Tag Archives: Education

But of COURSE conservatives are paranoid!

Posted on September 24, 2009 by | 4 Comments

Remember all the outcry when we raised hell about President Obama’s address to students? Our concerns were “baseless“. We’re clearly nothing but “paranoid right wing nut jobs“. And of course, don’t forget RAAAACIST!! Fine, other Presidents have spoken to students before. THAT is not what we took issue with! How many Presidents issued study guides? And how many treated everything the President said as fact? I wrote about this yesterday:

So much for objectivity, right? As I said yesterday, the things that are being presented as fact are, well, not so much fact. When the experts are still hotly debating the legislation, and there can be no clear answers derived from the bill itself, it is NOT fact. Go read this, from HSLDA.

The most interesting thing about the abortion issue? BOTH sides are protesting! The right is angry because they believe it IS included, and the left is angry for the opposite reason. The wording is SO loose that no one actually knows what’s in it. The fact that a teacher presumes to know the truth and teach it to the class as fact is inexcusable. Of course, abortion is NOT the only issue. The rest of the numbers used are skewed at best, if not flat out wrong. Such as the number of people who are uninsured, which mysteriously changes. This is EXACTLY the issue we were concerned about. Then yesterday, this video was released (which I’m sure most of you have seen by now): So this is all after the fact. Are we just looking for things to justify our accusations after the fact? No. My first cue that there would be indoctrination of children involved was this: THIS IS NOT NORMAL. And parents are right to object. When there are teachers like Diantha Harris around, there is a justifiable concern for parents who are sending their children to public school every day. So lefties, keep your head in the sand. Pretend your children are independent thinkers. But if you think your 5 year old has the intellect and wit to out-think an authority figure and come to their own conclusions regarding the President of the United States, I feel for your child.

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Posted in Abortion, Education, General Controversy, Health Care, Obama, Policy Issues, Politics

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Indoctrination: Quizzed on Obama's speech

Posted on September 23, 2009 by | 4 Comments

From Smart Girl Nation:

A member’s daughter, a senior in high school, had come home upset because, although the speech was not shown in her school, her anatomy teacher had made the class watch the President’s health care speech. After the video was shown, the students were given a short quiz about the speech. The questions asked gave the assumption that the answers provided in the President’s speech were fact and not opinion. The students were given no opportunity to discuss opposing views or have a debate on the topic. In fact, when one student stated that the President had lied, the student was told that kind of talk was unnecessary. Students in the class with opposing views were forced to remain silent or whisper amongst themselves.

The daughter of our member was so upset about what had occured that she refused to finish the quiz and brought it home to her mother for review. A copy of the quiz is provided below. Some of these students were educated on the health care debate going on in the country, while others simply took the information as fact and filled out their quiz. For those students, President Obama’s speech was their education. Is that not considered indoctrination?

So all the lefties that laughed and did the “I told you sos” over the speech. It was obviously scrubbed once the parents across the country raised hell. They didn’t hand out the study guides that they’d previously shown. Things were changed.

However, it’s become a battle between the education system and parents. You cannot present things that are not facts as, well, fact. I know from my own experience in the public education system that there are things that are just accepted by teachers as truth, when really, they’re not… mostly centering around religion and science and history. It is then passed on to students as truth. It’s a trend, one that has been heading heading leftward since the 60′s. This is the culmination of that.

The responsiblity of an educator is to present fact and facilitate critical thinking and dicussion. Spoonfeeding high school students misinformation as fact is not okay on any level.

If pundits and other political and health care professionals still do not have the answers to the questions asked in the quiz, there is no solid ground for the teacher to be presenting this as fact.

Education fail. Reason #48975478 I want to home school my kids.

Kudos to SGP and Michelle Malkin for bringing this public.

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Posted in Education, General Controversy, Health Care, Obama, Policy Issues, Politics, smart girl politics

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America's Education Failure

Posted on December 6, 2008 by | 6 Comments

I’m not that old, but even in the 15 years since I was in elementary school, the landscape of our education system has changed immensely. Homeschooling has increased steadily for the past 20 years, growing from just 300,000 to over a million. Why is this?

Some (Joy Behar) would have you believe that all homeschoolers are fringe religious cultists that want to isolate themselves and/or their children from reality. The facts tell a very different story. While it’s true that many homeschool for religious reasons, many don’t. There are countless reasons to pull your children out of school. This one and this one among them. Not to mention this one.

Anyone paying attention would know that there are fundamental problems with America’s education system. Kids are not learning what they need to know, and teachers are not being given an incentive to invest in their students. Our politically correct approach to education is damaging. Teachers are so bound by the possibility of offending that they are forced to bend over backwards to accommodate every child, diluting the education experience.

Prime example of political correctness gone awry: Schools in my part of North Carolina cannot discipline children in any way. My dear friend Dana’s 5 year old son started kindergarten this year. His teacher informed her that the school policy on discipline was a “preventative” one. In other words, the teacher was supposed to determine when the child was getting angry and preempt any episode by sending the child to the “beach” to calm down… a bean bag in a beach themed corner of the room.

No, I’m not making this up. The sad part is that I don’t think it’s all that uncommon.

With policies like this in place, it’s no wonder parents are pulling their kids out of school. Having full control over what your child learns and how they are disciplined is invaluable.

As a side note, since I now fall into this category, the “pajamas media” would be prime candidates for homeschooling their kids. Why? Because we’re PAYING ATTENTION, and are concerned about the direction of mainstream education. With indoctrination beginning in elementary school, is it any wonder conservatives have lost the youth vote? Your kids are going to be the future leaders of this country. How will they do?

Education begins early. Obviously, America’s kids are getting a bad start. I think homeschooling is a perfect way to change that.

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Posted in Education, Politics, Uncategorized

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Change.gov

Posted on November 10, 2008 by | Leave a comment

The official website for the non-existent Office of the President Elect. Read it. Know what’s on there – if for no other reason than to know what’s coming.

From the America Serves section:

“When you choose to serve — whether it’s your nation, your community or simply your neighborhood — you are connected to that fundamental American ideal that we want life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness not just for ourselves, but for all Americans. That’s why it’s called the American dream.”

The Obama Administration will call on Americans to serve in order to meet the nation’s challenges. President-Elect Obama will expand national service programs like AmeriCorps and Peace Corps and will create a new Classroom Corps to help teachers in underserved schools, as well as a new Health Corps, Clean Energy Corps, and Veterans Corps. Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America, by setting a goal that all middle school and high school students do 50 hours of community service a year and by developing a plan so that all college students who conduct 100 hours of community service receive a universal and fully refundable tax credit ensuring that the first $4,000 of their college education is completely free. Obama will encourage retiring Americans to serve by improving programs available for individuals over age 55, while at the same time promoting youth programs such as Youth Build and Head Start.

Last week, the community service was mandatory according to the website – however, what college student is going to turn down a $4000 scholarship? $40/hr “community service”. Again, furthering the entitlement society. Is this in addition to already existing federal education aid programs? That would be my interpretation.

Let’s assume that it’s only offered to college freshmen, since it does say that the “first $4000 will be free”. The NCES reported 2,657,000 college freshman in 2005. The avg. growth for the past 5 years was 45,800… so let’s factor that in. That brings our number to 2,702,800. That bill comes to $11,171,200,000… not accounting for 2 year programs. Granted, this seems like chump change when the government has been throwing hundreds of billions around – but the bottom line is that there is still no way to pay for it.

In addition, what happens after that first $4000? If the government spends that money, and the student can’t afford to continue their education, what is the point? That’s certainly not fair. Does this set us up for a $4000 credit all 4 years? Let’s look at those numbers.

In 2005-2006 there were 10,999,924 students enrolled in a 4 year degree program. At $4000/student, that runs us $43,999,696,000. And the 2 year students? There were 6,613,596 of them. That’s another $26,454,384. See how quick that ran up to almost $70.5 billion – not even factoring in growth?

That said, I’m all for community service. I like the idea of setting goals in that regard. Should it be rewarded? Is it truly service if you’re receiving a reward? My thought is no.

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Posted in Obama, Policy Issues, Politics

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