Conservatives deal with facts and reach conclusions; liberals have conclusions and sell them as facts.
Since I’ve been huffing and puffing about education a lot, I enjoyed, and I think you might enjoy the segment from hour No. 1 of Dennis Prager’s September 13 program about the “10 No’s of education.” (You can find it here.) I’m on board with every single one of his
Continue readingMy daughter came home today with two forms that I “must sign, because they’re urgent.” One is a form that both the student and the parent have to sign. It states that we’ve read the school handbook and its code of conduct, and that I promise to support the principles
Continue readingAt Montessori, a teacher gives a lesson, and then, when the children comprehend the lesson, she has them practice it immediately so that they principles they’ve just learned “set.” Public school, so far, has been different. Now that they’re in public school, the children bring me homework, complaining that they
Continue readingIt’s fall, and my life is once again bounded by soccer. Four times a week, I’m dragging at least one of my children, and at least one of the neighbor children, up and down my community to various soccer practices and games. Today is one of those days where both
Continue readingWhen my children were at a Montessori school and I attended back to school nights, I wished that I could go back to school too. Now that my children attend a public school (and a really excellent public school at that) and I attend a back to school night, I’m
Continue readingAfter a long morning away from my computer, I’ve got a couple of minutes just to say “hi,” and then I’m back to being away. I’ll be back tonight, though, and should have some good, pent-up blogging energy! In the meantime, if you’re looking for something interesting to read and
Continue readingI got the following email from a friend. Can you help with suggestions? My daughter started school today as a high school senior. Over the summer, for her first class in Politics and Government in the U.S. and the World, she had to read What’s the Matter with Kansas. My
Continue readingWhat’s wrong with this sentence? (Beware. This is a trick question.) Your child should wear a good pair of sneakers so that they may participate in PE. Okay, here’s the answer: Aside from the blatant grammatical error, what’s really wrong with this sentence is that a teacher wrote it. How
Continue readingA nice companion piece to my (I hope polite) rant about the effect of quotas on the materials presented to California school children shows up in this Daniel Golden article about how school textbook publishers are desperate to meet their quota requirements. After describing the nice wheel and crutch props
Continue readingI blogged earlier about how I was pleased that the California Legislature gutted SB 1437. This bill, as proposed, would have amended various Education Code provisions to require California schools, beginning in first grade, to teach positive lessons about homosexuals. In another post, I explained my position: I certainly do
Continue readingMy kids have started public school after several years in the rarified world of alternative education. I’m a bit dubious about the whole thing, being a product of public schools myself (so I know just how bad they can be). Two things stood out today: First, my daughter told me
Continue readingThe Terminator, merely by raising his eyebrows, managed to get the California legislature to back down on a bill that would have required all California textbooks, starting in first grade, to include materials focusing on famous homosexuals — not because of their fame, but because of their homosexuality. Instead, it
Continue readingI distinctly remember the laughs ordinary people had decades ago when a Harvard study for the then ridiculously high sum of $50,000 established that mother’s milk is good for babies. I had the same “duh” feeling when I read that a San Francisco neuropsychiatrist has written a book, based on
Continue readingThere was a whole lot going on at the annual National Education Association convention, but not a whole lot of it seemed to have anything to do with education. Thus, because it’s clear that our nation’s children are learning reading and writing at rocket-like speed (this is said with a
Continue readingMy policy, when my children were little enough to have temper tantrums was, as I always said, “to walk over the body.” I simply won’t deal with someone behaving that way. One of my all time favorite videos shows beautifully how even children are wise enough to use temper tantrums
Continue reading