to death for challenging authority. Mill says their executors were not bad men; on the contrary they were "men who possessed in a full, or somewhat more than a full measure, the religious, moral, and patriotic feelings of their time and people".

Source





20 October, 2008

Academics sign on in support of Bill Ayers

In academic leftist circles, it has become a badge of honor to proclaim support for unrepentant terror bomber Bill Ayers. Thousands of people claiming scholarly affiliation have already put up their names as signatories on a website in support of the man who wishes he had done more. See the remarkable website http://www.supportbillayers.org/ .

The much self-righteous posturing, of course, but the nub of the matter lies in this sentence.

The current characterizations of Professor Ayers---"unrepentant terrorist," "lunatic leftist"---are unrecognizable to those who know or work with him.

For alleged scholars to dispute the accuracy of "unrepentant terrorist" is remarkable. By his own word he did indeed commit terrorist acts, and he has never indicated any penance. He may well be a dedicated worker and a hail fellow well met. He is also a revolutionary who put down the gun only because it didn't work, but is dedicated to the same cause through means of subversion. He aligns with Hugo Chavez and Castro's Cuba against the United States.

The scholars mobilizing in support of Ayers are not protesting his jailing, torture, or physical abuse. They are protesting people criticizing him. Apparently, to them, he is a noble individual who should be above criticism. In a world in which even Mother Teresa is the subject of a scathing biography, criticism of a man who bombed the United States Capitol is beyond the pale.

The fact that academic is rife with these sentiments demonstrates the triumph of the left in implementing the plans of Antonio Gramsci. I wonder how many of them se nothing wrong with this?

Source




Public Schools Are a Threat to Our Freedom

In 1940 teachers reported their major problems were talking, gum chewing, noise, running in halls, and cutting in line. In 1990 the problems were assault, robbery, drug abuse, and pregnancy. Forty-three percent of teachers now say they spend more time trying to keep order than teaching. A United States Department of Education 2006 report disclosed that the average is 45 crimes per 1000 students in public schools---and ONLY 28 violent crimes per 1000 students. School shootings are extreme cases of a grimmer fact---public schools have grown increasingly dangerous.

Just looking at my home state is alarming. A 2005 Associated Press report revealed that during the period of 2000-2004 West Virginia dismissed 41 teachers for sexual misconduct.

A Hofstra University professor believes that educator sexual misconduct is "woefully understudied". The Sexuality Information and Education Council (SIECUS for short) produces lessons for "sex ed" classes known as "Programs That Work". Parents probably do not know that SIECUS criticizes "abstinence-only-until-marriage" curricula as "based on religious beliefs (that) rely on fear and shame". SIECUS also complains that these abstinence programs do not view homosexuality as normal. SIECUS promotes policies, like what we have in West Virginia, where the school can provide birth control without consulting parents.

Trying to reform public schools is like putting a finger in a bucket of water. After the finger is removed the water returns to where it was originally. In the meantime our children remain in danger zones. Loving parents would not allow their children to walk through a mine field just because they see some children making it through without getting maimed. Once the mine explodes it is too late. It is time for thinking parents to remove their children from the public schools and either homeschool them or place them in private schools.

A critic of public schools once said, "Humanist taxidermists have done well. Public schools are hollow shells, a stuffed charade, a glass-eyed cadaver. They have knowledge without wisdom and facts without truth."

Parents are usually unaware of messages that are conveyed to their children "under the radar". For example, the Early Childhood Equity Alliance (ECEA), a network of activist educators promotes a teachers guide for teachers of young children (pre-kindergarten) that portrays the Navy's Blue Angels as heartless killers who could bomb innocent American kids.

Public schools are operated like prisons with medical sedation, metal detectors, uniformed officers, searches by drug sniffing dogs, and video surveillance. Totalitarian regimes have always claimed that children belong to them. "For this reason we have set before ourselves the task of inoculating our youth with the spirit of this community of the people at a very early age.and this Reich will give its youth to no one, but will itself take the youth and give to youth its own education and its own upbringing." Everyone knows who made that statement.

Public schools are really government schools and the more the government controls of any thing, the less effective it becomes. A monopolistic system of education that is controlled by the State is far more efficient in crushing our liberty than weapons of war.

We do not need more reform. We have wasted millions (perhaps billions) of dollars on utopian efforts to reform public schools. Every president, since the Department of Education was formed, has had a utopian plan to solve the problems raging through the public schools. History has proven, beyond all reasonable doubt, that pouring money into public schools is crazy. We merely pay for our own subjugation! The time is now for parents to seek educational freedom by placing their children in home or private schools.

Source





19 October, 2008

A Model of Successful Education Reform

For years, education reformers have struggled to find strategies to improve opportunities for disadvantaged children and eliminate the achievement gap between minority students and their peers. On Capitol Hill, decades of new programs and increased government spending on education have failed to achieve significant improvement.

But, there is new reason for hope that serious education reforms can make a lasting difference. After a decade of aggressive statewide reforms, students in Florida have made impressive strides on national exams, which should cause policymakers from around the country to study what's happening in the Sunshine State.

On the National Assessment of Educational Progress, Florida students are outpacing the national average on improvement in reading and math. Between 1998 and 2007, Florida 4th graders gained nearly 9 percent on the NAEP reading test compared to 4 percent improvement across the nation. Florida students are also outpacing the nation in progress on math exams.Importantly, the greatest gains have been made by Hispanic and African American students. For example, African American and Hispanic students' 4th grade reading scores have risen by 12 percent and 10 percent respectively since 1998, ahead of their peers across the nation.Compared to students around the nation, Florida's minority children are making dramatic progress. In fact, Hispanic 4th graders in Florida now have higher reading scores than the statewide average of all students in 15 states: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Hawaii, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, and West Virginia.

What is responsible for this progress? We tried to answer that question in a new paper for the Goldwater Institute: "Demography Defeated: Florida's K-12 Reforms and Their Lessons for the Nation." Thanks largely to the leadership of former Gov. Jeb Bush, Florida implemented sweeping education reforms to set challenging standards, expand school choice options, hold public schools and students accountable for results, and improve teacher quality. Some of Florida's most promising reforms include:

- Standards and Accountability: Three years before state-testing was required by No Child Left Behind, Florida implemented a plan to test the majority of public school students annually and grade schools based on students' achievement. Test scores track students' progress over time to allow parents and teachers to gauge whether a child is learning.

- Ending Social Promotion: Students are held accountable for results, too. Third-grade students must be able to pass the state's reading test before moving on to fourth grade. In 2006, approximately 29,000 were identified for retention. Struggling students are provided remedial instruction.

- Focusing on Reading: Florida launched a statewide initiative to improve reading instruction. New reading academies were created to train teachers about how to provide better instruction. Two thousand reading coaches were hired to improve learning in schools across the state. Older students in grades 6 through 12 have access to reading instruction to provide remediation.

- Expanding School Choice Options: Florida is a leader in offering families school choice options. The state has more than 300 charter schools which are educating more than 100,000 students. Thousands of disadvantaged children and special education students are attending private schools using tuition scholarships.

- Improving Teacher Quality: Florida has implemented policies to attract talented teachers and reward those who are succeeding in the classroom. An alternative certification program allows talented professionals who don't have traditional teaching credentials to enter the classroom. Approximately half of all new teachers are being hired this way. Performance bonuses are awarded to successful schools to reward teachers who are lifting students' academic achievement.

It is impossible to conclude which of these reforms has made the biggest contribution to improving students' academic achievement and reducing the achievement gap. In all likelihood, the combination of these reforms is responsible for the improvement. But we review the existing academic research evidence in our study and find that studies report that reforms like holding schools accountable, ending social promotion, and expanding school choice are contributing to the improvement.

Given the breadth of Florida's reforms and the encouraging test scores as evidence, we hope that researchers continue to study the Sunshine State to help policymakers understand just how these reforms are making a difference. In the meantime, policymakers across the country would be wise to follow Florida's path in implementing this broad range of promising education reforms.Florida is proving that all children can succeed. If states across the nation can follow Florida's lead and replicate this success, millions of children - especially low-income and ethnic minority students - will have hope for a brighter future

Source




Math Skills Suffer in U.S., Study Finds

The United States is failing to develop the math skills of both girls and boys, especially among those who could excel at the highest levels, a new study asserts, and girls who do succeed in the field are almost all immigrants or the daughters of immigrants from countries where mathematics is more highly valued.

The study suggests that while many girls have exceptional talent in math - the talent to become top math researchers, scientists and engineers - they are rarely identified in the United States. A major reason, according to the study, is that American culture does not highly value talent in math, and so discourages girls - and boys, for that matter - from excelling in the field. The study will be published Friday in Notices of the American Mathematical Society.

"We're living in a culture that is telling girls you can't do math - that's telling everybody that only Asians and nerds do math," said the study's lead author, Janet E. Mertz, an oncology professor at the University of Wisconsin, whose son is a winner of what is viewed as the world's most-demanding math competitions. "Kids in high school, where social interactions are really important, think, `If I'm not an Asian or a nerd, I'd better not be on the math team.' Kids are self selecting. For social reasons they're not even trying."

Many studies have examined and debated gender differences and math, but most rely on the results of the SAT and other standardized tests, Dr. Mertz and many mathematicians say. But those tests were never intended to measure the dazzling creativity, insight and reasoning skills required to solve math problems at the highest levels, Dr. Mertz and others say.

Dr. Mertz asserts that the new study is the first to examine data from the most difficult math competitions for young people, including the USA and International Mathematical Olympiads for high school students, and the Putnam Mathematical Competition for college undergraduates. For winners of these competitions, the Michael Phelpses and Kobe Bryants of math, getting an 800 on the math SAT is routine. The study found that many students from the United States in these competitions are immigrants or children of immigrants from countries where education in mathematics is prized and mathematical talent is thought to be widely distributed and able to be cultivated through hard work and persistence.

The International Olympiad, which began in Romania in 1959, is considered to be the world's toughest math competition for high school students. About 500 students from as many as 95 countries compete each year, with contestants solving six problems in nine hours. (Question 5 from the 1996 test was famously difficult, with only six students out of several hundred able to solve it fully.)

The United States has competed in the Olympiad since 1974. Its six-member teams are selected over years of high-level contests, and trained during intensive summer math camps.

One two-time Olympiad gold medalist, 22-year-old Daniel M. Kane, now a graduate student at Harvard, is the son of Dr. Mertz and her husband, Jonathan M. Kane, a professor of mathematics and computer science at the University of Wisconsin, and a co-author of the study. The other two co-authors are Joseph A. Gallian, a math professor at the University of Minnesota and president of the Mathematical Association of America, and Titu Andreescu, a professor of math education at the University of Texas at Dallas and a former leader of the United States Olympiad team.

All members of the United States team were boys until 1998, when 16-year-old Melanie Wood, a cheerleader, student newspaper editor and math whiz from a public high school in Indianapolis, made the team. She won a silver medal, missing the gold by a single point. Since then, two female high school students, Alison Miller, from upstate New York, and Sherry Gong, whose parents emigrated to the United States from China, have made the United States team (they both won gold).

By comparison, relatively small Bulgaria has sent 21 girls to the competition since 1959 (six since 1988), according to the study, and since 1974 the highly ranked Bulgarian, East German/German and Soviet Union/Russian IMO teams have included 9, 10 and 13 girls respectively. "What most of these countries have in common," the study says, "are rigorous national mathematics curricula along with cultures and educational systems that value, encourage and support students who excel in mathematics."

Ms. Wood is now 27 and completing her doctorate in math at Princeton University. "There's just a stigma in this country about math being really hard and feared, and people who do it being strange," she said in a telephone interview. "It's particularly hard for girls, especially at the ages when people start doing competitions. If you look at schools, there is often a social group of nerdy boys. There's that image of what it is to be a nerdy boy in mathematics. It's still in some way socially unacceptable for boys, but at least it's a position and it's clearly defined."

More here




Fewer than half of British teenagers achieve basic set of A to C grades at GCSE (Middle school qualification)

Fewer than half of teenagers finish compulsory schooling with a basic set of GCSE qualifications including English and maths, official figures have revealed. Results for the first pupils to go through an entire education under Labour showed that 345,000 last year failed to meet the Government's benchmark for secondary school achievement. Despite a rise on 2007, only 47.2 per cent of pupils achieved the desired five A* to C-grade GCSEs including English and maths, leaving ministers struggling to hit a 53 per cent Treasury target by 2011. One in six pupils finished 11 years of compulsory schooling without achieving a single C grade in any subject.

The GCSE gender gap widened again with girls pulling further ahead. Teachers' leaders declared the scale of failure shameful but ministers insisted trends over the long term showed 'sustained improvement'. Figures for core subjects such as the three Rs, however, showed that attainment is rising more slowly than for other subjects. The proportion gaining any five GCSEs rose sharply to 64.6 per cent - 3.2 percentage points up on last year.

But the numbers able to count English and maths towards those five qualifications - the Government's preferred measure - went up just 0.9 per cent. Only 50 per cent of teenagers were awarded the Government's desired two Cs in science - up just 0.2 per cent on last year.

While the top-performing teenagers celebrated record numbers of A and A* grades, the figures sparked renewed concern over the fate of those at the other end of the spectrum. They showed that the proportion of pupils gaining five GCSEs including English and maths at any level - A* to G - fell 0.1 per cent to 87 per cent.

There was a mixed picture at A-level. The proportion of candidates achieving at least two A-levels was slightly down from last year's 95.2 per cent to 94.6 per cent. However the average point score per candidate was 733.5, up from 731.2 last year.

The gulf between independent schools and state comprehensives continued, with almost one in three pupils at fee-paying schools - 30.3 per cent - emerging with three As at A-level, against 7.6 per cent at comprehensives.

Dr Mary Bousted, general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, said: 'It is good to see an improvement on last year's results, reflecting the hard work put in by teachers and pupils. 'But there are still far too many pupils leaving school without five A* to C grades including English and maths at GCSE. 'It is truly shameful that half the pupils in England do not achieve this level.'

David Laws, Liberal Democrat schools spokesman, said: 'It's completely unacceptable that so many children are still not getting a good basic set of qualifications. 'After 11 years of Labour promises, whatever happened to "education, education, education"?'

The Tories said the gap between rich and poor areas had widened. According to the figures, GCSE results will need to improve at twice their current rate if the Government is to meet its 2011 target. Ministers have introduced a new secondary curriculum with increased flexibility for schools to focus on the three Rs. Schools Minister Jim Knight said: 'These are very positive results that build on the improvements of the last decade.'

Only three in ten school-leavers score C grade or above in a languages GCSE The Government published the figure for the first time this year, aiming to shame schools which neglect languages. Only 30.6 per cent of pupils nationally achieved a good grade in a language this summer and school league tables due out next year will show the proportion at individual secondaries. These will allow parents to judge schools on their performance in languages for the first time. The poor showing follows a 2004 Government decision to make language learning optional for 14-year-olds. The slump in entries for language GCSEs has led to fears our school-leavers will be ill-equipped on the job market.

This summer only 382,228 took GCSEs in languages - down from 559,115 in 2002. French and German suffered particularly while Spanish entries rose but from a lower base. Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Turkish, Russian and Polish also rose but only a few thousand pupils took them. Fewer than a quarter of state schools require GCSE students to learn languages, according to a report last year. It found they are fast becoming the preserve of grammar and fee-paying schools as many comprehensives allow them to decline to 'extremely low levels'. Under plans to reduce academic demands on students, teenagers will be able to gain a 'short' course GCSE in a foreign language without having to show they can speak it. A second short course - worth half a GCSE - will focus only on speaking and listening, meaning students can pass it without ever reading or writing the language.

Source





18 October, 2008

Ayers Is No Education 'Reformer'

The new media spin is worse than Obama's original evasion

By SOL STERN

One of the most misleading statements during the presidential debates was when Barack Obama claimed that William Ayers was just "a guy in the neighborhood."

But that piece of spin is nothing compared to the false story now being peddled by Mr. Obama's media supporters that Mr. Ayers -- who worked with the Democratic nominee for years to disperse education grants through a group called the Chicago Annenberg Challenge -- has redeemed his terrorist past. In the New York Times, for example, Frank Rich writes that "establishment Republicans and Democrats alike have collaborated with the present-day Ayers in educational reform."

I've studied Mr. Ayers's work for years and read most of his books. His hatred of America is as virulent as when he planted a bomb at the Pentagon. And this hatred informs his educational "reform" efforts. Of course, Mr. Obama isn't going to appoint him to run the education department. But the media mainstreaming of a figure like Mr. Ayers could have terrible consequences for the country's politics and public schools.

The education career of William Ayers began when he enrolled at Columbia University's Teachers College at the age of 40. He planned to stay long enough to get a teaching credential. But he experienced an epiphany in a course offered by Maxine Greene, who urged future teachers to tell children about the evils of the existing, oppressive capitalist social order. In her essay "In Search of a Critical Pedagogy," for example, Ms. Greene wrote of an education that would portray "homelessness as a consequence of the private dealings of landlords, an arms buildup as a consequence of corporate decisions, racial exclusion as a consequence of a private property-holder's choice." That was music to the ears of the ex-Weatherman. Mr. Ayers acquired a doctorate in education and landed an Ed school appointment at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC).

Chicago might seem to be the least likely place for Mr. Ayers to regain social respectability for himself and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn. After all, the Windy City was where their Weathermen period began in 1969, with Mr. Ayers, Ms. Dohrn and their comrades marauding through the Miracle Mile, assaulting cops and city officials and promulgating slogans such as "Kill Your Parents." But Chicago's political culture had already begun to change by the time the couple returned in 1987. And the city would change even more dramatically when Richard Daley Jr. became mayor in 1990.

Daley the son has maintained as tight a rein over the city's Democratic Party machine as did his father, doling out patronage jobs and contracts to loyalists and tolerating as much corruption as in the old days. But unlike his father, he was ready to cut deals with veterans of the hard-core, radical left who were working for their revolutionary ideas from within the system they once sought to destroy from without. There is no lack of such veterans. One of Chicago's congressmen, Bobby Rush, is a former chairman of the Illinois Black Panther Party; Louis Gutierrez, a former leader of a Puerto Rican liberation group, the Puerto Rican Socialist Party, is another.

In this Chicago, where there are no enemies on the left, Mr. Ayers's second career flourished. It didn't hurt that his father, Thomas Ayers, was the CEO of the Commonwealth Edison company, a friend of both Daleys and a major power broker in the city.

Mr. Ayers was hired by the Chicago public schools to train teachers, and played a leading role in the $160 million Annenberg Challenge grant that distributed funds to a host of so-called school-reform projects, including some social-justice themed schools and schools organized by Acorn. Barack Obama became the first chairman of the board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge organization in 1995. When asked for an opinion on the Obama/Ayers connection, Mayor Daley told the New York Times that Mr. Ayers had "done a lot of good in this city and nationally." In fact, as one of the leaders of a movement for bringing radical social-justice teaching into our public school classrooms, Mr. Ayers is not a school reformer. He is a school destroyer.

He still hopes for a revolutionary upheaval that will finally bring down American capitalism and imperialism, but this time around Mr. Ayers sows the seeds of resistance and rebellion in America's future teachers. Thus, education students signing up for a course Mr. Ayers teaches at UIC, "On Urban Education," can read these exhortations from the course description: "Homelessness, crime, racism, oppression -- we have the resources and knowledge to fight and overcome these things. We need to look beyond our isolated situations, to define our problems globally. We cannot be child advocates . . . in Chicago or New York and ignore the web that links us with the children of India or Palestine."

The readings Mr. Ayers assigns to his university students are as intellectually diverse as a political commissar's indoctrination session in one of his favorite communist tyrannies. The list for his urban education course includes the bible of the critical pedagogy movement, Brazilian Marxist Paolo Freire's "Pedagogy of the Oppressed"; two books by Mr. Ayers himself; and "Teaching to Transgress" by bell hooks (lower case), the radical black feminist writer.

Two years ago Mr. Ayers shared with his students a letter he wrote to a young radical friend: "I've been told to grow up from the time I was ten until this morning. Bullshit. Anyone who salutes your 'youthful idealism' is a patronizing reactionary. Resist! Don't grow up! I went to Camp Casey [Cindy Sheehan's vigil at the Bush ranch in Crawford, Texas] in August precisely because I'm an agnostic about how and where the rebellion will break out, but I know I want to be there and I know it will break out." (The letter is on his Web site, www.billayers.org.)

America's ideal of public schooling as a means of assimilating all children (and particularly the children of new immigrants) into a common civic and democratic culture is already under assault from the multiculturalists and their race- and gender-centered pedagogy. Mr. Ayers has tried to give the civic culture ideal a coup de grace, contemptuously dismissing it as nothing more than what the critical pedagogy theorists commonly refer to as "capitalist hegemony."

In the world of the Ed schools, Mr. Ayers's movement has established a sizeable beachhead -- witness his election earlier this year as vice president for curriculum of the American Education Research Association, the nation's largest organization of education professors and researchers. If Barack Obama wins on Nov. 4, the "guy in the neighborhood" is not likely to get an invitation to the Lincoln bedroom. But with the Democrats controlling all three branches of government, there's a real danger that Mr. Ayers's social-justice movement in the schools will get even more room to maneuver and grow.

Source




Australia: Football "too rough" for schoolkids

There are many reasons to say that very active sports are good for kids so banning them for everybody instead of dealing with the troublemakers is just cowardice

Touch football and soccer have been banned from the playground at Coombabah State School, as well as rougher full contact games such as rugby league, AFL and rugby union.

Yesterday, a number of outraged students took part in a protest against the new rules. But the school says those students could now face disciplinary action.The blanket ban on all contact sports, which only applies to Year 7 students, comes after reports of fighting during games. The schoolyard games, including football and soccer, which past generations can recall playing every morning tea and lunch breaks, often without supervision, are now being referred to by the school as 'too rough'.The ban will be in place until the end of Term 4, which finishes on December 12. Students will still be allowed to play alternative games during play times, provided they do not fall under the category of those considered 'contact'.

An Education Queensland spokesman from the Department of Education, Training and the Arts said the move was necessary."The safety and welfare of all students is the school's highest priority," he said."The school has been forced to restrict Year 7 students from taking part in contact sports, following a number of recent incidents that have escalated into fights."Coombabah State School does not tolerate bad behaviour, particularly physical aggression between any students."

The department said the ruling by the school had the full support of staff and the school P&C.However, a concerned grandfather, who has a grandchild at the school, contacted The Gold Coast Bulletin yesterday to complain about the new rules.He said he was worried his grandchild might be expelled and did not wish to comment further or be named.

Without the lunchtime games, coupled with the crisis most schools are facing with a lack of volunteer coaches available to supervise team games, some students may miss out on playing contact sports altogether.

Education Queensland said disciplinary action had been taken against students caught fighting and those who showed disrespect to staff trying to manage the situation. "Other students who took part in an unruly protest yesterday against the school directive have been warned they may also face disciplinary action," he said.

The department said the school would be happy to discuss its course of action with any concerned parents.

School principal John Hoskings was not available to comment on the issue yesterday. However, on the school's website, Mr Hoskings' welcome message for parents who have enrolled their students at the school says: "We trust that you and your children will enjoy being a part of our school community and that you will feel confident to join in our school life in whatever capacity you can."It is important for your child that parents and staff have a positive relationship."To this end, we encourage you to make good use of all available channels of communication, thereby providing the best possible support for your child while he or she is at our school."

Coombabah State School was originally built to service the growing population north of Biggera Waters and classes began in 1981.About 850 students attend the school, which is located on Oxley Drive at Paradise Point.

Source

Update: Publicity works wonders

A Gold coast school which caused uproar when it banned touch footy and soccer in lunchbreaks has now suspended six students for rough play. The entire year 7 level at Coombabah State School has been barred from the lunchtime sports for the term because of bouts of fighting that occur during games. Queensland Sports Minister Judy Spence said yesterday the school might have over-reacted, saying teachers needed to step up playground supervision.

Source




Australia: Grammar returns in English curriculum revamp

Long overdue -- so long overdue that one wonders where they will find teachers to teach it

Basic English and grammar lessons, downgraded decades ago, will be restored in schools to boost students' slipping spelling and writing skills. Traditional lessons are to be reinstated nationwide after complaints that pupils struggle to form proper sentences and don't understand nouns, verbs, adjectives and punctuation. Schools will also revert to a focus on teaching the alphabet through sounding out letters, known as phonics, rather than by showing pictures on a card displaying the word beneath. It was also announced this week that maths in Australian schools will get a makeover.

The National Curriculum Board will today unveil for public comment recommendations to revamp English from kindergarten to year 12. "Pop culture" English that studies soap operas and mobile phone text-messaging is expected to be scaled down. The emphasis will be on classics by writers such as Shakespeare, Charles Dickens and Jane Austen, and works by modern authors such as Tim Winton and Peter Carey. The study of literature will be broadened to embrace modern digital technology such as the internet and CD ROMs.

Under proposed changes, bright students in primary school will be given more advanced books to read, and elementary literacy will be reinforced for secondary students falling behind.

It has been revealed that too many students battle to read and write properly. One in five who sat national literacy and numeracy tests in years 3, 5, 7 and 9 this year either fell below the standard or only reached the minimum. Employers, recruitment companies and universities have bemoaned school-leavers' sloppy spelling and writing. "We have to do better," National Curriculum Board chairman Prof Barry McGaw conceded. "Establishing a national English curriculum is an opportunity to raise standards for all young people and to ensure no one slips through the cracks."

The advice is that the subject should be broken into three areas: English as a language, including grammar, punctuation and spelling; literature; and the application of skills to achieve confident and accurate speaking and writing. "A focus on grammar, spelling and conventions of punctuation will be necessary across all stages of schooling," the paper says.

The proposal follows a backlash over the 1970s shift from a grammar-based curriculum. Monash University deems the situation so dire that it's introducing remedial grammar and punctuation classes. The draft says that books, novels, short stories, poetry, drama, movies and documentaries should be introduced progressively from early years.

Education Minister Julia Gillard this week raised concerns about falling reading performance among 15-year-olds. Australian students still score above the OECD average, but have slumped from second to sixth in recent years. The National Curriculum Board is remodelling English, history, maths and science curriculums. The new framework will be introduced by 2011.

Source





17 October, 2008

Imposing San Francisco Values On First-Graders

Thank God for San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom. If, when the dust settles at the ballot box this Nov. 4, California voters definitively repudiate the California Supreme Court's unjust gay marriage ruling by voting Yes on Proposition 8, Mayor Gavin Newsom will be a big part of the reason why. Even the San Francisco Chronicle acknowledged on Monday that in recent weeks, Mayor Newsom's role in the gay marriage debate "has turned decidedly unheroic." "He's become everyone's worst nightmare," said Barbara O'Connor, a professor of political communications at Sacramento State University

Gay marriage is coming "whether you like it or not," Mayor Newsom intones in news clips featured in the first round of Yes-on-Proposition-8 ads, looking unbearably smug and arrogant in dictating the future of marriage for the rest of California from his San Francisco perch. (See the ads for yourself at www.protectmarriage.com.)

Public opinion polls showed a dramatic surge in support for Prop 8 after these Yes-on-Propostion-8 ads featuring Newsom hit the airwaves. Faced with a dramatic drop in public support once the real potential consequences of gay marriage for parents, public schools, church groups and others are highlighted, gay marriage advocates have responded with a rebuttal ad. (See it at www.noonprop8.com.)

Their allegedly pro-gay marriage message? Labeling the concerns that public schools will teach about gay marriage, if we permit gay marriage to remain the law of the land, as just "lies!" Right. What do gay marriage advocates think public schools should teach about marriage if gay marriage is the law of the land? Could we have a reasonably honest discussion please about what you have in store for California's first-graders? Instead of standing their ground and defending their moral views, gay marriage advocates are simply pretending to voters that legalizing gay marriage won't affect anyone else at all.

Marriage is a publicly affirmed status -- a shared social ideal -- not just a private act. When the government says gay unions are the ideal -- exactly the same as husband and wife -- a whole lot of people who disagree are going to find life gets a whole lot harder, especially when it comes to raising our children.

So what does Mayor Newsom, the poster boy for arrogance among gay marriage advocates, do in the middle of this campaign to deceive California voters about the real consequences of gay marriage? Why, he presides over a lesbian teacher's wedding ceremony at City Hall, to which public school children are bused, at taxpayer expense, during school hours. (Newsom claims he wasn't aware of that fact when he agreed to preside.)

That's right. Taxpayers paid for first-graders to take time from reading, writing and 'rithmetic to strew rose petals after a lesbian marriage ceremony -- no doubt in the belief that there was something educational about witnessing a historic civil rights victory the courts have endorsed as the law of the land.

Let me be clear about one thing: I know many, many gay people who have no truck with the arrogance of so many leaders of the gay marriage movement in California (see for example www.gaypatriot.net). I even know some gay people (though, not very many) who think marriage means a husband and wife, and that the California solution struck down by the courts -- civil unions for gay couples, marriage remains marriage -- is common sense, not some kind of gross injustice motivated by seething hatred to gay folks.

If Prop 8 loses, expect a lot more public schools to join Mayor Newsom's crusade to promote gay marriage, "whether you like it or not." People who think that's a good thing should have the decency to stand up before California voters and say so, instead of pretending it's not going to happen. It already has.

Source




Australia: The high standards of government schools again

No wonder around 40% of Australian teenagers go to private schools. Government education departments don't give a stuff about anything -- except their tea-breaks, of course. I worked in one once so the story below does not surprise me. "Just don't bother us", is their attitude.

It's the poor who have to put up with all this crap, of course. So we see what the "compassion" of a Leftist government really leads to: The opposite of what it claims. They don't give a stuff about the poor. All they care about is sounding good

The mother of a student at a country primary school plagued by years of inappropriate sexual behaviour between its pupils has hit out at the lack of action by authorities. As revealed by The Advertiser yesterday, a country primary school has reported to the Education Department at least 60 incidents of inappropriate sexual behaviour by its students in the past three years. Among the incidents were boys exposing themselves in class, throwing girls to the ground and simulating sex, pulling down other students' pants and underwear, writing sexually explicit stories and the use of threatening sexual language among students. In one case, a student brought a plastic penis to school and sexually harassed another student. The school's plight only became public after the 28-year-old mother complained to her local MP.

The MP used Freedom of Information laws to obtain pages of school incident reports detailing a catalogue of shocking sexual behaviour since 2006. The mother yesterday told The Advertiser her five-year-old son had only been at the school for a fortnight when he was urinated on twice by another student. "This same child later on knocked a toilet door off and asked him to touch his penis, and this same child was also asking my son and other children at the school for sex," she said.

"We reported it to the school. The school counsellor then told us she had already been into the reception classroom a couple of times to talk about inappropriate sexual behaviour. "As parents, we were never told a counsellor had been having sex education talks with our reception-aged children."

The mother said her 11-year-old daughter also had been the victim of violent sexual threats by boys at the school, who had talked of raping her. "Teachers dismissed that as children just learning a new word over the holidays," she said. The mother, who has since pulled her son out of the school, said Education Department officials only took her complaints seriously after she told them she had met with her local MP.

University of South Australia child development professor Freda Briggs told ABC radio yesterday that "this is the tip of the iceberg". "I'm getting desperate parents ringing me every other week about this sort of thing," she said. "We are dealing with teachers ignorance and also ignorance in the department."

Opposition education spokesman David Pisoni yesterday called on Education Minister Jane Lomax-Smith to explain what was being done to address the problem. "The Minister repeatedly refused on ABC radio today to reveal what steps the department had taken to protect children and stop the extraordinary behaviour involving children as young as five," he said. "It is not good enough for the Minister to say these incidents happen in disadvantaged schools and blame forms of media. "This is totally inappropriate sexual behaviour and parents want to know what the Minister is doing about it."

But Dr Lomax-Smith accused the Opposition of using children to "score political points". "I have been assured that the school and district have dealt with the incidents immediately and appropriately when they occur, including advising relevant authorities where necessary," she said.

Education Department chief executive Chris Robinson said swift action had been taken, but he remained "very concerned" by groups of students who were "multiple" offenders. He said some students had been suspended, mandatory reports had been made to child protection authorities and students and parents had been counselled. Police have not been involved, he said.

Source





16 October, 2008

Charter Success in L.A.: School choice in South Central

With economic issues sucking up so much political oxygen this year, K-12 education hasn't received the attention it deserves from either Presidential candidate. The good news is that school reformers at the local level continue to push forward.

This month the Inner City Education Foundation (ICEF), a charter school network in Los Angeles, announced plans to expand the number of public charter schools in the city's South Central section, which includes some of the most crime-ridden neighborhoods in the country. Over the next four years, the number of ICEF charters will grow to 35 from 13. Eventually, the schools will enroll one in four students in the community, including more than half of the high school students.

The demand for more educational choice in predominantly minority South Los Angeles is pronounced. The waitlist for existing ICEF schools has at times exceeded 6,000 kids. And no wonder. Like KIPP, Green Dot and other charter school networks that aren't constrained by union rules on staffing and curriculum, ICEF has an excellent track record, particularly with black and Hispanic students. In reading and math tests, ICEF charters regularly outperform surrounding traditional public schools as well as other Los Angeles public schools.

ICEF has been operating since 1994, and its flagship school has now graduated two classes, with 100% of the students accepted to college. By contrast, a state study released in July reported that one in three students in the L.A. public school system -- including 42% of black students -- quits before graduating, a number that has grown by 80% in the past five years.

Despite this success, powerful unions like the California Teachers Association and its political backers continue to oppose school choice for disadvantaged families. Last year, Democratic state lawmakers, led by Assembly Speaker Fabian N£¤ez, tried to force Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to sign a bill that would have made opening a new charter school in the state next to impossible. Mr. Nunez backed down after loud protests from parents in poorer neighborhoods.

School reformers in New York, Ohio, Florida, Connecticut, Utah and Arizona have faced similar challenges of late. Last year in Texas, where 81% of charter school students are minorities (versus 60% in traditional public schools), nearly 17,000 students had to be placed on charter waiting lists. Texas is currently bumping up against an arbitrary cap on the number of charters that can open in the state. Unless the cap is lifted by state lawmakers, thousands of low-income Texas children will remain stuck in ineffective schools.

Back in California, ICEF says that its ultimate goal is to produce 2,000 college graduates each year, in hopes that the graduates eventually will return to these underserved communities and help create a sustainable middle class. Given that fewer than 10% of high-school freshmen in South Los Angeles currently go on to receive a college diploma, this is a huge challenge. Resistance from charter school opponents won't make it any easier.

Source




British government scraps public examinations for 14-year-olds

Being in favour with the teacher is all that matters now. The teenage years bring big changes. Assessment at this age could detect students who are going off the rails and help them to straighten out

National school testing for 14-year-olds in England is to be scrapped as part of a major shake up of testing in primary and secondary education, the Government announced today. Ed Balls, the Schools Secretary, said that Key Stage 3 National Curriculum tests, known as Sats, would be replaced by better and more intensive classroom assessment by teachers and more frequent reporting of pupils' progress to parents.

As part of the reforms, an annual School Report Card will be drawn up for every school in England, awarding it a grade from A-F. The report card will show pupil test scores as well as information on attendance, pupil motivation, and other non-academic measures. The report cards replicate a system currently operating in New York City, which provides parents with a "simpler more understandable and more comprehensive view" of individual school performance, Mr Balls told MPs in the House of Commons.

National Key Stage Two testing for 11-year-olds at the end of primary school will remain. A new expert panel will be created to advise on the implementation of the reforms.

The Conservatives welcomed the move, while the National Union of Teachers called for a suspension of all testing in primary schools.

Mr Balls denied that the measures were a U-Turn, but accepted that the decision to scap the Key Stage 3 tests had been based on the view of both head teachers and education experts who believed the tests, introduced by the Conservatives in 1993, had out lived their usefulness. In recent years, Key Stage 3 tests for 14-year-olds have routinely been condemned as unnecessary because GCSEs and A-Level exams already provide an objective and externally marked measure of school performance.

"These reforms will provide more regular and more comprehensive information to parents about their progress, support heads (and) teachers, to make sure that every child can succeed and strengthen our ability to hold all schools to account, as well as the public's ability to hold government to account," Mr Balls said. "Key Stage Two tests are here to stay. They are essential to give parents, teachers and the public the information they need about the progress of every primary aged child and every primary school. "The final year of primary school is critical to prepare children for the step up to secondary school", he said.

More here





15 October, 2008

Leftist racism in Arizona And Nebraska

The invaluable Center for Equal Opportunity has recently released studies documenting the degree of preference given to minority applicants to law schools in Arizona and Nebraska. As I've written to my friend Roger Clegg, CEO's president and general counsel, he publishes important reports faster than I can read them.

Defenders of preferential treatment usually begin their defense by denying that they practice it. Thus nearly a year ago I quoted Doug MacEachern, an editorial writer at the Arizona Republic, who predicted that the Arizona Civil Rights Initiative would fail because Arizona is "different" from California, Washington, and Michigan.

... Arizona is different from those states in one key respect. And it's not something that necessarily reflects well on this state: College admissions programs are the primary battleground of the racial-preference wars, and the fact is Arizona colleges are not terribly selective about who gets to attend.

Actually, it failed because thugs from ACORN and other groups succeeded in preventing the gathering of the required number of signatures, but that's another story.

Back to this story, the degree of racial preference in admissions to the law schools at the University of Arizona, Arizona State University, and the University of Nebraska, Clegg and CEO Chairman Linda Chavez noted (in the press releases accompanying the reports, which can be found on the CEO sites linked above):

CEO chairman Linda Chavez said: "Racial discrimination in university admissions is always appalling. But the degree of discrimination we have found here, at both schools but especially at Arizona State, is off the charts." She noted that the odds ratio favoring African Americans over whites was 250 to 1 at the University of Arizona and 1115 to 1 at Arizona State. "As a result, nearly a thousand white students during the years we studied were denied admission even though they had higher undergraduate GPAs and LSATs than the average African American student who was admitted--and over a hundred Asian and Latino students were in the same boat with them."

CEO president Roger Clegg agreed, and stressed that, not only was race weighed, but it was weighed much more heavily that residency status. "For instance, a white Arizonan in 2007 was about eight times less likely to be admitted to the University of Arizona than a black out-of-state applicant, and at Arizona State he would be twelve times less likely to be admitted."

Arizona, it turns out, is not so "different" after all. And Nebraska is no better. At the University of Nebraska law school, Chavez noted,

the odds ratio favoring African Americans over whites was 442 to 1. She pointed out, "During the two years studied (the entering classes of 2006 and 2007), 389 whites were rejected by the law school despite higher LSATs and undergraduate GPAs than the average black admittee. Racial discrimination in university admissions is always appalling. But the extremely heavy weight given to race by the University of Nebraska College of Law is off the charts."

At the state-supported law school in Nebraska, as in Arizona, race was also weighted much more heavily than residence. As Clegg noted,

a white resident of Nebraska in 2007 was more than twenty times less likely to be admitted than an African American applicant from out of state."

I urge you to read both studies, as I intend to do. Meanwhile, as an appetizer, you should take a look at the graphs from them presented on TaxProfBlog. These graphs reveal that for most of the years studied at all three schools the 75th percentile score on the LSAT for entering black students was lower than the 25th percentile score for entering whites.

Also about a year ago I quoted the Dean of the University of Arizona law school, Toni Massaro, who proudly defended her school's use of race preferences because of the "diversity" the preferentially admitted provided to the non-"diverse" students.

Consider, she suggested, teaching constitutional law to a class which includes a Native American student from a reservation with different cultural and legal traditions. "It's a positive value that informs the class discussion,'' she said.

As I pointed out at the time, one problem here is that diversity, even pigmentary "diversity," can be provided by means that do not require pervasive racial discrimination in admissions. It could also be achieved, for example, by something as unthreatening to the "without regard" principle as inviting guest speakers to the campus.

Let me conclude now the same way I concluded then (what's the point of having your own blog if you can't quote yourself at will?):

Actually, inviting guests to articulate "different cultural and legal traditions" would also have the virtue of lifting from the admissions committees the obligation they no doubt now feel to admit some CEOs to enliven and inform discussions of corporate law, old people for their essential views on trusts and estates, fishermen and ship captains for their angle on law of the sea, a boatload of foreigners from all over to provide international perspectives on international law, and tax cheats and felons for their unique and essential points of view on tax and criminal law

Source (See the original for links)




Australia: School science curriculum to be further watered down

The kids are going to get vague generalizations and warm feelings instead of knowledge -- another unfortunate following of the British trend

The traditional school science subjects of biology, physics and chemistry will disappear until the senior years of school under a draft national science curriculum that proposes teaching "science for life". The curriculum, released yesterday, proposes one science course through to Year 10 in which students will explore the big ideas of science, drawing on knowledge from the three traditional disciplines. In the senior years of 11 and 12, the draft proposes three common courses in physics, chemistry and biology, and suggests a fourth more general science course with an emphasis on the applications of science.

The draft is a fundamental shift in the approach to teaching science, away from a focus on facts to fostering students' own inquiries and experiments. It argues that a science curriculum should develop science competencies, give students an understanding of the big ideas, expose them to a range of science experiences relevant to everyday life, and give them an understanding of the major concepts from the sciences. "It is also acknowledged that there is a core body of knowledge and understanding that is fundamental to the understanding of major ideas," it says.

The author of the draft, science education professor Denis Goodrum of Canberra University, said the major challenge of a national science curriculum was to engage and interest students by linking science to their everyday lives. "What we have to do within our curriculum is marry contemporary issues with underlying basic science," he said. Professor Goodrum said the curriculum was not simply to train future scientists but had to provide all students with the scientific skills and knowledge to understand the voltage in their homes or complex issues such as climate change. "Surely a lawyer should have a better understanding of scientific principles in a rich way, just as a medical doctor or a businessman or social worker," he said. "All these areas have a social scientific dimension which is important."

The proposal to drop the traditional disciplines was supported by science education professor at Flinders University, Martin Westwell, who said the advances in science happened at the boundaries where the disciplines intersected. Professor Westwell said the only place where people studied or practised biology, physics and chemistry was in universities. "If you ask a professional scientist what their speciality is, they don't identify as a physicist, biologist or chemist but as a neuroscientist or other," he said. "If you push them, they'll tell you the name that was over the door of the faculty where they did their degree."

Professor Westwell said learning scientific facts and knowledge was fundamental, but had to be balanced with teaching scientific concepts and inquiries. "Perhaps there's been an overemphasis on the stuff taught in science rather than learning about science, about some of the big ideas," he said.

Professor Goodrum said contemporary issues should be included in the curriculum as a way of providing a meaningful context to students, such as cloning, stem cell research, global warming, water conservation and recycling, and hybrid cars.

The draft curriculum blames science curriculums of the past for being too full of content, which students memorise rather than understand, for turning students off the subject. The draft proposes science education start in early childhood, with children's play used to develop an awareness of their world through observation and using their senses. In primary school, the curriculum focus is recognising questions that can be investigated scientifically and investigating them.

The big ideas cover order, change, patterns and system, with suggested topics including weather and how clouds form, sound and how it travels, plants and their reproduction, and the night sky covering the stars andplanets. In Years 7 to 10, the curriculum focuses on explaining phenomena involving science and its applications, covering topics from earth and space science, life science and physical science. The big ideas to be studied cover energy, sustainability, equilibrium and interdependence, form and function, evidence, models and theories.

Source





14 October, 2008

UK's Largest Teachers' Union Lobbies to Legalise consensual Sex with older Students

Criminalizing otherwise legal sex because one of the parties is a teacher does seem anomalous

The largest UK teachers' union wants the government to decriminalise sex with students who are over the legal age of consent. Chris Keates, the general secretary of the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT), said that teachers who have sex with pupils over the age of consent should not be placed on the sex offenders register. Keates called prosecution for statutory rape "a real anomaly in the law that we are concerned about."

NASUWT complained that media reports had misrepresented their position. "To describe the NASUWT's comments on this as 'teachers want the right to bed pupils' as one report has done, simply for pointing out an anomaly which criminalises a teacher but would leave any other adult free from prosecution for the same type of relationship, is a travesty."

Gregory Carlin, however, a child protection activist and head of the Irish Anti-Trafficking Coalition, said that such ideas were another sign of the erosion of legal protections for young people against exploitation. "If the NASUWT philosophy has its day," he said, "exploiting a 16 year old in a brothel would carry no extra penalty." Under the same logic, he said, "Jail guards would be able to take their pick from their charges and foster parents would be spared prosecution for having sex with foster children."

In an official statement dated October 6th, Keates said, "From the time the Sexual Offences legislation was first drafted in 2001 the NASUWT consistently raised the significant anomaly within its provisions. A teacher having a consensual relationship with a pupil over the age of 16 on the roll of the school in which they teach is liable under the Act to prosecution and being placed on the sex offenders register. "However, if the same teacher has a consensual relationship with a young person of the same age who attends another school they would not be prosecuted or classed as sex offenders."

Carlin told LifeSiteNews.com that Keates "knows what she was asking for," which is simply to "legalise sex crimes." List 99 is a secret register of men and women who are barred from working with children by the Department of Education and Skills. Carlin said, "Thousands of teachers are referred to List 99 each year, most of them from the NASUWT. In fact, the referrals doubled between 2003 and 2005."

Source




HISTORY TEACHING REFORM BEGINNING IN AUSTRALIA

Three current articles below

Greater serve of history in national curriculum

History lessons will be soon be compulsory for every Australian student until the end of Year 10 under radical national curriculum proposals. The Rudd Government is pushing for extended and compulsory history subjects across Australia as educators survey a generation of students with "gaps in their history". The National Curriculum Board will this week unveil its proposals to transform history, science, maths and English subjects in our classrooms from 2011.

Arguably the most controversial of these reforms is the content and structure of history taught to students from Cape York to Perth. The NCB proposes the subject become compulsory and stand alone with about 100 lessons a year from Years 7 to 10, and a "distinctive branch of learning" constituting 10 per cent of all primary class time. The NCB also suggests what and when matters of ancient, modern, Australian and world histories should be learned by students.

Currently most Queensland schools teach history to Year 10 as part of the studies of society and environment (SOSE) subject, which also integrates geography and social studies. Less than half of Australian students now learn history as a stand alone subject.

The radical reforms were formulated by a 10-strong advisory group containing Brisbane Girls Grammar School head of history Julie Hennessey, and led by University of Melbourne Professor Stuart Macintyre. Professor Macintyre said many high school leavers now had "gaps in their history" and were "not aware of major topics". "History should be taught as history because the skills of historical understanding and the importance of historical knowledge are not being given as important a place in the timetable," he said. The proposals draw heavily from Monash University's National Centre for History Education.

A NCB spokesman said the reforms could be modified at an educators' forum in Melbourne on Wednesday, before being placed on the NCB website for "public discussion" from November 2008 to February 2009. The changes to history, science, maths and English curricula - forming the first national curriculum - will then be trialled for two years before implementation in 2011. Future science students are set to learn about cloning, stem cell research and hybrid cars.

Source

Curriculum to scale back Australian history

The emphasis on teaching Australian history in recent years will be scaled down in the national curriculum, as its initial draft, to be released today, outlines a course that places the national story in the context of broader global events. The draft says restricting the study of history to Australian history is inappropriate, and while it retains an important place in the national curriculum, knowledge of world events is necessary to understand the nation's history.

The national curriculum stems the push to privilege Australian history, which culminated in the call by the Howard government to make the study of Australian history compulsory in Years 9 and 10. "If only to equip students to operate in the world in which they will live, they need to understand world history," the draft says. 'History should have a broad and comprehensive foundation from which its implications for Australia can be grasped."

The lead author of the draft, Melbourne University history professor Stuart Macintyre, said yesterday the push to cement Australian history in schools had left the position of world history unclear in curriculums. "To think one can study Australian history in isolation is a bit short-sighted," Professor Macintyre said. "There was a concern ... that it was solipsistic and not conducive to understanding Australia and its place in the world. "I think there is very broad agreement that, while all Australian students should learn Australian history, we don't really do our duty to them unless they study other history as well."

The draft curriculum proposes history be compulsory for all school students until the end of Year 10, and introduced as a distinct subject in primary school. Professor Macintyre said having trained history teachers was crucial to implementing the curriculum, and attention should be given to the history education given to student teachers.

The draft curriculum outlines a sequential study of world and Australian events based on factual knowledge and the skills to "think historically" or analyse events in a course that spans from the earliest human communities to the Industrial Revolution to the dismissal of the Whitlam government and the Iraq war. The draft, described as initial advice to the National Curriculum Board, was developed by a group of historians and history teachers led by the Left-aligned Professor Macintyre, whose appointment was criticised as being provocative by the conservative side in the history wars.

The broad aim of the curriculum is to introduce students to world history from the time of the earliest human communities, and to have an appreciation of the major civilisations that have existed in Europe, Asia, Africa, America and Australia.

In primary school, history should occupy at least 10 per cent of the teaching time, covering student family histories in the early years to allow students to make connections between their past and that of others. In middle and upper primary school, students would study the history of their local community and key national events such as the significance of Anzac Day, migration, "contact to 1788", and the early years of the colony. In Years 11 and 12, history would be optional and offer more in-depth study in ancient, modern and Australian history.

The draft proposes extension studies, such as those offered in NSW, that allow students to explore traditions of historical research and writing, including debates between historians through the ages. The draft curriculum emphasises the importance of factual knowledge in history, but says historical thinking and the skills of historical inquiry are just as important.

Source

Prominent conservative says Australian kids should learn about British history

OPPOSITION frontbencher Tony Abbott wants school students to study more British history, saying Britain has shaped the world and should get the credit for it. The National Curriculum Board today will release a draft curriculum which places a greater focus on world events in history classes.

Mr Abbott said he was in favour of world history but said the focus should be on Britain. "People have got to know where we came from, they've got to know about the ideas that shaped the modern world, and in a very significant sense, the modern world has been made in England," he said in Canberra. "I think (the curriculum) needs to be history that pays credit where it's due." "We are a product of western civilisation, in particular we are a product of English-speaking civilisation." History classes should start with the history of the Jews, then move on to the Greeks and Romans, then the history of Britain, Mr Abbott said.

Mr Abbott, the shadow indigenous affairs minister, did not mention Aboriginal or Asian history. When asked specifically about Aboriginal history, Mr Abbott said that could be studied too. "That's a part of it, sure, but if you want to understand modern Australia, you've got to understand world history," he said. When asked about Asian history, he said that was important, but it was important to know where we came from.

Source





13 October, 2008

Police called in to prevent 'havoc' at school entrance exam in Britain

British parents know the value of "Grammar" (selective) schools but the British government does not. It is trying to abolish them instead of building more. A British "Grammar" school is a publicly-funded school run along private school lines -- with admission dependant upon passing an entrance exam. British Leftists hate them because they are "elitist". But the Leftist alternatives -- non-selective "comprehensive" schools -- are often a behavioural sink -- thus preventing even bright children from learning and so closing off their advancement to higher education

Police had to be called to a top grammar school to prevent havoc during an entrance exam day. Officers had to patrol the car park as visitors came to sit the 11-plus exam and threatened to cause chaos at the school. Nearly 1,500 pupils were competing for 126 places at Wallington County Grammar School in Sutton, Surrey.

Competition for highly-rated grammar schools has risen as parents are looking at cheaper alternatives to private schools during the financial crisis. The Good Schools Guide shows applications at almost one in five private schools has dropped by 10 per cent in four years. Highly rated grammar schools on the other hand attract at least 10 applicants for every place, especially schools such as Wallington which do well in the exam league tables without demanding fees.

Wallington, an 880-pupil school which admits girls in the sixth form, obtained five GCSEs at grades A* to C (including English and maths) for 98 per cent of its pupils last year. Tina Marden, admissions secretary, said: "We had 1,496 applications for 126 places this year and we are still expecting some 'lates'. "We had to have the police down to control parking... we are on a red route and, if we didn't, people would cause havoc."

Robert McCartney QC, chairman of the National Grammar Schools Association, said that applications across the country have risen in record numbers. He said: "Many aspirational parents who want their children to have a good education have tightened their belts and gone without other things to give them a place at independent school. "One of the effects of the credit crunch is that those people that were just able to make the fees are no longer able to do so. "Because of the poor state of the comprehensive system, they are desperate to get their children into grammar schools."

A Metropolitan Police spokesman confirmed they were asked to attend last month's exams at the grammar school.

Source




France in shock as dictionary Le Petit Robert relaxes language rules

Modernization of spelling makes sense. English could do with some. But alternative spellings? Sounds like a recipe for confusion

Schoolchildren are celebrating, commentators are astonished and purists are fuming over what they describe as a scandalous attack on 500 years of French history. In the most sweeping linguistic reform in France for centuries, Le Petit Robert, the nation's premier dictionary, has cast aside tradition to allow alternative spellings for thousands of words. Accents have become optional, consonants can be doubled on a whim and hyphens will float in and out of literary texts under the changes imposed by Alain Rey, the linguist responsible for the opus.

He says that the reform has been necessary to enable a rigidly codified language to move forward in a society of slang and multi-ethnic innovation. "We have to make spelling simpler," he said. "It's too complicated and it's not surprising that schoolchildren have trouble learning it."

In an attempt to ease their task in schools that continue to impose weekly dictations, he has included variable spellings for 6,000 of the 60,000 words in his dictionary, including many of foreign, and notably English, origin. Cameraman, for instance, can be written with or without an acute accent over the "e" in Le Petit Robert 2009, published this month. Manager can be spelt manageur and acupuncture can be turned into acuponcture.

Mr Rey says that reform was long overdue, since the last great linguistic clean-up in 1762, when medieval spellings were prodded into what became modern French. He points out that the changes have been authorised by l'Acad‚mie Fran‡aise, the body that regulates the language, and that the concept of twin spellings is nothing new. The French word for key, for example, has been written two different ways for years, he says - cle or clef.

However, the initiative has sparked a furious row in a country that has clung to la langue fran‡aise as a pillar of its identity ever since King Fran‡ois I made it the official language in 1539. "Until now, we tended to consider the French language dictionary as the supreme judge, the final arbiter," Pierre Assouline, the renowned literary commentator for Le Monde, said. "We doubted, it decided, we obeyed. Those were the good old times. Confidence reigned. What are we to do if it is having doubts itself?"

The controversy has spread to internet forums, where users have denounced the arrival of text-message terms at the heart of Gallic culture. "I am scandalised," one opponent from southern France said. "We have a grammar and our roots. How can you just sweep that all away? One day text messages will replace our cherished French language." Comments on Le Figaro's chat forum accused Mr Rey of "treason", "spreading illiteracy" and "dumbing down" the nation's culture.

Some pointed out that his move flew in the face of President Sarkozy's drive to improve spelling among primary school children after a survey showed that 15 per cent of them had "grave difficulties" in French.

Michel Schifres, a commentator for Le Figaro, took a more cheerful view. "Is there more beautiful combat than to fight over your language? What other people than us is capable of that? It's a whole lot better than Japan, an ageing country, which has just invented a fashion show for elderly people in nappies."

Source





12 October, 2008

Decision to teach kids to be homosexual allowed to stand

Parental rights nullified. Fascism legitimized by SCOTUS!

A federal court decision approving mandatory public school instruction for children as young as kindergarten in how to be homosexual is being allowed to stand, drawing a description of "despicable" from the parent who unsuccessfully challenged his school district's "gay" advocacy agenda. The U.S. Supreme Court without comment has refused to intervene in a case prompted by the actions of officials at Estabrook Elementary school in Lexington, Mass., who not only were teaching homosexuality to young children, but specifically refused to allow Christian parents to opt their children out of the indoctrination.

The case on which WND has reported previously involves Massachusetts father David Parker, who with his wife now have withdrawn their children from public schools, for which they continue to pay taxes, and are homeschooling.

The decision by the Supreme Court leaves standing the ruling from the appeals court for Massachusetts, where Judge Sandra Lynch said those who are concerned over such civil rights violations "may seek recourse to the normal political processes for change in the town and state."

Earlier District Judge Mark Wolf had ordered that school officials' work to undermine Christian beliefs and teach homosexuality is needed to prepare children for citizenship, and if parents don't like it they can elect a different school committee or homeschool their children.

According to a new report from MassResistance, a pro-family organization following the case, the dispute was over the "Lexington Schools' aggressive policy of normalizing homosexual behavior to elementary school children and not allowing parents to be notified before or after, or being able to opt-out their kids from it."

The dispute grabbed headlines when Parker, on April 27, 2005, "was arrested and thrown in jail by school officials over his insistence on being notified regarding his son in kindergarten being taught about homosexual relationships by adults," Mass Resistance reported.

Another family was alarmed by a similar situation a short time later as the school not only continued its indoctrination, but "became more hostile to the Parkers, and local liberals and homosexual activists did their best to harass the family," Mass Resistance reported. In fact, the school, led by Supt. Paul Ash, then stated in school publications they would not "compromise" on any points regarding the homosexual agenda.

"The [Supreme] court did not even bother to notify the Parkers or their attorneys," said Mass Resistance, which said what now will be enforced in the judicial district will be the lower bench rulings that the state has not only the right but "even the obligation . to promote homosexual relationships to young children."

"The unrelenting action of the Lexington schools to push homosexuality in the lower grades, as well as the ugly hostility of local liberals toward the Parkers and their children over this incident has taken its toll," Mass Resistance said. "This year the Parkers removed both of their children from the Eastbrook Elementary School and have been homeschooling."

Parker gave no indication, however, he was quitting the overall battle against rampant normalization of homosexuality. "The federal Supreme Court of the United States has tragically decided to deny our case from moving forward," Parker said in a statement. "We have exhausted all our legal options in the federal system for the protection of young children in the public schools. The Supreme Court has cowardly turned their backs on a parental rights issue that clearly has national significance with profound consequences. "We believe that parents have the right and sacred responsibility to defend the psyches of their young impressionable children against such child predation. This includes more forceful measures to defend against, the inculcation and penetration, of perversion into their minds, behind the parent's back and against their will," Parker said.

"This despicable ruling is not of the people, nor for the people, and nor by the people - but against them. We, the people, must take back our government for the sake of our children and the sake of this nation," he said.

When Parker asked the Supreme Court for a review he noted the questions raised in the case have not been answered in previous cases. Those include: "Whether objecting parents have a constitutional right to opt their public school children out of, or even to receive notice of, undisputed government efforts to indoctrinate kindergarten, first and second grade school children into the propriety, indeed desirability, of same gender marriage." Also at issue is whether those schools' "open and specific intention to indoctrinate . children into disbelieving core tenets of their families' deeply held religious faith constitutes a burden on the families' free exercise of religion."

The high court previously found, the request argued, the "primary role of the parents in the upbringing of their children is now established beyond debate as an enduring American tradition. Aspects of child rearing protected from unnecessary intrusion by the government include the inculcation of moral standards, religious beliefs, and elements of good citizenship."

In an earlier interview with WND, Parker warned allowing the appeals ruling to stand would "allow teachers in elementary schools to influence children into any views they wanted to, behind the backs of parents, to a captive audience, and against the will of the parents if need be. "Teachers are being postured to have a constitutional right to coercively indoctrinate little children [into whatever they choose to teach,]" he noted.

Source




The suppressed history of Communism

I have seen for quite some time that although we won the Cold War -- and defeated the Soviet communist empire -- America is vulnerable to varying degrees of collectivism, wealth redistribution, "creeping socialism" (Ronald Reagan's phrase), class-warfare rhetoric, and generally milder, more palatable (but still dangerous) forms of disguised Marxism. Why? How? The answer is simple: The history and truth about communism is not taught by our educators. That total failure to remind and understand means that Americans are painfully vulnerable to repeat mistakes that should have been forever tossed onto the ash-heap of history.

Communism and the Cold War has been my area of research for years. I've written books on the subject. I lecture on the subject at Grove City College and around the country. The book I'm currently researching with Peter Schweizer is a Cold War book, which, ironically, inevitably brought us into contact with Marxist characters who allied with and even mentored Barack Obama.

Of all the lectures that I do around the country, none seem to rivet the audience as much as my discourse on the horrors of communism. In these lectures, which are usually connected to my books on Ronald Reagan, I do a 10-15 minute backgrounder on the crimes of communists-from their militant attacks on private property, on members of all religious faiths, and on basic civil liberties, to their total death toll of over 100 million bloodied, emaciated corpses in the 20th century.

As I do these presentations, the young people, especially on college campuses, are locked in, amazed at what they are hearing. I think they are especially struck that I always ground every fact and figure in reliable research and authorities -- books published by Harvard University Press and Yale University Press, quotes from the likes of Mikhail Gorbachev and Vaclav Havel and Alexander Yakovlev, anti-Soviet appraisals from certain Cold War Democrats like Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy and even early liberals like Woodrow Wilson. I rarely use right-wing sources because I don't want the professors of these students to be able to later shoot a single hole in my presentation -- a potential tactic to undermine the overall thesis.

And speaking of those professors, that gets to my point here: As the young people in my audience are fully engaged, hands in the air with question after question -- obviously hearing all of these things for the first time in their lives, from K-12 to college, as they are eager to inform me after my talk -- the professors often stare at me with contempt. In one case, a British professor, who could not step sighing, squirming, and rolling her eyes as I quoted the most heinous assessments of religion by Marx and Lenin, got up and stormed out of the room.

These professors glare at me as if the ghost of Joe McCarthy has flown into the room and leapt inside of my body. In fact, that's the essence of their criticism: It is not so much that these professors approve of communism as much as they disapprove of -- actually, utterly despise -- anti-communism. They are anti-anti-communist more so than pro-communist. Conservatives need to understand this, so as to avoid broad-brushing and losing credibility. Sure, a lot of professors are Marxists, and many more share the utopian goals of Marxism, but the vast majority are simply leftists.

Being on the left entails many strange contradictions and political pathologies, one of which is this bizarre revulsion toward anti-communists. These leftists -- to their credit -- despise fascism, and will preach anti-fascism until they're blue in the face. They are as appalled by fascism as conservatives are by communism. But while conservatives detest both communism and fascism, liberals only detest one of the two.

For instance, I recently saw that Human Events created a list of the top 10 worst books ever written, which included, as the top two, Marx's Communist Manifesto (#1), followed by Hitler's Mein Kampf (#2). That ranking is easily defended solely on numbers: Hitler killed at least 10 million; communism killed at least 100 million. Either way, kudos to Human Events, a conservative newspaper, for putting both communism and fascism in its top two. Yet, conversely, any liberal version of such a list would not even place the Communist Manifesto in the top 10. I guarantee that liberals who read the Human Events list will snicker at its alleged Neanderthal anti-communism.

The leftist intelligentsia that dominates higher education, and which writes the civics texts used in high schools -- I've read and studied these texts -- and which trains the teachers who teach in high schools, is not in the slightest bit notably anti-communist. These liberals do not teach the lessons of communism.

What's more, aside from failing to instruct their students in the crass facts about communism's unprecedented destruction -- its purges, mass famines, show trials, killing fields, concentration camps -- these educators are negligent in failing to teach the essential, non-emotional, but crucial Econ 101 basics that contrast capitalism and communism and, thus, that get at the heart of how and why command economies simply do not work. Each semester in my Comparative Politics course at Grove City College, it takes no more than 50 minutes to matter-of-factly lay out the rudimentary differences. Whereas capitalist systems are based on the market forces of supply and demand, which dictate prices and production levels and targets, communist systems are based on central planning, by which a government bureau attempts to manage such things. Capitalism is based on private ownership; communism on public ownership. Capitalism thrives on small government and taxes; communism on large government and taxes, typically progressive income-tax rates and estate taxes -- both advocated explicitly by Marx -- and much more.

This stuff isn't rocket science. It is easy to teach, if the professor desires. The problem is that it isn't being taught. Consequently, Americans today do not know why communism is such a devastating ideology, at both the level of plain economic theory and in actual historical practice. It is a remarkably hateful system, based on literal hatred and targeted annihilation of entire classes and groups of people. (Nazism sought genocide based on ethnicity; communism sought genocide based on class.)

Most Americans generally know that the USSR was a bad place and that it was good that the Berlin Wall fell; they lived through that. But they know little beyond that, especially young Americans in college today, born around the time the wall fell -- Obama's biggest supporters. Nowhere in America is Barack Obama worshipped as he is on college campuses, by students and professors alike.

What does it all mean for November 2008? It means that millions of modern Americans, when they hear that Barack Obama has deep roots with communist radicals like Bill Ayers and Frank Marshall Davis, don't care; they don't get it. Moreover, the leftist establishment -- from academia to media to Hollywood -- will not help them get it. To the contrary, the left responds to these accusations by not only downplaying or dismissing them but by ridiculing or even vilifying them, given the left's reflexive anti-anti-communism. The left will create bad guys out of the anti-communists who are legitimately blowing the whistle on the real bad guys.

When the leftists of the `60s took over higher education and the media, they really knew what they were doing. This was brilliant, masterful, a tactical slam-dunk, a tremendous coup for them and their worldview, with ripple effects we can scarcely imagine.

Does this mean that the McCain camp, talk radio and conservatives generally shouldn't bother exposing these things? Not at all. The truth is the truth, and needs to be told. Moderates especially need to be informed that Barack Obama is not your typical liberal: he is the most hard-left Democrat that his party has ever nominated for the presidency. It is absolutely not a coincidence that the man with these far-left associations just so happens to be ranked -- quantifiably, objectively, by non-partisan, respected sources like National Journal -- the most far-left member of the U.S. Senate, which is no small thing given the leftward drift of the modern Democratic Party. In other words, Obama's extremist associations matter; they are fully revealing, illustrative of the political-ideological realities that the pro-Obama media will not expose. His voting record bears this out.

That said, I warn my fellow conservatives: Be prepared to be really, really frustrated when few people seem to care. The Santayana aphorism is correct: those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it. For decades now, we haven't taught the next generation what it needs to know from its immediate past. And now, to borrow from the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, America's chickens have come home to roost.

Source





11 October, 2008

Bias at Whitman: Does Whitman college hate conservatives?

(Some insight below from one student at a very Leftist liberal arts college in Washington State. His encounter with contempt for his Texan home has alerted him to the evils of other biases)

By Jesus Vasquez

Of course not. We just think they're wrong. And barbaric. But hate is too strong of a word. We just severely dislike them with all our heart and soul.

As a first year, the question "Where are you from?" is part of the awkward initial conversations we all have. Personally, after indicating that Texas was my native state, I was met with many an `oh,' characterized by a falling tone of displeasure and slight bewilderment. Generally, students, once friendly and welcoming, immediately became suspicious and closed. I only provoked further agitation after informing the inquisitor that I was NOT from Austin. Immediately, I was subjected to an uncomfortable interrogation regarding my religious, political, social and economic beliefs.

As a result, I felt pressured to assimilate, to conform to the ideal of your average liberal kid. When sharing stories from back home, I glossed over the fact that I had befriended fundamentalist Christians, who helped re-elect George W. Bush, whose parents had a gun collection worth thousands of dollars. I would even engage in what an interviewee for this article termed "pretentious despair," feeling sorry for all those in my hometown and home state who had yet to see the light of liberal ideals. And, all the while, all I could think was, "I'm so glad I'm a liberal." But, a year later, after meeting a conservative on campus, I finally realized, "But what if I wasn't?"

It makes quite a statement when the three conservative students who chose to be interviewed also requested anonymity. It truly shows what an accepting climate we have on our campus - what grandiose, open-minded folks we have that can tolerate and accept such different viewpoints. Indeed, this triumvirate seemed to agree that if conservatives were any other minority group on campus, the marginalization and overwhelming dismissal of their point of view would NOT be tolerated. Why is it, then, that Whitman students (as a whole) are committed to allowing multi-vocality and giving credence to nearly any set of ideals OTHER than those of the American conservative?

"One of the most unfortunate things about being liberal on this campus is that it promotes conformity in opinion, without a reason to back it up," says anonymous 1. A1 then recalled an event that occurred, where this problem became quite evident. "I once got into an argument with someone from an environmental organization on campus, and, after shooting down all of her claims with my evidence, she refused to even consider re-evaluating her position. Instead, she shut down, and ignored everything I said."

Yet another student, a2, who terms their views as `conservative-leaning moderate,' insists that Whitman was initially attractive to them due to their commitment to diversity. "One of the reasons I came to Whitman is because I thought it was a pretty balanced campus, in terms of diversity of opinion. It turns out, it's not quite as diverse as I thought it would be." But, a2 continued, "What I don't want to do is complain about lack of representation - I think that's the wrong thing to do. What I do propose is the need to have intellectual balance and understanding." Likewise, a3 expressed their surprise at how sharp reactions could be to foreign points of view. "When talking about politics, there was usually this exclamation of `Oh, YOU'RE the Republican!' Personally, there were feelings of shock and alienation, and for others, it was considered odd that there was one amongst them." Indeed, a3 implored for greater patience and understanding. "I'll speak very calmly one-on-one with people. If people want to hear my point of view, I'll share it. I'm not trying to be a sensationalist, I'm just trying to be - me."

Admittedly, I'm not perfect - read my last two articles, and you'll see I'm as capable of bias as anyone else. Furthermore, though I may have spoken in general terms, I don't mean to accuse ALL Whitman students of being spiteful towards conservatives. I know that there are indeed some stellar, genuinely open-minded scholars that reside within this hallowed bubble.

If there's anything I've learned in my four years at Whitman, it's that intelligence and ignorance are quite independent of each other. Indeed, I've met the most intelligent people of my life here, and some of the most ignorant - some are the same people. A particularly damning and relevant comment came from a1, when noting, "Whitman is more interested in seeking out what they want to hear - so long as they continue this, Whitman will not be a place of education - it will be a cheerleading camp."

I propose this to you - if you believe that red states are a monolithic entity inhabited by imbeciles incapable of inculcating the lofty platitudes we so celebrate, perhaps it's time to go back to the drawing board.

Source




Australia: Students missing out on basic literacy, numeracy skills

Too much time wasted on propaganda

STUDENTS' literacy and numeracy are suffering because they are tied up learning such life skills as bike safety and sex education, principals say. The Australian Primary Principals Association says teachers spend too much class time on lifestyle issues at the expense of reading, writing and maths, the Courier-Mail reports.

APPA president Leonie Trimper said sex, drug, car and bike safety tuition were key distractions. "We're not saying we don't have a role but we seem to be the only ones with it," she said. She said a plethora of "add-ons" had crept into overcrowded state curriculums over many years, making it "impossible to achieve" learning aims.

In a report released last month, 96 per cent of 5000 Australian principals and teachers surveyed wanted a simpler, less-crowded curriculum.

Queensland's Year 3 and 5 students came seventh out of eight states and territories in this year's first national literacy and numeracy tests. Year 7 and 9 students came sixth. At the same time, Queensland Association of State School Principals president Norm Hart said, teachers copped "another job" when Education Queensland made 2008 The Year of Physical Activity with its Smart Moves program. "If you put your focus everywhere you can't keep your focus," he said. "Literacy and numeracy should be the focus."

Source





10 October, 2008

"Right and wrong" makes a comeback in British schools

Apparently "extremism" now joins "racism" in being one of the few things that are wrong

Schools are being given advice on how to prevent pupils becoming drawn to violent extremism and terrorism. Guidelines are being made available to primary and secondary schools in England to help them discuss the issues surrounding extremist views. Schools Secretary Ed Balls said schools could play a "key role" in getting young people to reject extremism.

Schools should have a named teacher to whom pupils can report any concerns of grooming by extremist groups. Teachers should protect the well-being of pupils who may be vulnerable to being drawn to extremism, says the government's "Learning together to be safe" kit. ' Mr Balls said the initiative was a direct response to a call from schools for support and advice to tackle extremism. "This is not about asking teachers to be monitors and to be doing surveillance, that's not their job. "But if something concerns them, we want them to know who to turn to for help," he said.

"Violent extremism influenced by Al-Qaeda currently poses the greatest security threat but other forms of extremism and hate- or race-based prejudice are also affecting our communities and causing alienation and disaffection amongst young people," he added. "The toolkit shows how education can be used to tackle all forms of extremism and build a stronger, safer society."

Mr Balls said a security response to terrorism was not enough and that the underlying issues must be addressed. "Our goal must be to empower our young people to come together to expose violent extremists and reject cruelty and violence in whatever form it takes," he said.

Hatch End High School in Harrow, north-west London, is one of the schools that has been involved with producing the guidance. Head teacher Alan Jones said the important thing was to keep children safe and secure. "By bringing things into the open, by discussing these sorts of things in school, we're actually improving the safety of all our children."

Mr Jones said while schools were there to teach academic subjects, they also had a duty to develop the wider person. "It's important to teach about everything in life, to prepare young people to be world citizens," he said. The National Union of Teachers welcomed the guidance, saying violent political groups presented a significant threat to large numbers of people. Acting general secretary Christine Blower said: "Terrorist threats have to be tackled. "It's worth remembering that groups such as those from the far right can pose intimidatory threats to their communities, as serious as those from al-Qaeda."

And Chris Keates of the NASUWT teachers' union welcomed the way the government had taken on board its representations to ensure the toolkit covered the extremism of fascist and racist groups. But Dr Mary Bousted, general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, was more critical. "We have a duty of care to try to prevent young people descending into illegal activities which could ruin their lives," she said. "But teachers are not trained to deal with radicalisation. We are not spy catchers. "School staff believe in having reasoned discussions with pupils, and will welcome the practical advice in the government's anti-extremism tool-kit which builds on the work already being done in schools and colleges. "

But despite what Ed Balls says, the tool-kit over-emphasises concerns about al-Qaeda, while the reality is that more staff in schools and colleges are trying to combat intolerance towards minority groups such as gays and lesbians and travellers, racism, and violence from animal rights extremists."

Anthony Glees, Professor of security and intelligence studies at the University of Buckingham, said it was wrong to target young children. "It's very important that the government has recognised that school teachers and their pupils need to be alerted to the growing threat of radicalisation amongst the young and MI5 has alerted us to this some time ago. "This is good. It's a sophisticated, security-led tool kit although I have to say putting this over to kids who are five-years-old is ridiculous. This is a problem for 12 years and above. "This is a mistake. You should allow all British children a certain amount of innocence and happy childhood days. They don't need to know all the things they are being told."

Source




Latin revival

The number of students in the United States taking the National Latin Exam has risen steadily to more than 134,000 students in each of the past two years, from 124,000 in 2003 and 101,000 in 1998, with large increases in remote parts of the country like New Mexico, Alaska and Vermont. The number of students taking the Advanced Placement test in Latin, meanwhile, has nearly doubled over the past 10 years, to 8,654 in 2007. While Spanish and French still dominate student schedules - and Chinese and Arabic are trendier choices - Latin has quietly flourished in many high-performing suburbs, like New Rochelle, where Latin's virtues are sung by superintendents and principals who took it in their day. In neighboring Pelham, the 2,750-student district just hired a second full-time Latin teacher after a four-year search, learning that scarce Latin teachers have become more sought-after than ever.

On Long Island, the Jericho district is offering an Advanced Placement course in Latin for the first time this year after its Latin enrollment rose to 120 students, a 35 percent increase since 2002. In nearby Great Neck, 36 fifth graders signed up last year for before- and after-school Latin classes that were started by a 2008 graduate who has moved on to study classics at Stanford (that student's brother and a friend will continue to lead the Latin classes this year).

Latin is also thriving in New York City, where it is currently taught in about three dozen schools , including Brooklyn Latin, a high school in East Williamsburg that started in 2006. Four years of Latin, and two of Spanish, are required at the new high school, where Latin phrases adorn the walls and words like discipuli (students), magistri (teachers) and latrina (bathroom) are sprinkled into everyday conversation. "It's the language of scholars and educated people," said Jason Griffiths, headmaster of Brooklyn Latin. "It's the language of people who are successful. I think it's a draw, and that's certainly what we sell."

Adam D. Blistein, executive director of the American Philological Association at the University of Pennsylvania, which represents more than 3,000 members, including classics professors and Latin teachers, said that more high schools were recognizing the benefits of Latin. It builds vocabulary and grammar for higher SAT scores, appeals to college admissions officers as a sign of critical-thinking skills and fosters true intellectual passion, he said. "Goethe is better in German, Flaubert is better in French and Virgil is better in Latin," Dr. Blistein said. "If you stick with it, the lollipop comes at the end when you get to read the original. In many cases, it's what whets their appetite."

Latin was once required at many public and parochial schools, but fell into disfavor during the 1960s when students rebelled against traditional classroom teachings and even the Roman Catholic Church moved away from Latin as the official language of Mass. Interest in Latin was revived somewhat in the 1970s and began picking up in the 1980s with the back-to-basics movement in many schools, according to Latin scholars, but really took off in the last few years as a language long seen as a stodgy ivory tower secret infiltrated popular culture.

Harry Potter books use Latin words for names and spells, and at least two have been translated into Latin ("Harrius Potter et Philosophi Lapis"), as have several by Dr. Seuss ("Cattus Petasatus"). Movies like "Gladiator" and "Troy" have also lent glamour to the ancient world. "Sometimes you need to know Latin to understand that part," said Adrian McCullough, 10, a sixth grader in New Rochelle who plans to reread the Harry Potter books now that he is learning Latin.

Marty Abbott, education director of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, said it was possible that Latin would edge out German as the third most popular language taught in schools, behind Spanish and French, when the preliminary results of an enrollment survey are released next year. In the last survey, covering enrollment in 2000, Latin placed fourth. "In people's minds, it's coming back," she said. "But it's always been there. It's just that we continue to see interest in it."

Source





9 October, 2008

Utah: Charter schools far outshine public in 'No Child Left Behind' standards

Utah's charter schools performed far better than their traditional public school counterparts in meeting Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) goals for the federal education program No Child Left Behind. Eighty percent of Utah's public schools met AYP goals for the 2007-08 school year, with far more meeting those goals by appeal than the previous year. By contrast, 95 percent of the 58 Utah charter schools tested met the federal requirements, with only one charter appealing, according to results released last week by the State Office of Education. Between 27,000 and 32,000 Utah students attend charter schools, which this year number 68.

Utah charter schools also outperformed traditional public schools on the Utah Performance Assessment System for Students (U-PASS) test, a state complement to AYP. Ninety-three percent of charter schools passed, compared with 87 percent of traditional schools.

Rather than tout their higher pass rates, though, most charter school administrators point to differences that may weigh in their favor. AYP requires that schools meet goals across all 10 subgroups of students in order to pass. Subgroups include special education students, English Language Learners (ELL) and groups defined as "disadvantaged minorities."

Data compiled by the state show that in traditional public schools, 39 percent are "economically disadvantaged," 12 percent are a "disadvantaged minority," and almost 11 percent are students with special education needs. The charter school numbers: 24 percent "economically disadvantaged," 8 percent "disadvantaged minority" and slightly more than 10 percent special needs. The state office could not provide current ELL enrollment figures.

Sonia Woodbury, director of City Academy charter school in Salt Lake City, said her 185 students represent many subgroups, but some are small enough to be statistically insignificant for purposes of meeting federal goals. City Academy met AYP requirements this year and last. "We have them all, pretty much, but they're smaller," Woodbury said. "The way that's calculated in AYP can sometimes make it easier for charter schools."

Judy Park, associate superintendent at the State Office of Education, said that in general, public schools tend to enroll more subgroups at greater numbers. That makes passing AYP more difficult. "If your school has 10 of those subgroups, there's 10 ways you can pass or fail in order to meet AYP," Park said. "What percentage of charter schools have ESL learners?"

Although both draw on public funds, charter schools don't have geographic boundaries and operate under a specified charter based on student needs and interests. Also, charter schools are often smaller in both school and classroom size.

Rebecca Raybould, who analyzes AYP tests for charter schools, agrees that from a statistical standpoint, the number of subgroups and their size make meeting the requirement easier for charters. Still, she said comparing public and charter school AYP performance makes for uneven comparison. AYP and U-PASS often skip certain grade levels in their assessments, and therefore large groups of students, she pointed out. "It's detrimental, even though everyone loves to do it," Raybould said. "It splits the point, which is to educate kids."

Brian Allen, chair of Utah's State Charter School Board, said that although he doesn't know details of subgroup distribution at charter schools, public schools would do better to examine what charter schools do well instead of "excusing away" the disparity in AYP goal results. "Charter schools are a fine complement to public schools in the state. We ought to be learning more from each other," Allen said.

Source




British government attacking successful private schools

Five independent schools are to be investigated by the Charity Commission to see if they meet the Government's tough new charity requirement to offer a "public benefit" by helping poor as well as rich people. Those that fail could be required to replace their trustee boards and ordered to make changes such as allotting more cash for bursaries and sharing facilities with state school pupils.

The five include Manchester Grammar School (fees o9,000 a year), which is one of the top ten performing private boys' schools in the country at GCSE and which volunteered to be among the first fee-paying charities to undergo a public benefit test.

Charitable status brings independent schools tax breaks worth around o100 million a year and adds considerably to their fundraising credibility. New charity laws require organisations that charge fees to "earn" these benefits by offering some kind of benefit in kind to the wider community.

The other school charities being investigated are Manor House School Trust, operating in Dorset, Hampshire and Wiltshire; Pangbourne College in Berkshire; St Anselm's School Trust in Derbyshire; and Highfield Priory School in Lancashire. The results of the review will published in the spring.

Source





8 October, 2008

University Of Northern Colorado Opposes Equality

The board of trustees of the University of Northern Colorado opposes treating its applicants and students without regard to their race or ethnicity, voting unanimously to urge defeat of Amendment 46, the Colorado Civil Rights Initiative.

"We really think that the amendment, if passed, would jeopardize the ability of the university and universities across the state to attract and foster diverse student populations," said Jim Chavez, UNC trustee and director of the Latin American Education Foundation.

UNC offers several scholarships that provide preference to students on the basis of gender and ethnicity. Under the measure, Chavez said, those scholarships would be scrapped. "It would dramatically affect the financial resources for many, many different student populations," he said.

The University of Northern Colorado must be one of the few institutions in the country that attracts, funds, and fosters many, many different "populations" of diverse students.

How much money, I wonder, does it take to support these many, many different diverse populations? I also wonder if the taxpayers of Colorado are fully informed about the extent of this expense and whether they think the benefits that accrue to their non-diverse sons and daughters from being exposed to these "diverse student populations" is worth what it costs.

Source




Paedophile hysteria preventing men from applying to work in British grade schools

The lack of male teachers may be having a serious effect on boys' performance in the classroom as many miss out on strong role models at a young age, according to Tanya Byron, the child psychologist. She said the shortage particularly hit children from single-parent families who often went without father figures in the home.

The comments came as a campaign was launched by the Government's Training and Development Agency for Schools to recruit more men into the primary sector. According to official figures, fewer than one in eight primary school teachers are male, and numbers plummet to just one in 50 among those working in reception and nursery classes.

Dr Byron is the presenter of a television show on problem children called Little Angels, as well as a Government advisor on internet safety. She said paranoia about child abuse was driving many men out of the classroom. "There is this paranoid, over-the-top concern about paedophilia and child molestation - that it is not safe to leave children with men," she said. "These themes are running through society to such an extent that attitudes have become skewed and our anxiety does ultimately discriminate against men. This puts men off from working in primary schools because they are concerned about how they will be viewed and what parents will think of them. We have to challenge these negative and unhelpful belief systems."

Research by the TDA showed almost half of men believed male primary school teachers helped them develop at a young age. In a survey of 800 adults, it was revealed a third were challenged to work harder because of men in the primary years, while 50 per cent were more likely to report problems such as bullying to male teachers.

Dr Byron said boys - many of whom struggle to sit still at a young age - worked better with men. They also needed more exposure to males in school to show that learning was not a feminine virtue, she said. She added that positive male role models were particularly important for boys from single-parent households. "The need for strong male role models as constants in the lives of young children is more apparent than ever in light of the increasing numbers of children experiencing breakdown of the traditional family unit, growing up in single-parent families or not having a male figure at home," she said. "Male primary school teachers can often be stable and reliable figures in the lives of the children that they teach. They inspire children to feel more confident, to work harder and to behave better."

The TDA today urged men to consider applying for teacher training courses, with students and jobseekers now having less than nine weeks to apply for courses which start next year. In 2006-07, fewer than a quarter of primary and secondary school teaching qualifications were obtained by men - the lowest figure in five years.

Source




Parents concerned about low literacy levels in South Australian schools

PARENTS are raising "serious questions" about school students' basic literacy levels because they say too many are failing simple national tests. The concerns have been raised after the state's peak school parent group viewed examples of tests given to students around the country earlier this year. Parents have described questions put to Year 9 students as "primary school standard" and want a review of the curriculum following South Australia's average results in the national literacy and numeracy tests. But primary principals want the curriculum further simplified while teachers and the Education Department have defended what is being taught in schools.

The South Australian Association of State School Organisations, which represents the parents of about 90 per cent of state school students, said the test results were more worrying in light of the "not challenging" questions. "If this is the level of question, you've got to wonder why anybody would fail to meet the minimum standard," Association director David Knuckey said. "Exactly where are the 20 per cent who have just met the minimum standards? "It raises serious questions about the basic literacy levels of our high school students (in particular)." Other parents Mr Knuckey spoke to said they remembered more difficult testing when they were at school.

The Australian Primary Principals Association wants guidelines for teachers simplified when a national curriculum is developed. President Leonie Trimper said the primary curriculum "is far too crowded".

In May, about 80,000 South Australian students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 took part in the first national uniform testing of school students. The results, released last month, show up to 10.5 per cent of students failed to meet the minimum national benchmarks and up to 21.8 per cent just made the grade. SA students recorded scores below the national average in 15 of 20 categories and the state also had the highest proportion of students allowed to miss the test.

South Australian English Teachers Association president Alison Robertson said the standardised tests covered "a very narrow part of the curriculum". Flinders University senior lecturer in education Lyn Wilkinson agreed "more is being taught than is being tested" and felt most children were challenged further in class. "This (test) is really where you expect all Year 9 and all Year 7 kids to be. If they're not then there's cause for concern," said the specialist in basic skills testing.

Education Department chief executive Chris Robinson disputed the bar was set too low. "We don't believe that it's the curriculum that's deficient," Mr Robinson said. "The tests are designed by experts to work out what students should be able to do at their year level. The parents, with all due respect, may not be in the best position to judge what the standard of the test is." Mr Robinson said the department continually reviewed the curriculum.

The federal Education Department said the national tests were devised by state and federal governments, the non-government sector and independent experts.

State Education Minister Jane Lomax-Smith yesterday said she expected this group "will use feedback to improve the tests in future years". At the time the results were released, Dr Lomax-Smith promised a raft of initiatives including intervention plans for every student who did not meet the minimum standards and coaches for principals and teachers at 32 of the state's most disadvantaged schools as part of a federally funded, $4 million two-year trial.

Opposition Education spokesman David Pisoni expected more children to score better, considering the standard of testing. "I certainly wouldn't say they (the questions) were difficult, if you were an average child you would have got about 90 per cent (correct)," he said. "If there are children that didn't meet the national benchmark, especially at Year 7 and 9 level, we've got to ask questions of the education system."

Source





7 October, 2008

'Jesus was a Palestinian,' claims U.S. history text

Study: American public school books have 'same inaccuracies' as Arab texts

A new study reveals that if Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wanted to criticize the nation of Israel before the United Nations, he could use American public school textbooks to do so. "It is shocking to find the kind of misinformation we discovered in American textbooks and supplemental materials being used by schools in every state in the country," said Dr. Gary Tobin, president of the Institute for Jewish & Community Research and a co-author of the study. "Elected officials at every level should investigate how these offensive passages are creeping into our textbooks. Presenting false information in the classroom undermines the very foundation of the American educational system," he said.

Tobin teamed with insititute research associate Dennis Ybarra for the study, titled, "The Trouble with Textbooks: Distorting History and Religion." The five-year effort, which looked at 28 prominent history, geography and social studies textbooks, reveals American public school students are being loaded up with indoctrination about Christianity, Judaism, Islam and the Middle East, to the cost of Christianity and Judaism and the benefit of Islam.

The study also supports other assessments of U.S. texts on which WND has reported. According to an earlier report from the American Textbook Council, history textbooks throughout the U.S. schooling system promote Islam.

The new study by the IJCR found more than 500 erroneous passages in the books, including one textbook that charged that early Jewish civilization contributed little to the arts and sciences. An excerpt from "World Civilizations," published by Thomson Wadsworth, for example, said, "Excepting the Old Testament's poetry, the Jews produced very little of note in any of the art forms ... There is no record of any important [early] Jewish contributions to the sciences." The level of outrageousness grew: "Christianity was started by a young Palestinian named Jesus," claims "The World," published by Scott Foresman.

"The textbooks tend to be critical of Jews and Israel, disrespectful about Christianity, and rather than represent Islam in an objective way, tend to glorify it," said co-author Ybarra. "To teach children, for instance, that Jesus was a Palestinian and de-emphasize his Jewishness does a disservice to Christians and Jews as well as anyone who cares about historical accuracy."

The institute analyzes issues such as racial and religious identity, philanthropy and higher education. Its full report is available at TroubleWithTextbooks.org, where all 28 books that came under its review are listed.

The organization said its study revealed textbooks include routinely negative stereotypes of Jews, Judaism and Israel. For example, Israel is blamed for starting wars in the Middle East and Jews are charged with deicide, and the problems are rife through the three mega-publishers that have deep enough pockets to get approval and publish a textbook in the major states of Texas and California.

"The 'Trouble with Textbooks' is a very important book not only for Jews but for the entire Christian community," said Rev. John J. Keane, ecumenical officer for the Franciscan Friars of the Atonement. "This volume is an excellent tool for anyone who is interested in balanced information that is fair and reliable concerning Judaism, Christianity and Islam." The authors found textbooks that stated or suggested:

Jesus was a "Palestinian," not a Jew.

The Arab nations never attacked Israel. Arab-Israeli wars "just broke out," or Israel started them

Arabs nations want peace, but Israel does not

Israel expelled all Palestinian refugees

Israel put the Palestinians in refugee camps in Arab lands, not Arab governments

Palestinian terrorism is nonexistent or minimal

Israel is not a victim of terrorism, or terrorism against Israel is justified

U.S. support of Israel causes terrorism, including 9/11

The intifadas were children's revolts not involving adults or terrorism

They also found that Judaism and Christianity are treated as matters of believing, while Islam is treated as a matter of fact. In the glossary of "World History: Continuity and Change," the Ten Commandments are described as, "Moral laws Moses claimed to have received from the Hebrew God Yahweh on Mount Sinai." But the same glossary states as fact the Quran is a, "Holy Book of Islam containing revelations received by Muhammad from God."

The study found, "Islam is treated with a devotional tone in some textbooks, less detached and analytical than it ought to be. Muslim beliefs are described in several instances as fact, without any clear qualifier such as 'Muslims believe. . . .'"

Likewise, the Islamic empire of the Middle Ages was "a time of unqualified glory without blemishes," and Muslims "always tolerated Jews," unlike their Christian counterparts. The texts use terms such as "stories," "legends" and "tales" to talk about Jewish writings. "If the president of Iran wants to blast Israel at the U.N., he can use American textbooks to do so," Tobin concluded.

The earlier ATC report took two years to study textbooks, and its author, Gilbert T. Sewall, found the problems regarding Islam "are uniquely disturbing." "History textbooks present an incomplete and confected view of Islam that misrepresents its foundations and challenges to international security," the ATC report said."Islamic activists use multiculturalism and ready-made American-made political movements, especially those on campus, to advance and justify the makeover of Islam-related textbook content." "Particular fault rests with the publishing corporations, boards of directors, and executives who decide what editorial policies their companies will pursue," the report said.

One of the executives for a text critiqued by ATC, Bert Bower, founder of TCI, told WND at the time not only did his company have experts review the book, but the state of California also reviewed it and has approved it for use in public schools. "Keep in mind when looking at this particular book scholars from all over California (reviewed it)," he said.

One of the experts who contributed to the text, according to the ATC, was Ayad Al-Qazzaz. "Al-Qazzaz is a Muslim apologist, a frequent speaker in Northern California school districts promoting Islam and Arab causes," the ATC review said. "Al-Qazzaz also co-wrote AWAIR's 'Arab World Notebook.' AWAIR stands for Arab World and Islamic Resources, an opaque, proselytizing 'non-profit organization' that conducts teacher workshops and sells supplementary materials to schools."

Source




On the importance of grammar

There are schools of grammar, and I belong to none of them. Among the schools are traditional grammar, modern grammar and what is sometimes called transformational-generative grammar, the scientific-sounding grammar linguistics students learn these days. I'm uneasy with the diction of this (dominant) school of grammar - it's hard going for a writer on deadline - and I'm uncomfortable with its claim to "correct" the "errors" of older traditional grammar.

I'm more comfortable with the commonsense and plain-spokenness of modern grammar. Like others, I look at what the postmodern grammarians have to say, and I look back to the ancients, and I look in the middle, to acknowledge disagreements and developments, to discuss differences of view, and in the end to come as close as I can to a clear and useful description of everything important.

The larger part of grammar isn't especially mysterious or contentious. But there are controversies, and there are areas where even now the scholars are trying to agree how best to make sense of usages that have been in the language since Chaucer's April showers [An allusion to the opening line of the Canterbury Tales: "Whan that Aprill with his schoures sote" - according to Skeat]. (How do we properly understand the infinite phrase, for instance, in "I'd love you to love me"?)

Grammar doesn't construct language; it describes the way it goes. Grammar tries to explain how language works, so that we might use language, especially on paper, with some insight and consistency, and in doing so keep it strong. Because grammar scares some of us witless, even though we practise it most of the moments of our waking lives, talking or writing, and because there's a school of thought that looks on grammar as a kind of tyranny imposed on our creativity by a cardigan-wearing cadre of joyless pedants, I offer you this metaphor for grammar.

Grammar is the rules of democracy, which regulate and perpetuate this imperfect paradise of ours. It's the bundle of shared values, etiquettes, codified or inherited rights and obligations, along with a certain amount of governance infrastructure, all of which helps keep us in the freedom (of speech) to which we are accustomed.

Now, as someone has said - with the activities of the CIA in mind - democracy can be overdone, and so can grammar. But we need some rules if we want what democracy allows us, if we want to prevent anarchy and tyranny. And we want some rules and we need to practise them if we want meaning to abound.

The rules of grammar are the rules for paradise. The institutions and articles of democracy manufacture and conserve freedom. The rules of grammar manufacture and conserve language, with its power to make and share meaning. Grammar is the system inside the language; it is the constitution of the tongue. And if we want a community of sense - if we want to continue the vigorous and sometimes absurd and sometimes glorious conversation about ourselves and our world that we carry on in literature and government and everyday speech - then we'll need to know and observe our language's bill of rights: we'll need to learn and practise our grammar.

Now, I don't care for undue formality, the kind that pedantic insistence on grammar can foster. Grammar, like democracy, can be overdone. I like intelligent informality. We need a diversity of styles; each of us needs to find our unique voice and native syntax. That's the kind of democracy I'd fight for. I'm drawn, in particular, to the beauty of authentic vernacular, and some of that disobeys grammar.

If you're writing, though, you'll need to obey more rules. Readers demand it; if they're to follow you without your waving arms and your twinkling eyes and the acts that accompany speech, readers need you to take more care with the words and how you lay them down. But you don't have to sound pompous. Good writers sound like good talkers - but a little tidier.

My point is this: getting your grammar down shouldn't make you sound like the Queen of England. Correctness doesn't entail formality. Sound sentences needn't sound stilted. Indeed, such writing will fail. It's a lapse of taste, a want of cool, no matter how correct it is. So, relax your diction, but straighten your syntax. Stay cool; write like you speak, only better. The "better" is where the grammar comes in.

Source




Forgetting the Past

My radio partner Brian Ward of Fraters Libertas noted an appalling instance of historical ignorance in the Minneapolis public schools, and added his thoughts on the current epidemic of amnesia:

When asked what historical figure they'd most like to study this year, an astounding 22 of the 35 students in Ms. Ellingham's eighth-grade history class at Susan B. Anthony middle school in Minneapolis answered, "Yoko Ono" and/or "John Lennon."

I weep for the future. The great historian David McCullough was on C-SPAN this past week, looking like a beaten man while describing the crushing level of historical ignorance among America's youth. He summed up with the warning that one can never love a country one doesn't know. It sounded like an epitaph. Brian quotes from McCullough's address when he accepted the National Book Award:

We, in our time, are raising a new generation of Americans who, to an alarming degree, are historically illiterate. ...

Warning signals, in special studies and reports, have been sounded for years, and most emphatically by the Bradley Report of 1988. Now, we have the blunt conclusions of a new survey by the Education Department: The decided majority, some 60 percent, of the nation's high school seniors haven't even the most basic understanding of American history. The statistical breakdowns on specific examples are appalling.

But I speak also from experience. On a winter morning on the campus of one of our finest colleges, in a lively Ivy League setting with the snow falling outside the window, I sat with a seminar of some twenty-five students, all seniors majoring in history, all honors students-the cream of the crop. "How many of you know who George Marshall was?" I asked. None. Not one.

We have noted several times Barack Obama's surprising ignorance of American history. But in that context, maybe it isn't surprising at all. Maybe Obama is above average by today's standards.

My youngest daughter started middle school this year. After around a month of classes, as far as I can tell the curriculum consists largely of propaganda about recycling. My high school age daughter told me tonight that in Spanish class she has been taught to say "global warming," "acid rain" and "greenhouse effect" in Spanish. I don't think they've gotten around to translating "hoax" yet.

The schools can teach anything if they care about it. The problem is that they don't care about teaching history, least of all American history. Public education is agenda-driven, and American history--the facts of American history--is not on the agenda.

Which leaves us with McCullough's sad conclusion. The heritage that our forefathers sacrificed so much to leave us will most likely soon be lost, because the next generation won't even know what that heritage is.

Source





6 October, 2008

Transgender students force restroom change in British university

No privacy at the University of Manchester. I wonder how many sexual assaults it will take before they reverse this policy?

The ladies' lavatory is now simply labelled "toilet" while the mens' has become "toilets with urinals". The student union decided to change the signs during a meeting of its executive in the summer following a number of complaints from transgender students. Women's officer Jennie Killip refused to say how many people had complained, and there are no figures for how many transgender people there are among the university's 35,000 population. She said: "If you were born female, still presently quite feminine, but defined as a man you should be able to go into the men's toilets.

"You don't necessarily have to have had gender reassignment surgery, but you could just define yourself as a man, feel very masculine in yourself, feel that in fact being a woman is not who you are. "Transgender people can face violence and abuse when they go into toilets and we wanted to provide a place where they can feel comfortable. "I have had complaints from people who said we didn't have any facilities for them."

But the switch has caused consternation among many of the students returning from their summer break. Second-year student Jane McConnell, 19, a news editor on the Student Direct student newspaper, said: "While these signs might be appropriate for people with different sexualities, I also think that many people from different religious and ethnic groups are going to feel uncomfortable using these facilities. "Even though they're just two signs, at the end of the day, toilets should be for women and for men specifically, not for both." Another student said: "This is ridiculous. It is just too much political correctness".

Source




Scotland: Infant pupils to get "free" meals

"There aint no such thing as a free lunch" -- just something somebody else pays for

All pupils will receive free meals in the first three years of primary school, the Scottish Government has announced. The service will begin in 2010 after a pilot in several areas, which saw the take-up of meals rise from 53% to 75%. Council umbrella group Cosla denied claims from some authorities that services would have to be cut to pay for the move.

Ministers said helping children in their early years was a priority. The Scottish Government said councils would be expected to find the money for the scheme from the funding settlement already agreed. Scottish Education Secretary Fiona Hyslop said the year-long, $10m pilot scheme, involving 35,000 pupils in Glasgow, West Dunbartonshire, East Ayrshire, Fife and the Borders, was a success. The pilot also reported that parents and teachers were positive about the scheme, while some pupils enjoyed trying new foods. "This government has made it a priority to help children in their early years and this initiative does just that, providing every child with a free school meal in their first years at primary school," said Ms Hyslop.

The Scottish Government has already published guidance to help school catering staff produce healthy meals. According to Labour, the education conveners of several local authorities - including North Lanarkshire, East Dunbartonshire, Edinburgh and the leader of Inverclyde Council - raised concern over whether they could pay for the service, with some saying they would have to make cuts to fund it. But Cosla president Pat Watters told BBC Scotland there was $80m in the budget to provide free school meals to primaries one, two and three. He added: "There is no reason why anyone should have to cut anything to fund this. This is a government funded project."

Labour education spokeswoman Rhona Brankin also raised concerns about the funding, adding: "Local authorities are already struggling to employ newly qualified teachers and reduce class sizes, but some schools can't even afford photocopying."

Liz Smith, of the Scottish Tories, questioned whether a blanket free meals policy would target the right pupils, while the Liberal Democrats' Margaret Smith said ministers had "failed to make the case" that the plan was the best way to tackle poor diets.

But John Dickie, head of the Child Poverty Action Group in Scotland, said the announcement was "a massive step forward" in the campaign to ensure healthy meals for children, whatever their home circumstances. "It will help boost children's health, education and wellbeing and provide a really welcome benefit to hard pressed families across Scotland," he said.

A two-year free school meals pilot in primaries is due to start in England next year, while the Welsh Assembly administration said it was currently focussing on improving nutritional standards.

Source




Australia: Government-supported pedophilia?

Interesting to see who the teachers side with

PARENTS have expressed outrage over revelations that controversial artist Bill Henson was allowed into a primary school by its principal to search for models. Victorian Premier John Brumby said yesterday it was "completely inappropriate" that Henson was escorted onto a Melbourne school yard. The Victorian Education Department has launched an official investigation into the incident.

Federation of P&C Associations of NSW president Dianne Giblin said it had been a "betrayal of trust of parents". "Schools should not be a place to access for commercial purposes," Mrs Giblin said. "Any outside person or group coming into the school must do so for an educational purpose only and it supports our concerns of principals making these decisions and not having sectoral approval."

Henson was denounced by political leaders and his photographs seized by police and pulled from the Roslyn Oxley Gallery in Sydney in May following outrage over the picture of a naked 12-year-old girl on the invitation to his show. Fresh controversy has ensued following details from a new book, by Fairfax Media journalist David Marr, that Henson has been invited into the Melbourne primary school in his search for models.

Mr Brumby said: "Such activity taking place in a Victorian state school is completely inappropriate. "Like all parents, I have a deep concern about this sort of behaviour and I have asked the Education Minister for a full report from the department and the school on this matter."

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull expressed disgust and outrage yesterday. "I think parents would be revolted and horrified if this were true," Mr Rudd said. Mr Turnbull said: "There are very big issues here relating to the protection of children, their privacy and informed consent. The matters that have been described in the media are totally inappropriate and unacceptable and I share the outrage that has been expressed by many people at these events."

But Maree O'Halloran, the outgoing president of the NSW Teachers Federation, said it was a complex issue and there was a risk Henson could be unduly tarred. "There are very strict rules governing who can come into a school and principals and teachers follow those carefully," she said. "I think we do need to be careful not to tar someone as being a perpetrator of some sort of child abuse when we're talking about an artist. "We've got a person's reputation at stake here and a person who is a respected, professional artist."

However, Henson's supporters have rejected claims he was allowed to wander the grounds of the Melbourne primary school. Henson was accompanied by the principal at all times when he visited St Kilda Primary School looking for child models to pose for his artwork. He has lectured to school groups and his artwork is a part of the Victorian school curriculum. The artist declined to comment on the matter yesterday but it is understood he is horrified by claims he acted inappropriately.

His supporters are particularly upset by a cartoon that appeared in The Weekend Australian yesterday depicting the artist in a school playground while children hide behind bushes, saying: "Psst . maybe he's one of those arts bandits."

Source





5 October, 2008

CA: San Francisco schools trying to boot Junior ROTC

In this city long associated with the peace movement, some teens are taking an unlikely stance - campaigning to keep the armed forces' Junior ROTC program in public schools. If a school board decision stands, San Francisco would become the first city to remove a Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps program. But supporters, including many college-bound Asian-American students who make up the majority of cadets here, initiated an advisory measure on the November ballot. They hope it will persuade a new school board to save JROTC.

Board members who decided to kick JROTC out of town see it as arm of the military that reaches into schools, discriminating against gays by enforcing the "don't ask, don't tell" mandate, and recruiting teenagers for an unpopular war. "It's a broader issue about the Bush administration and military recruiting through JROTC," said board member Eric Mar. "It's clear with the military, if you're gay and out, you don't get the same opportunities," he added. He was among board members who voted two years ago to phase out JROTC and replace it with programs not linked to the military. The deadline was set for 2008, but the board later extended JROTC until next June because an alternative was not developed in time.

Participants, called cadets, wear uniforms, study military history, practice marching and drilling and can win awards for things like marksmanship. Armed forces retirees serve as instructors, and cadets can get academic credit in fields such as physical education.

If the aim is recruitment, however, JROTC in San Francisco is a failure. Only two of the 1,465 cadets there signed up for the armed forces after graduation in 2006-2007, the latest year for which numbers are available.

Supporters view the elective course as valuable self-improvement - teaching them discipline, responsibility and leadership skills they say they do not get in other classes. JROTC rules prevent instructors from trying to recruit participants. "It's helped me stand up for myself, have more confidence, and to fight for what I want," said Trina Mao, 16, standing on a corner in Union Square passing out fliers about the program.

They also say the arguments about the war in Iraq and the Pentagon's policy toward gays miss the point: The program in San Francisco is inclusive, with 90 percent minorities and 40 percent women, they say.

Some gay and lesbian student groups have come out in support of JROTC and the ballot measure, saying some of their members have found a home in the program.

Even as the debate went on and board members held their ground, students and their parents gathered enough signatures to put an advisory measure on the ballot asking voters to show their support for keeping JROTC. "It's become a 'Bonfire of the Vanities,' San Francisco-style - a lot of people want to use JROTC for their own purposes," said Mike Bernick, co-chair of a campaign to keep JROTC here and father of an ROTC graduate.

With confusion over the future of the program, enrollment in San Francisco's JROTC has declined by about two-thirds in the past year. But participation in JROTC has climbed steadily around the country, with additional funding approved by Congress. The program reached 3,351 schools and 503,306 cadets in 2006 - the latest numbers available from the Pentagon - and there is a waiting list of more than 700 schools that have requested JROTC. "We're watching the San Francisco situation very closely," said Curtis Gilroy, an official in the Defense Department's office for personnel and readiness.

The U.S. Department of Defense does not keep track of how many cadets later enlist in the military, but ROTC critic Mar said that, no matter the numbers, "14- and 15-year-olds are too young to be susceptible to their recruitment."'

The American Civil Liberties Union and the American Friends Service Committee agree that military-backed programs are not appropriate for public schools. The ACLU intervened in cases where entire classes were enrolled in JROTC without giving students a choice, or where cash-strapped schools used JROTC to substitute for physical education, said Jennifer Turner, a researcher with the group's Human Rights Program. "The United States is unique in the world in having this type of program that targets kids as young as 14 operating in public school, where students sometimes don't even have a choice," she said. "It is apparent that the JROTC program is a recruiting tool."

Source




British teacher junket cancelled

It could not stand the light of publicity

Teachers who planned to hold a training conference at a Costa del Sol resort will instead attend sessions in classrooms at their school in Staffordshire after complaints from parents. The trip to Marbella by staff at Edensor Technology College in Longton, planned for today and tomorrow, was cancelled yesterday morning. The school could be liable for costs of up to $40,000 because of the short notice, according to Stoke-on-Trent council. Mark Meredith, the mayor, said that it was unclear whether money spent in advance could be reclaimed. "There are guesstimates going around - it could be $40,000 or more," he said in a radio interview. ""The school is investigating this. But these are the questions that the governors will be putting to the head teacher."

Richard Mercer, the headmaster, said in a statement: "Following the publicity concerning the proposed visit to Marbella for training purposes by staff, it has been decided to cancel the trip. The training programme will now take place at the school. It was felt that due to the pressure from media interest in the trip it would be unfair to the staff, the pupils and parents." About 80 members of the teaching staff were to have stayed at the hotel until Sunday, the Stoke Sentinel had disclosed on Wednesday.

The trip angered parents, whose children would have been off school while the teachers were away at the beachside resort. Andy Sales, 34, said: "Why isn't this money being spent on our kids? Parents are having to take time off work or are paying for extra childcare while the staff are enjoying the sun at the school's expense."

Mr Mercer said that it was "more cost-effective" to go abroad as it is the end of Marbella's peak season. "If parents think this is a `jolly', they should join us and find out how hard the staff work." [Give us a break!] In a further statement, released through the council yesterday, Mr Mercer said that the school budget allowed for an annual staff conference. Governors considered nine quotes for Britain and abroad and the Marbella hotel was "the best value for money".

Mr Meredith said: "My personal view is that it was a barmy decision to hold the session in Spain. I'm pleased that they have come to their senses."

Source




Australian literacy, numeracy standards stuck at '70s levels

And much worse than the '50s, I'll warrant

TODAY'S students are no better at English or maths than those of the 1970s, despite the billions of dollars annually pumped into schools. Australian Council for Educational Research findings, presented in Brisbane recently, showed no improvement in young people's literacy and numeracy skills from 1975 to 1998. The most instructive study asked identical and similar questions of 14-year-olds across the country over the 23-year period. There was no increase in averaged scores. Boys' literacy dropped and girls' rose slightly.

Other, more recent, findings collated by the Australian National University confirmed the trend in classrooms around the country has continued since 2000, in particular a decline in reading skills. The results make Queensland's second last placing among the states and territories at this year's first national tests even more alarming.

Education agitator Kevin Donnelly, who wrote Dumbing Down and Why Our Schools Are Failing, slammed Queensland's education establishment for its lack of progress. Dr Donnelly said the Queensland Studies Authority, and successive education ministers and departments, had failed for 20 years by adopting "pretty new-age" methods. "Kids just aren't being taught formal grammar," he said. "Ministers come and go, governments come and go but bureaucrats don't change. The minister jumps up and down for a week but the people given the job to fix it are the same people who created the mess."

Dr Andrew Leigh, an ANU economist and author of the report, said Australian governments proved it was easy to waste money on education. A report by Dr Leigh and Chris Ryan showed government spending per student in Australia had more than doubled between 1964 and 2003. "The real question is why we've increased school funding so dramatically yet seen no improvement in literacy and numeracy," Dr Leigh said.

Education Minister Rod Welford refused to comment yesterday, two weeks after admitting his department's entrenched funding practices had failed to improve results in low socio-economic areas.

Source





4 October, 2008

NYC Teachers for Obama

The teachers union has been handing out thousands of Barack Obama campaign buttons to its members, sparking a clampdown by education brass. The Department of Education - which has a long-standing policy barring teachers from wearing campaign buttons in schools - is set to send out an e-mail this week from Schools Chancellor Joel Klein laying down the law. "Schools are not a place for politics and not a place for staff to wear political buttons," said department spokeswoman Ann Forte. "We don't want a school or school staff advocating for any political position or candidate to students and we don't want students feeling intimidated because they might hold a different belief or support a different candidate than their teachers."

United Federation of Teachers official LeRoy Barr told his members in a recent e-mail that union chief Randi Weingarten is fighting the DOE decision. Officials of the union - which has endorsed Obama - said they didn't know of any schools where button-wearing teachers were told to zip it, but they said they were exploring the matter "to ensure members' rights to free speech and expression."

While department officials said the courts are on their side in the matter, many city teachers say their right to wear partisan buttons is a matter of free speech. Several cited a landmark 1969 Supreme Court ruling involving students who planned to wear black armbands in protest of the Vietnam War. It affirmed that constitutional rights don't get dropped "at the schoolhouse gate." "It's not teaching kids to vote for Obama; rather, it's showing them the democratic process in action," said Patrick Compton, a social-studies teacher at Lafayette HS in Brooklyn, who said he has been wearing an Obama button handed out by the union. "It is shocking to me, truly, that in this day and age, the school system wants to diminish, rather than increase, participation in our democratic system."

Other teachers said they were extremely careful not to let free speech morph into any kind of partisan preaching. "As long as you don't preach to the children about who you should vote for, I don't see anything wrong with it," said Ellen Eisenger, a teacher at PS 35 in Queens. "It's still America."

Last week, employees at the University of Illinois received an e-mail forbidding them to wear partisan political buttons on campus, while teachers at a high school near Santa Cruz, Calif., agreed to remove their "Educators for Obama" buttons in class after complaints from a parent who supports John McCain.

Source




Cane is needed again to give children a lesson say a fifth of British teachers

A fifth of teachers would like to see the cane re-introduced in Britain's schools, research has found. They said children's behaviour had deteriorated to the point that caning would be an effective punishment. The survey of more than 6,000 teachers by the Times Educational Supplement found that a fifth supported the right to use corporal punishment in extreme cases.

Judith Cookson, a supply teacher, said: “Children's behaviour is absolutely outrageous in the majority of schools. I am a supply teacher, so I see many schools, and there are no sanctions. There are too many anger management people and their ilk who give children the idea that it is their right to flounce out of lessons for time out because they have problems with their temper. They should be caned instead.”

Ravi Kasinathan, a primary teacher who also “strongly” supported the idea, said: “There is justification, or an argument, for bringing back corporal punishment, if only as a deterrent. I believe some children just don't respond to the current sanctions.”

The survey suggests that support for corporal punishment is strongest among secondary teachers: 22 per cent back the idea, compared with 16 per cent of primary teachers. It also uncovers much lower support among heads and deputy and assistant heads: 12 per cent, compared with 22 per cent of teachers.

John Dunford, of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “Thankfully, corporal punishment is no longer on the agenda, except in the most uncivilised countries. I am sure that this barbaric punishment has disappeared for ever.”

An official at the Department for Children, Schools and Families said: “Violence against children is clearly unacceptable and illegal.”

Source




Soviet mentality lives on in Australian teachers' unions

HASN'T the belief that private equals evil and public equals good long passed its use-by date? Apparently not for the troglodytes in the teachers unions who are still entrenched in a class war that no longer interests the rest of thecommunity. At the September 12 meeting of the TAFE Teachers Association council, some union warriors requested "as a matter of urgency" that an important issue be resolved. Is it acceptable, they asked, for a union representative to send their children to a private school or to a private provider competing with TAFE? Is it acceptable for a union representative to have once taught in a private school or worked for a private provider that competes with TAFE? You get the gist. If you have come in contact with private education, you have been tainted with evil.

Fortunately, the general-secretary of the NSW Teachers Federation, John Irving, is not interested in these archaic union battles. The point man for policy in the NSW Teachers Federation told The Australian on Friday that he is "not interested in vetting people" on the basis of which school their children attend.

Instead of drafting a policy precluding people who send their children to private schools, Irving is thinking about asking those who seek positions within the NSW teachers union to sign a declaration that they have actively demonstrated a commitment to public education. If that comes to pass, many of those who sign such a declaration will be committing perjury if they sign. Why? Because many within the teachers unions have worked tirelessly to obstruct reform and improvement within public education. And the irony is that the obstinacy of these white-collar educational diehards against reform of public education will lead only to a greater exodus of students from public schools to private schools.

Consider the union reaction to the Rudd Government's education revolution outlined last month by the Prime Minister and his deputy, Education Minister Julia Gillard. Reforms to make education more transparent by mandatory reporting of student results, allowing parents to compare school performance? Opposed by unions. Transparency and accountability reforms that will enable the most disadvantaged schools to be identified and receive extra funding of $500,000 for your average school so that they may improve? Opposed by unions. Moves to give greater autonomy and flexibility for principals to hire staff? Opposed by unions. Moves to introduce performance-based pay for teachers to encourage better teachers? Opposed by unions. Moves to introduce a national curriculum so that students moving between states and territories can access a seamless education system? Opposed by unions. Queensland Teachers Union boss Steve Ryan summed up the reforms as "beyond insulting".

It's not news that teachers unions remain the single biggest hurdle to improving public education in Australia. They are wedded to an archaic public system that has long protected teachers, not promoted the interests of students. What is news is a federal Labor government is apparently willing to tackle the union influence that has long infected state and federal politics. The Howard government talked about reforming public education but achieved very little.

So it was powerful symbolism and pragmatic politics for Gillard, from Labor's left faction, to pose the killer question to union critics: "I cannot understand why public institutions such as schools should not be accountable to the community that funds their salaries and running costs." If any other group, drawing on the public purse, were exempt from disclosure and accountability, union activists would be the first to cry foul, demanding to know what was being hidden from the taxpaying public.

But reason cannot compete with union ideology. Neither can evidence that Australia ranks 23rd among Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development industrialised countries for students who finish Year 12 or a trade equivalent and talking about the consequences of this long-tail educational underachievement for 25 per cent of Australian students. Nor will union diehards such as Ryan or his friends at the Australian Education Union be swayed by Gillard's laudable interest in school accountability reforms undertaken by New York's schools chancellor Joel Klein that have lifted student performance. If student achievement mattered, unions would have sided with these sorts of reforms long ago.

Left-wing union types like to wear their commitment to compassion and disadvantage on their sleeves. But it is fraudulent rhetoric when used by teachers unions that are patently not fighting for disadvantaged students. Opposing Rudd's reform condemns those who cannot afford to escape the worst aspects of public education to disadvantage for life.

In truth, the unions are fighting for their own vested interests. They oppose transparency and accountability because it would weed out the substandard schools and second-rate teachers. They oppose greater flexibility for principals because it would remove union leaders from teacher selection processes. They oppose private education because the competition it brings challenges the public school system to lift its performance.

It's no surprise that teachers unions would protect their interests. That's what the more militant unions do. The challenge is for Rudd to prove the Labor Government is serious about its education revolution by exposing the anti-reform union agenda. Archaic union leaders who refuse to budge on these reforms need to named and shamed as obstructionists who care little about students and more about ancient class warfare. They then can be replaced by more sensible union leaders genuinely committed to student achievement within the public education system.

The real challenge is for the PM's new federalism. The Rudd Government failed to garner agreement on plastic bags from state governments. How will it wangle agreement on education reform from state Labor governments beholden to teachers unions? When the West Australian teachers union won pay increases of 21.7 per cent earlier this year, union boss Anne Gisborne boasted that "one of the strongest elements behind this has been the political campaigning that our members have had on track for eight to 10 weeks". With an election looming, union influence prevailed. Outside education, it's the same in other states. Unions rolled attempts by the NSW Iemma government to reform the electricity industry.

Keen to stand apart from union influence, the Prime Minister will have many chances to prove his mettle. On three critical fronts - industrial relations, the Australian Building and Construction Commission and education - the hostility to Rudd's reforms will come less from the federal Opposition and more from Labor's traditional brother in arms: the unions. Aggressive union campaigns and behind-the-scenes union powerbroking aimed at derailing Rudd's reforms are already under way. If Rudd and Gillard fail to stand up to unions early on, they will suffer the same ignoble fate as craven state governments where brute union power has snuffed out critical reforms.

Source





3 October, 2008

Colleges calling sleep a success prerequisite

It's an age-old predicament: Caffeine-fueled college students cramming for exams and writing papers until the crack of dawn, then skipping or snoozing through classes. Sleep deprivation has long been considered a rite of passage, a point of pride even.

But now, alarmed by recent studies tying lack of sleep to poor academic performance, college officials are urging students just to go to bed. More than a dozen Massachusetts schools have begun waging campaigns touting the benefits of sleep through dorm seminars, posters, and catchy slogans like, "Want A's? Get Z's."

Wellesley College spreads the message by throwing dorm pajama parties with tea and popcorn. Tufts University passes out sleep masks, ear plugs, and a CD of relaxation tracks. Bentley College holds a weeklong contest called the Biggest Snoozer, and gives away memory foam pillows and white noise machines to students who log the most hours of shut-eye. And Massachusetts Institute of Technology has enlisted the help of far-flung parents, alerting them to watch for warning signs such as e-mails sent at 4 a.m.

"For college students, sleep is the most dispensable thing," said Dr. Vanessa Britto, director of health services at Wellesley. "Most people feel it's a badge of honor. 'I didn't sleep. Parentheses, aren't I great?' Until you point out to them that pulling an all-nighter is the equivalent of driving drunk and is detrimental to their reaction time and memory."

Universities, though, have their work cut out for them to change such a culturally ingrained habit on campus. With 24 hours of online entertainment available, students today are tempted by myriad diversions other than school books. They're gambling, catching up on their favorite television shows, playing video games, or chatting with virtual friends - then trying to study into the wee hours of the morning. "It's like, well, I could do my calculus homework or it sounds like the girls next door are doing something fun so I'll just walk over there," said Kelsey Barton, a freshman at Tufts, who said she has been averaging about three hours of sleep a night since starting college this month. "I don't want to miss out."

With so many distractions, Barton often doesn't start on schoolwork until midnight, when she's so tired that it takes her even longer to finish. She downs coffee and Mountain Dew to make it through classes and cross-country practice. "It's a cycle that I'm now kind of stuck in, and I get more and more tired," she lamented.

College officials say more students seem to be getting stuck on the sleep-deficit treadmill. Skimping on shut-eye has become such a concern that the American College Health Association revamped its annual health survey this fall to include six questions focused on sleep instead of one, said Mary Hoban, director of the Baltimore-based National College Health Assessment.

More here




Australia: A plague of student suspensions hits Queensland schools

The fruit of negligible discipline

An alarming spike in student suspensions for being aggressive, disobedient, taking drugs and wagging school is plaguing the state's classrooms. Education Queensland statistics show suspensions were up 25 per cent at Gold Coast and Ipswich region public schools in the past three years and 22 per cent at Townsville schools. Other public school region reports, including Brisbane, are expected this week.

The initial snapshot has prompted child psychologists to call for family and community strategies to improve the behaviour of disrespectful students. The state Opposition has called for teachers to be equipped with more comprehensive behaviour management resources. [Like "the cane"]

Last financial year, 16,036 suspensions and 274 expulsions were slapped on students in the Gold Coast and Ipswich regions. In the Townsville region over the same period, there were 4068 suspensions and 48 expulsions. The information was contained in an answer to a parliamentary question on notice by LNP Member for Robina Ray Stevens.

Education Minister Rod Welford refused yesterday to comment on the reports or the implications. However, he did preface the reports by linking the rise to a stricter disciplinary approach from schools when the Code of School Behaviour was introduced in 2006.

Opposition education spokesman John-Paul Langbroek said the results indicated a larger behavioural problem both in and out of the classroom. "The Government will say they're being tougher (on students) but I think it reflects kids are more aggressive and we have to focus on behaviour management," Mr Langbroek said. "Just suspending them doesn't fix the problem." [It's a holiday for them, in fact]

Pathways Health and Research Centre's Professor Paula Barrett, a child psychologist, said the Government should consider making suspended students do community service, such as visiting nursing homes, hospitals or the RSPCA. She said most of the children suspended probably suffered from learning, emotional or social difficulties, in part because families now spent less time guiding and having fun with their young . "It's a two-way street. You give them quality time, you get respect," she said.

Source





2 October, 2008

Oxford 'is not a social security office'

Chancellor of university rejects government plan to attract more state pupils

Oxford University should not be treated by the Government as "a social security office" to widen participation in higher education among disadvantaged pupils from state schools, its chancellor said yesterday. Oxford had "no chance" of increasing state school admissions to meet targets so long as the gap in exam performance existed, Lord Patten of Barnes told the annual meeting of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference (HMC).



Research by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development showed the gap in performance between Britain's private and state schools was the widest in the Western world, he said, adding: "The sense that many universities have is that they are being asked to make up for the deficiencies of secondary education. If this were the aim, it would be a fool's mission."Latest figures show that 53 per cent of Oxford's student intake is from state schools. The target is to raise this to 62 per cent by the end of the decade.

Lord Patten's comments were coupled with a plea to charge middle-class parents more for a child's university tuition by lifting the current fees cap of 3,140 pounds per annum. "It is surely a mad world in which parents or grandparents are prepared to shell out tens of thousands to put their children through private schools to get them into universities and then to object to them paying a tuition fee of more than 3,000," he said. His long-term preference would be for no cap at all, which could lead to universities charging up to 20,000 for some courses.

The chancellor's remarks coincided with a study for the HMC, carried out by Buckingham University's Centre for Education and Employment, which showed that independent schools were concentrating on "hard" A-level subjects such as further maths, rather than "soft" ones like media studies and psychology - which are more popular in comprehensive schools. The study's authors said: "Independent schools have above-average A-level entries in further maths, physics, French, economics and classics, while comprehensives have above average entries in sports studies, media studies, law, psychology and sociology."

The Schools minister, Lord Adonis, also addressed the conference, insisting there was plenty of teaching of the "harder" subjects at state schools.

Source




Most Australian university students now need to be taught grade-school English

MONASH University will teach its first-year students grammar and punctuation after discovering that most arrive without basic English skills. Baden Eunson, lecturer at the university's School of English, Communications and Performance Studies, and convenor of the new course, said about 90 per cent of his first-year students could not identify a noun. "If you ask them to identify adjectives and other parts of a sentence, only about 1 per cent can manage," he said, according to The Australian. "It is not really a surprise as only about 20 per cent of English teachers understand basic grammar."

Mr Eunson described his remedial program as a US-style "freshman composition course, mainly covering material that should have been covered in school but wasn't". He pointed to a 2003 study by the Economic Society of Australia which found school leavers "are functionally illiterate because standards in Australian high schools have collapsed".

Mr Eunson said students' inadequacies emerged when they were asked to hand-write answers to test questions and without the aid of spell-checkers. "I think we'll see more and more of these university-level courses springing up to do the schools' work for them," he said.

His comments come after Monash colleague Caron Dann said the majority of her 500 students in communication were strangers to English grammar. "Marking essays, I discovered the majority had no idea how to use apostrophes, or any other punctuation for that matter; that random spelling was in and sentence construction out. About half thought plurals were formed by adding an apostrophe-s, as in apple's and banana's. "Marking the final exam, it emerged that few could write neatly: From bold childlike printing to spidery scribblings in upper case, it is obvious that handwriting is a dying art," she said.

Swinburne University has said it will test the literacy skills of domestic and international students next year because of concern about standards.

Source





1 October, 2008

BRITISH SCHOOLS FAILING PUPILS ON MATHEMATICS

Too many schools are failing to provide children with a good maths education, inspectors have warned. An Ofsted review of maths in primary and secondary schools in England found many lessons do not teach children how to apply maths to other subjects and in their every day lives. It said that too often, pupils were expected to remember mathematical formulas, methods and rules, without actually understanding their subject. This is in large part due to schools focusing on preparing pupils to pass exams, inspectors said.

The report noted that: "For many pupils, mathematics consists of a regular diet of broadly satisfactory lessons." It added: "In many cases, pupils simply completed exercises in textbooks or worksheets, replicating the steps necessary to answer questions in national curriculum tests or external examinations. Success too often depended on pupils remembering what to do rather than having a secure understanding underpinning their thinking and application of techniques."

It adds that steady improvements in national tests and GCSE results in maths are "generally not being matched by identifiable improvements in pupils' understanding of mathematics or in the quality of teaching".

"Instead the evidence suggests that much is due to the increased level of intervention with underachieving pupils and those on key borderlines of performance, coupled with teaching that focuses on the skills required by examination questions and extensive use of revision."

Of the 192 primary schools and secondary schools visited for the review, the teaching and learning was good or better in 60% of them. In primary schools the teaching and learning was satisfactory or worse in 33% and in secondary schools that figure was 46%.

Schools Minister Jim Knight said he acknowledged that more needs to be done to improve maths teaching for the long term, with a range of measures due to be implemented to achieve this.

Source




Jose, Can You See?

by Mike S. Adams

UNC-Wilmington decided recently that the way to bolster its failing diversity program is to dump more money into it. Without any help from the Bush administration's financial advisors, they have decided that rewarding failure is a good way to ensure success. That's why they created a new Associate Provost of Institutional Diversity and Inclusion position. And that's why they paid big bucks to Jose Hernandez to fill the slot. According to a university press release, the new tolerance czar will focus on four areas of "diversity and inclusion" including the following: Centro Hispano, the Multicultural Center, the African-American Cultural Center, and a new Women's Studies unit.

Before the university starts to construct separate (but equal) bathrooms for "colored" people, I'm interested in speaking to Jose about a group that already has separate bathroom status. I'm talking, of course, about women - an historical "minority" of close to 70% on our almost entirely white campus.

As a first order of business, I would encourage Jose Hernandez to take a look at the lack of "diversity and inclusion" in the Women's Studies Minor (WSM). Recently, I went to their web page and started looking at the faculty who teach in that program. Then, I did a search of the voter registration data base in North Carolina. The results were quite interesting. Below, I've cut and pasted the names of the women teaching in the WSM followed by the Women's Resource Center's descriptions of their contributions to the program. I've changed just one thing. In the place of their departmental affiliation, I've superimposed their political party affiliation, if any.

Kathleen Berkeley (Democrat): Teaches the history of women in America from the era of pre-contact to the present, with a special emphasis on the interactions among gender, race, class, and ethnicity, and the influence these variables have on expressions of power and sexuality in American society.

Maria Cami-Vela (Not registered to vote): Teaches literature and film courses focusing on gender, class, and sexuality. Her current research explores the representation of desire and sexuality in films directed by women.

Cara Cilano (Democrat): Teaches courses in women's literature from around the globe, with a particular emphasis on third world women's literature. Her research focuses on issues of nationhood, cultural production and reception of texts, and globalization.

Eleanor Krassen Covan (Democrat): Teaches courses on women and aging. A sociologist by discipline, she is editor of the journal Health Care for Women International.

Andrea Deagon (Democrat): Teaches classical studies. Her research interests include women's dance and women's experience of the sacred.

Janet Ellerby (Democrat): Teaches courses that focus on women writers, issues of gender, and the memoir. She is currently working on a cultural analysis of adoption practices in literature and history.

Elizabeth Ervin (Democrat): Teaches courses in education, professional writing, and feminist theory. Her research explores connections between public discourse, feminism, and activism.

Jennifer Horan (Democrat): Teaches courses focusing on the status of women in the American political system. Her current research interests include environmental policy and policymaking in Latin America and the impact of environmental degradation on women in the developing world.

Leslie Hossfeld (Democrat): Teaches sociology courses focusing on gender and society. Her current research interests include worker displacement and gender and job loss.

Donna King (Unaffiliated Marxist): Teaches sociology courses focusing on gender, race, and class. Her current research interests include eco-feminism and feminist critiques of consumer culture.

Patricia Lerch (Democrat): Teaches courses on women in such diverse cultural settings as Brazil, Barbados, and North America. Her research focuses on women and religion, tourism, and economic development.

Diane Levy (Democrat): Teaches courses in the sociology of the family, gender and society, and the sociology of work and occupations. She is interested in gender and globalization, tourism, and women's travel accounts.

Katherine Montwieler (Democrat): Teaches courses related to gender and literature. Her current research interests are eighteenth- and nineteenth-century women writers and constructions of gender and sexuality.

Diana Pasulka (Not Registered to Vote): Teaches courses on women and religion. Her research focuses on gender representations in world religions as well as religion and popular culture.

Lisa Pollard (Not Registered to Vote): Teaches courses on Muslim, Jewish, and Christian women in the modern Middle East, and courses on gender. Her research interests focus on gender and nation building in 19th and 20th century Egypt.

Colleen Reilly (Democrat): Teaches courses in professional writing and computers and writing, including a course in gender and technology. Her current research explores how gender and sexuality help to construct and are constructed by technologies.

Karen Sandell (Unaffiliated): Teaches social work courses focusing on issues relating to women, children, and society. Her current research interests include teaching innovations in social work education, technology and social work education, and feminist practice.

Kindra Steenerson (Democrat): Teaches a wide variety of topics including the construction of gender, institutional sources of oppression, and feminist scrutiny of the media.

Anita Veit (Democrat): Teaches courses in the sociology of gender, children, family, sport, and birth and death.

Barbara Waxman (Democrat): Teaches literature by and about women, multicultural autobiography, fiction, and autobiography about aging and Victorian literature. Her research examines memoirs of the bilingual/trans-cultural experience.

For those not counting, the party affiliation tally of the 20 professors (now 19, as one recently passed away) teaching in the WSM is as follows:

Democrats 15
Not Registered 3
Unaffiliated 2
Republican 0

This all reminds me of the time when the aptly named Dick Veit (English Department) falsely accused the College Republicans of trying to exclude blacks and Jews from their club. At the very time of his accusation, the English Department had thirty-three professors, none of whom were Republicans. Veit insisted that his department was always professional and never tried to exclude anyone.

I guess the questions for Jose Hernandez are really quite simple: What happens when you flip a peso 20 times and it never comes up heads? Can Jose see that the system has been rigged? And, will he have the courage and integrity to create real diversity and inclusion in Women's Studies?

Source