Israel is criticized for alleged insensitivity to the risks of casualties among civilians, especially children, during counter-terrorist missions. But the tragedy of unintended casualties from justified military actions cannot be compared to a society's deliberate...
Education
Cognitive Child Abuse in Our Math Classrooms
The test results are in: America's children are flunking math. In 1996 American high school seniors finished close to the bottom on an international mathematics test. At the end of last year, American eighth-graders ranked below those of Malaysia, Bulgaria, and...
Crusading to Keep Kids Clueless: Public Education Monopoly Cracks Down on Home Schooling
The public education monopoly can't stand the thought of "unqualified" parents teaching their own children. That is why they are cracking down on home schooling, even as a new study shows that thousands of public school teachers themselves are shamefully unqualified...
Capitalist Principles Would Cure Education Woes
Fundamental problems require fundamental solutions-which can only be derived by thinking in fundamental principles. And that’s precisely what’s absent from discussions on education.
Teachers Who Hate Tests: Part 3
While we ought to learn from our own experiences, it is even better to learn from other people's experiences, saving ourselves the painful costs of the lessons. In the case of the dominant educational fads of our times, many have been tried out before in other...
Teachers Who Hate Tests: Part 2
One of the objections by the educational establishment to state-mandated tests for students is that this forces the teachers to teach directly the material that is going to be tested, instead of letting the students "discover" what they need to know through their own...
Teachers Who Hate Tests
Florida's school year has already started early, so that its students will have more preparation before the state-mandated tests that will be administered to them later in the school year. Meanwhile, there is much wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth because so...
High Schools Flunk Science
Physics is the fundamental natural science. Its birth in the 17th century heralded man's coming of age as a rational being. The discovery of the basic laws of nature led to the industrial revolution and modern technology, demonstrating the enormous practical power of...
The Problem of Public Schools: In Search of the “Certified” Teacher
Most discussions of the problems of American education have an air of utter unreality because they avoid addressing the most fundamental and intractable problem of our public schools -- the low quality of our teachers. There is no point expecting teachers to teach...
“Affirmative Action” and College Graduation Rates
Some thought that racial preferences and quotas -- "affirmative action" -- in university admissions decisions were on their way out after they were banned by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in Texas and by Proposition 209 in California. However, the 6th Circuit Court...
What Adults Cannot Learn from Children
Accused pipe bomber Lucas John Helder had barely been taken into custody before people began saying that he was crazy. Apparently no one is responsible for doing wrong things any more. Some of young Mr. Helder's comments may sound illogical to many of us. But they are...
Suffer the Palestinian Children
I spent my 21st birthday, in 1973, in Jerusalem, months before the Yom Kippur War. As part of the college junior semester abroad, I lived and traveled in Israel for nearly five weeks. In preparing a thesis called "U.N. Resolution 242 and the Viability of an...
“Good” Teachers
The next time someone receives an award as an outstanding teacher, take a close look at the reasons given for selecting that particular person. Seldom is it because his or her students did higher quality work in math or spoke better English or in fact had any tangible...
Three Books on The State of Education
Why our disintegrating culture is turning out so many people who are so much less than men can be.
For-Profit Schools: Profit’s not a Four-Letter Word
"It's not ethically sound to make a profit off educating students in a school that serves the public, which a charter school is, using funds from public coffers." That's not a sentence from Mao's Little Red Book. It's from Philip Parr, Chief of Staff of the Pittsburgh...
How Best to Improve School Productivity? School Choice!
Although it's only seven years since Caroline Minter Hoxby received her Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the brilliance of her subsequent research at Harvard University into the effectiveness and cost of public education has...
University Professors vs. America
Many simply shake their heads in confusion and disbelief at reports of peace rallies on college campuses from coast to coast. At such an unprecedented time of pro-American sentiments, and in light of the magnitude of horror of September 11, it seems almost impossible...
Interview: The Well Trained Mind and Homeschooling
When her daughter Susan started kindergarten in Virginia in 1972, Jessie Wise quickly heard complaints from Susan's teacher that the child would become a social misfit because she wanted to read during free time instead of playing. This was not good news for Wise,...
Microsoft Goes to School: You’re An Evil Predator; Now Teach My Kids
The settlement of the Microsoft anti-trust case got interesting this week -- and developments revealed the laughably absurd nature of much of the suit against the company. Reports in the Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times and elsewhere revealed that Mister...
Bill Clinton’s anti-American speech at Georgetown University
Nothing is an outrage when the reigning fad is being non-judgmental. So perhaps it is not surprising that there has been no nationwide chorus of condemnation of Bill Clinton's anti-American speech at Georgetown University. According to the former president, America is...
The Child Welfare Act Versus Children
In a world where the media are ready to magnify innocuous remarks or a minor problem into a trauma or a disaster, there is remarkably little attention being paid to cruelties routinely inflicted on children by our laws and our courts. That cruelty is ripping children...
On Sept 11: Open Letter to University Students
The events of September 11 have been the primary subject of discussion on college campuses across America. A patriotic fervor has been revived, with flags popping up in virtually every yard and on every car. However, after reading the editorials that appeared in last...
Teachers, Guns, and Zero-Tolerance Tyranny
When the new school year begins, Deena Esteban will not be among the legions of educators welcoming students back to class. That's because Mrs. Esteban, a 43-year-old art teacher in Prince William County, Va., lost the job she loved after being convicted of a felony...
Death Among Children: Tragedy at Tommy Lee’s
A 4-year-old boy died last weekend at the Malibu home of rock star Tommy Lee. How any right-thinking parents could entrust their child to a drug-addled celebrity who pled no contest to kicking his ex-wife (actress Pamela Anderson) while she held their newborn baby is...
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