Conservatives deal with facts and reach conclusions; liberals have conclusions and sell them as facts.
It’s no secret that I’m hostile to the teachers’ union. While I completely support the idea of teachers earning a living wage and having decent working conditions — and am willing to concede that unions are well suited to negotiating these ends — I think the teachers’ unions have gone
Continue readingIn yet another reminder that it’s all about the bureaucracy and not about the child, it turns out that California joins the lists of states lying and cheating to get federal funds (and what a good lesson that is to teach our children): California and some other states have inflated
Continue readingI spend a lot of time talking to people whose children attend public schools in my fairly affluent area. What always surprises me is the disconnect between the facts they recite and their ultimate conclusion about our school district. Their ultimate conclusion is that the school district is just wonderful.
Continue readingSorry for the long post title, but it pretty explains why I'm including in my blog this long quotation from the Marin Independent Journal: Poor academic achievement in the Sausalito Marin City School District has rendered the concept of public neighborhood schools largely meaningless as dozens of children in the
Continue readingA friend directed me to an interview that was conducted by a student involved with UCLA's Instituted for Democracy, Education and Access. The tenor of the interview makes it clear that this organization — funded by California taxpayers — supports Hispanic separatism within the United States. I have a problem
Continue readingPick an aphorism, any aphorism — “The perfect is the enemy of the good.” “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.” “Big Brother is watching.” Each applies with equal accuracy to Proposition 82, the preschool time bomb waiting to explode in the California primaries. Proposition 82 is a
Continue readingHere's Rich Lowry, drawing right-on-the-money conclusions about the recent spectacle of college students protesting McCain and Rice as commencement speakers: What a bargain: At a cost of a mere $100,000 or so, a northeastern college can take your child and transform him into a delicate flower incapable of handling opinions
Continue readingHere's a list of names, and you get to guess what they have in common: Fabian Nunez, Howard Dean, Carol Liu, and Liz Figueroa. If you guessed that they're all Democrats, you're halfway there. But there are lots of Democrats around. These four fall into an even tighter group. They
Continue readingI blogged some time ago about the latest insanity in identity politics: a bill before the California legislature mandating that the California curriculum incorporate feel good stories about gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered people. I hate the artificiality of it all and I really I hate forcing sexuality in children's
Continue readingI'm intransigently hostile to a great deal of modern pop music, because I consider it ugly, crude, vulgar, violent and hypersexualized. (I feel like saying here, "But other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?) I don't even like Radio Disney because, although it presents the slighter
Continue readingThose familiar with my writing know that, while I haven't touched upon it in a while, a particularly hate multiculturalism, which I believe is one of the great cancers eating away at Western culture. To me, it has nothing to do with respecting the cultures of others, and everything to
Continue readingAnn Coulter reminds me of that old doggerel: There was a little girl, who had a little curl, right in the middle of her forehead, and when she was good, she was very, very good, and when she was bad she was horrid. When she gets too crude or abusive,
Continue readingLawrence O'Donnell is a "political analyst" for MSNBC (although his analysis often as not appears to be unrelated to any known reality, except rudeness). He also produces and writes The West Wing. Last night's episode was one of the last in the final season of the fantasy Democratic rule in
Continue readingThe big focus in American education from the 1960s through the present was why children can't read (something I attribute to the new educational approach that abandoned the wonderful logic of phonics). Now, though, for parents hewing to traditional morals who have kids trapped in public schools, the question becomes,
Continue readingThis NPR story addresses the Day of Silence gay kids are holding today at American schools and the Day of Truth that Christian kids are countering with tomorrow at American schools. I think both are proselytizing, and I'd like to see both out of the school. However, to the extent
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