Feb 14, 2023 | Education
John Andreson speaks with Professor James Tooley, Vice-Chancellor at the University of Buckingham, for an insightful conversation about the role of education in the modern age, the relationship between parental and government oversight in education systems, the differences between public and private education, ideological uniformity in universities and more
. James Tooley is Professor of Educational Entrepreneurship and Policy at one of the UK’s only private universities, the University of Buckingham, where he was also appointed Vice Chancellor in 2020. In his previous role at Newcastle University, Tooley directed the E.G. West Centre which is dedicated to advancing choice, competition, and entrepreneurship in education. In the early 2000s, Tooley took 5 years of unpaid leave to foster entrepreneurial projects in education in developing countries, led by his research on how to provide high quality education for a lower cost. Tooley’s ground breaking research has demonstrated the benefits of low-cost private education, with his work winning numerous prestigious awards and international recognition. James has also written numerous critically-acclaimed books on the topic, including The Beautiful Tree, Reclaiming Education and most recently Really Good Schools: Global Lessons for High Caliber, Low Cost Education.
Nov 15, 2022 | Education
Before the midterm elections, in an attack on his critics President Biden writes that once one takes government money, they no longer can criticize him, implying hypocrisy of his critics.
Yet, the Payroll relief program was instituted because successful, prosperous businesses were put out of business by the government’s lockdown orders at the behest of the CDC.
So, Mr. Biden, you tax the hell out of productive people, shut down their jobs with mandates/lockdowns, loan them some of their money back, while taking a cut to pay off the people who got you elected, cry it’s a “democracy,” and then say people have no right to speak?
US college is expensive & wasteful because the govt subsidizes inefficiency with federally-backed student loans. Time to cancel that program too.
Oct 3, 2022 | Education
From Pacific Legal Foundation:
[On September 7, 2022, the]…Pacific Legal Foundation filed suit against the U.S. Department of Education to block its illegal move to cancel more than $500 billion in student loan debt.
“Congress did not authorize the executive branch to unilaterally cancel student debt,” said Caleb Kruckenberg, an attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation. “It’s flagrantly illegal for the executive branch to create a $500 billion program by press release, and without statutory authority or even the basic notice and comment procedure for new regulations.”
In August 2022, President Biden announced his plan to cancel up to $20,000 in student loan debt per person for more than 40 million Americans. The Department of Education’s justification relies on an inapplicable, 20-year-old law: The HEROES Act, which was intended as aid to veterans and their families, allows government to modify student loans during times of war or national emergency.
Whatever the motives of the president for transferring massive amounts of student debt to taxpayers in a rushed, haphazard manner, it certainly seems like an election year ploy. That is one of the predictable effects of the president usurping Congress’ power to make law. Not since President Trump imposed a nationwide eviction moratorium before the 2020 elections has a president abused his power so profoundly.
“Cancelling student debt is unjust to those who have paid their loans or never took any. It will only lead to more calls for government intervention in education at taxpayers’ expense,” said Steve Simpson, senior attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation. “Loan cancellation will make Americans more divided, as those who paid their loans—or never went to college—will have good reason to think that we no longer have a government of, by, and for the people.”
Plaintiff Frank Garrison is a public interest attorney — now at Pacific Legal Foundation — who believes the rule of law and separation of powers are bulwarks for liberty and against centralized government power. As a part of an existing, congressionally authorized Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program, he will receive debt forgiveness after making 10 years of payments on his loans. The challenged program will stick him with a new state tax bill which he would not have under his existing PSLF program.
For decades, Pacific Legal Foundation has fought for the constitutional separation of powers, the main structural protections against abuses of power that undermine freedom. PLF has won five separation of powers cases at the U.S. Supreme Court.
The case is Garrison v. U.S. Department of Education, filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana. PLF has filed a temporary restraining order to prevent the loan cancellation from going into effect.
Jun 7, 2022 | Education
Photo Credit : Gage Skidmore
From “DeSantis requires Florida students to learn about ‘victims of communism’”:
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed legislation Monday requiring Sunshine State students to learn about the “Victims of Communism” in high school.
Beginning in the 2023-2024 academic year, high school students enrolled in US government courses will get at least 45 minutes of instruction each November 7 describing how “victims suffered under these regimes through poverty, starvation, migration, systemic lethal violence, and suppression of speech.”
As an advocate of capitalism, I applaud Governor Ron DeSantis’s call to teach students the evils of communism.
As an advocate of capitalism, I hope those Democrats displeased with teaching their children the evils of communism advocate for the separation of education and state.
State schools are communism.
“Free education for all children in government schools.” — Karl Marx, Plank #10 Communist Manifesto
– MDC
May 8, 2022 | Education
A very important essay on the gradual insertion of Marxist gender indoctrination in American schools over the past decade, and its goal of placing a wedge between children and their parents to replace the family with the almighty state. There is no such right to hijack schools and indoctrinate five-year-olds in Marxist gender ideology contrary to the wishes of parents. Such “love” is hatred of children.
From “Sex and the Schools, or, An Essay You Don’t Want to Read“:
The primary function of teachers today is no longer to be the transmitters of knowledge but to serve as agents of social and political change. This is what they are taught to be in the teacher-training institutions or the so-called “ed” schools. It is a well-known fact that America’s Education Deep State (i.e., federal and state education departments, the teacher-training institutions, the teachers’ unions, curriculum designers, textbook publishers, local school boards, and even now the College Board which administers the SAT), has invested enormous time and resources in pushing the ideology and agenda of what is often called cultural Marxism and what is more narrowly known as “Critical Theory.”
[…]
Sex in the schools—by which I mean the sexualization of children on issues related to sexual orientation and gender identity—is America’s twenty-first century kulturkampf. This is the subject about which very clear lines have been drawn, and this is where the final cultural battle of our time is to be fought.
[…]
The battlefront comes down to two core questions: first, who shall determine the sexual mores taught to America’s young children—parents or government teachers, and, second, what sex- and gender-related values should be taught to children in America’s government schools?
And yet these fundamental questions still don’t quite capture what’s at stake in this conflict. There’s an even deeper, metaphysical question that represents the new battleground between parents and America’s Education Establishment: What is the sex-gender “identity” of each and every child? To put the issue in even simpler terms, the question is: what is a boy, and what is a girl?
For tens of thousands of years, the answers to these two questions were self-evidently obvious the moment a child was born. Today, however, the answers are uncertain until the child answers them with the assistance of government school teachers and administrators. The question is no longer settled by nature and science and nurtured by parents.
To put a sharper edge on the matter, the question might be: how is it that 9-year-old girls can be encouraged by school officials to take puberty blockers and 15-year-old girls can be encouraged to begin a course of testosterone treatments and 17-year-old girls can be encouraged to ready themselves for double mastectomies without their parents’ knowledge and permission?
We have entered a Brave New World. This is the penultimate stage of western nihilism.
Read the rest.
Apr 11, 2022 | Education
Florida’s so-called “Don’t say gay” bill is a parent right’s bill that doesn’t say “don’t say gay.”
Here is what it does say: http://laws.flrules.org/2022/22 (Download PDF)
Here is the contentious “Don’t Say Gay” portion of the just over 3-page bill:
3. Classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.
Charlotte Cushman explains the uproar in Grooming Our Children: We Need to Fight Back.
