<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<rss version="2.0"
	xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/"
	xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/"
	xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
	xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"
	xmlns:sy="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/syndication/"
	xmlns:slash="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/slash/"
	>

<channel>
	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; school</title>
	<atom:link href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/tag/school/feed/" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
	<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com</link>
	<description></description>
	<lastBuildDate>Wed, 31 Dec 2014 07:56:08 +0000</lastBuildDate>
	<language>en-US</language>
		<sy:updatePeriod>hourly</sy:updatePeriod>
		<sy:updateFrequency>1</sy:updateFrequency>
	
	<item>
		<title>Only Muslim Schoolchildren Lives Matter?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/raymond-ibrahim/only-muslim-schoolchildren-lives-matter/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=only-muslim-schoolchildren-lives-matter</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/raymond-ibrahim/only-muslim-schoolchildren-lives-matter/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 29 Dec 2014 05:45:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Raymond Ibrahim]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[attack]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Christian]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Muslim]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[school]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Terrorism]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=248282</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The world heard about the Peshawar school attack, but many attacks on Christian schools go unreported by MSM.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/4973928-3x2-700x467.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-248284" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/4973928-3x2-700x467-450x300.jpg" alt="4973928-3x2-700x467" width="321" height="214" /></a>Earlier we looked at “<a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/raymond-ibrahim/how-western-media-enable-islamic-terrorism/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">how Western mainstream media enable Islamic terrorism</span></a>,” specifically by employing an arsenal of semantic games, key phrases, convenient omissions, and moral relativism to portray such violence as a product of anything and everything—political and historical grievances, “Islamophobia,” individual insanity, poverty and ignorance, territorial disputes—not Islam.</p>
<p>Another strategy that recently came to the fore consists of highlighting Islamic terror attacks that target other Muslims.  The logic here is clear:  How “Islamic” can such Islamic groups be if they attack and kill fellow Muslims?  In other words, whatever the motivation, it surely cannot be Islam, since those being killed are themselves Muslims.  This suggests that the terrorists themselves cannot be true Muslims since Muslims are generally forbidden by Islam to kill other Muslims (caveats exist).</p>
<p>A recent example of this is the December 16 Taliban attack on an army public school in Peshawar, where 145 people were killed, the majority being schoolchildren age 18 and under.   This incident was reported all over the mainstream media, and rightfully so.</p>
<p>Yet this begs the question: why do similar attacks, when directed at non-Muslims—especially Christians—rarely if ever get the same sort of media coverage?</p>
<p>For example, in <a href="https://barnabasfund.org/US/News/Archives/47-youngsters-killed-at-Christian-school-in-Nigeria-while-Christians-in-Mubi-forced-to-flee-after-Boko-Haram-renames-it-City-of-Islam.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Nigeria</span></a> on November 10,</p>
<blockquote><p>A suicide bomb attack in a Christian secondary school in the town of Potiskum in Yobe state, north-eastern <a href="https://barnabasfund.org/US/Our-work/Our-current-projects/BF-Project-Countries/Nigeria.html?"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Nigeria</span></a>, has killed at least 47 people on Monday as the students gathered for morning assembly. Boko Haram is thought to be behind the blast, having carried out several attacks on schools giving a Western-style education. Translated from Hausa, Boko Haram means “Western education is forbidden” of which this latest school attack is a stark reminder.</p></blockquote>
<p>Earlier in the year in Nigeria “Boko Haram claimed the lives of <a href="http://www.romereports.com/pg155924-nearly-60-students-at-christian-school-killed-in-boko-haram-attack-in-nigeria-en"><span style="color: #0433ff;">59 students</span></a> at a Christian school &#8230;  Some 50 men ambushed the school, then beat and shot staff and students. Once finished, they set fire to the buildings, with many students still inside. It&#8217;s the fourth attack of its kind since May of last year.”</p>
<p>On October 1 in Syria, at least 41 Alawite children—all under 12—were <a href="https://docs.zoho.com/writer/ropen.do?rid=b6wwv3c5aa80706194262ab5ce81131ace25c#bookmark=http://www.fides.org/en/news/36468-ASIA_SYRIA_Massacre_of_children_in_Homs_three_Christians_kidnapped_in_the_province_of_Hassake"><span style="color: #0433ff;">killed</span></a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>The massacre was one of the most severe in terms of children who died since the beginning of the conflict in Syria. According to official Syrian sources, a car bomb and a suicide bomber caused two explosions when the children came out of school, in the suburb of Akrameh inhabited mainly by Alawites, with the targeted intention to cause the highest number possible of deaths among children of the same religious community to which the Assad family belong.</p></blockquote>
<p>Here is the testimony of an eyewitness to another Islamic attack on a Christian school in Syria, where 12 people—mostly children—were <a href="http://www.charismanews.com/world/43540-god-is-here-but-i-am-getting-so-tired-syrian-christian-mother-mourns-killing-of-children-from-bombings"><span style="color: #0433ff;">killed</span></a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>I want to tell you about Tuesday. It was a terrible day. We cried and prayed all day. Tuesday they were bombing Bab Touma, the old city of Damascus. A lot of Christians live there. There is also a Christian school—a private one. We know a lot of people in that school. Some children from our area also go to school there. When those kids went to school on Tuesday, gathered at the square like they always do, a mortar fell in their midst. Some friends passed by the school and saw that parents and teachers were carrying their wounded children out of the school, dripping with blood. They saw them running to the hospitals in panic. For me, as a mother and a teacher, I can hardly bear to imagine what these people must be going through right now.  Twelve people lost their lives in that school, most of them children from the elementary school. Many more of them have lost arms and legs or have other injuries.</p></blockquote>
<p>As for Islamic attacks on Christian schools that do not lead to casualties, these are quite common.  Thus, on November 5 in Bangladesh, hundreds of Muslims, some armed with knives and machetes, attacked a Christian school.  <a href="https://www.worldwatchmonitor.org/2014/11/article_3500298.html/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">They</span></a> torched its library, burned Bibles and hymnals, and committed other wanton acts of violence.  According to a source, “A wave of panic swept through the school and traumatized everyone. Many students became sick in the following days.”  The reason for this particular attack?  <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/muslim-persecution-of-christians/islamists-project-islams-worst-traits-onto-christians/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Muslim projection</span></a>: a rumor started that the Christian school was converting Muslim students to Christianity.</p>
<p>How many of those Western people who could not help but hear about the Peshawar attack—considering its widespread coverage—also heard about these Islamic attacks on schools some of which also took large numbers of children lives?  Not very many, I would wager.</p>
<p>The reason, again, is obvious: reporting Muslims killing Muslims does not contradict the mainstream media’s narrative but ostensibly enforces it.  For—so the simple logic goes—Muslims who kill fellow Muslims cannot be “real” Muslims to start with, and must in fact be, as Western politicians habitually characterize them, mere “criminals.”</p>
<p>Thus, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan issued a <a href="http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?adbid=545215646309416960&amp;adbpl=tw&amp;adbpr=66369181&amp;cid=social_20141217_37458137&amp;id=123838"><span style="color: #0433ff;">statement</span></a> condemning the Peshawar attack, adding, “The barbaric actions of the Taliban illustrate their lack of value for human life and lack of respect for the Islamic faith. These attacks only prove their selfish desire for power and willingness to murder to reach their self-serving goals.”</p>
<p>On the other hand, it is more difficult for the media to dissemble the motives of Muslims who intentionally target and kill “the other”—outnumbered and defenseless “infidel” minorities—simply because <i>they are</i> “the other.”</p>
<p>Whether small numbers or large—whether <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/muslim-persecution-of-christians/islam-built-on-the-blood-of-christian-martyrs/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">four children decapitated for refusing to renounce Christ</span></a> or whether <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/largest-massacre-of-christians-in-syria-ignored/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">the largest massacre of Christians in Syria</span></a>—Muslim persecution of Christians will rarely if ever get MSM coverage, for it <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/muslim-persecution-of-christians/why-christian-persecution-is-islams-achilles-heel/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">throws a wrench</span></a> in the media’s narrative that Islamic violence is a product of anything and everything but <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/the-ultimate-source-of-islamic-hate-for-infidels/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Islamic hate for non-Muslims</span></a>.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>.</b></p>
<p><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf" target="_blank"><b>Subscribe</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> to Frontpage&#8217;s TV show, <i>The Glazov Gang</i>, and </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>LIKE</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> it on </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>Facebook.</b></a></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/raymond-ibrahim/only-muslim-schoolchildren-lives-matter/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>15</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Taliban School Slaughter</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/taliban-school-slaughter/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=taliban-school-slaughter</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/taliban-school-slaughter/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 17 Dec 2014 05:54:09 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[attack]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[beheading]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Children]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Pakistan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[school]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Taliban]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Terrorism]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=247651</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Islamic child sacrifice reaches grisly new low in Pakistan. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #232323;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/635543241836764189-AP-Pakistan-002.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-247656" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/635543241836764189-AP-Pakistan-002-450x316.jpg" alt="635543241836764189-AP-Pakistan-002" width="313" height="220" /></a>The mind-numbing savagery of radical Islam plumbed new depths in Pakistan yesterday. Taliban terrorists shouting &#8220;Allahu akbar&#8221; <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/pakistan-school-massacre/pakistan-school-attack-taliban-militants-kill-more-140-peshawar-n269011"><span style="color: #1255cc;">attacked</span></a> the Army Public School and Degree College in Peshawar, slaughtering 142 people, including 132 children <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/taliban-storms-pakistani-military-school-kills-20-students-article-1.2046714"><span style="color: #1255cc;">between</span></a> the ages of six and 16. Another 10 staff members, including the principal, were also murdered. &#8220;They didn&#8217;t take any hostages initially and started firing in the hall,” said Maj. Gen. Asim Bajwa, a military spokesman.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The details of the slaughter are horrific. “We were in the education hall when militants barged in, shooting,” <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/17/world/asia/taliban-attack-pakistani-school.html?_r=0"><span style="color: #1255cc;">said</span></a> Zeeshan, a student, speaking at a hospital. “Our instructor asked us to duck and lay down and then I saw militants walking past rows of students shooting them in the head.” Another student confirmed those shootings. &#8220;The gunmen entered class by class and shot some kids one by one,” he told local media. Jamshed Khan, a school bus driver, also described the scene. &#8220;We were standing outside the school and firing suddenly started and there was chaos everywhere and the screams of children and teachers,” he said.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;"><span style="color: #1255cc;"><a href="http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/peshawar-school-attack-taliban-burn-teacher-alive-front-pupils-behead-children-1479767?">According</a></span> to the <i>International Business Times</i>, the Taliban monsters allegedly stooped even lower to satisfy their bloodlust. &#8220;They burnt a teacher in front of the students in a classroom,&#8221; an unnamed military source revealed. &#8220;They literally set the teacher on fire with gasoline and made the kids watch.” Moreover, Pakistani officials revealed that many of the dead children brought to the hospital had their heads chopped off.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The assault began around 11 a.m. local time (1 a.m. EST)  when <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-30491435"><span style="color: #1255cc;">seven terrorists</span></a> wearing police uniforms and suicide vests scaled the wall of the school. They immediately began lobbing hand grenades and shooting indiscriminately at a time when approximately 1,000 of the school’s 2,500 male and female students in grades one through 10 were in attendance. The siege lasted more than eight hours, with Pakistani security forces forced to deal with five “heavy” explosions heard around 5 a.m. EST, in a seeming attempt to hinder rescue efforts. All seven attackers were ultimately killed, with the <i>Daily News</i> reporting that once they were finally cornered by Pakistani commandos &#8220;they blew themselves up rather than surrender.&#8221; A sweep of the compound for additional explosives was subsequently undertaken.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">An unnamed security official illuminated the one and only objective of these savage thugs. “These attackers were not in the mood to take hostages,” he said. “They were there to kill and this is what they did.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The killers <a href="http://pamelageller.com/2014/12/126-dead-in-taliban-attack-on-school-hundreds-of-children-held-hostage.html/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">were</span></a> part of the Tehreek-e-Taliban (TTP) group, a Pakistani terrorist organization attempting to over throw the Pakistani government, and the same group to which wannabe 2010 Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad belonged. TTP spokesman Mohammed Khurasani <a href="http://tribune.com.pk/story/807564/gunmen-target-school-in-peshawar/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">told</span></a> the Karachi-based <i>Express Tribune</i> the attack was an act of revenge. “We selected the army’s school for the attack because the government is targeting our families and females,” he said, referring to Pakistan’s ongoing military offensive taking place on the Afghan border. “We want them to feel the pain.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Gen. Bajwa confirmed that almost all of the children killed belonged to members of the Pakistani military. Army chief of staff General Raheel Sharif called the killers “inhuman beasts.” Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who arrived in Peshawar where authorities have declared a three-day mourning period, promised certain reprisal. “Those behind the heinous act will not be spared,” he vowed.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Sharif also announced a meeting of all government parties scheduled for today. Its comes amidst political turbulence orchestrated by opposition leader Imran Khan whose political party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), controls the provincial government in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. Khan has led a series of protests in a effort to unseat Sharif, because he believes the Prime Minister’s supporters rigged the 2013 election, and because he disagrees with the army’s ongoing effort against terrorists in tribal areas. That effort, known as Operation Zarb-e-Azb, has killed approximately 1,800 terrorists operating in North Waziristan, an epicenter of Taliban terrorist activity. And while public support for that campaign has been described as “lukewarm,” due to what by government policy-makers attribute to &#8220;lack of consensus&#8221; and &#8220;large pockets of sympathy” for terrorists, Khan&#8217;s belief the government should negotiate with the terrorists instead of fighting them has garnered considerable criticism.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Unfortunately, he is not alone in that regard. The same day President Obama insisted the Taliban had &#8220;once again shown their depravity,&#8221; Breitbart News <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-TV/2014/12/16/Obama-2012-My-Administration-is-Negotiating-With-The-Taliban"><span style="color: #1255cc;">revealed</span></a> a statement made in 2012 by Obama at Bagram Airfield Base, home of the U.S. Air Forces Central Command in Afghanistan. &#8220;We&#8217;re pursuing a negotiated peace. In coordination with the Afghan government my administration has been in direct discussions with the Taliban &#8230; Many members of the Taliban, from foot soldiers to leaders, have indicated an interest in reconciliation,” he said at the time.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The BBC wonders whether this heinous attack will constitute a “watershed” moment for the Pakistani government. Americans might be forgiven for wondering the same thing with regard to the Obama administration.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Other world leaders issued forceful condemnations of the slaughter. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon referred to it as &#8220;an act of horror and rank cowardice.” British Prime Minister David Cameron characterized it as “deeply shocking,” adding that it was “horrifying that children are being killed simply for going to school.<i>” </i>Indian prime minister Narendra Modi called it “cowardly,” and a &#8220;senseless act of unspeakable brutality that has claimed lives of the most innocent of human beings&#8211;young children in their school.”<i> </i></p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Nobel Prize winner<i> </i><a href="http://www.dailyworth.com/posts/3014-10-fast-facts-about-malala-yousafzai"><span style="color: #1255cc;">Malala Yousafzai</span></a>, the young girl shot in the head by would-be Taliban assassins in 2012 when she was only 15, also added her voice to the mix. “Innocent children in their school have no place in horror such as this,” she said in a statement. “I, along with millions of others around the world, mourn these children, my brothers and sisters — but we will never be defeated.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Pakistan has <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/16/pakistan-taliban-peshawar-massacre-attack"><span style="color: #1255cc;">already responded</span></a> to the tragedy. Gen. Shariff tweeted that “massive air strikes” had been carried out in the Khyber region of the country, and Sharif insisted that Operation Zarb-e-Azb &#8220;will continue until the terrorism is rooted out from our land.” The latest attack is part of a bloody track record in a nation where 50,000 people have been killed by terrorist violence in the past 13 years.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Devastated parent Tahir Ali expressed the grief undoubtedly shared by every parent victimized by this brutality. &#8220;My son was in uniform in the morning, he is in a casket now,” Ali said. “My son was my dream. My dream has been killed.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">One would hope the world’s denial about radical Islam, pockmarked by occasional outbursts of horror whenever the next atrocity occurs, will suffer the same fate. We are two days removed from the <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/lindt-chocolat-cafe-hostage-drama-in-martin-place-sydney-20141215-1278cx.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">attack</span></a> in Sydney, one of many where the mainstream media and feckless politicians seek the false comfort of the “lone wolf” theory that amounts to nothing more than a willful refusal to connect the dots.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">An Obama administration that refers to the war on terror as “an overseas contingency operation” and applauds the conclusions of a one-sided report denigrating the CIA, hardly inspires confidence that the status quo will change. Thus, the only question is when the next horrific atrocity will occur. Should Americans have confidence that it won&#8217;t be in their own shopping malls, train stations, airports and city squares? The answer is a clear &#8220;no.&#8221;</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>.</b></p>
<p><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf" target="_blank"><b>Subscribe</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> to Frontpage&#8217;s TV show, <i>The Glazov Gang</i>, and </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>LIKE</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> it on </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>Facebook.</b></a></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/taliban-school-slaughter/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>66</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Dept. of Ed. Supports Classroom Memorials to Michael Brown</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/mark-tapson/dept-of-ed-supports-classroom-memorials-to-michael-brown/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=dept-of-ed-supports-classroom-memorials-to-michael-brown</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/mark-tapson/dept-of-ed-supports-classroom-memorials-to-michael-brown/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 05 Dec 2014 05:39:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark Tapson]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Department of Education]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[memorial]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Michael Brown]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[school]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Teaching for Change]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=246747</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Lynch mob justice trumps education.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/53f7dd490fbb5.preview-620.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-246748" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/53f7dd490fbb5.preview-620-436x350.jpg" alt="53f7dd490fbb5.preview-620" width="283" height="227" /></a>If you are mystified as to why the left strives so hard to make martyrs out of such unlikely role models as Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin, both killed in self-defense, just keep in mind Rahm Emanuel’s credo: “Never let a serious crisis go to waste.”</p>
<p>Within days of the shooting of Brown in August, a “Professor of Science and Education” named Christopher Emdin posted (and then updated in October) a piece for <i>Huffington Post</i> entitled “<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christopher-emdin/5-ways-to-teach-about-michael-brown-and-ferguson-in-the-new-school-year_b_5690171.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">5 Ways to Teach About Michael Brown and Ferguson in the New School Year</span></a>.” That article was given new life when a link to it was <a href="https://twitter.com/AfAmEducation/status/538433447945961473"><span style="color: #0433ff;">tweeted</span></a> by the White House Am-Af Ed just after Thanksgiving. It included the acronym for “in case you missed it” – indicating that the administration thought the article’s content important and valid enough to bring to people’s attention once again.</p>
<p>What is <a href="http://www.ed.gov/edblogs/whieeaa/about-us/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Am-Af Ed</span></a>? It is the U.S. Department of Education’s Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans, an Obama creation designed to improve educational opportunities for blacks in America. But of course, educational excellence doesn’t mean the same thing to the Alinsky protégés in the White House as it does to most Americans. To the radical left, education is about mobilizing, galvanizing, and deploying armies of social justice warriors.</p>
<p>The Am-Af Ed tweet also included Twitter links to: left-leaning PBS; Teaching for Change, whose motto is “Building Social Justice Starting in the Classroom”; and <a href="http://www.rethinkingschools.org/index.shtml"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Rethinking Schools</span></a>, whose mission is “social justice teaching and education activism… to build broad democratic movements for social and environmental justice.” See a pattern developing there?</p>
<p>Teaching for Change devotes an entire page to “<a href="http://www.teachingforchange.org/teaching-about-ferguson"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Teaching About Ferguson</span></a>” to help indoctrinators – I mean, educators – enable students to “be proactive in their own communities” – because apparently it’s less important to give students of color an education than it is to pump them up for community action. The page is replete with items about the history of racism in America, along with positive references to Malcolm X, radical historian Howard Zinn, and the Black Panthers. That would be the same Black Panthers whose recent plot to bomb the Gateway Arch and murder the Ferguson police chief and a St. Louis prosecutor was stalled because <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2014/11/27/two-black-panther-members-unable-to-buy-bombs-because-ebt-card-didnt-have-enough-money/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">the racist thugs ran out of EBT credit</span></a>. What a standard for academic excellence they set.</p>
<p>Emdin’s <i>Huffington Post</i> piece urges that educators “set the appropriate tone for the school year” by focusing on “events and issues that mean something to students,” especially “youth of color” – by which he means the Michael Brown shooting and what he calls “the recent events in Ferguson.” Those “events” now have expanded beyond Ferguson and include rioting, burning, looting, and murdering, and the <a href="http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/11/29/absolutely-terrified-young-christmas-carolers-burst-into-tears-as-michael-brown-protesters-surround-them-shut-down-show/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">harassment</span></a> of Christmas-caroling children for good measure. It is “imperative that teachers find a way to bring this issue into the classroom,” he writes, otherwise “we are loosing [sic] opportunities to make powerful connections” – because successful community organizing depends on ramping up racial grievances and victimhood. Never mind the powerful connections that a good education would instill in students’ minds.</p>
<p>His 5 steps to not letting this crisis go to waste begin with asking students what they have heard or know about Brown and Ferguson. From there the indoctrinators – oops, there I go again – are to connect the Brown shooting to other, similar controversial black deaths such as those of Trayvon Martin and Eric Garner, to make students “more sociopolitically aware” and to develop “emotional awareness, empathy, and other skills necessary to be informed citizens.” Actually, emotional awareness, whatever that is, and empathy are unnecessary to be an informed citizen; they are, however, necessary in order for youth to be manipulated by progressive race-mongers into believing that <i>feeling</i> trumps <i>facts</i>.</p>
<p>Third, Emdin recommends that students “write letters to all those who are involved in the shooting. This includes politicians, police officers, the families of victims of the violence, and even the deceased.” This apparently helps “students lean [sic] how to write while conveying emotion” – because again, emphasizing emotion is a critical element in community organizing. And while the students devote all this time to writing emotionally-charged letters to everyone involved in a case in which the evidence supports the white officer’s story and demolishes the racially self-serving lies initially spread about the shooting, the rest of their education languishes on the sidelines.</p>
<p>Emdin’s fourth proposal would ordinarily beggar belief, except that by now, nothing that emerges from leftist propagandizing in the American educational system should surprise anyone. He recommends that students <i>create a memorial to Brown</i> on a classroom bulletin board, to “honor Michael Brown and other people who have been victims of police and other violence.” That’s an actual memorial to a man who <i>initiated</i> violence against a cop after strong-arming a local storekeeper in the commission of a crime. That is the man that Emdin and the Department of Education want to hold up as an inspiration to youth of color. This, Emdin claims, helps teachers to “<i>form classroom solidarity</i>” [emphasis added] – because classroom solidarity, and not the development of individual critical thinking skills, is crucial to “rethinking schools.”</p>
<p>Finally, Emdin wants teachers to “carry the theme for the rest of the year” to get the students “beyond meaningless assignments like writing and talking about what they did over the summer&#8230; [They] begin to see the classroom as a space where the teaching affects real life, and where assignments have meaning” – because without the transformative goal of racial payback and social justice, readin’, writin’, and ‘rithmetic obviously have no real life applications.</p>
<p>Are such recommendations really ways in which Af-Am Ed intends to produce educational excellence in students of color? For all of Christopher Emdin’s lip service to the “critical thinking skills” he claims his plan promotes, it will produce not academic excellence but more dumbed-down youth animated by racial anger – just the way the Alinsky protégés want it.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p><em>Don&#8217;t miss Shillman Journalism Fellow <strong>Mark Tapson</strong> on the <strong>Glazov Gang</strong> discussing<strong> Fighting the Culture War</strong>:</em></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/v5gR4E5UPB8" width="460" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
<p><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf" target="_blank"><b>Subscribe</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> to Frontpage&#8217;s TV show, <i>The Glazov Gang</i>, and </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>LIKE</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> it on </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>Facebook.</b></a></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/mark-tapson/dept-of-ed-supports-classroom-memorials-to-michael-brown/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>22</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Racial Quota Punishment</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/thomas-sowell/racial-quota-punishment/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=racial-quota-punishment</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/thomas-sowell/racial-quota-punishment/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 18 Nov 2014 05:30:26 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Thomas Sowell]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[classroom]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[discipline]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama Administration]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[punishment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Race]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Racism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[school]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=245401</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Obama administration's war on discipline in education -- and who really suffers. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/2512878_orig.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-245404" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/2512878_orig-450x337.jpg" alt="2512878_orig" width="332" height="249" /></a>If anyone still has any doubt about the utter cynicism of the Obama administration, a recent agreement between the federal government and the Minneapolis Public Schools should open their eyes.</p>
<p>Under the Obama administration, both the Department of Education and the Department of Justice have been leaning on public schools around the country to reduce what they call the &#8220;disproportionate&#8221; numbers of black male students who are punished for various offenses in schools.</p>
<p>Under an implicit threat of losing their federal subsidies, the Minneapolis Public Schools have agreed to reduce the disparity in punishment of black students by 25 percent by the end of this school year, and then by 50 percent, 75 percent and finally 100 percent in each of the following years. In other words, there are now racial quota limits for punishment in the Minneapolis schools.</p>
<p>If we stop and think — as old-fashioned as that may seem — there is not the slightest reason to expect black males to commit the same number of offenses as Asian females or any other set of students.</p>
<p>When different groups of human beings have behaved differently in all sorts of ways, in countries around the world, for thousands of years of recorded history, why would we accept as dogma that the only reason one set of students gets punished more than others is because the people who are doing the punishing are picking on them?</p>
<p>Politically — which is the way the Obama administration looks at everything — any time they can depict blacks as victims, and depict themselves as their rescuers, that means an opportunity to get out the black vote for Democrats.</p>
<p>On the surface, this may look like a favor to blacks. But only on the surface.</p>
<p>Anyone with common sense knows that letting a kid get away with bad behavior is an open invitation to worse behavior in the future. Punishing a kid for misbehavior in school when he is 10 years old may reduce the chances that he will have to be sent to prison when he is 20 years old.</p>
<p>Other schools in other cities, which have also caved under pressure from the federal government, and agreed to lighten up on black kids who misbehave, have reported an increase in misbehavior, including violence.</p>
<p>Who would have thought otherwise?</p>
<p>Letting kids who are behavior problems in schools grow up to become hoodlums and then criminals is no favor to them or to the black community. Moreover, it takes no more than a small fraction of troublemakers in a class to make it impossible to give that class a decent education. And for many poor people, whether black or white, education is their one big chance to escape poverty.</p>
<p>The people in the Obama administration who are pushing this counterproductive policy are not stupid. They are political, which is worse. They know what they are doing and they are willing to sacrifice young blacks to do it.</p>
<p>This punishment issue made me think back to the 8th grade, when I was punished by being kept after school, more often than any other kid in the class — black, white, Hispanic or whatever. I was bored in school and did various pranks to liven things up.</p>
<p>One day, after school, as I sat alone among the empty chairs in the classroom, the teacher said, sarcastically: &#8220;Well, here we are again, Sowell, just the two of us!&#8221;</p>
<p>&#8220;Good grief, Miss Sharoff,&#8221; I said. &#8220;If we keep staying in after school together all the time, people will begin to talk.&#8221;</p>
<p>&#8220;We will just have to live with the scandal,&#8221; she said, without even looking up from the papers she was correcting.</p>
<p>Thank heaven there was no Obama administration to exempt me from punishment. Who knows how I might have ended up?</p>
<p>Years ago, there was a study of a working class community where there were black, Hispanic and Italian kids, and where many of the cops were Italian. When a black or Hispanic kid broke the law, the police took him down to the station and booked him. But, if an Italian kid did the same thing, they reacted differently.</p>
<p>The Italian cop would take the Italian kid out into an alley and rough him up. Then he would take him home to his family, tell them what had happened and leave him there — where the kid could expect another beating, instead of the wrist-slap punishment of the law. Those cops understood the realities of life that politicians ignore. And they were doing a favor to their own.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
<p><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf" target="_blank"><b>Subscribe</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> to Frontpage&#8217;s TV show, <i>The Glazov Gang</i>, and </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>LIKE</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> it on </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>Facebook.</b></a></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/thomas-sowell/racial-quota-punishment/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>23</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>California Law Enshrines Obama’s Place in History</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/mark-tapson/california-law-enshrines-obamas-place-in-history/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=california-law-enshrines-obamas-place-in-history</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/mark-tapson/california-law-enshrines-obamas-place-in-history/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 05 Sep 2014 04:25:12 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark Tapson]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[History]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[law]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[school]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Textbooks]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=240088</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[His election was a watershed moment in more ways than one.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/obambro.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-240141" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/obambro-341x350.jpg" alt="obambro" width="247" height="254" /></a>In case you were concerned that future generations of schoolchildren won’t be sufficiently indoctrinated into the cult of the man and the legend that is Barack Obama, here is some good news: the <em>Washington Post</em> <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2014/08/26/california-law-calls-for-schools-to-teach-about-the-significance-of-obamas-election">reported</a> last week that, beginning with the 2015-2016 school year, California textbooks will teach about the significance of President Obama’s election thanks to a new law signed Monday by Governor Jerry Brown.</p>
<p>Under measure <a href="http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/13-14/bill/asm/ab_1901-1950/ab_1912_bill_20140825_chaptered.html">AB 1912</a>, the California Instructional Quality Commission will be required, during its next revision of the history-social science curriculum, to consider including instruction on “the election of President Barack Obama and the significance of the United States electing its first African American President.”</p>
<p>The bill’s sponsor is Democrat Assemblyman Chris Holden, who said <a href="http://asmdc.org/members/a41/news-room/press-releases/governor-signs-assemblymember-holden-s-bill-recognizing-president-obama-in-california-textbooks">in a statement</a> that “Obama will take his rightful place in California textbooks” under the legislation, which “will be the first step toward acknowledging President Obama’s legacy for generations to come.” Holden was concerned that Obama’s presidency would otherwise be “relegated to a footnote in textbooks,” despite the fact that his election “represented the moment when all things seemed possible.”</p>
<p>Let’s look at some of the specific wording of the measure [<em>with added commentary in brackets</em>]: “The Legislature finds and declares all of the following”:</p>
<blockquote><p>(a) The election of Barack Hussein Obama to the office of President of the United States was a historic step in the effort towards equality in the United States.<br />
[<em>And since then, his presidency has been more about racial payback than equality; Obama has done more to inflame race relations in this country than O.J. Simpson.</em>]</p>
<p>(d) Barack Obama attended Harvard Law School where he became the first African American president of the Harvard Law Review.<br />
[<em>And the first to do so without publishing anything of his own, a self-proclaimed constitutional law expert who views the Constitution as a “living” document which he has ignored at will.</em>]</p>
<p>(e) After law school, Barack Obama worked to fulfill the spirit of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 by encouraging people to register to vote.<br />
[<em>And to vote as often as possible, including dead people and illegal aliens</em>]</p>
<p>(h) In honor of his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples, President Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.<br />
[<em>Actually, Obama was awarded the meaningless Nobel Peace Prize not in honor of any effort on his part; it was given to him prematurely by the Nobel Committee – chaired by Thorbjørn Johansen, one of Europe’s leading socialists and an outspoken critic of the mythical plague of “Islamophobia” – for no substantive reason apart from the halo of hope and change enveloping The One’s head. In light of the numerous foreign policy debacles that have unfolded under his presidency, the notion that Obama has strengthened “international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples” is laughable</em>.]</p></blockquote>
<p>Though I don’t believe a law is necessary to enforce this measure, I’m actually wholeheartedly in favor of the concept. I believe strongly that California high school students <em>should </em>be educated about Obama and his presidency. Future generations of students <em>all across</em> America <em>should</em> be informed of the legacy he has left us. Every schoolkid should be aware of the subversive process whereby we, as a once-great, pre-eminent superpower, were brought low by a post-colonialist, post-Western, post-American President who successfully carried out his mission to effect a fundamental transformation of the United States.</p>
<p>I’m being facetious, of course; educating our children about the ugly truth of Obama’s rise and reign certainly isn’t what Assemblyman Holden had in mind. The purpose of his bill is to insure precisely the opposite: to enshrine the election of Barack Obama as a watershed moment for civil rights in American history. And in truth, it was; all joking about the sax-playing Bill Clinton aside, Obama is technically our first (half-)black President.</p>
<p>But it was a watershed moment in our history for a much more significant reason. For many of his star-struck fans, Obama’s election may have “represented the moment when all things seemed possible,” as Holden put it, but his subsequent two-term presidency represented the years when all things went to hell in a handbasket.</p>
<p>“If you watch the nightly news,” Obama <a href="http://www.mediaite.com/online/obama-the-medias-making-you-think-the-world-is-falling-apart/">said</a> at one of his many fundraisers recently, “it feels like the world is falling apart.” Yes it does, because it is. But it’s not just the media ginning up that false impression, as Obama was suggesting; it is a hard reality, and he principal reason for the alarming state of the world today is Barack Obama himself, and six years of his destructive presidency that has kneecapped the United States as the world’s leading superpower.</p>
<p>Assemblyman Holden wants future generations to acknowledge Obama’s legacy, but he didn’t specify in AB1912 or in his statement exactly what that legacy will be, so allow me to elucidate. Obama has alienated our allies and empowered our enemies. He facilitated the disastrous “Arab Spring” and left the Middle East inflamed by chaos. He has exacerbated racial tensions to the breaking point. He has overloaded our immigration system, launched the healthcare leviathan, and boosted our national debt into the stratosphere. He has implanted the Muslim Brotherhood in our own government. He has gutted our military. And he still has two years remaining in which to wreak further havoc.</p>
<p>That is Barack Obama’s shameful, colossal failure of a legacy, about which every schoolkid definitely should be made aware.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </strong><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank"><strong>Click here</strong></a><strong>.   </strong></p>
<p><a href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf"><strong>Subscribe</strong></a><strong> to Frontpage&#8217;s TV show, <em>The Glazov Gang</em>, and </strong><a href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang"><strong>LIKE</strong></a><strong> it on </strong><a href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang"><strong>Facebook.</strong></a></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/mark-tapson/california-law-enshrines-obamas-place-in-history/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>17</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Demonizing the Helpers</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/thomas-sowell/demonizing-the-helpers/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=demonizing-the-helpers</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/thomas-sowell/demonizing-the-helpers/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 29 Apr 2014 04:00:09 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Thomas Sowell]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[alternative]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Education]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[private]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[public school]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[school]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Wall Street]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[walton family foundation]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=224329</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Robbing minorities of education by denigrating those trying to reform the system. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/la-me-ln-walton-funds-la-charters-20140204-001.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-224331" alt="la-me-ln-walton-funds-la-charters-20140204-001" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/la-me-ln-walton-funds-la-charters-20140204-001-450x299.jpg" width="315" height="209" /></a>It is not easy to demonize people who have spent hundreds of millions of dollars of their own money to help educate poor children. But some members of the education establishment are taking a shot at it.</p>
<p>The Walton Family Foundation — created by the people who created Walmart — has given more than $300 million to charter schools, voucher programs and other educational enterprises concerned with the education of poor and minority students across the country.</p>
<p>The Walton Family Foundation gave more than $58 million to the KIPP schools, which have had spectacular success in raising the test scores of children in ghettoes where the other children are far behind in academic performance.</p>
<p>D.C. Prep, in Washington, whose students are mostly poor and black, has also received grants from the Walton Family Foundation. Its test scores likewise exceed those of traditional neighborhood schools, as well as the test scores of other local charter schools. Other wealthy people across the country have been doing similar things for years, including high-tech tycoons like Bill Gates and Michael Dell. It is one of the great untold stories of a unique pattern of philanthropy that makes America truly exceptional.</p>
<p>Yet these philanthropists have been attacked by the teachers&#8217; unions and by others in the education establishment, including academics.</p>
<p>It was painful to watch a well-known historian of education on a TV talk show recently, denouncing people from &#8220;Wall Street&#8221; who have promoted alternatives to the failing public schools. Apparently, in some circles, you can just say the words &#8220;Wall Street&#8221; and that proves that something evil is being done.</p>
<p>You can listen in vain for any concrete evidence that these philanthropic efforts to help educate poor children are creating harm.</p>
<p>Instead, you get statements like that from the head of the American Federation of Teachers, saying, &#8220;they&#8217;re trying to create an alternative system and destabilize what has been the anchor of American democracy.&#8221;</p>
<p>If government-monopoly schools, with iron-clad tenure for incompetent teachers, have been an anchor, they have been an anchor around the necks of American students, who consistently score lower on international tests than students from countries that spend half as much money per student, and yet have students who outperform our youngsters, year after year.</p>
<p>It is not written in the stars that youngsters in ghetto schools have to score miles behind everybody else.</p>
<p>Data from the 1940s show test scores in Harlem schools comparable to test scores in white working class schools on New York&#8217;s lower east side. (See &#8220;Teachers College Record,&#8221; Fall 1981, pages 40-41.)</p>
<p>Even today, particular minority schools — sometimes charter schools, sometimes Catholic schools, and sometimes even regular public schools headed by principals who defy the prevailing educational dogmas — turn out black students who can compete with other students academically.</p>
<p>Teachers&#8217; unions and others who defend the public school establishment decry competing schools, on grounds that they are somehow undermining the public schools.</p>
<p>One of the claims is that these alternative schools drain money from the public schools. But expenditures per pupil in the public schools have risen during the era of the spread of alternative schools.</p>
<p>Of course, if there were no alternative schools, the total amount of money going to the public school system might have increased more. But this would not necessarily produce more money per student, since charter schools typically do not get as much money per student as the public schools get.</p>
<p>Then there is the claim that alternative schools &#8220;skim the cream&#8221; of the students, and that this explains why their test results are better. But many, if not most, charter schools select among their applicants through a lottery.</p>
<p>Lots of things need to be done by lots of people to improve our education system, especially for schools in minority neighborhoods. Demonizing those who are trying to help is not one of them.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
<p><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf" target="_blank"><b>Subscribe</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> to Frontpage&#8217;s TV show, <i>The Glazov Gang</i>, and </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>LIKE</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> it on </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>Facebook.</b></a></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/thomas-sowell/demonizing-the-helpers/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>27</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Obama&#8217;s School &#8216;Punishment Equality&#8217; Folly</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/walter-williams/obamas-school-punishment-equality-folly/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamas-school-punishment-equality-folly</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/walter-williams/obamas-school-punishment-equality-folly/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 17 Apr 2014 04:15:27 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Walter Williams]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Department of Education]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[discipline]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[disproportionate]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Education]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[public]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[school]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=223582</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The racism of the Left is revealed in a new Department of Education policy. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/800px-Japanese_high_school_classroom.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-223583" alt="800px-Japanese_high_school_classroom" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/800px-Japanese_high_school_classroom-450x337.jpg" width="315" height="236" /></a>George Leef, director of research for the North Carolina-based John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, authored a Forbes op-ed article titled &#8220;Obama Administration Takes Groupthink To Absurd Lengths.&#8221; The subtitle is &#8220;School Discipline Rates Must Be &#8216;Proportionate.&#8217;&#8221; (http://tinyurl.com/mxnlg9h). Let&#8217;s examine some of the absurdity of the Obama administration&#8217;s take on student discipline.</p>
<p>Last January, the departments of Justice and Education published a &#8220;guidance&#8221; letter describing how schools can meet their obligations under federal law to administer student discipline without discriminating on the basis of race, color or national origin. Its underlying threat is that if federal bureaucrats learn of racial disproportionality in the punishments meted out for misbehavior, they will descend upon a school&#8217;s administrators. If schools cannot justify differentials in rates of punishment by race or ethnic group, they will face the loss of federal funds and be forced to undertake costly diversity training.</p>
<p>The nation&#8217;s educators can avoid sanctions by adopting a racial quota system for student discipline. So as Roger Clegg, president and general counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity, predicts, &#8220;school officials will either start disciplining students who shouldn&#8217;t be, or, more likely, will not discipline some students who ought to be.&#8221; I can imagine school administrators reasoning this way: &#8220;Blacks are 20 percent of our student body, and 20 percent of suspensions this year have been of black students. In order to discipline another black student while maintaining our suspension quota, we will have to suspend some white students, whether they&#8217;re guilty or not.&#8221; Some administrators might see some injustice in that approach and simply ignore the misbehavior of black students.</p>
<p>Leef cites Manhattan Institute&#8217;s Heather Mac Donald, who wrote in City Journal (http://tinyurl.com/9k648fj) that &#8220;the Departments of Education and Justice have launched a campaign against disproportionate minority discipline rates, which show up in virtually every school district with significant numbers of black and Hispanic students.</p>
<p>The possibility that students&#8217; behavior, not educators&#8217; racism, drives those rates lies outside the Obama administration&#8217;s conceptual universe.&#8221; She quoted Aaron Benner, a black teacher in a St. Paul, Minn., school who abhors the idea that school officials should go easy on black students who act up because (as a &#8220;facilitator&#8221; said) that&#8217;s what black culture is. &#8220;They&#8217;re trying to pull one over on us. Black folks are drinking the Kool-Aid; this &#8216;let-them-clown&#8217; philosophy could have been devised by the KKK.&#8221; Benner is right. I can&#8217;t think of a more racist argument than one that holds that disruptive, rude behavior and foul language are a part of black culture.</p>
<p>If Barack Obama&#8217;s Department of Justice thinks that disproportionality in school punishments is probative of racial discrimination, what about our criminal justice system, in which a disproportionate number of blacks are imprisoned, on parole or probation, and executed? According to the NAACP&#8217;s criminal justice fact sheet, blacks now constitute nearly 1 million of the total 2.3 million people who are incarcerated. Blacks are incarcerated at nearly six times the rate of whites. The NAACP goes on to report that if blacks and Hispanics were incarcerated at the same rate as whites, today&#8217;s prison and jail populations would decline by approximately 50 percent (http://tinyurl.com/7g2b32h).</p>
<p>So what to do? For example, blacks are 13 percent of the population but over 50 percent of homicide victims and about 46 percent of convicted murderers. Seeing as the Obama administration is concerned about punishment disproportionality, should black convicts be released so that only 13 percent of incarcerated murderers are black? Or should the Department of Justice order the conviction of whites, whether they&#8217;re guilty or not, so that the number of people convicted of murder by race is equal to their number in the general population? You say, &#8220;Williams, that not only is a stupid suggestion but violates all concepts of justice!&#8221; You&#8217;re absolutely right, but isn&#8217;t it just as stupid and unjust for the Obama administration to seek punishment equality in schools?</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
<p><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf" target="_blank"><b>Subscribe</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> to Frontpage&#8217;s TV show, <i>The Glazov Gang</i>, and </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>LIKE</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> it on </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>Facebook.</b></a></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/walter-williams/obamas-school-punishment-equality-folly/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>11</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>The Judicial Assault on American Flag T-Shirts</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/the-judicial-assault-on-american-flag-t-shirts/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-judicial-assault-on-american-flag-t-shirts</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/the-judicial-assault-on-american-flag-t-shirts/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 03 Mar 2014 05:41:15 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[9th circuit court of appeals]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[American Flag]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[cinco de mayo]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mexican flag]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[school]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[shirt]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=220086</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously condemns free speech.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/20131015__cincoflag1.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-220104" alt="SJMN_NTlfernandez" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/20131015__cincoflag1-397x350.jpg" width="278" height="245" /></a>Last Thursday, a federal court unanimously </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/02/27/court-rules-school-can-ban-american-flag-shirts-to-avoid-racial-strife/">determined</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> that officials at Live Oak High School in California acted appropriately when they ordered students wearing American flag t-shirts to turn them inside out, or be sent home during a 2010 Cinco De Mayo celebration. &#8220;Our role is not to second-guess the decision to have a Cinco de Mayo celebration or the precautions put in place to avoid violence,&#8221; Judge M. Margaret McKeown wrote for the three-member panel of judges from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The past events &#8220;made it reasonable for school officials to proceed as though the threat of a potentially violent disturbance was real,&#8221; she wrote.</span></p>
<p>The past events to which the court referred included problems between white and Hispanic students on that particular day, as a well as a history of violence between gang members and racial groups. UCLA law professor Eugene Volkh notes that the Supreme Court’s decision in <i>Tinker v. Des Moines Indep. Comm. School Dist.</i> (1969), determined that students&#8217; rights are limited, and that their speech can be restricted student if  “school authorities [can reasonably] forecast substantial disruption of or material interference with school activities” stemming from that speech.</p>
<p>The judges here believed that forecasting such violence was appropriate considering what had occurred the previous year:</p>
<blockquote><p>On Cinco de Mayo in 2009, a year before the events relevant to this appeal, there was an altercation on campus between a group of predominantly Caucasian students and a group of Mexican students. The groups exchanged profanities and threats. Some students hung a makeshift American flag on one of the trees on campus, and as they did, the group of Caucasian students began clapping and chanting “USA.” A group of Mexican students had been walking around with the Mexican flag, and in response to the white students’ flag-raising, one Mexican student shouted &#8220;f*** them white boys, f*** them white boys.&#8221; When Assistant Principal Miguel Rodriguez told the student to stop using profane language, the student said, &#8220;But Rodriguez, they are racist. They are being racist. F*** them white boys. Let’s f*** them up.&#8221; Rodriguez removed the student from the area….</p>
<p>At least one party to this appeal, student M.D., wore American flag clothing to school on Cinco de Mayo 2009. M.D. was approached by a male student who, in the words of the district court, &#8220;shoved a Mexican flag at him and said something in Spanish expressing anger at [M.D.’s] clothing.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>A similar chain of events unfolded in 2010. Following the principal&#8217;s order that students change their shirts or go home with an excused absence, those students were threatened with violence via a text message, telephone calls, and the possibility of gang violence. Citing <i>Tinker</i>, the court concluded that &#8220;both the specific events of May 5, 2010, and the pattern of which those events were a part made it reasonable for school officials to proceed as though the threat of a potentially violent disturbance was real.” The court further ruled that “school officials, namely Rodriguez, did not act unconstitutionally, under either the First Amendment or Article I, § 2(a) of the California Constitution, in asking students to turn their shirts inside out, remove them, or leave school for the day with an excused absence in order to prevent substantial disruption or violence at school.&#8221;</p>
<p>While the Court may have acted appropriately, Volkh correctly notes that their decision essentially endorses a &#8220;heckler&#8217;s veto,&#8221; where freedom of speech can be suppressed in order to avoid violence. This is a tactic long employed by the American left, especially on college campuses. Incidents such as the attempt to <a href="http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2013/11/08/reimagining-free-speech-at-brown-university/">prevent</a> former Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren from speaking at UC-Irvine in 2010, leading to 11 arrests, or more recently, the shouting down of New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly at Brown College last October, have become commonplace.</p>
<p>And that&#8217;s with regard to students who ostensibly support the First Amendment. In a <a href="http://www.thecrimson.com/column/the-red-line/article/2014/2/18/academic-freedom-justice/?page=single#">column</a> for The Harvard Crimson, Harvard University student Sandra Korn has decided that academic freedom is, well, too free. &#8220;Instead, I would like to propose a more rigorous standard: one of &#8216;academic justice,&#8217;” she writes. &#8220;When an academic community observes research promoting or justifying oppression, it should ensure that this research does not continue.&#8221;</p>
<p>She is echoed by Swarthmore College&#8217;s Erin Ching, who was <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/371625/attacking-diversity-thought-jonah-goldberg">overcome</a> with indignation when it was revealed that left-wing Princeton professor Cornell West and right-wing Princeton professor Robert George were invited to debate on her campus. &#8220;What really bothered me is, the whole idea is that at a liberal arts college, we need to be hearing a diversity of opinion,” Ching told the <i>Daily Gazette</i>, the school’s newspaper. “I don’t think we should be tolerating [George’s] conservative views because that dominant culture embeds these deep inequalities in our society.”</p>
<p>At Live Oak High School, the equation is much simpler. A toxic combination of political correctness that promotes the celebration of a Mexican holiday despite a track record of violence, coupled with the calculated impotence that rewards that violence with the suppression of free speech, makes an utter mockery of the educational process. As Volkh explains, the school has &#8220;taught its students a simple lesson: If you dislike speech and want it suppressed, then you can get what you want by threatening violence against the speakers. The school will cave in, the speakers will be shut up, and you and your ideology will win. When thuggery pays, the result is more thuggery. Is that the education we want our students to be getting?&#8221;</p>
<p>That is the education students <i>are</i> getting, and it is an integral part of the left&#8217;s multicultural, anti-American agenda. The same ideologues who promote Cinco de Mayo deride Columbus Day as <a href="http://newspaperrock.bluecorncomics.com/2013/10/columbus-day-celebrates-white.html">celebrating</a> genocide. They have secularized Christmas celebrations beyond recognition (when they allow celebrations at all), even as the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, honoring Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son on God’s command, is <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2014/02/04/new-york-city-prepares-to-close-public-schools-for-muslim-holidays-lunar-new-year/">added</a> to the list of days off in NYC public schools. The left&#8217;s divide and conquer strategy, including the message sent to immigrants that balkanization is preferable to assimilation, is precisely why the students at Live Oak High School have been taught to embrace an us-versus-them mindset, even as a substantial portion of that student body has also been encouraged to view American culture with contempt.</p>
<p>Such PC-inspired nonsense should be called out. &#8220;This is the United States of America,&#8221; <a href="http://www.mercurynews.com/crime-courts/ci_25240543/american-flag-removal-order-justified-u-s-court">said</a> Kendall Jones, whose son, Daniel Galli, was one of the students sent home by officials. &#8220;The idea that it&#8217;s offensive to wear patriotic clothing &#8230; regardless of what day it is, is unconscionable to me.&#8221;</p>
<p>William Becker, one of the lawyers representing the students, is willing to go the distance. He will request that a special 11-judge panel of the appeals court to rehear the case, and he will take it to the Supreme Court if he loses again. &#8220;The 9th Circuit upheld the rights of Mexican students celebrating a holiday of another country over U.S. student proudly supporting this country,&#8221; he contended.</p>
<p>Last week in a speech on immigration, Britain&#8217;s UKIP party leader Nigel Farage <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/02/28/Farage-speech-ukip-conference">delivered</a> a massage that ought to be hammered home by every school official in America, even as it remains completely inimical to aspirations of the American left. Farage desires to &#8220;make patriotism a respectable idea once again.&#8221;</p>
<p>That is an eminently noble idea, but it is only half the equation. American students, from elementary school through college, must become reacquainted with the idea that free speech extends beyond the borders of that which they consider offensive, or even unpleasant. Preposterous and unconstitutional notions such as academic justice trumping academic freedom, or the desire to dispense with a diversity of opinion, should be relegated to the ash heap of history. What happened at Live Oak High School the year<i> before</i> this debacle occurred should have engendered a series of teachable moments, including the unmistakable message that serious consequences would be implemented against those threatening, or engaged, in violence or other reprisals.</p>
<p>Instead, there was abject surrender by school officials, unanimously sanctioned by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. If there&#8217;s a worse teachable moment than that, one is hard-pressed to imagine what it is.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/the-judicial-assault-on-american-flag-t-shirts/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>78</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Schoolteacher Cheating: Cheating Students</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/walter-williams/schoolteacher-cheating-cheating-students/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=schoolteacher-cheating-cheating-students</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/walter-williams/schoolteacher-cheating-cheating-students/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 04 Feb 2014 05:15:20 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Walter Williams]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Black]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[cheating]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Philadelphia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[scandal]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[school]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[students]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Teacher]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=217954</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Who is demanding justice for the countless minority students deprived of an education? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Philadelphia-School-Cheating-Scandal-Widens.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-217956" alt="Philadelphia-School-Cheating-Scandal-Widens" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Philadelphia-School-Cheating-Scandal-Widens-450x335.jpg" width="270" height="201" /></a>Philadelphia&#8217;s public school system has joined several other big-city school systems, such as those in Atlanta, Detroit and Washington, D.C., in widespread teacher-led cheating on standardized academic achievement tests. So far, the city has fired three school principals, and The Wall Street Journal reports, &#8220;Nearly 140 teachers and administrators in Philadelphia public schools have been implicated in one of the nation&#8217;s largest cheating scandals.&#8221; (1/23/14) (http://tinyurl.com/q5makm3). Investigators found that teachers got together after tests to erase the students&#8217; incorrect answers and replace them with correct answers. In some cases, they went as far as to give or show students answers during the test.</p>
<p>Jerry Jordan, president of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, identifies the problem as district officials focusing too heavily on test scores to judge teacher performance, and they&#8217;ve converted low-performing schools to charters run by independent groups that typically hire nonunion teachers. But William Hite, superintendent of the School District of Philadelphia, said cheating by adults harms students because schools use test scores to determine which students need remedial help, saying, &#8220;There is no circumstance, no matter how pressured the cooker, that adults should be cheating students.&#8221;</p>
<p>While there&#8217;s widespread teacher test cheating to conceal education failure, most notably among black children, it&#8217;s just the tip of the iceberg. The National Assessment of Educational Progress, published by the U.S. Department of Education&#8217;s National Center for Education Statistics and sometimes referred to as the Nation&#8217;s Report Card, measures student performance in the fourth and eighth grades. In 2013, 46 percent of Philadelphia eighth-graders scored below basic, and 35 percent scored basic. Below basic is a score meaning that a student is unable to demonstrate even partial mastery of knowledge and skills fundamental for proficient work at his grade level.</p>
<p>Basic indicates only partial mastery. It&#8217;s a similar story in reading, with 42 percent below basic and 41 percent basic. With this kind of performance, no one should be surprised that of the state of Pennsylvania&#8217;s 27 most poorly performing schools on the SAT, 25 are in Philadelphia.</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Philadelphia&#8217;s four-year high-school graduation rate in 2012 was 64 percent, well below the national rate of 78 percent. Even if a student graduates from high school, what does it mean? What a high-school diploma means for white students is nothing to write home about, as suggested by the fact that every year, nearly 60 percent of first-year college students must take remedial courses in English or mathematics. What a high-school diploma means for black students is nothing less than a disaster, as pointed out by Drs. Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom in their 2009 book, &#8220;No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning.&#8221; They state that &#8220;blacks nearing the end of their high school education perform a little worse than white eighth-graders in both reading and U.S. history, and a lot worse in math and geography.&#8221; Little has changed since the book&#8217;s publication.</span></p>
<p>Hite rightfully said that test cheating by adults harms students, but that harm pales in comparison with the harm done by teachers awarding fraudulent grades and conferring fraudulent high-school diplomas, particularly to black students. You say, &#8220;Williams, what do you mean by fraudulent diplomas?&#8221; When a student is given a high-school diploma, that attests that he can read, write and compute at a 12th-grade level, and when he can&#8217;t do so at the eighth-grade level, that diploma is fraudulent. What makes it so tragic is that neither the student nor his parents are aware that he has a fraudulent diploma. When a black person is not admitted to college, flunks out of college, can&#8217;t pass a civil service test or doesn&#8217;t get job promotions, he is likelier to blame racial discrimination than his poor education.</p>
<p>Politicians, civil rights organizations and the education establishment will do nothing about the fraud. In fact, they give their full allegiance to the perpetrators.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/walter-williams/schoolteacher-cheating-cheating-students/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>31</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Palestinian Terror Education: Funded by U.S. Taxpayers</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dbedein/palestinian-terror-education-funded-by-u-s-taxpayers/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=palestinian-terror-education-funded-by-u-s-taxpayers</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dbedein/palestinian-terror-education-funded-by-u-s-taxpayers/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 06 Jan 2014 05:04:16 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[David Bedein]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Anti-Semitism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[camp]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Children]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jihad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[school]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Terrorism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Textbooks]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[United Nations]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=214652</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Time for Americans to demand a stop to aid sent to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Hamas_Children_1594729i.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-214655" alt="Hamas_Children_1594729i" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Hamas_Children_1594729i.jpg" width="279" height="211" /></a>UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, shapes the mindset of a new generation of Palestinian youth, educating 492,000 students in 699 schools.</p>
<p>The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, Article 3.1 of the Convention, requires that &#8220;in all actions concerning children&#8230; the best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration.&#8221;</p>
<p>Article 6 requires UN agencies to recognize &#8220;that every child has the inherent right to life,&#8221; and, further, that UN agencies &#8220;shall ensure to the maximum extent possible the survival and development of the child.&#8221;</p>
<p>Article 29 requires that such education be directed to the &#8220;preparation of the child for responsible life in a free society, in the spirit of understanding, peace, tolerance, equality of the sexes, and friendship among all peoples&#8230;.&#8221;</p>
<p>In direct contradiction to the mandate of UN education, UNRWA uses new school books from the Palestinian Authority, which violate sacred UN principles of peace.</p>
<p>A depicted in the film &#8220;<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iURo_lsdXvA">Camp Jihad</a>,&#8221; produced by the Center for Near East Policy Research this past summer, UNRWA instructors openly incorporate virulent anti-Semitic teachings into the classroom, demonizing Jews as part of their UNRWA summer camp program, telling child campers that Jews are nothing but &#8220;wolves&#8221; who chased their grandparents from their homes.</p>
<p>UNRWA educational facilities are sites of indoctrination, exploiting the malleability of children&#8217;s minds to breed hostility toward Israel and the West and to encourage violent homicide-suicide attacks, effectively grooming pupils for recruitment by terrorist groups like Hamas, which controls the teacher&#8217;s union in Gaza.</p>
<p>Where is the accountability? With Islamic states that remain at war with Israel?</p>
<p>The United States, the largest donor nation to UNRWA, contributed more than $275 million to the agency in 2013 alone, while the rest of the donors are spread among 38 democratic nations. The US continues unbridled funding of UNRWA, which results in the<br />
use of US taxpayer dollars for teaching Palestinian children to revere suicide-homicide bombings. Letters to US AID to condition funds to UNRWA on the cessation of such indoctrination have gone unanswered.</p>
<p>At the same time, UNRWA openly hires teachers with ties to designated terrorist organizations, such as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, ignoring US law that forbids aid to agencies hat hire terrorists. While UNRWA has agreements with Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon for the verification of criminal records by potential agency employees, no such agreement exists between UNRWA and the Palestinian Authority, where 19 UNRWA camps function under Palestinian jurisdiction.</p>
<p>Terror education abounds in the UNRWA schools. A fifth grade textbook taught in UNRWA schools known as Our Beautiful Language reads, &#8220;We shall return to the homes, to the valleys, to the mountains/Under the flag of glory, Jihad and struggle/With blood, sacrifice [fida’], fraternity and loyalty/We shall return.&#8221;</p>
<p>Another PA school book goes even further: &#8220;O brother, the oppressors have exceeded all bounds and Jihad and sacrifice [fida’] are imperative&#8230;.&#8221;</p>
<p>A ninth-grade PA textbook indoctrinates students into martyrdom. In an exercise where students are asked to connect two sentence, a correct answer links the phrase &#8220;Morning of glory and red redemption, nourished by the blood of Martyrs&#8221; with the concept of &#8220;hope for the liberation of Palestine.&#8221;</p>
<p>When UNRWA promotes such sentiments, UNRWA schools violate children&#8217;s basic right to protection from harmful influence. The question remains: Will US citizens file complaints against UNRWA with Congress and with the courts, or will US citizens let this kind of US-funded education for terror continue unabated?</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dbedein/palestinian-terror-education-funded-by-u-s-taxpayers/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>4</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Missouri State to Ban Nerf Guns?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/sara-dogan/missouri-state-to-ban-nerf-guns/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=missouri-state-to-ban-nerf-guns</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/sara-dogan/missouri-state-to-ban-nerf-guns/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 26 Nov 2013 05:25:22 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Sara Dogan]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Campus Roundup]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Campus]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Conservative]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Free Speech]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Left]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nerf gun]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[school]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=211460</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[How students are reacting to the PC madness. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Griff_Nerf.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-211547" alt="Griff_Nerf" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Griff_Nerf.jpg" width="280" height="217" /></a><i>A regular column dedicated to reporting on the slanted teaching, mis-administration and sheer insanity of our nation’s colleges and universities.</i></p>
<p><i></i><b>Top Stories:</b></p>
<p>• The director of public safety at Missouri State University is <a href="/articles/5412/20131106/use-of-nerf-guns-in-humans-vs-zombies-role-playing-game-worries-missouri-state-administrator.htm">raising concerns</a> about the use of fluorescent nerf guns in a popular campus roll-playing game of Humans vs. Zombies. &#8220;I don&#8217;t know that it is necessarily a danger to campus. It is a disruption to campus,&#8221; safety director Don Clark told a local radio station. “We cannot tell people that ‘if you see someone with a gun, it might be a Nerf gun, so just disregard it.’” The University is considering a ban on the Nerf guns despite a student government poll showing that students overwhelmingly oppose such a ban.</p>
<p>• An administrator at Furman College in South Carolina was <a href="/2013/11/13/video-did-school-admin-try-to-confiscate-conservative-fliers/">caught on video</a> attempting to confiscate flyers critical of Rev. Jesse Jackson from conservative students who were distributing them outside an event where Jackson was speaking on campus. Video taken of the incident shows Furman Special Events Coordinator Gayle Warth demanding that a student distributing the flyers turn them all over to her. When the student refused, Warth claimed that he could not distribute materials without “pre-approval.” A spokesman for the university defended the administration stating, “Furman is satisfied that no one was prevented from expressing their opinions.”</p>
<p>• The student government at the University of California Berkeley <a href="/corner/363501/uc-berkeley-students-ban-use-illegal-immigrant-andrew-johnson">passed a unanimous resolution</a> barring the term “illegal immigrant” from their discussions and communications. “No human being is illegal,” states the resolution which holds that the term is “racially charged” and leads to “punitive and discriminatory actions aimed primarily at immigrants and communities of color.”  The resolution suggests that student government members substitute other terms including “‘Foreign nationals,’ ‘undocumented immigrants,’ ‘immigrants without papers’ and ‘immigrants seeking status.’” UCLA passed a similar measure last summer.</p>
<p>• The University of Texas—Austin chapter of the Young Conservatives of Texas (YCT) were <a href="/_news/2013/11/19/21537743-texas-young-conservatives-group-cancels-catch-an-illegal-immigrant-game">forced to cancel</a> a planned “Catch an Illegal Immigrant” game on campus after administrators issued strong condemnations of the event and implied that participants might face disciplinary action.  Vice President for Diversity and Community Engagement Gregory Vincent wrote in a <a href="/news/2013/11/18/yct-game/">public statement</a>, “If the members of YCT carry out their plan for ‘Catch an Illegal Immigrant,’ they are willfully ignoring the honor code and contributing to the degradation of our campus culture.” Movie star America Ferrera also got involved, leading a campus solidarity march of hundreds of students and activists to protest the event.</p>
<p><b>Further News from the Campuses:</b></p>
<p><b>When Opposing Jihad Is ‘Racist’ </b>[FrontpageMag.com]</p>
<p>“Islamophobia” has broken out at Washington University of St. Louis, sparking outrage, grief, an “open solidarity forum,” and an avalanche of groveling apologies from university administrators.</p>
<p><a href="/2013/robert-spencer/when-opposing-jihad-is-racist/">Read more</a></p>
<p><b>Rescuing Free Speech at Brown </b>[Intercollegiate Review]</p>
<p>Many students, Americans, and believers in the First Amendment were rightly outraged by the protest of Ray Kelly at Brown University. The NYPD Commissioner was invited to talk on Oct. 29 about the role of proactive policing. But, after a half hour of raucous interruptions, Ray Kelly departed, unable to speak a single sentence.</p>
<p><a href="/index.php/2013/11/15/rescuing-free-speech-at-brown/">Read more</a></p>
<p><b>UC Berkeley Student Government Bans Use of the Term ‘Illegal Immigrant’ </b>[FoxNews.com]</p>
<p>The student government at the University of California, Berkeley has censured use of the term, “illegal immigrant.”</p>
<p><a href="/us/2013/11/10/uc-berkeley-student-government-bans-use-term-illegal-immigrant/">Read more</a></p>
<p><b>Some Faculty Demand Skin Color-Based Hiring </b>[The College Fix]</p>
<p>Some faculty at the University of Arizona have said they believe there are not enough people of color employed as professors on campus and are clamoring for administrators to enforce a way to even out the numbers.</p>
<p><a href="/post/15316/">Read more</a></p>
<p><b>University of Wisconsin Regents Revise Systemwide Speech Code </b>[TheFire.org]</p>
<p>There is good news for free speech at Wisconsin’s public universities, as the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents voted in October to revise a system-wide discriminatory harassment policy that previously contained language declared unconstitutional by a federal court.</p>
<p><a href="/article/16502.html">Read more</a></p>
<p><b>Brown University Retreats From Free Speech</b> [Frontpagemag.com]</p>
<p>As champion of New York’s controversial stop-and-frisk policy—one riddled with accusations of racial profiling and saddled with a recent federal court ruling against it—police commissioner Raymond Kelly could count on some tough questions from students when he stopped at Brown University last month to talk about proactive policing.</p>
<p><a href="/2013/stephen-beale/brown-university-retreats-from-free-speech/">Read more</a></p>
<p><b>Committee Created to Deal with In-Class Social Media Presents Latest Research </b>[StateNews.com]</p>
<p>The committee created after <a href="/article/2013/09/going-behind-the-camera">English professor’s anti-republican rants</a> to address the best practices on the use of social media and technology in classrooms, has begun its research — with few findings so far.</p>
<p><a href="/article/2013/11/committee-created-to-deal-with-in-class-social-media-presents-latest-research">Read more</a></p>
<p><b>Public College Cites High Cost of Obamacare in Canceling Students&#8217; Health Plans </b>[Campus Reform]</p>
<p>Officials at one one of the nation&#8217;s oldest and most elite historically black colleges are citing the Affordable Care Act (ACA) as the reason they have cancelled a school-wide affordable health care plan they had offered students.</p>
<p><a href="/?ID=5235">Read more</a></p>
<p><b>Napolitano’s Move from DHS to California Schools Chief Draws Protests </b>[Washington Times]</p>
<p>While many across the political spectrum are happy to see Homeland Security Secretary <a href="/topics/janet-napolitano/">Janet Napolitano</a> leave her job in Washington, some who live on the West Coast say they’d just as soon not see her out there, after it was revealed Friday that she’s poised to take over as head of the <a href="/topics/university-of-california/">University of California</a> school system.</p>
<p><a href="/news/2013/jul/12/napolitanos-move-california-draws-protests/">Read more</a></p>
<p><b>At Sinclair, Liability Concerns Trump Students&#8217; Expressive Rights</b> [TheFire.org]</p>
<p>Earlier this semester, when students from Sinclair’s chapter of Young Americans for Liberty (YAL) wanted to put together a “free speech wall” event, the group’s event request was denied by the school’s Student Leadership Development office, citing—you guessed it—“liability issues.”</p>
<p><a href="/article/16501.html">Read more</a></p>
<p><b>Students suffer ObamaCare sticker shock as premiums soar, plans get cut </b>[FoxNews.com]</p>
<p>While millions of Americans are watching their individual polices get canceled due to ObamaCare regulations, the new health care rules are also having a major impact on college campuses.</p>
<p><a href="/politics/2013/11/18/students-suffer-sticker-shock-from-obamacare/">Read more</a></p>
<p><b>Texas Student Group Under Fire For &#8216;Catch An Illegal Immigrant&#8217; Game On Campus</b> [FoxNews.com]</p>
<p>The Young Conservatives of Texas (YCT), a student club at the University of Texas at Austin, is holding a “Catch an Illegal Immigrant” game on the school’s campus to “spread awareness and to spark a political discussion about the issue,” organizers said.</p>
<p><a href="/latino/news/2013/11/18/student-group-under-fire-for-catch-illegal-immigrant-game-on-campus/">Read more</a></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/sara-dogan/missouri-state-to-ban-nerf-guns/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>6</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Politico&#8217;s Attack on Minority Student School Choice</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/arnold-ahlert/politicos-crusade-against-minority-student-school-choice/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=politicos-crusade-against-minority-student-school-choice</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/arnold-ahlert/politicos-crusade-against-minority-student-school-choice/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 08 Oct 2013 04:29:23 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[choice]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Education]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Louisiana]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[private school]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[public]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[school]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[vouchers]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=206588</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A misleading report trashing vouchers -- and what it left out.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/nal_voucher051808a_23838a_8col.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-206589" alt="nal_voucher051808a_23838a_8col" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/nal_voucher051808a_23838a_8col-450x316.jpg" width="315" height="221" /></a>On Monday, Politico published an <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2013/10/vouchers-dont-do-much-for-students-97909.html?hp=f1">article</a> contending that school vouchers don&#8217;t necessary translate into a better educational experience for students. It cited the outrage Republicans demonstrated over the Department of Justice&#8217;s (DOJ) <a href="http://www.nola.com/education/index.ssf/2013/08/us_government_files_to_block_s.html">lawsuit</a> against Louisiana, including Governor Bobby Jindal&#8217;s accusation that the Obama administration was “ripping low-income minority students out of good schools” that could “help them achieve their dreams.” Politico insisted an &#8220;inconvenient truth&#8221; revealed that a $1 billion investment by American taxpayers shows little evidence that it &#8220;yields academic gains.&#8221; Unsurprisingly, Politico&#8217;<i>s</i> outrage is both selective and misleading. Furthermore, they completely miss the point behind vouchers and other educational initiatives that challenge the status quo.</p>
<p>Columnist Stephanie Simon cites all of three cities &#8212; Cleveland, Milwaukee and New Orleans &#8212; as &#8220;evidence&#8221; that vouchers don&#8217;t work. &#8220;In Milwaukee, just 13 percent of voucher students scored proficient in math and 11 percent made the bar in reading this spring,&#8221; the article states. &#8220;That’s worse on both counts than students in the city’s public schools.&#8221; That is true, but hardly a justification for abandoning a voucher system. Only 19.4 percent of Milwaukee public schools students were proficient in math, and 14.2 percent were proficient in reading. Moreover, the math score represented a <i>decline</i> from the previous school year. Simon also neglected to mention that State Superintendent Tony Evers concluded, &#8220;it&#8217;s time to bring publicly funded choice schools into Wisconsin&#8217;s school accountability system.&#8221;</p>
<p>In Cleveland, it was<i> </i>noted that voucher students &#8220;in most grades&#8221; did worse than their peers, but better in reading. What the article fails to note is that the Cleveland Municipal School District&#8217;s <a href="http://reportcard.education.ohio.gov/Pages/District-Report.aspx?DistrictIRN=043786">grades</a> for Achievement, Gap Closing, Progress and Graduation Rates were F, F, F and F, respectively. The district is also in the<a href="http://www.cleveland.com/opinion/index.ssf/2013/09/cleveland_schools_come_up_dism.html"> bottom</a> five or six of the 609 school districts in the state with regard to each of the 24 measurements used to determine proficiency.</p>
<p>With regard to New Orleans, Politico failed once again to produce any hard statistics, only noting that voucher students didn&#8217;t advance any faster over the past two years than students in public schools, &#8220;many of which are rated D or F, state data show.&#8221; Like much of the rest of the leftist establishment, it would seem Politico prefers that children remain in D- or F-rated schools, even as it fails to mention that <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/08/27/DOJ-sues-Louisiana-vouchers">90 percent</a> of the students who have had an opportunity to escape them are black. Since black American students perform far worse overall than those of other ethnicities, the stats may be somewhat skewed. Furthermore, only two years&#8217; worth of data may be less than optimum for drawing any conclusions about vouchers per se.</p>
<p>On the other hand, a New York City <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444184704577585582150808386.html">program</a> tracked students from kindergarten in 1997, to college enrollment in 2011. It compared students who won a voucher lottery with students who didn&#8217;t. The researchers noted the importance of that reality contending that &#8220;the only difference between the groups was the luck of the draw, the gold standard in research design.&#8221; There was no significant impact for Hispanic students, and too few Asian and white students participated to draw reliable conclusions.</p>
<p>For black students, however, the gains were impressive: part-time and full-time college enrollment together was 24 percent higher for voucher students, and full-time enrollment only was 31 percent higher. Even more impressive was the cost, which was far cheaper than the average amount New York City spends to educate students in public schools.</p>
<p>Politico largely dismisses this study because it &#8220;only&#8221; helped black students.</p>
<p>Another irritating issue for the anti-voucher crowd is that parents can use vouchers to send their children to private schools that teach religion, and the article was quick to criticize those that offer such an &#8220;anti-science&#8221; agenda as part of their curriculum.</p>
<p>Yet it is no secret that America&#8217;s public schools have mired millions of children in a leftist, secular humanist agenda. That agenda is one where the same schools that hand out condoms and advise teens where they can get an abortion are forbidden to discuss the moral implications involved. As for anti-science, public school students are routinely immersed in speculative, ideological-based curricula on global warming, including being forced to watch Al Gore&#8217;s &#8220;An Inconvenient Truth,&#8221; whose &#8220;scientific&#8221; claims were <a href="http://newsbusters.org/blogs/brad-wilmouth/2009/10/16/cnn-s-dobbs-interviews-producer-film-debunking-gore-s-inconvenient-tr">debunked</a> by a British Court.</p>
<p>The hand-wringers are further incensed that public funds are being &#8220;siphoned&#8221; from public schools to pay for vouchers, insisting&#8211;as they invariably do&#8211;that more money will lead to better public schools. This argument was completely debunked by Caroline M. Hoxby, an Associate Professor of Economics at Harvard, during an <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/vouchers/choice/provouchers.html">interview</a> with PBS&#8217;s Frontline. At the time she noted that the average spending per pupil in the U.S. was $7500 per year, while voucher costs averaged $2000. &#8220;Even if the vouchers came completely out of the local public school district&#8217;s budget, every time they lost a student, they&#8217;d be losing $2000, but they&#8217;d lose a whole student and $5,500 remains behind,&#8221; she explained.</p>
<p>As for funding per se,  the reality that America <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-202_162-57590921/u.s-education-spending-tops-global-list-study-shows/">spends more</a> on education than any other developed nation in the world, and still lags behind many of those nations in international testing, is apparently irrelevant. Furthermore, if more money equalled better schools, Washington, D.C., which <a href="http://schoolsofthought.blogs.cnn.com/2012/06/21/which-places-spent-most-per-student-on-education/">spends more money</a> than any other public school district in the nation would be a shining example of success.</p>
<p>In 2011, Washington, D.C. had the <a href="http://cnsnews.com/news/article/dc-takes-top-honors-worst-graduation-rate-us">worst</a> high school graduation rate in the nation.</p>
<p>Politico also cites a questionable Gallup poll alleging that 70 percent of Americans oppose vouchers. However, Gallup <a href="http://pdkintl.org/noindex/2013_PDKGallup.pdf">asks</a> only if respondents favor or oppose &#8220;allowing students and parents to choose a private school to attend at public expense.&#8221; Based on the wording of this question alone, respondents would have no idea that the program is meant specifically for low-income and disadvantaged students, and that vouchers are relatively modest and may only account for a portion of private school tuition.</p>
<p>What Politico neglects to take seriously in its hit-job on vouchers is the real impetus behind the movement. That impetus is best described by Fox News&#8217; John Stossel, who did an extensive investigation of America&#8217;s public schools, or as he more aptly describes them, “government” schools. According to Stossel, they are a &#8220;stultified government monopoly&#8221; that &#8220;never improves.&#8221; &#8220;Most services improve,&#8221; he adds. &#8220;They get faster, better, cheaper. But not government monopolies. Government schools are rigid, boring, expensive and more segregated than private schools.&#8221;</p>
<p>It is almost surreal that this irrefutably logical argument fails to resonate with so many Americans. Those same Americans would undoubtedly be appalled if government told them could only shop in supermarkets in their own neighborhoods, or only buy cars from a dealer in their &#8220;district,&#8221; irrespective of price or quality. Yet in thousands of public school districts across the nation, millions of children are trapped in substandard schools because &#8220;The Blob,&#8221; as Stossel refers the unholy alliance of education unions, school board bureaucrats and the politicians, <i>demands</i> that the status quo be maintained.</p>
<p>It is a status quo utterly inimical to the best interests of parents and their children for the simplest of reasons: the existence of any union is predicated on the reality that protecting and promoting its members’ interests transcends all other considerations. Thus, even under optimal circumstances, the interests of parents and students come second to those of teachers, principals, and even school custodians. In turn, those unions fund political campaigns of <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/list.php">overwhelmingly</a> Democratic politicians to ensure the status quo.</p>
<p>Vouchers and other initiatives challenge that status quo, which is why <i>Politico</i> and other leftist entities seek to denigrate anything that threatens it. Fortunately as the article is forced to admit, vouchers are &#8220;booming in popularity.&#8221; Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal explains why. “We make no apologies for giving parents the option to determine the best educational path for their children,” he said. “President Obama has the means to send his children to the school of his choice. Parents in Louisiana should have the same opportunity.” So should every other parent in the country.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/arnold-ahlert/politicos-crusade-against-minority-student-school-choice/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>How Textbooks Push Children to the Left</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/jeff-ludwig/how-textbooks-push-children-to-the-left/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=how-textbooks-push-children-to-the-left</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/jeff-ludwig/how-textbooks-push-children-to-the-left/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 16 Aug 2013 04:15:12 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jeff Ludwig]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Indoctrination]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Left]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[school]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[students]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[textbook]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=200636</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[One popular book provides a glimpse into the Left's preferred method of indoctrination. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/9044303-large.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-200637" alt="9044303-large" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/9044303-large.jpg" width="266" height="198" /></a>Are you surprised that leftist ideas have penetrated the minds of the people?  Chalk up this reality to the leftist teachers and, especially, to the left-oriented textbooks now in use in our secondary schools.  One book in particular that has been gaining traction in New York City in recent years is &#8220;The Americans.&#8221;</span></b></p>
<p>Although even the leftist teachers claim not to like this textbook used in U.S. history (a one-year course required in NYC for all juniors) because it is so skimpy on facts and is written in an opaque style, any informed reader would have to agree that it is one of the most politically correct textbooks one could imagine. Reading this book, one gets the message that the history of America is a theme of victimization. The list of victims is well known: Native Americans, women, labor, immigrants, blacks, farmers, urban dwellers, the mentally ill, migrant workers, unions, etc. &#8220;The Americans&#8221; is a somewhat diluted version of Howard Zinn’s openly communist college textbook, &#8220;A People’s History of the United States.&#8221; It is also worth adding that this reference to Zinn’s “communism” is not putting labels on anyone, and is not a McCarthy-like type of red-baiting of an innocent individual; Zinn openly <i>announced</i> his communism decades ago when he taught at Boston University.</p>
<p>This author surveyed the index of &#8220;The Americans,&#8221; and found that in the 1,045 pages of text, there were only two references to Christianity, no references to Protestants, and five references to Roman Catholicism. There were zero references to God, zero references to Jesus Christ, and only one reference to evangelicals. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are described as “minor activists,” not as traitors who sold out their country for $10,000. Their being traitors is no longer supposition or in any way debatable, but has been revealed conclusively by Harvey Klehr et al. in their monumental study<i> The</i> <i>Secret World of American Communism</i> based on documents made available after the collapse of the USSR. Prof. Klehr is a professor at Emory University and the book was published by Yale University Press, hardly right-wing organizations.</p>
<p>The same textbook has no index reference to John Calvin and the powerful Reformation currents that were alive and well in the 17<sup>th</sup> and into the 18<sup>th</sup>centuries. And in the textbook’s sections on the &#8220;Pilgrims and the Puritans,&#8221; the focus goes from Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson (essentially depicted as the first feminist victim of an uptight male patriarchy) to King Philip’s War between the Puritans and Wampanoag Indians in 1675. Although it’s not said outright, the book means to suggest that there was a certain bloodthirsty aspect to the Puritan culture. They were encroaching and exploitative, so the Indians had to fight back. The textbook fails to mention anything about the fifty-year peace treaty between the Wampanoags and the Puritans, which held up beautifully until Chief Massasoit and the Puritan leader John Winthrop died.</p>
<p>It fails to mention Thomas Hooker who founded Connecticut and, with his co-founders, wrote the first state constitution – &#8220;The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut&#8221; – that was a model for representative government in the colonies. The book does not mention that Anne Hutchinson, though she was a woman, was permitted to lead Bible discussions at her home in Massachusetts. Only when she began teaching antinomian doctrine (i.e., that it was not necessary for a Christian to follow moral law) was she reprimanded, and banished when she failed to submit to the teachings of the colonial leaders. Moreover, the book fails to highlight the incredible faith of the Puritans as they actually succeeded, despite some flaws, on building that “city on the hill” out of the wilderness, and the debt of gratitude we owe to the righteous and faithful Puritans, people who walked the walk of faith wearing the whole armor of God.</p>
<p>Further, under their original charter, the Puritans set up a kind of primitive communism where everybody shared equally in the town of Plymouth, but they soon perceived that this did not work, and divided the land into portions for each family, where the efforts of each person would decide his well-being up to a point (they never stopped being good neighbors and helping each other). All of this information is not noted in any form in the textbook and, although it is not said outright, an inexperienced young reader will come away with the impression that the Puritans and Pilgrims were a narrow-minded and racist group, and besides that they were Christian fanatics (like those terrible evangelicals of our own era).</p>
<p>Would not an even-handed approach to colonial U.S. history discuss William Penn and the founding of Pennsylvania?  In that colony, there were no armed conflicts with the Native Americans during the colonial period. Pennsylvania had no army until the French and Indian War in the 1750s.  William Penn was an incredibly righteous and informed Quaker.  He wrote many books, including the marvelous book &#8220;No Cross, No Crown<i>,&#8221; </i>as well as others about politics, Christianity, and history.  His moral excellence and writing gifts are not even alluded to, nor are those of Thomas Hooker of Connecticut or Increase and Cotton Mather of Massachusetts (more than 500 works between them on a variety of topics).  Is there any governor among our fifty states who could write a theology book today?  Or any other book of clear intellectual merit for that matter?</p>
<p>The skewed and distorted information and disinformation in &#8220;The Americans&#8221; is too extensive in over 1,000 pages to catalogue completely in this article.  However, it reflects a mindset that is not unique to this volume.  This textbook represents a besetting ignorance as well as congeries of biases that are epidemic in our country and disrupting the minds of the people.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/jeff-ludwig/how-textbooks-push-children-to-the-left/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>43</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Black Education Tragedy</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/walter-williams/black-education-tragedy/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=black-education-tragedy</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/walter-williams/black-education-tragedy/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 11 Jul 2013 04:10:07 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Walter Williams]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Black]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[cursive]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Education]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[George Zimmerman]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Rachel Jeantel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Read]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[school]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[testimony]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Trayvon Martin]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=196525</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why Rachel Jeantel's testimony at the Zimmerman trial should be a wake up call to America. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/ap_rachel_jeantel_ll_130627_16x9_992.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-196528" alt="ap_rachel_jeantel_ll_130627_16x9_992" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/ap_rachel_jeantel_ll_130627_16x9_992-450x336.jpg" width="270" height="202" /></a>As if more evidence were needed about the tragedy of black education, Rachel Jeantel, a witness for the prosecution in the George Zimmerman murder trial, put a face on it for the nation to see. Some of that evidence unfolded when Zimmerman&#8217;s defense attorney asked 19-year-old Jeantel to read a letter that she allegedly had written to Trayvon Martin&#8217;s mother. She responded that she doesn&#8217;t read cursive, and that&#8217;s in addition to her poor grammar, syntax and communication skills.</p>
<p>Jeantel is a senior at Miami Norland Senior High School. How in the world did she manage to become a 12th-grader without being able to read cursive writing? That&#8217;s a skill one would expect from a fourth-grader. Jeantel is by no means an exception at her school. Here are a few achievement scores from her school: Thirty-nine percent of the students score basic for reading, and 38 percent score below basic. In math, 37 percent score basic, and 50 percent score below basic. Below basic is the score when a student is unable to demonstrate even partial mastery of knowledge and skills fundamental for proficient work at his grade level. Basic indicates only partial mastery.</p>
<p>Few Americans, particularly black Americans, have any idea of the true magnitude of the black education tragedy. The education establishment might claim that it&#8217;s not their fault. They&#8217;re not responsible for the devastation caused by female-headed families, drugs, violence and the culture of dependency. But they are totally responsible for committing gross educational fraud. It&#8217;s educators who graduated Jeantel from elementary and middle school and continued to pass her along in high school. It&#8217;s educators who will, in June 2014, confer upon her a high-school diploma.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s not just Florida&#8217;s schools. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, nationally most black 12th-graders test either basic or below basic in reading, writing, math and science. Drs. Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom wrote in their 2004 book, &#8220;No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning,&#8221; &#8220;Blacks nearing the end of their high school education perform a little worse than white eighth-graders in both reading and U.S. history, and a lot worse in math and geography.&#8221; Little has changed since the book&#8217;s publication.</p>
<p>Drexel University history and political science professor George Ciccariello-Maher disapprovingly says that the reaction to Jeantel&#8217;s court performance &#8220;has been in terms of aesthetics, of disregarding a witness on the basis of how she talks, how good she is at reading and writing.&#8221; Harking back to Jim Crow days, he adds: &#8220;These are subtle things that echo literacy testing at the polls, echo the question of whether black Americans can testify against white people, of being always suspect in their testimony. It&#8217;s the same old dynamics emerging in a very different guise.&#8221; Then there&#8217;s Morgan Polikoff, assistant professor of education at the University of Southern California, who says: &#8220;Cursive should be allowed to die. In fact, it&#8217;s already dying, despite having been taught for decades.&#8221; That&#8217;s the kind of educational philosophy that accounts for much of our nation&#8217;s educational decline.</p>
<p>The educational system and black family structure and culture have combined to make increasing numbers of young black people virtually useless in the increasingly high-tech world of the 21st century. Too many people believe that pouring more money into schools will help. That&#8217;s whistlin&#8217; &#8220;Dixie.&#8221; Whether a student is black or white, poor or rich, there are some minimum requirements that must be met in order to do well in school. Someone must make the student do his homework, see to it that he gets a good night&#8217;s sleep, fix a breakfast, make sure he gets to school on time and make sure he respects and obeys his teachers. Here are my questions: Which one of those requirements can be achieved through a higher school budget? Which can be achieved by politicians? If those minimal requirements aren&#8217;t met, whatever else is done is mostly for naught.</p>
<p>I hope Rachel Jeantel&#8217;s court performance is a wake-up call for black Americans about the devastation wrought by our educational system.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/walter-williams/black-education-tragedy/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>76</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Brainwashing Kids About Guns: the Sequel</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/mark-tapson/brainwashing-kids-about-guns-the-sequel/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=brainwashing-kids-about-guns-the-sequel</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/mark-tapson/brainwashing-kids-about-guns-the-sequel/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 08 Mar 2013 04:38:33 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark Tapson]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[brainwash]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Children]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[control]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[gun]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[school]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=180368</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Progressives go to astounding lengths to teach children that even owning a gun is insane.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/mark-tapson/brainwashing-kids-about-guns-the-sequel/bullets-control-2/" rel="attachment wp-att-180516"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-180516" title="bullets-control" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/bullets-control1-450x300.jpg" alt="" width="270" height="180" /></a>Barely a month ago <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/mark-tapson/brainwashing-kids-about-guns/">I wrote about</a> a spate of recent incidents in which schoolchildren as young as five were seriously punished for committing no reasonable offense whatsoever other than triggering the anti-gun hysteria of politically correct, progressive school officials. Those incidents were just the beginning.</p>
<p>In arguably the most ludicrous and outrageous example yet, a seven-year-old with ADHD <a href="http://foxbaltimore.com/news/features/raw-news/stories/7yearold-suspended-teacher-says-he-shaped-pastry-into-gun-465.shtml">has been suspended</a> from his Brooklyn Park school for two days because he accidentally shaped a breakfast pastry to resemble – according to his teacher – a gun. Apparently he was trying to shape a mountain out of it, but it turned out to be the school authorities who made a mountain out of a molehill. Playing with his food actually drove Joshua’s teacher to tears (“She was pretty mad,” <a href="http://www.foxbaltimore.com/news/features/top-stories/stories/7yearold-suspended-teacher-says-he-shaped-pastry-into-gun-18192.shtml#.UTRXA3zF36o">he said</a>), and she took away the pastry and tossed it in the trash. The father confirmed with the school that no students had been upset or hurt or scared, but the principal determined that “a threat had been made.”</p>
<p>Ponder that for a moment.</p>
<p>Joshua’s elementary school later sent students home with <a href="http://www.loweringthebar.net/2013/03/update-ii-school-offers-counseling-for-students-troubled-by-pastry-gun-incident.html">a letter</a> citing the Code of Student Conduct to parents and guardians which declared that “one of our students used food to make inappropriate gestures that disrupted the class. While no physical threats were made and no one [was] harmed, the student had to be removed from the classroom.” This is curious reasoning, considering that it was the hysterical teacher who disrupted the class, and since the incident had no adverse effect on any of the students, there was no reason to remove Joshua from the class, much less suspend his education for two days.</p>
<p>Joshua’s father said, “I would almost call it insanity. I mean with all the potential issues that could be dealt with at school, real threats, bullies, whatever the real issue is, it’s a pastry, ya know?” Apparently Joshua’s dad needs to be sent to reeducation camp until he fully grasps the seriousness of pastry-shaped threats to the security of the State.</p>
<p>Astoundingly, the letter went on to offer reassurances to anyone who might have been traumatized:</p>
<blockquote><p>If your children express that they are troubled by today’s incident, please talk with them and help them share their feelings. Our school counselor is available to meet with any students who have the need to do so next week. In general, please remind them of the importance of making good choices.</p></blockquote>
<p>The “good choice” that schools now want your children to make is to banish from view anything that might remotely resemble a gun, because the progressive goal is to brainwash impressionable young generations into considering guns themselves <em>verboten</em>, rather than understanding their centrality to American freedom and making rational distinctions about how they are used.</p>
<p>How pathetic are American adults becoming, that we actually now need school counselors to deal with students “troubled” by gun-shaped pastry? The truth of the matter is that children are not troubled by such incidents at all; it’s progressive <em>adults</em> who, in the wake of the Sandy Hook shooting and the subsequent opportunism of the Obama administration, have whipped themselves into an irrational state of pacifist horror unmatched in the history of humankind. How America’s enemies must be exulting over the extent to which the most powerful nation on earth has been emasculated by cultural Marxism’s political correctness.</p>
<p>As I wrote in <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/mark-tapson/brainwashing-kids-about-guns/">my previous piece</a> about the brainwashing of our children, the left does not want American citizens to own guns. They want to mold future generations into a helpless citizenry that entrusts its protection to the well-armed State. The radical left is hell-bent on subverting our 2<sup>nd</sup> Amendment right to bear arms, because that right stands in the way of their tyrannical ambitions.</p>
<p>Moving on to another incident: in <a href="http://townhall.com/columnists/tonykatz/2013/03/04/actor-joseph-c-phillips-teacher-threatened-my-son-questioned-his-mental-state-over-photo-of-bb-gun-n1525401">a radio interview</a> with talk show host Tony Katz, actor Joseph C. Phillips, who happens to be openly conservative, related how his fifteen-year-old son took his camera to school in Woodland Hills, California to show off a photo of himself with a BB gun. The boy’s social studies teacher, James DeLarme, saw it, “snatched” the camera out of his hand and declared that the police would have to be notified. Outrageously, he and another teacher scrolled through all the photos on the camera before returning it. Then, in front of all the students, DeLarme asked Phillips the Younger, “Do you have any animosity towards your classmates? Are you angry at anyone at school?” implying that a photo of him with a BB gun marked the teen as a loony, imminent threat.</p>
<p>The elder Phillips, who was not notified of this by the school, was rightfully outraged and wrote a letter to the principal. “Owning a BB gun is NOT an indication of mental instability!” Ah, but that’s where progressives would disagree; demonizing law-abiding gun owners as mentally and morally unstable is precisely their goal. In any case, the principal didn’t deign to respond, but a vice principal did, claiming that DeLarme had done the right thing to “secure the safety of the 3,000 students and the 250 faculty members at the school.”</p>
<p>Interestingly, as Katz points out in his Townhall article about the incident, it turns out that social studies teacher James DeLarme has strong feelings about his opposition to gun ownership. In an <a href="http://www.ecrjournalism.com/news/2013/01/10/sandy-hook-shooting-causes-minor-concern-for-school-safety/" target="_blank">interview</a> with the school paper in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook shooting, he said, “We need to discuss the number of guns we have in this country,” and asserted that our country’s position on gun control and violence is what makes such situations as Sandy Hook probable.</p>
<p>Joseph C. Phillips complained in his radio interview that “at a certain point, people have to stand up and say ‘Enough with the hysteria! Enough is enough!’ We are not going to sacrifice the dignity of our children, our own dignity… What they [the school] did is not keeping anyone safe.”</p>
<p>Obviously he will have to join Joshua’s father in reeducation camp.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/mark-tapson/brainwashing-kids-about-guns-the-sequel/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>70</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Texas School Kids Forced to Wear Burqa &#8212; on The Glazov Gang</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/threteaning-woodward-on-the-glazov-gang/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=threteaning-woodward-on-the-glazov-gang</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/threteaning-woodward-on-the-glazov-gang/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 08 Mar 2013 04:00:21 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frontpagemag.com]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[The Glazov Gang]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[burqas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[hagel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[school]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Sequester]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sharia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Texas burqa]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Texas kids]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Woodward threat]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=179693</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The troubling Sharia education in Texas' public school system. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/threteaning-woodward-on-the-glazov-gang/burqa_edited-1/" rel="attachment wp-att-180553"><img class=" wp-image-180553 alignleft" title="burqa_edited-1" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/burqa_edited-1-382x350.jpg" alt="" width="267" height="245" /></a>On this week&#8217;s Glazov Gang, Morgan Brittany, Ann-Marie Murrell and Dwight Schultz gathered to discuss <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/texas-high-school-tells-teenage-girls-to-wear-burqas/"><em>Texas School Kids Forced to Wear Burqa</em></a>. The discussion occurred in<strong> Part I</strong> and focused on the troubling Sharia education in Texas&#8217; public school system. The dialogue followed an analysis of <em>Threatening Woodward</em>, which dealt with the thought crime of a journalist in the Obama-era. <strong>Part II</strong> highlighted Hagel heading to the Pentagon, MSNBC<em> </em>hiring Axelrod and Gibbs, the upcoming CPAC 2013, and much, much more.  To watch both parts of the two part series, see below:</p>
<p><strong>Part I:</strong></p>
<p><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/VDfJ_s3oWqw" frameborder="0" width="425" height="325"></iframe></p>
<p><strong>Part II:</strong></p>
<p><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/xKcI-7bHkQc" frameborder="0" width="425" height="325"></iframe></p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank">Click here</a>.  </strong></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/threteaning-woodward-on-the-glazov-gang/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>25</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Are Guns the Problem?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/walter-williams/are-guns-the-problem/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=are-guns-the-problem</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/walter-williams/are-guns-the-problem/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 15 Jan 2013 04:10:14 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Walter Williams]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Guns]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[morals]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[school]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Second Amendment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Values]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[violence]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=173441</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The one undeniable reality that spawns the youth culture of violence. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/walter-williams/are-guns-the-problem/scotus-guns/" rel="attachment wp-att-173444"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-173444" title="Scotus Guns" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/large_gun.jpg" alt="" width="250" height="179" /></a>When I attended primary and secondary school — during the 1940s and &#8217;50s — one didn&#8217;t hear of the kind of shooting mayhem that&#8217;s become routine today. Why? It surely wasn&#8217;t because of strict firearm laws. My replica of the 1902 Sears mail-order catalog shows 35 pages of firearm advertisements. People just sent in their money, and a firearm was shipped.</p>
<p>Dr. John Lott, author of &#8220;More Guns, Less Crime,&#8221; reports that until the 1960s, some New York City public high schools had shooting clubs where students competed in citywide shooting contests for university scholarships. They carried their rifles to school on the subways and, upon arrival, turned them over to their homeroom teacher or the gym coach and retrieved their rifles after school for target practice. Virginia&#8217;s rural areas had a long tradition of high-school students going hunting in the morning before school and sometimes storing their rifles in the trunks of their cars that were parked on school grounds. Often a youngster&#8217;s 12th or 14th birthday present was a shiny new .22-caliber rifle, given to him by his father.</p>
<p>Today&#8217;s level of civility can&#8217;t match yesteryear&#8217;s. Many of today&#8217;s youngsters begin the school day passing through metal detectors. Guards patrol school hallways, and police cars patrol outside. Despite these measures, assaults, knifings and shootings occur. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, in 2010 there were 828,000 nonfatal criminal incidents in schools. There were 470,000 thefts and 359,000 violent attacks, of which 91,400 were serious. In the same year, 145,100 public-school teachers were physically attacked, and 276,700 were threatened.</p>
<p>What explains today&#8217;s behavior versus yesteryear&#8217;s? For well over a half-century, the nation&#8217;s liberals and progressives — along with the education establishment, pseudo-intellectuals and the courts — have waged war on traditions, customs and moral values. These people taught their vision, that there are no moral absolutes, to our young people. To them, what&#8217;s moral or immoral is a matter of convenience, personal opinion or a consensus.</p>
<p>During the &#8217;50s and &#8217;60s, the education establishment launched its agenda to undermine lessons children learned from their parents and the church with fads such as &#8220;values clarification.&#8221; So-called sex education classes are simply indoctrination that sought to undermine family and church strictures against premarital sex.</p>
<p>Lessons of abstinence were ridiculed and considered passé and replaced with lessons about condoms, birth control pills and abortions. Further undermining of parental authority came with legal and extralegal measures to assist teenage abortions with neither parental knowledge nor consent.</p>
<p>Customs, traditions, moral values and rules of etiquette, not laws and government regulations, are what make for a civilized society. These behavioral norms — transmitted by example, word of mouth and religious teachings — represent a body of wisdom distilled through ages of experience, trial and error, and looking at what works. The importance of customs, traditions and moral values as a means of regulating behavior is that people behave themselves even if nobody&#8217;s watching. Police and laws can never replace these restraints on personal conduct so as to produce a civilized society. At best, the police and criminal justice system are the last desperate line of defense for a civilized society. The more uncivilized we become the more laws that are needed to regulate behavior.</p>
<p>Many customs, traditions and moral values have been discarded without an appreciation for the role they played in creating a civilized society, and now we&#8217;re paying the price. What&#8217;s worse is that instead of a return to what worked, people want to replace what worked with what sounds good, such as zero-tolerance policies in which bringing a water pistol, drawing a picture of a pistol, or pointing a finger and shouting &#8220;bang-bang&#8221; produces a school suspension or arrest. Seeing as we&#8217;ve decided that we should rely on gun laws to control behavior, what should be done to regulate clubs and hammers? After all, FBI crime statistics show that more people are murdered by clubs and hammers than rifles and shotguns.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/walter-williams/are-guns-the-problem/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>44</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>The Left&#8217;s Renewed Assault on the NRA</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/joseph-klein/left-vows-to-exploit-and-politicize-newtown-tragedy/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=left-vows-to-exploit-and-politicize-newtown-tragedy</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/joseph-klein/left-vows-to-exploit-and-politicize-newtown-tragedy/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 18 Dec 2012 04:58:38 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joseph Klein]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Connecticut]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Guns]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[national rifle association]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Newtown]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[NRA]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Rights]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[school]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Second Amendment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[shooting]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=169864</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Anti-Second Amendment zealots vow to "exploit" and "politicize" the Newtown massacre.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/joseph-klein/left-vows-to-exploit-and-politicize-newtown-tragedy/jerrold_nadlerx390_5c66f/" rel="attachment wp-att-169881"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-169881" title="Jerrold_NadlerX390_5c66f" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Jerrold_NadlerX390_5c66f.jpg" alt="" width="262" height="193" /></a>While much of the country mourns the horrific death of the 26 children and adults murdered at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut at the hands of an alleged mentally unstable individual who also killed his mother, the Left lost no time in shamelessly exploiting the tragedy.  In fact, Democratic Congressman Jerrold Nadler (NY) used the word &#8220;exploit&#8221; in urging President Obama to take advantage of the Newtown massacre to prod Congress into passing stronger gun control legislation.</p>
<p>The Left&#8217;s avowed goal is to use what happened to galvanize support for cutting the Second Amendment into pieces and disarm law-abiding Americans. To accomplish that purpose, they are committed to discrediting and destroying the National Rifle Association.</p>
<p>Some unhinged leftists have taken to social media to literally call for NRA President David Keene and NRA members to be shot.</p>
<p>For those leftists who would not go quite that far, they have called for an all-out political war to take down the NRA. For example, in a clarion call to its readers, the progressive Daily Kos proclaimed:</p>
<blockquote><p>After Connecticut, we can&#8217;t stay silent and just hope that something like it will never happen again. We have to stand up to the political power of the NRA, and we have to do it right now while their support is weakest.</p></blockquote>
<p>CREDO, a progressive group, organized a march on NRA headquarters in Washington, D.C. These zealots blamed the NRA for the shooting. &#8220;To stop the senseless killing we must first stop the NRA,&#8221; they said in announcing their march. Evidently, these progressives have as little regard for the NRA&#8217;s constitutional right to petition their government under the First Amendment as they do for the right of individuals to keep and bear arms under the Second Amendment.</p>
<p>The mainstream media is also jumping on the anti-gun bandwagon. &#8220;We need to get guns and bullets and automatic weapons off the streets,&#8221; CNN anchor Don Lemon demanded during an anti-gun tirade. During the same tirade he said that mental health is a &#8220;secondary issue.&#8221;</p>
<p>Jeff Greenfield, a political analyst now with PBS who used to work for CBS News, CNN, and ABC News compared the Newtown shootings to the sinking of the Titanic, which cost 1,522 passengers and crew members their lives, and to the horrible 1911 fire that broke out in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in lower Manhattan and killed 146 garment workers, mostly young female immigrants, who were trapped inside. In both of these earlier cases, Greenfield argued, the tragedies spurred tighter regulations. Now, Greenfield wrote, it was time to  &#8220;politicize the Newtown school shooting, starting right now&#8221; and clamp down on gun ownership.</p>
<p>The progressives who demand stricter gun control measures refuse to look at the consequences of their own actions that have made it very difficult to get mentally unstable individuals off the streets and institutionalized if they represent a danger to themselves or others.  The American Civil Liberties Union is one of the main culprits.</p>
<p>While the ACLU has little use for the Second Amendment, which it has said is only &#8220;a collective right,&#8221; despite the Supreme Court&#8217;s opinion to the contrary, the ACLU endangers communities by advocating the release of potentially violent individuals into society without adequate safeguards, monitoring to make sure they are taking their meds, and intervention if necessary. The ACLU even helped defeat a bill in the Connecticut Senate that would have allowed the state to institutionalize those persons whom it had reason to believe posed a threat to themselves or others. The ACLU charged that the bill would &#8220;infringe on patients&#8217; privacy rights by expanding [the circle of] who can medicate individuals without their consent.&#8221; Did the ACLU ever stop to worry about the rights of ordinary citizens to go about their business without the risk of coming face-to-face with an unsupervised mentally deranged shooter? Obviously not. Would the children and adults killed in Newtown Connecticut be alive today if that bill had passed?  We&#8217;ll never know, thanks in part to the ACLU.</p>
<p>There is room for honest debate on whether to tighten background checks and to consider more restrictions on the sale of military-style semi-automatic rifles. But the Left&#8217;s gun prohibitionists have no interest in reasonable dialogue or in seeking a sensible solution to prevent more carnage that addresses all relevant factors including mental health rather than focus single-mindedly on gun control. They are using the slaughtered kids as props for their radical anti-Second Amendment agenda.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/joseph-klein/left-vows-to-exploit-and-politicize-newtown-tragedy/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>104</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Gun Control is Evil Misspelled</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/gun-control-is-evil-misspelled/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=gun-control-is-evil-misspelled</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/gun-control-is-evil-misspelled/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 16 Dec 2012 04:33:10 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Connecticut]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[evil]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gun Control]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Lanza]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Left]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[school]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[shooting]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[society control]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=169617</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The individual is not the problem.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/gun-control-is-evil-misspelled/gcc/" rel="attachment wp-att-169622"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-169622" title="gcc" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/gcc.jpg" alt="" width="288" height="182" /></a>If you&#8217;re the biblically minded sort, then the trouble began when a jealous Cain clubbed Abel to death, but if you&#8217;re evolutionarily minded, then it&#8217;s a &#8220;chicken and egg&#8221; question. Violence had no beginning, except perhaps in the Big Bang; it was always here, coded into the DNA.</p>
<p>The issue isn&#8217;t really guns. Guns are how we misspell evil. Guns are how we avoid talking about the ugly realities of human nature while building sandcastles on the shores of utopia.</p>
<p>The obsession with guns, rather than machetes, stone clubs, crossbows or that impressive weapon of mass death, the longbow (just ask anyone on the French side of the Battle of Agincourt) is really the obsession with human agency. It&#8217;s not about the fear of what one motivated maniac can do in a crowded place, but about the precariousness of social control that the killing sprees imply.</p>
<p>Mostly it&#8217;s about people who are sheltered from the realities of human nature trying to build a shelter big enough for everyone. A Gun Free Zone where everyone is a target and tries to live under the illusion that they aren&#8217;t. A society where everyone is drawing unicorns on colored notepaper while waiting under their desks for the bomb to fall.</p>
<p>After every shooting there are more zero tolerance policies in schools that crack down on everything from eight-year-olds making POW POW gestures with their fingers to honor students who bring pocket knives to school. And then another shooting happens and then another one and they wouldn&#8217;t happen if we just had more zero tolerance policies for everyone and everything.</p>
<p>Zero tolerance for the Second Amendment makes sense. If you ban all guns, except for those in the hands of the 708,000 police officers, the 1.5 million members of the armed forces, the countless numbers of security guards, including those who protect banks and armored cars, the bodyguards of celebrities who call for gun control, and any of the other people who need a gun to do their job, then you&#8217;re sure to stop all the shootings.</p>
<p>So long as none of those millions of people, or their tens of millions of kids, spouses, parents, grandchildren, girlfriends, boyfriends, roommates and anyone else who has access to them and their living spaces, carries out one of those shootings.</p>
<p>But this isn&#8217;t really about stopping shootings; it&#8217;s about controlling when they happen. It&#8217;s about making sure that everyone who has a gun is in some kind of chain of command. It&#8217;s about the belief that the problem isn&#8217;t evil, but individual agency, that if we make sure that everyone who has guns is following orders, then control will be asserted and the problem will stop. Or if it doesn&#8217;t stop, then at least there will be someone higher up in the chain of command to blame. Either way authority is sanctified, control or the illusion of it, maintained.</p>
<p>We&#8217;ll never know the full number of people who were killed by Fast and Furious. We&#8217;ll never know how many were killed by Obama&#8217;s regime change operation in Libya, with repercussions in Mali and Syria. But everyone involved in that was following orders. There was no individual agency, just agencies. No lone gunman who just decided to go up to a school and shoot kids. There were orders to run guns to Mexico and the cartel gunmen who killed people with those guns had orders to shoot. There was nothing random or unpredictable about it. Or as the Joker put it, &#8220;Nobody panics when things go according to plan. Even if the plan is horrifying.&#8221;</p>
<p>Gun control is the assertion that the problem is not the guns; it&#8217;s the lack of a controlling authority for all those guns. It&#8217;s the individual. A few million people with little sleep, taut nerves and PTSD are not a problem so long as there is someone to give them orders. A hundred million people with guns and no orders is a major problem. Historically though it&#8217;s the millions of people with guns who follow orders who have been more of a problem than millions of people with guns who do not.</p>
<p>Moral agency is individual. You can&#8217;t outsource it to a government and you wouldn&#8217;t want to. The bundle of impulses, the codes of character, the concepts of right and wrong, take place at the level of the individual. Organizations do not sanctify this process. They do not lift it above its fallacies, nor do they even do a very good job of keeping sociopaths and murderers from rising high enough to give orders. Organizations are the biggest guns of all, and some men and women who make Lanza look like a man of modestly murderous ambitions have had their fingers on their triggers and still do.</p>
<p>Gun control will not really control guns, but it will give the illusion of controlling people, and even when it fails those in authority will be able to say that they did everything that they could short of giving people the ability to defend themselves.</p>
<p>We live under the rule of organizers, community and otherwise, whose great faith is that the power to control men and their environment will allow them to shape their perfect state into being, and the violent acts of lone madmen are a reminder that such control is fleeting, that utopia has its tigers, and that attempting to control a problem often makes it worse by removing the natural human crowdsourced responses that would otherwise come into play.</p>
<p>The clamor for gun control is the cry of sheltered utopians believing that evil is a substance as finite as guns, and that getting rid of one will also get rid of the other. But evil isn&#8217;t finite and guns are as finite as drugs or moonshine whiskey, which is to say that they are as finite as the human interest in having them is. And unlike whiskey or heroin, the only way to stop a man with a gun is with a gun.</p>
<p>People do kill people and the only way to stop people from killing people is by killing them first. To a utopian this is a moral paradox that invalidates everything, but to everyone else, it&#8217;s just life in a world where evil is a reality, not just a word.</p>
<p>An armed society spends more time stopping evil than contemplating it. It is the disarmed society that is always contemplating it as a thing beyond its control. Helpless people must find something to think about while waiting for their lords to do something about the killing. Instead of doing something about it themselves, they blame the agency of the killer in being free to kill, rather than their own lack of agency for being unable to stop him.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank">Click here</a>.  </strong></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/gun-control-is-evil-misspelled/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>258</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Obama Pushing Federal Control of Public Schools</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/arnold-ahlert/indoctrination-sold-as-education/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=indoctrination-sold-as-education</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/arnold-ahlert/indoctrination-sold-as-education/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 10 Dec 2012 04:38:38 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[English]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Environmentalism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Indoctrination]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[literature]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obamacare]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[school]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=168570</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[How the president and his radical cohorts are coercing states to cede authority to Washington. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/arnold-ahlert/indoctrination-sold-as-education/classroom_620/" rel="attachment wp-att-168571"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-168571" title="classroom_620" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/classroom_620-450x304.jpg" alt="" width="315" height="213" /></a>The effort to turn public school classrooms into laboratories for government propaganda has reached a new milestone. <a href="http://www.corestandards.org/">Common Core State Standards in English</a> is a program already adopted by 46 states and the District of Columbia. It calls for an increase in the reading of &#8220;informational text&#8221; instead of fictional literature. When the new standards are fully implemented in 2014, nonfiction texts will comprise 50 percent of reading assignments in elementary schools, with a required increase to 70 percent by grade 12. Thus, timeless literature such as <em>Of Mice and Men,</em> or <em>Catcher in the Rye</em> will be <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/booknews/9729383/Catcher-in-the-Rye-dropped-from-US-school-curriculum.html">replaced</a> by recommended nonfiction works such as “Executive Order 13423: Strengthening Federal Environmental, Energy, and Transportation Management,” or &#8220;Recommended Levels of Insulation by the the US Environmental Protection Agency.&#8221;</p>
<p>Proponents of Common Core, including the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/common-core-state-standards-in-english-spark-war-over-words/2012/12/02/4a9701b0-38e1-11e2-8a97-363b0f9a0ab3_story.html">claim</a> U.S. students have grown used to easy reading assignments that leave them unprepared to comprehend complex nonfiction. This leaves too many students unprepared for the rigors of college and the demands of the workplace, experts say. And while some of the recommended texts are legitimate, such as Alexis de Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America,” those mentioned in the first paragraph, or a <em>New Yorker </em><a href="http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/06/01/090601fa_fact_gawande">essay</a> titled &#8220;The Cost Conundrum,&#8221; which would give students the impression that the Affordable Healthcare Act is good policy, are little more than thinly-veiled efforts to promote a progressive agenda masquerading as education.</p>
<p>Jamie Highfill, an eighth-grade English teacher at Woodland Junior High School in Fayetteville, AK reveals some of the &#8220;unintended consequences&#8221; of the rollout. “I’m struggling with this, and my students are struggling,” said the Arkansas 2011 middle school teacher of the year. “With informational text, there isn’t that human connection that you get with literature. And the kids are shutting down. They’re getting bored. I’m seeing more behavior problems in my classroom than I’ve ever seen,” she added.</p>
<p>David Coleman, the chief architect of the Common Core, who led the effort to write the standards with a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, said educators are overreacting as the standards move from concept to classroom. “There’s a disproportionate amount of anxiety,” he contended.</p>
<p>There ought to be, but not just for the concerns expressed by teachers such as Ms. Highfill. As <em>National Review&#8217;s</em> Stanley Kurtz <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/334878/obama-and-your-childs-mind-stanley-kurtz#">explains</a>, there is a good reason why control over public schools was kept out of federal hands by the Founding Fathers. They realized that one political party or ideology shaping the curriculum in public schools was a direct route to tyranny. What the Obama administration has done has conditioned Department of Education funding and regulatory waivers on state acceptance of Common Core. That such a move is constitutionally suspect at best, and another naked power grab at worst, should infuriate Americans who still believe an education is about teaching children <em>how</em> to think, not <em>what</em> to think. (Furthermore, considering the reality that this is being sold as an alternative to “easy reading assignments,” they should ask themselves how and why the public school curriculum was dumbed-down in the first place).</p>
<p>Accuracy in Media&#8217;s (AIM) Mary Grabar <a href="http://www.aim.org/special-report/terrorist-professor-bill-ayers-and-obamas-federal-school-curriculum/">reveals</a> how 48 state governors were lured into entering a contest called &#8220;Race to the Top&#8221; for a portion of $4.35 billion of funds made available by the stimulus package. &#8220;It was one of the many &#8216;crises&#8217; exploited by the Obama administration,” she writes. “While the public was focused on a series of radical moves coming in rapid-fire succession, like the health care bill and proposed trials and imprisonment of 9/11 terrorists on domestic soil, governors, worried about keeping school doors open, signed on.&#8221;</p>
<p>Far more importantly, she reveals the players involved. The educational component of Common Core is controlled by Linda Darling-Hammond, a radical left-wing educator and close colleague of William Ayers, former member of the domestic terrorist group the Weather Underground, who became a professor of education &#8212; and a friend of Barack Obama’s. Both Darling-Hammond and Ayers have advocated ending funding disparities between urban and suburban schools, ending standardized testing, and attacking “white privilege.” The big picture here is to eliminate objective measurement of knowledge and skills, and replace them with teachers offering up subjective appraisals of students’ attitudes and behavior.</p>
<p>In a 2009 article for the <em>Harvard Educational Review,</em> Darling-Hammond extolled these initiatives as the Obama administration’s “opportunity to transform our nation’s schools.” Grabar reveals what such &#8220;transformation&#8221; is intended to achieve. &#8220;When these dangerous initiatives are implemented, there will be no escaping bad schools and a radical curriculum by moving to a good suburb, or by home schooling, or by enrolling your children in private schools,&#8221; she warns.</p>
<p>Some state governors have wised up. Virginia opted out when Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell was elected. Georgia, Indiana, Utah, South Carolina, and others have also begun, or completed, the effort to do the same. Last February, Republican South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley <a href="http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/education/story/2012-04-28/common-core-education/54583192/1-">explained</a> her rationale for doing so. &#8220;Just as we should not relinquish control of education to the Federal government,&#8221; she wrote in a letter to a state lawmaker, &#8220;neither should we cede it to the consensus of other states.&#8221; U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan characterized Haley&#8217;s fear of losing control as &#8220;a conspiracy theory in search of a conspiracy.&#8221; Yet when Utah dumped the program, Duncan was far more <a href="http://truthinamericaneducation.com/uncategorized/arne-duncan-junked-common-core/">conciliatory</a>. &#8220;States have the sole right to set learning standards” he wrote in a letter.</p>
<p>Legally they do, but the federal Race to the Top (RTTT) <a href="http://www2.ed.gov/programs/racetothetop/executive-summary.pdf">application</a> says exactly the opposite, noting that any applicant is required to adopt “a set of content standards&#8230;that are substantially identical across all States in a consortium.” In other words, any states that wish to compete for RTTT school funding <em>must</em> embrace Common Core. Thus, a portion of federal funding for schools is nothing less than an effort to coerce the states into adopting a de facto national educational system. In many instances, such coercion is hardly necessary: the public school system is dominated by progressive-supporting unions who <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/list.php">contribute</a> virtually all of their campaign dollars to Democrats. Thus, the progressive agenda is already welcomed in many public schools. The Common Core curriculum is nothing less than an effort to coordinate that agenda on a national level.</p>
<p>In 2009, Bill Ayers was one of three keynote speakers at a conference <a href="http://stephen-diamond.com/?p=1581">sponsored</a> by the Renaissance Group. The other two speakers were Secretary of Education Duncan and U.S. Under Secretary of Education, Martha Kanter. The Renaissance Group is purportedly interested in finding ways to educate the &#8220;New American Student,&#8221; part of which deals with the alleged inability of white teachers to deal with the issues of poverty, diversity and multiculturalism that affect their students. While some Americans might contend that the emphasis on such obvious progressive talking points is overblown, they should still ask themselves why those in charge of overseeing the federal government&#8217;s education programs would associate with a terrorist thug whose contempt for American culture, tradition and history is well-documented.</p>
<p>Just before he was elected in 2008 President Obama <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cqN4NIEtOY">told</a> his followers, &#8220;We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.&#8221; It would appear that he and his progressive minions intend to make good on that promise, state by state, school by school&#8211;and child by child.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/arnold-ahlert/indoctrination-sold-as-education/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>33</slash:comments>
		</item>
	</channel>
</rss>

<!-- Performance optimized by W3 Total Cache. Learn more: http://www.w3-edge.com/wordpress-plugins/

Object Caching 1455/1528 objects using disk
Content Delivery Network via cdn.frontpagemag.com

 Served from: www.frontpagemag.com @ 2014-12-31 04:29:11 by W3 Total Cache -->