Dawn Buckingham @DrBuckinghamTX
·
Washington bureaucrats have had their chance, and they’ve failed. It’s time to let states lead the way. Local control means better schools, less red tape, and more opportunities for our kids. Eliminating the Department of Education is a step toward empowering states and communities to decide what’s best for their students.

2:24 PM · Dec 29, 2024. //

Robert Bortins @TheRobertBshow
·
Jimmy Carter - R.I.P. 2024
Department of Education - R.I.P. 2025
7:54 PM · Dec 30, 2024

Over the past few days, X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, has been the scene of a fairly intense discussion between guys like Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, and others who are in favor of "high skill" immigration in the form of a massive increase in H1B visas that allow the hiring of foreign workers and a large number of devoted Trump fans who see H1B visas as a way corporate America has of replacing American workers with what amounts to chattel labor. //

Regardless of my view on the subject (and I do see H1B visas as a way for businesses to depress wages and create a captive and compliant workforce), I admire Musk's willingness to duke it out with all comers. That is something that would have been impossible with Jack Dorsey's Twitter.

Vivek Ramaswamy, though, [hit] a nerve. He believes that Americans are not culturally adapted to working in the tech field.

Vivek Ramaswamy @VivekGRamaswamy
·
The reason top tech companies often hire foreign-born & first-generation engineers over “native” Americans isn’t because of an innate American IQ deficit (a lazy & wrong explanation). A key part of it comes down to the c-word: culture. Tough questions demand tough answers & if we’re really serious about fixing the problem, we have to confront the TRUTH:

Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long (at least since the 90s and likely longer). That doesn’t start in college, it starts YOUNG.

A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers.
...
That’s the work we have cut out for us, rather than wallowing in victimhood & just wishing (or legislating) alternative hiring practices into existence. I’m confident we can do it.
11:02 AM · Dec 26, 2024 //

Rachel Bovard @rachelbovard
·
According to Census Bureau data, the US has more than 2x as many American workers with STEM degrees as there are STEM jobs. And many of the STEM jobs that do exist go to foreigners, because our immigration system allows them to legally be paid less.

But sure, it’s the tv shows.

Vivek Ramaswamy @VivekGRamaswamy
The reason top tech companies often hire foreign-born & first-generation engineers over “native” Americans isn’t because of an innate American IQ deficit (a lazy & wrong explanation). A key part of it comes down to the c-word: culture. Tough questions demand tough answers & if…
1:40 PM · Dec 26, 2024

Rep. Mike Collins @RepMikeCollins
·
The United States graduates over half a million STEM students per year. If there is an issue in the tech workforce, then we need to address it at the educational level, not import a problem away.
4:04 PM · Dec 26, 2024. //

On the one hand, Musk and Ramaswamy are right. The US must make it easier for top-shelf talent to come to America. That isn't a problem for major tech players like Google, Meta, etc., because their brand draws the best, and the work environment doesn't tolerate mediocrity. On the other hand, there is no doubt that run-of-the-mill H1Bs are not superior to American workers. Their competitive advantage is that they are cheap and don't cause labor problems.

As much as we don't like to hear it, Ramaswamy has a point about the culture we're developing. One of the responses to his critique was this. //

TheLastRefuge @TheLastRefuge2
·
Dear, @VivekGRamaswamy, my counter take..... 😇

Several years ago, Florida Power and Light won the prestigious international Edward Demming Award for excellence in multi-platform engineering, efficiency superiority and total quality in the process of energy management.

You see, the reviewers couldn’t actually quantify the reason why the Florida-based energy company was so successful. In response the FPL field leadership laughed, took out magic markers and wrote on the back of their hard hats: “WE’RE NOT GOOD, WE’RE RUCKY.”

A few years later, every single Kuwaiti oil field was blown up by Saddam Hussein. Global analysts and think-tanks proclaimed it would take 5 years to cap them all off and restart the Kuwait oil pumping industry. Well, the Kuwaiti’s and Saudi’s called Texans, who had them all capped and back in working order in 6 months.

We are a nation that knows how to get shit done.

A few more years pass, and the Northern Chile mine workers were trapped two miles underground. The eyes of the world began to tear as the word spread. Most began to whisper no one could save them. Who did they call for help? A bunch of hick miners from USA coal country who went down there, worked on the fly, engineered the rescue equipment on site, and saved every one of them.

Yup, that’s our America. Ingenuity born from freedom. //

The problem is we are no longer the America that produced the guys who put out the Kuwaiti oil field fires and rescued Chilean miners. We are a nation that has permitted its primary and secondary education system to be dumbed down to the lowest conceivable denominator and made a high school diploma a participation trophy...and we're trying to do that to our university systems. We don't care about performance or standards, and our traditional work ethic is probably an artifact of white supremacy. //

NightTwister
14 hours ago
What a huge pile of crap. They want to import "engineers" from other countries because they can pay them half the going wage. They're mostly entry-level capable, and companies no longer care if they can actually do the work. For the most part they can't innovate, so they're used for repeatable work. They live 4-5 to a home, and send most of their money back home. This is not an "America First" strategy.

When Trump was in last time he increased the minimum H1B visa salary to $120K. When Biden changed it to $60K which it was before, they flooded in again. Raise the minimum to $150K and you'll suddenly see there are plenty of Americans available for these jobs.

Bruce427
5 hours ago edited
** Jess Davis: "When I hear people talking about expanding school vouchers, my mind immediately goes to how hard it is for families in some parts of Tennessee [because of poor bridges] even to get their children to school safely.”

OK, let's just cut to the chase: The real (and Primary) reason Progressives viscerally despise School Choice is, it substantially takes the minds of our youngsters out of the reach of Leftist Progressive Ideology.

A close secondary reason is, it takes millions in Funding out of the hands of Teacher's Unions who then funnel it back to the Democrat Party.

Everything else is just noise. //

EDMUND
4 hours ago
It's real easy....school money should follow the student, not the system... //

Indylawyer
7 hours ago
Its an especially strange argument because school choice should bring an enormous cost savings. That $7,000 voucher is probably less than half of what they are spending for those kids to attend public schools - and it's still providing $140,000 for a classroom of 20 kids. //

sb2
7 hours ago
I hear some of these arguments against big government relinquishing control and I'm left thinking that it isn't that they really think these things. They just try to find arguments they hope enough people will buy into. There is only one reason to be against school choice - and that's if you want to indoctrinate instead of teach.

But upon reading the thoughts of Michael Harriot — a columnist for The Grio, guest on MSNBC programs, “board-certified wypipologist” and for our purposes “guy with 500,000 Twitter followers” — I was so dumbstruck all I could think of was Adam Sandler’s 1995 classic film, “Billy Madison,” which, underneath its farcical façade, is appropriately enough a clarion call for the necessity of quality education:

At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

To the extent I can pull a premise out of Harriot’s mess, it seems to be that classical education “doesn’t measure a student’s ability to learn or teach them TO LEARN. It teaches students to learn LIKE WHITE PEOPLE LEARN who have already been deemed smart because they know white things.”

While obviously there are cultural differences that can affect one’s learning environment, I, along with the vast majority of normal people, don’t happen to believe that basic knowledge and how you go about learning it is relative to one’s skin color. Yet educrats everywhere increasingly believe what Harriot is saying. For instance, a proposed California mathematics curriculum declares that focusing on students “getting the right answer,” asking students to “show their work,” and grading them based on their ability to do problems correctly is “white supremacy culture in the mathematics classroom.”

Of course, it’s even worse in subjects that aren’t as literal as math.

Last month, in a basement office in Monrovia, I watched a teacher with 15 years of experience fail a sixth-grade math test. She wasn’t an outlier—she represented the norm in a nation that ranks 155th out of 156 countries according to the 2023 World Bank Human Capital Index. After a decade of traversing Africa’s education landscape, from Ethiopia’s ambitious reforms to Rwanda’s digital revolution, I can confidently state that Liberia isn’t just failing at education. We’re actively manufacturing ignorance. //

The most dangerous thing in Liberia isn’t poverty—it’s the slow death of our potential. //

The truth is more damning: we’re not failing because we’re poor. We’re poor because we’ve institutionalized failure.

A scathing new report claims that the Biden administration's Department of Education's (ED) enforcement actions were focused at least 70 percent on Christian and career-based schools, even though they represent less than 10 percent of the students in the nation. This uncovers an unseen campaign that persisted over the administration's term and can hardly be seen as impartial.

https://www.foxnews.com/media/new-report-shows-70-biden-administrations-education-enforcement-targeted-christian-colleges

Elon Musk has been going all-in to stump for former President Donald Trump.

He was in Pennsylvania this weekend doing a town hall in Harrisburg. He covered a lot of topics including one not touched upon enough: that there's too much focus on a college education as a path to success. //

I think the value of a college education is somewhat overweighted. Too many people spend four years, accumulate a ton of debt and often don't have useful skills that they can apply afterwards.

I have a lot of respect for people who work with their hands and we need electricians and plumbers and carpenters and that's a lot more important than having incremental political science majors.

I think we should not have this idea that in order to be successful you need a four year college degree.//

He also spoke about the problems presented by "the Machine" that we must defeat.

Kamala is just a puppet, if the teleprompter breaks, she doesn't know what to say. I just call it "The Machine'" When the Biden puppet was not working out, they got a new puppet. It's all the same machine. It's undemocratic what was done to Biden. It's bizarre to claim Trump is a danger to democracy when what happened to Biden was entirely undemocratic. Yeah, so, it doesn't make sense. //

Elon Musk @elonmusk
·
Tomorrow, I will tell the story of how SpaceX was forced by the government to kidnap seals, put earphones on them and play sonic boom sounds to see if they seemed upset

Colin Wright @SwipeWright
This story of strangulation by over-regulation from @elonmusk about the government requiring @SpaceX to asses whether their rockets could potentially hit SHARKS and WHALES is side-splittingly hilarious. 🤣
Embedded video
3:55 AM · Oct 20, 2024. //

GreenLanternMD
an hour ago edited
This isn’t at all about enforcing regulations, it’s about using them to control and obstruct whatever government employees don’t want to happen based on their personal and political beliefs. The government is the bad neighbor who’s been elected president of your HOA. //

EMCM(SS)
an hour ago
A “Department of Government Efficiency” will fix nothing. It will become another layer in the bureaucracy preventing anything from getting done. The system is the problem.
We don’t need government efficiency, we need government elimination. //

CaptainCall EMCM(SS)
an hour ago
It will create a thousand jobs for attorneys who will be lined up to sue every time a job is cut or an agency impacted. The only way it works is if the Rs win both houses and commit to cutting funding on the recommendations of the DGE, and that ain't gonna happen. //

mopani EMCM(SS)
2 minutes ago edited
First, every government entity needs to have a sunset clause.

Second, Trump has got to remove "baseline budgeting" (where next year's budget is based on whether the agency spent all of last year's budget, then adds a percentage increase) and go back to zero based budgeting, where every agency budget is zeroed and they have to itemize and justify their budget needs every year.

Additionally, those budgets then have to be adjusted government-wide to fit projected revenue for the coming fiscal year. And if the projection is too high and revenue is lower, then every department gets their budgets cut proportionally to fit revenue.

That will keep them busy fighting among themselves and free up the rest of us to get on with our lives.

It will keep them fighting among themselves and free up the rest of us to get on with our lives.

Florida has long been the most prominent battleground in the ongoing struggle between the rights of parents and the elitists who wish to violate them.

The latest skirmish in this war centers on HB 1069 which, among other things, gives parents and taxpayers more of a say in which books and materials are made available in public school libraries. //

The law empowers parents to raise objections to certain types of material. These objections would be taken into account by the district, which will work with the community to decide whether the content will be removed, restricted, or allowed.

This has nothing to do with censorship, as folks on the left contend. It has everything to do with parents being able to decide what their children are learning in the schools they fund through taxes. It is a process through which local communities have a stronger voice in what their children are seeing and consuming in the state’s educational institutions.

For most people, this concept is a no-brainer. Parents are the ones responsible for raising their children. Moreover, schools are funded using money taken from parents in the form of taxes. Why shouldn’t they have more of a say in what schools are teaching their children? //

The suit complains that Florida’s law requires books to be removed without consulting “trained professionals, such as teachers or media specialists.”

The notion that only governmental and corporate “experts” should decide what books are appropriate for school libraries smacks of elitism. This perspective implies that only our betters are equipped to know what our children should and should not be learning in class. //

The plaintiffs cannot win this lawsuit. It is not just about books. It is about parental rights. Corporate and governmental interests should not supersede the rights of parents to determine how their children are raised and educated just because there are some folks who want small children to view sexually explicit content.

Effective July 2025, teacher licensing rules passed last year in Minnesota under Democrat Gov. Tim Walz will ban practicing Christians, Jews, and Muslims from teaching in public schools. Walz is now the presidential running mate of current U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris. His resume includes a stint as a high school social studies teacher who sponsored a student queer sex club in 1999.

Starting next July, Minnesota agencies controlled by Walz appointees will require teacher license applicants to affirm transgenderism and race Marxism. Without a teaching license, individuals cannot work in Minnesota public schools, nor in the private schools that require such licenses.

The latest version of the regulations requires teachers to “affirm” students’ “gender identity” and “sexual orientation” to receive a Minnesota teaching license:

The teacher fosters an environment that ensures student identities such as race/ethnicity, national origin, language, sex and gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, physical/developmental/emotional ability, socioeconomic class, and religious beliefs are historically and socially contextualized, affirmed, and incorporated into a learning environment where students are empowered to learn and contribute as their whole selves.

For more than 2,300 years, Euclid’s Elements has been the foundation for countless students to learn how to reason with precision and pursue knowledge in all fields of learning.

The brilliance of his work has made it the second most published book in history because it provides profound tools to distinguish truth from error and discover fundamental principles about the world.

Modeled after our core mathematics course, “Mathematics and Logic” examines the vital importance of good reasoning to the liberal arts.

With this course, you’ll study the transformation of mathematics by the ancient Greeks, the fundamentals of logic and deductive reasoning, the central proofs of Euclid, the birth of modern geometry, and much more.

And now, you can own a DVD box set of “Mathematics and Logic” for a gift of $100 or more to Hillsdale College.

 Golden Rule
4 hours ago
German owned magazine since 1986. Germany does not allow homeschooling.

anon-055q Golden Rule
2 hours ago
In Germany, any "rights" that citizens have are bestowed by Daddy Government.

Indeed. In that respect, the term "Fatherland" assumes an almost literal meaning!

This has, alas, been a leitmotif of German social thought for centuries.

The Thirty Years War (1618-1648) devastated Germany. The aftermath of that brutal conflict witnessed the widespread development of political thought that emphasized the need for a strong state to protect against, inter alia, the prospect of rampant invasions by foreign armies slaughtering the local populations and plundering the countryside.

This was a central theme of Thomas Hobbes, "Leviathan", and directly inspired, (albeit, from afar) by the horrific events of that conflict.

That war had profound effect on German thought - starting in its immediate aftermath. The Saxon jurist, Samuel Pufendorf, strongly influenced by Hobbes, wrote in, "The Elements of Essential Jurisprudence" of the empirically demonstrated need for a strong political authority to acquire and maintain the military and financial means of protecting the polity from such depredations by foreign powers and actors. This, in turn, provided the justification for royal absolutism of the monarch over the rest of society - to the detriment, alas, of the status of individual rights that have been the basis of (especially, but not exclusively, American political thought.

The idea of individual rights that could be legitimately claimed against the desires and interior the state, has, thus, never really taken hold in Germany - even with the advent of the Republic of Germany after World War II.

And,I haven't even touched upon other historical factors that further buttressed authoritarian political thought in Germany, such as the Reformation.

Unfortunately, Martin Luther was a servant believer in absolute submission to state authority. This, ultimately, also had the unfortunate effect of rendering the Lutheran Church largely subservient to the monarch and state - in sharp contrast to the American experience.

All of these (and more) military, political, religious, legal, and cultural developments in Germany eventually combi ed to produce a social milieu where the author of the state was almost invariably presumed to be dispositive over the preparative of the individual.

Given that, is is not surprising (unfortunately) that the rights of parents with respect to their children's education have been historically weak in Germany.

And more's the pity!

In a June 17 newsletter, "Scientific American" Magazine, based on numbers from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), suggested that federal regulations be put on homeschooling. NCES shows that almost three percent of American students are homeschooled, roughly 1.5 million kids. But it is not the call for federal regulations that is the most disturbing thing about Scientific American's suggestion; the best part is that they also suggest that parents of homeschooled kids "undergo a background check." First, just one question: What does this have to do with "science?" //

Fatherhood Reforged @fathersreforged
·
When they want to regulate homeschooling,

what they're really regulating is parenting.

When they say,

"Homeschool kids need to be checked on",

what they're really saying is,

"Parents can't be trusted with their kids".
6:00 PM · Jun 18, 2024 //

What better way to create a comprehensive database of conservatives and be able to know exactly where they are than to require them to undergo a background check? What sort of information would be required from a background check? Political affiliations, ownership of firearms? Imagine what the Biden administration would do with a database of conservatives — think January 6, and we already have a pretty good idea. //

Robert A Hahn
4 hours ago
Leftists wreck everything they touch. This used to be such a wonderful magazine. It was so scientific that much of the content went right over my head.

As Becky says, this article isn't science. This is leftist BS dressed up in a science suit. These bastiges did the same thing to Science News, which was also a wonderful little magazine until it turned into Al Gore's Climate Bugle. I hate these people. They wreck everything. //

MCPR
4 hours ago
Homeschooling succeeds BECAUSE it’s not regulated. Everything the government regulates turns into poop. “It takes a State to raise a child, comrade. Now stand aside while we indoctrinate your children.”

Classical, Christian education isn’t meant to be confusing.
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Learn about classical homeschooling by watching our Start Here series! After you watch each short video below, another will appear to answer a follow-up question. And after watching all three introductory videos, you'll be able to view more detailed, age-focused videos about what a typical CC experience would look like for your student. You'll also receive three free downloadable PDFs, Ten Things to Know Before You Start Homeschooling, Ten Great Read Alouds, and Eleven Keys to Make Homeschooling Doable. Enjoy!

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Glenn Beck @glennbeck
·
.@RichardDreyfuss tells me he gave up acting "ONLY for something I loved as much, which was saving my country...It infuriates me that people don't understand what this place means."
1:24 / 1:24
11:00 PM · Jan 16, 2023
https://twitter.com/glennbeck/status/1615121851784593410

All The Right Movies @ATRightMovies
·
Years after Robert Shaw's passing, his JAWS co-star Richard Dreyfuss met his granddaughter and got very emotional.
1:43 / 1:43
12:00 PM · May 1, 2024
https://twitter.com/ATRightMovies/status/1785640322061811725

My words will perhaps seem somewhat vintage in character rather than current or up-to-date. In that context, I admit to being unapologetically Catholic, unapologetically patriotic, and unapologetically a constitutionalist.

[...]

Let me offer you, this year’s graduates, a few brief suggestions about making your deposits in the account of liberty. Today is just the end of the beginning of your young lives, and the beginning, the commencement of the rest of your lives. There is much more to come, and it will not be with the guiding hands of your parents—indeed, they may someday need your hand to guide them. Some of you will most assuredly be called upon to do very hard things to preserve liberty. All of you will be called upon to provide a firm foundation of citizenship by carrying out your obligations in the way so many preceding generations have done. You are to be the example to others that those generations have been to us. And in being that example, what you do will matter far more than what you say.

Truth is by nature one, universal, and indivisible because the ultimate truth is Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the Logos, the one Word of God through Whose light knowledge is possible (John 1:3-4). Because truth is the Word—a united whole—it is essential that the curriculum of New College Franklin reflects this unity. Every fact, idea, symbol, or sign exists in relationship to universal truth. Every part of the curriculum is interrelated and helps the student seek, know, and experience truth. While there are facets of the curriculum as varied as Greek grammar and Euclidean propositions, every part serves the whole.

New College Franklin offers one degree. With the exception of preceptorials, all students take the same courses. Our goals encompass our students’ vocations and individual callings, but our primary goals are wisdom and discipleship for all of life. Because of this commitment, all of the disciplines are core curricula, and we believe that this core prepares each student to seek his or her individual calling. Once the strong foundation of a liberal arts education is laid, students are prepared to pursue their callings in light of the questions and ideals common to all humanity. Additionally, we encourage students to shape projects, papers, and the Capstone Project to coincide with their vocational callings and interests. //

The curriculum of New College is grounded in five areas.

I. Moral Philosophy

Moral Philosophy studies the historical progression of major questions and ideas by examining great texts of literature, philosophy, and history.

II. Theological Studies

Theological Studies focuses on Biblical, Systematic, and Historical Theology, as well as the koine Greek language. In contrast to Moral Philosophy, which considers religion as an anthropological study, Theological Studies focus on God as Creator, Savior, and Sustainer.

III. The Trivium

The Trivium is composed of Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric and lays down the foundation for academic expertise, equipping students to engage in the process of academic discovery for the gaining and disseminating of wisdom.

IV. The Quadrivium

The Quadrivium is composed of Arithmetic, Geometry, Harmonia, and Cosmology and is founded on the belief that God reveals Himself and His decrees through the beauty, order, and design of His world.

V. Applied Studies

Applied Studies articulate the complex relationship between faith, learning, and practice by means of artistic mediums, preceptorials, and the Senior Capstone Project.

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Debt is never truly canceled, only transferred. And Biden’s latest election year stunt could transfer nearly $150 billion of student loan debt onto your backs, even though 87% of American adults don’t have student debt. We need your help to fight back.

So what to make then of broadsides from radical deschooling intellectuals (see below) questioning the very basis of our whole education system. Broadsides like these: “Schools fail to teach what they pretend to teach. Most of their inmates spend years failing to learn things like Mathematics, Science and French”[1] ....and: “An illusion on which the school system rests is that most learning is a result of teaching.”[2] //

Which brings us to another question: to what extent does our formal schooling system survive because society needs it as opposed to because the Education Industrial Complex needs it? One trenchant criticism can be levelled at all bureaucratic institutions is that it is not in their nature to notice whether the purpose for which they were originally created is still a valid one. They are never going to do a Lone Ranger and ride off into the cultural sunset... “job done”. And education is no exception – it has become “a major service industry creating demands for its own services and validating its own activities”[3]. //

But I’ll finish this brief survey of deschooling literature with an amusing excerpt from a dystopian imaginative piece about the prospect of ‘Permanent Education in 1984’ because I find it eerily prescient of our 21st c. Therapeutic Culture. “A child is born in the United States in 1984. He can never look forward to getting out of school. From the ‘infant school’ he starts attending at the age of six months to the ‘geriatric learning centre’ he dies in, he finds himself going to school all his life ‘for the good of society’......and so we bid goodbye to this lucky man, the minister chants, ‘firm in the conviction that he will go to heaven where he will attend a ‘school for angels.’”(John Ohliger) //

The evidence seems to show that:

Neither schools nor parents can have much impact on a given child’s capacity for academic achievement because it is so so hard-wired into their genetic inheritance.

But the school peer group will have a big influence on how they turn out in other respects.

In other words, it may well be that formal schooling seriously fails to live up to its Education rhetoric but nevertheless has an important role to play in a child’s Social development.