Are we raising the stupidest generation in American history? The statistics that you are about to read below are incredibly shocking. They indicate that U.S. high school students are basically as dumb as a rock. As you read the rest of this article, you will be absolutely amazed at the things that U.S. high school students do not know. At this point, it is really hard to argue that the U.S. education system is a success. Our children are spoiled and lazy, our schools do not challenge them and students in Europe and in Asia routinely outperform our students very badly on standardized tests. In particular, schools in America do an incredibly poor job of teaching our students subjects such as history, economics and geography that are necessary for understanding the things that are taking place in our world today. For example, according to a survey conducted by the National Geographic Society, only 37 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 can find Iraq on a map of the world. According to that same survey, 50 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 can't even find the state of New York on a map. If our students cannot even find Iraq and New York on a map, what hope is there that they will be able to think critically about the important world events of our day? (Read More.....)
It has been said that children are our future, and right now the vast majority of our children are being "educated" in public schools that are rapidly being turned into indoctrination centers and prison camps. Our children desperately need to focus on the basics such as reading, writing and math, but instead a whole host of politicians, "education officials" and teachers are constantly injecting as much propaganda as they possibly can into classroom instruction. Instead of learning how to think, our children are continually being told what to think. Not only that, our children are also being trained how to live as subservient slaves in a Big Brother police state. Today, nearly everything that children do in public schools is watched, monitored, recorded and tracked. Independent thought and free expression are greatly discouraged and are often cracked down upon harshly. If students get "out of line", instead of being sent to see the principal they are often handcuffed, arrested and taken to the police station. In addition, law enforcement authorities are using weapons such as pepper spray and tasers against young students in our public schools more than ever before. Children in U.S. public schools are not learning how to live as strong individuals in the "land of the free and the home of the brave". Rather, they are being trained how to serve a Big Brother police state where control freaks run their entire lives. If we continue to allow all of the liberty and freedom to be systematically drained out of our school children, then there is not going to be much hope for the future of this nation. (Read More.....)
America's second-largest schools district is giving students a break with a new policy ruling that homework can only count for 10% of a student’s grade.
Los Angeles is joining the growing list of school districts across the country that are downgrading the importance of time children have to spend working on assignments at home.
The idea is to allow students to spend more time with their families or on extracurricular activities such as sports or hobbies.
Parents are increasingly worried that the competition to get into good colleges is leaving their children exhausted with all their free time taken up doing hours of homework.
But teachers worry that the move penalises hard-working youngsters who are eager to improve by taking on extra studies at home.
Critics also say the Los Angeles Unified Schools District is effectively rewarding slackers who don’t bother doing their homework...[Full Article]
Is college worth it? Is a college education really worth the investment of time, money and energy? Is a college degree really worth becoming enslaved to student loan debt that will haunt you for decades? The truth is that a college education is a massive gamble. For millions of Americans it works out well, but millions of other college graduates have found themselves completely unable to get a quality job in this economy and yet they are still trapped in a nightmare of student loan debt from which there is no escape. Millions of young Americans have discovered that they have become "indentured servants" the moment they graduate. The entire system encourages our young people to take out whatever college loans they "need" without worrying how they will pay them back because a college education is such a good "investment". Once upon a time, a college education was actually an almost automatic ticket to the middle class. Today, a college education does not guarantee you anything, but for millions of Americans it does turn out to be an automatic ticket to student loan hell. (Read More.....)
Today's graduates face miserable job prospects, and experts say the student loan crisis could be worse than the credit card or housing bubbles.
June 1, 2011 |
It's the beginning of summer: warmer weather, longer days, the end of the school year. And that means graduation for thousands of young people across the U.S.; graduation with more student debt than ever before, and into a job market that is anything but promising.
Young people between the ages of 16 and 24 face an unemployment rate nearly twice that of the rest of the population, according to data from the Economic Policy Institute. 2010's 18.4 percent rate for youth was the worst in the 60 years that economists have collected such data. ColorLines notes that in 2010, 8.4 percent of white college graduates were unemployed, 13.8 percent of Latino graduates, and a dismal 19 percent of black graduates.
Those bright, shiny new degrees simply aren't worth the paper they're printed on all too often. The cost of a college degree is up some 3,400 percent since 1972, but as we all know too well, household incomes haven't increased by anything close to that number -- not for the bottom 99 percent of us, anyway...[Full Article]
Lansing— Swift and severe changes are coming to Detroit Public Schools.
State education officials have ordered Robert Bobb to immediately implement a financial restructuring plan that balances the district's books by closing half of its schools, swelling high school class sizes to 60 students and consolidating operations...
ARVADA, Colo. -- An 11-year-old Arvada boy was arrested and hauled away in handcuffs for drawing stick figures in school, something his therapist told him to do.
His parents say they understand what he did was inappropriate, but are outraged by the way Arvada Police handled the case. The parents do not want their real names used...
Officials in the Anaheim school district in southern California are taking a new technological approach to cutting high school truancy: GPS devices.
According to the Orange County Register, students in seventh or eighth grade who cut class more than a few times can avoid "continuation school" or juvenile prosecution by agreeing to carry a handheld GPS device the size of a cell phone. Then, at critical times of day where they might skip out -- like on the way to school and at lunch -- they are supposed to enter a code that tells officials where they are...
Skipping class, though frowned upon, is practically a rite of passage for young teens, but thanks to an elaborate system involving GPS being used by some school districts, it is practically being eliminated completely.
The Orange County Register reports that the Anaheim Union High School District in California is currently participating in a pilot program which involves using a combination of Global Positioning System technology, automated telephone reminders, and one-on-one coaching to cut down on truancy. It's similar to programs being used in Baltimore and San Antonio...
The Anaheim Union High School District in California is currently cracking down on students who have a penchant for missing classes. The Cali school district is currently taking part in a pilot program in association with The Orange County Register Reports, which will be tracking lackadaisical students who have 4 or more unexcused absences throughout the year. How will they track them? Through a complex GPS system that works in conjunction with automated telephone reminders, coaching, and student responses. According to reports, 7th and 8th grade students will be enrolled in the Anaheim program who have a history of cutting class. These kids will receive a GPS tracking device, which will need to be used on a regular basis.
“Each morning on schooldays, [students will] get an automated phone call reminding them that they need to get to school on time. Then, five times a day, they are required to enter a code that tracks their locations – as they leave for school, when they arrive at school, at lunchtime, when they leave school and at 8 p.m...
A teacher at a Chicago school did not act outrageously in screening part of the movie “Brokeback Mountain” — including gay sex scenes — to a class of seventh- and eighth-graders, a jury has found in rejecting an unusual emotional injury lawsuit.
Jessica Turner, a 12-year-old seventh-grader at the time, and her grandparents claimed she suffered “severe emotional distress” as a result of seeing the R-rated Oscar winner at Ashburn Community Elementary School. They sued the substitute teacher, Marnetta Buford, and the Chicago Board of Education in May 2007 for at least $500,000 in damages.
Buford showed the film in, of all things, a math class, allegedly after warning students that “what happens in Ms. Buford's class stays in Ms. Buford's class.” The school allows only G-rated movies to be shown to students and requires teachers to get the principal's permission before screening a film.
But after a three-day trial, On Point has learned, a Cook County Circuit Court jury last month cleared Buford and the school board of liability, finding the teacher's behavior did not meet the “outrageousness” standard of claims for intentional infliction of emotional distress.
According to trial testimony, Buford screened the first 44 minutes or so of the film during the final period of the school day on May 26, 2006. That segment includes the film's most explicit scene as the two cowboys played by Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal begin a homosexual relationship while herding sheep in the Wyoming wilderness.
But perhaps crucially, there was no evidence to support the plaintiffs' allegation that Buford “deliberately screened only the sexual segments of 'Brokeback Mountain.'”
“The sex scenes were not specially screened or specially highlighted,” Joseph D. Gergeni, an assistant general counsel for the school board, tells On Point. “They were shown in the context of the movie as a whole.”
The children in Buford's class viewed two scenes of Ennis Del Mar (Ledger) and Jack Twist (Gyllenhaal) making love in their tent. During the first 44 minutes of the film, there are also glimpses of male nudity along with some drinking and swearing.
“[S]ubjecting Jessica to view an 'R' rated movie with adult themes and strong homosexual content was extreme and outrageous,” Turner and her grandparents said in their complaint.
In Illinois, the legal test for intentional infliction of emotional distress “is met only if the distress inflicted is so severe that no reasonable person could be expected to endure it.” Buford did not testify in the trial, leaving her motives for showing “Brokeback Mountain” unclear.
“The evidence was that Ms. Buford did not seek permission [from the principal],” says Lisa Decker Hugé, co-counsel for the board. “No one knew she was going to show the movie.”
The jury wasn't swayed by the plaintiffs' argument that Turner and her classmates were particularly vulnerable at their age. The evidence of emotional trauma was also somewhat flimsy — Turner had an initial visit with a counselor but did not return for a therapy appointment.
“The counselor testified that she was not qualified to make a diagnosis,” Hugé says.
A judge dismissed Turner's other claims for negligent hiring and false imprisonment before the trial. Her lawyer asked the jury for only $40,000 in damages.
School police officers in Texas are doling out more tickets to children as young as 6, who under past disciplinary practices would have been sent to the principal's office instead, according to a report by a Texas nonprofit.
"Disrupting class, using profanity, misbehaving on a school bus, student fights, and truancy once meant a trip to the principal's office. Today, such misbehavior results in a Class C misdemeanor ticket and a trip to court for thousands of Texas students and their families each year," says the Appleseed Texas report (PDF). It examined data from 22 of the state's largest school districts and eight municipal courts.
Over six years, school police issued 1,000 tickets to elementary school children in 10 school districts...
In Texas school districts, hundreds of tickets have been given to students, turning schoolyard shenanigans into Class C misdemeanors. Children as young as 6 years old have been ticketed, reported Dallas News.
The report was authored by Deborah Fowler, legal director of Texas Appleseed. She said student misbehavior that would typically be handled by school management are now being referred to campus police...
[Webmaster - This is not "cute" or "funny" or being implemented to elicit "good behavior". This is a behavior modification technique of indoctrination and standardization designed to turn students into servile "good citizens" to the state. These children will be cowed into submission, learn to love Big Brother, and never question the supposed "authority" of the state.]
Detroit — Detroit Public Schools would close nearly half of its schools in the next two years, and increase high school class sizes to 62 by the following year, under a deficit-reduction plan filed with the state.
The plan, part of a monthly update Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb gives the Department of Education, was filed late Monday to provide insight into Bobb's progress in his attempt to slash a $327 million deficit in the district to zero over the next several years. Under it, the district would slim down from 142 schools now to 72 during 2012-13...
President Obama's Department of Education, where Secretary Arne Duncan appointed a longtime homosexual activist who was part of the sometimes-violent Act Up organization to head his "safe schools" office, now is proposing to force colleges and universities to submit to a political agenda, according to critics.
Under the proposed federal rule change, institutions of higher education "would be required to have a document of state approval … to operate an educational program, including programs leading to a degree or certificate," explained an analysis by Shapri D. LoMaglio for the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities.
"I think it is the greatest threat to academic freedom in our lifetime," former Sen. Bill Armstrong, now president of Colorado Christian University, told WND. "But only if you love liberty."...
The United States' ability to compete globally in science and technology is on a "perilous path," said a new report delivered Sept. 23 on Capitol Hill to a bipartisan group of policymakers, industry leaders, and academics.
American students continue to perform poorly in math and science compared to their counterparts abroad, the report claims. Though the United States is still a leader in innovation and produces a disproportionate share of the world's wealth, other countries such as China are investing heavily in research and education and, according to the new report, threatening America's competitiveness...
MercuryNews.com The Associated Press Posted: 08/18/2010 08:42:13 AM PDT
RICHMOND, Calif.—California officials are outfitting preschoolers in Contra Costa County with tracking devices they say will save staff time and money.
The system was introduced Tuesday. When at the school, students will wear a jersey that has a small radio frequency tag. The tag will send signals to sensors that help track children's whereabouts, attendance and even whether they've eaten or not.
School officials say it will free up teachers and administrators who previously had to note on paper files when a child was absent or had eaten.
Sung Kim of the county's employment and human services department said the system could save thousands of hours of staff time and pay for itself within a year.
It cost $50,000 and was paid by a federal grant.
[Webmaster - TRACK/TRACE/DATABASE... Next stop is the IMPLANTABLE microchip. They always target the most vulnerable members of society first...the children...the elderly...]
ADELAIDE, Australia (AP) — A high school teacher who assigned her class to plan a terrorist attack that would kill as many innocent Australians as possible had no intent to promote terrorism, education officials said Wednesday.
The Year 10 students at Kalgoorlie-Boulder Community High School in the state of Western Australia were given the assignment last week in a class on contemporary conflict and terrorism...
The federal prosecutor investigating the case of a Pennsylvania school district that spied on its students via remote-controlled laptop cameras says the school district won't face criminal charges in the case.
US Attorney Zane David Memenger said in a statement that there is no evidence the Lower Merion School District, in suburban Philadelphia, had any criminal intent when it remotely activated cameras on laptops issued to students.
"For the government to prosecute a criminal case, it must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the person charged acted with criminal intent," Memeger said, as quoted at Information Week. "We have not found evidence that would establish beyond a reasonable doubt that anyone involved had criminal intent."
The issue came to light in February, when the parents of Harriton High School student Blake Robbins filed a class-action lawsuit alleging the school district invaded Robbins' privacy by filming him in his home through his school-issued laptop. It emerged later that the school district photographed Robbins 400 times in a two-week period, in various states of undress and even during his sleep.
Investigators found that the remote-controlled cameras took some 56,000 pictures of Lower Merion School District students over a two-year period, with the cameras sometimes left on for weeks at a time...
Most young Americans entering university this year can't write in cursive, think email is too slow, that Beethoven's a dog and Michelangelo a computer virus, according to an annual list compiled by two academics at a US college.
To students who will get their bachelor's degrees in 2014, Czechoslovakia has never existed, Fergie is a pop singer, not a duchess; Clint Eastwood is a sensitive movie director, not Dirty Harry; and John McEnroe stars in TV ads, not on the tennis court, Beloit College's "Mindset" list says.
The Mindset list was first compiled in 1998, for the class of 2002, by Beloit humanities professor Tom McBride and former public affairs director Ron Nief.
It was intended as a reminder to faculty at the university that references quickly become dated, but quickly evolved to become a hugely popular annual list that gives a snapshot of how things have changed, and chronicles key cultural and political events that have shaped a generation...
A public community college in California has set up a scholarship fund for immigrant students — including illegal immigrants. The $2,500 scholarship has sparked anger by some, including at least one lawmaker who is threatening to cut off federal funding to the school.
Orange County's Santa Ana College says the controversial new memorial scholarship will be funded by private donations and honors former student Tan Ngoc Tran, a student leader and immigrant-rights activist who transferred to Brown University before she was killed by a drunk driver on May 15.
Students eligible for the new scholarship must have a 3.0 or higher grade point average, demonstrate a financial need and must also be trying to become an American citizen. Those eligible include students holding green cards, students who have permanent residency — and illegal, undocumented immigrants.
The scholarship was announced by the Santa Ana College Foundation at an informal memorial service for Tran held at Santa Ana College on Wednesday, said Laurie Weidner, spokeswoman for the Rancho Santiago Community College District, which governs Santa Ana College.
Weidner repeatedly emphasized to FoxNews.com that no public funds would be used for the scholarship.
But Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., whose district includes the taxpayer-funded Santa Ana College, says that isn't quite true — because the scholarship diverts resources from Americans in need of education funds...
system that works in conjunction with automated telephone reminders, coaching, and student responses. According to reports, 7th and 8th grade students will be enrolled in the Anaheim program who have a history of cutting class. These kids will receive a GPS tracking device, which will need to be used on a regular basis.
