I would submit to you that an elementary school's policy on recess tells you everything you need to know about that school's seriousness.

 Our Education Establishment for decades has flirted with a total lack of seriousness. How do we know this? Because they found many reasons to downplay or eliminate recess. That means you have millions of restless, unhappy kids who are unlikely to learn anything at all. And when these children squirm and complain, they are labeled ADHD and…

This is a creepy, scary topic. That would be the one where guys in white lab coats spend their careers figuring out ways to alter somebody's mental prowess.

 I had heard for years about something called MK Ultra and never understood what it was. But apparently during the heights and depths of the Cold War, the CIA was working on every possible way to manipulate the mind. Those ways would include brainwashing, torture, drugs, and others. 

 Meanwhile, my…

Here are the answers all wrapped  up in one little tribute to Thomas Jefferson. That's the guy who wanted to educate the little people up as high as they could be educated. We have got to fight for that.

http://www.examiner.com/article/jeb-bush-common-core-and-thomas-jefferson

 Full title is "Jeb Bush, Common Core and Thomas Jefferson."

 Here is…

  Why did Prometheus come down to give us knowledge? Zeus didn't want him to do this. Prometheus was sent into outer darkness for his sin.

 For thousands of years,  people understood that they should be thankful to Prometheus. He brought the fire, he brought the light, he brought the knowledge that humanity needed to rise above the level of dirt.

 I doubt kids today ever hear about Prometheus. But they should. 

Just as political leaders should now…

 Do you agree? Good, then please pass this little summary to everyone you know.

 Or were you thinking, that’s crazy talk. Afraid not. It’s quite accurate, comparable to saying, “The sky is blue.”

 Reading instruction in our country has been insane and/or a criminal conspiracy for 80 years.  

The resulting illiteracy is a giant hemorrhaging wound. We cannot have a successful school system or…

Progressive educators think that the way you redesign curricula is you throw out all traditional content and introduce dozens of soft skills,  strange new literacies, and 21st century this-and-that.

The people proposing this sort of redesign are the same people who have controlled education for 75 years. Do you believe in your heart that they will now do a better job? You know they won’t. (You probably suspect the truth. They don’t want the schools to do…

A lot of people think John Dewey invented the Dewey Decimal System. No, that was Melville Dewey.

John Dewey is America's premier educator. He is often called the Father of American Education. He was the guy, about a century ago, who started all the liberal/collectivist/progressive/experiential/socialist/cooperative stuff.

 He wanted children to work together in an harmonious group. He didn't want anybody learning too much, because that would create…

 Suppose you had a $1 billion grant to dumb down the country.

  Would you need to do a lot of fancy research to find the best ways? Not at all. Hang on to your money. According to this article, what they're doing  now in the public schools works perfectly, thank you very much.

 Here are the six essential techniques, boiled down. 1) Make the classroom as fact-free as possible. 2) If there is information left, efficient teaching is not allowed. 3) Nothing…

By way of  setting the stage, dyslexia is  for sure a huge topic. It is probably a huge fraud. And there seems to be a significant shift in attitude about this subject.

 What we know for sure is that the public schools use dyslexia as an excuse for the bad results they get in reading. Dyslexia is also used as a hook for fundraising by the International Dyslexia Association.

 The Cynic’s Guide to Education would tell you that our public…

An article in the New York Times, signed by everybody on the editorial board,  argued that every problem in the schools is due to a shortage of money, and racial problems.

 Basically, the New York Times claims this. Gov. Cuomo claims this. And the Regents claim this. Each ends up in the same spot, although coming from different directions and with different emphasis. Money and race. Race and money. That's what they want to talk about. And the goal in every case is money, more…

Here are three things about Jeffrey Ludwig you should know: he was a teacher for 30 years, high school and college; he's an aggressive critic of the problems in our public schools and has written a book on the subject; and finally he's  OR-- openly religious.

 I interviewed him (via email) for an …

I first wrote about this 20 years ago; the issue is still around; and I think the academic left STILL pretends that calling something "prescriptive" is really VERY damning.

 They reach this verdict by a twisted sophistry that mixes up how you treat natives in the jungles of South America with how you treat people-- expert and not so expert – in New York City.

This may be…

 I'm trying to address a certain unreality, a certain abstraction,  a certain dishonesty, where children are  said to be learning 21st-century skills, critical thinking, collaboration, resilience, and so much more, but they don't know where Panama is on a map of the world. They don't know what 7×8 is. They don't know what a moon is.

They are as ignorant as bricks.

And here is a little secret. Our…

In my never-ending quest for boiling everything down to a few paragraphs, I put up a short article called "Memo to mothers: how public schools damage your child."

 The four ways are: reading, arithmetic, knowledge, and attitudes. Make a mess of those four and you've pretty well  messed up another generation.…

That was my title for an article which the American Thinker changed to "Public schools chew up teachers and spit them out."

Okay, that's colorful. But it misses the essential point that I want to emphasize. The Education Establishment, which should be very…

Virginia Beach public schools are discussing a new initiative called Compass to 2020, aka the Strategic Framework. Seems to me it’s mush on steroids.

 One of the many “strategies" is this: “Develop a plan to systematically integrate developmentally appropriate social emotional learning strategies into the…

What kind do you want? Many reformers deal with bureaucratic, financial, theoretical, and window-dressing stuff that  probably won’t change very much. Bill Gates thought that making all the schools small would save the system. It made no difference. See what I mean?

My theory is that we can improve the schools ONLY by dealing with the rot at the heart of the system. That would be the dysfunctional theories and methods that govern how all of…

 This is an update on the wonderful videos made by HSLDA. If only everyone America could see both…

 The short one at 22 minutes is called "Building the Machine – the parent interviews". For some reason it is now unavailable. The substitute here is the PREVIEW, which is better in a way because it's only 7 minutes, and here is that link:  …

Video consist of interviews with parents whose children were traumatized by Common Core.

Video is a bit long at 22 minutes but please watch it all. You will understand why a little girl might carve the word STUPID on her arm.

(I think the smart strategy is not to negotiate with Common Core, not to accept any part of it. The people behind CC are relentless, as the…