Pajamas Media

46 Comments

1. elvis:

Your stand is impressive.I wish parents understood what is going on. It is obvious to note that many many so called academics wish they were Ayres, but only if you take a moment to look.
Colleges are not places for children. They have been ruined by these self serving radicals.

Mar 10, 2009 - 4:13 am 2. Craig:

“Ayers had been invited by the University of Nebraska’s College of Education for his expertise on urban education.”

And that expertise is what exactly? Making bombs in dense urban areas? Like say…Greenwich village?

He’s an urban THUG. Pure and simple.

Mar 10, 2009 - 4:24 am 3. maurice:

It would be a great service to parents and (deserving) post-secondary students all over North America if someone put together comprehensive lists of colleges and universities that were NOT controlled and directed by leftists. They could then be circulated to media outletslike PJM whose readers/audience would make good use of them.

Besides, how long could they be?

Mar 10, 2009 - 4:56 am 4. Surf66:

Had I to do it over again: I would NEVER have scrimped, refinanced, worked two jobs …done any of the stuff I did getting my 3 kids through college….The hell of it is…Incompetence in education started for them in the first grade. What a waste.

Mar 10, 2009 - 5:38 am 5. Yvonne McClain:

Concerning our Schools, most children attending the 8th.grade in school is not taught to any degree our USA Constitution.
And forget about children individually having and expressing their ideas,thoughts,actions that’s a thinking of the past.
One example,try this simple following question …..
Just ask any young person if Obama presented a REAL birth certificate first for proof of USA birth,nada.

Mar 10, 2009 - 5:55 am 6. Wolla Dalbo:

Like many of the radicals of the 1960’s, Bill Ayers–after ten years on the run for crimes committed as a Weatherman urban terrorist (26 bombings, four innocent people dead, three Weatherman killed when a huge, homemade anti-personnel nail bomb exploded in their “bomb making factory” and not, as intended, at a NCO dance at Ft. Dix) and after evading trial and punishment because of “prosecutorial misconduct”–continued the “revolution by other means” by embedding himself in academia (see Ayers and his wife ex-Weatherman Bernadine address a 2007 reunion of some 1960 SDS radicals here, http://hotair.com/archives/2008/08/19/what-is-university-of-illinois-hiding/).

Once situated–with considerable help from his wealthy, politically connected father, the ex-chairman of Chicago’s Con Edison (see an outline of the life of Tom Ayers, the “Godfather” of Chicago politics and his incredible web of connections here http://tinyurl.com/5689qk)–as the Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Ayers become a force in Chicago politics and his wife in Chicago’s juvenile justice system and Ayers started to re-write the textbooks and curriculums that are used in college Education departments all over the United States to train elementary school teachers (see http://www.city-journal.org/html/16_3_ed_school.html and here, http://www.city-journal.org/2008/eon0423ss.html).

Ayers approach is modeled after that of his teacher Maxine Greene and her “”critical pedagogy.”

Says writer Sol Stein in the City Journal (cited above):

“As Ayers wrote later, he took fire from Greene’s lectures on how the “oppressive hegemony” of the capitalist social order “reproduces” itself through the traditional practice of public schooling—critical pedagogy’s fancy way of saying that the evil corporations exercise thought control through the schools.”

“It hadn’t occurred to Ayers that an ed-school professor could speak or write as an authentic American radical. “There are vast dislocations in industrial towns, erosions of trade unions; there is little sign of class consciousness today,” Greene had proclaimed in the Harvard Education Review. “Our great cities are burnished on the surfaces, building high technologies, displaying astonishing consumer goods. And on the side streets, in the crevices, in the burnt-out neighborhoods, there are the rootless, the dependent, the sick, the permanently unemployed. There is little sense of agency, even among the brightly successful; there is little capacity to look at things as if they could be otherwise.”
Greene told future teachers that they could help change this bleak landscape by developing a “transformative” vision of social justice and democracy in their classrooms. Her vision, though, was a far cry from the democratic optimism of the Founding Fathers, Abraham Lincoln, and Martin Luther King Jr., which most parents would endorse. Instead, critical pedagogy theorists nurse a rancorous view of an America in which it is always two minutes to midnight and a knock on the door by the thought police is imminent. The education professors feel themselves anointed to use the nation’s K–12 classrooms to resist this oppressive system. Thus Maxine Greene urged teachers not to mince words with children about the evils of the existing social order. They should portray “homelessness as a consequence of the private dealings of landlords, an arms buildup as a consequence of corporate decisions, racial exclusion as a consequence of a private property-holder’s choice.” In other words, they should turn the little ones into young socialists and critical theorists.

All music to Bill Ayers’s ears. The ex-Weatherman glimpsed a new radical vocation. He dreamed of bringing the revolution from the streets to the schools. And that’s exactly what he has managed to do.”

“… One of his (Ayers) several books on the moral imperative of teaching for social justice is a bestseller in ed-school courses. Like many other tenured and well-heeled radicals, Ayers keeps hoping for a revolutionary upheaval that will finally bring down American capitalism and imperialism. But now, instead of planting bombs in bathrooms, he has been planting the seeds of resistance and rebellion in America’s future teachers, who will then pass on the lessons to the students in their classrooms.

Future teachers signing up for Ayers’s course “On Urban Education” can read these exhortations from the course description on the professor’s website:

“Homelessness, crime, racism, oppression—we have the resources and knowledge to fight and overcome these things.”

“We need to look beyond our isolated situations, to define our problems globally. We cannot be child advocates . . . in Chicago or New York and ignore the web that links us with the children of India or Palestine.”
“In a truly just society there would be a greater sharing of the burden, a fairer distribution of material and human resources.”

For another course, titled “Improving Learning Environments,” Ayers proposes that teachers “be aware of the social and moral universe we inhabit and . . . be a teacher capable of hope and struggle, outrage and action, a teacher teaching for social justice and liberation.”

When your child comes home from school and says that America sucks and is an oppressive, capitalist, warmonger, imperialist nation you now know where it is coming from.

Mar 10, 2009 - 6:10 am 7. John Eyster:

Holding a teaching cirtificate should be an automatic disqualifier from ever being permitted to teach. Sorry, but that’s just the short of it.

Mar 10, 2009 - 6:34 am 8. Sissy Willis:

As Pope Benedict XVI himself said back when he was Cardinal Ratzinger, “the 1968 revolution” turned into “a radical attack on human freedom and dignity, a deep threat to all that is human.”

Mar 10, 2009 - 6:49 am 9. JFM:

Simple solution:

When a teacher spends your $$$, be they tax or private, for indoctrinating instead of teaching sue his a… and the one of the institution employing him.

When a teacher wastes your children’s school or university time indoctrinating instead of teaching sue him and the institution employing him on the basis they will get worse jobs due to the time wasted.

Mar 10, 2009 - 7:47 am 10. Roger Godby:

That Ayers’ drool is to be released as a graphic novel is quite fitting. Considering most of the ed school types I’ve worked and studied with, that might be the best way of getting through to the thick majority of them, other than a DVD version.

If Ayers endorses physical movements to augment the learning process, maybe a Wii version isn’t far away. Don your ideological armor to battle with Comrade Ayers against The Man, The Establishment (a particularly challenging enemy since it has become Ayers and his pals), and the bitter, religion-clinging, gun-clutching, jobless, xenophobic Wal*Mart shoppers who are nevertheless probably more civil and honest than Ayers himself.

Mar 10, 2009 - 7:53 am 11. Wolla Dalbo:

Rahim Emmanuel, rabid pit bull White House Chief of Staff, recently said that “You should never let a crisis go to waste”

It is our present economic crisis–initiated by problems in our housing sector due primarily to laws passed by Democrats—the Community Reinvestment Act comes to mind–and made much worse by the actions of Democratic members of Congress like Rep. Barney Frank and Sen. Chris Dodd, who pushed for ever more “subprime loans” and blocked any attempts to investigate and rein in Fannie and Freddie, and then made into an even bigger “crisis” by Obama’s doom mongering–that Obama and the Democrats in Congress are taking advantage of to pass their enormous legislative and spending bills designed to virtually nationalize the energy, education and health care sectors, transfer massive amounts of taxpayer’s money to the government, vastly increase the budget and the size of government, reduce the percentage of citizens who pay no taxes from 38% to 50% and, incidentally, bring back massive welfare rolls, quadruple the deficit, and remake America into a Socialist country.

It was very noteworthy that Obama’s first address to Congress focused on three areas that Obama said got us into the bind we are in, and are in need of wholesale reform and massively increased spending: education, energy and health care.

This is an odd list of culprits, indeed.

Certainly, high oil prices have not helped our economy, but our economic meltdown started in the housing sector, with subprime mortgages, and then spread to other financial sectors, so pinning our present crisis on the energy sector doesn’t wash. The other two culprits Obama pointed to, education and health care, made even less sense, for neither one of these sectors had been pinpointed by analysts as major sources for our current economic meltdown.

As my comment on Ayers above noted, Ayers has been busily working to lay out a far left hate America curriculum to indoctrinate the teachers who teach students in K-12, and has been pretty successful thus far. Imagine how much more successful the current crop of Ayers-influenced teachers will be when the government has massively increased its control over education.

In basically nationalizing health care, which–one way or another–is one sixth of our entire economy, Obama and Co. take a commanding position astride our entire economy.

Education i.e. Propaganda, Health Care, Energy—once the massively increased Obama government sinks its claws into these sectors, it will never let go, and it will effectively control our lives.
,

Mar 10, 2009 - 8:04 am 12. Wolla Dalbo:

P.S. I meant to say that Obama’s budget “increases” the percentage of those paying no taxes from the present 38% up to 50%; bet this “free ride” crew will be fervent Obama supporters.

Mar 10, 2009 - 8:08 am 13. Middleman:

Well no teacher should be indoctrinating students with their own opinions, but honestly how many conservatives are going to work in academia, be it K-12 or Universities? Football coaches don’t count. Instead of being John Galts they get paid a meager income to teach kids stuff. The losers!

Mar 10, 2009 - 8:30 am 14. Boots:

Do all the teachers and other “useful idiots” working for CHANGE as articulated by Bill Ayers, understand what that change really means? The truly rich & elite like Ayers will be able to weather the revolution if it comes, since the will be directing the action, but the rest of us will be wiped out. Ayers himself thought that 25 million Americans might need to be sent off to re-education camps or worse.

It reminds me of what Tom Wolfe wrote about Leonard Bernstein’s hosting of a party for the Black Panthers back in 70’s……
http://www.tomwolfe.com/RadicalChicExcerpt.html

Leonard & his wife threw a party for the Panthers, which was attended by NYC’s elite. Tom Wolfe wasn’t originally invited but managed to get himself in the door through his magazine connections. The Panthers got up and spoke about why these rich people ought to donate money to the Panthers to finance the coming revolution that would destroy the very people in the room who were being asked to donate the money. These people were so dumb they thought society would be destroyed but somehow they themselves would be spared. The Panthers were standing there telling them they would be offed, and Tom Wolfe’s writing conveys his amazement that nobody in the room (except for himself and the Panthers) understands the very clear message being delivered.

Mar 10, 2009 - 8:30 am 15. Charles Williams:

“Such self-aggrandizement occurs in his other books — and the fluffy style does indeed support the speculation that he was the ghost writer of Obama’s two autobiographies.”

Jack Cashill wrote the first serious article considering this possibility. http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/who_wrote_dreams_from_my_fathe_1.html

“Shy of a confession by those involved, I will not be able to prove conclusively that Obama did not write this book. As shall be seen, however, there are only two real possibilities: one is that Obama experienced a near miraculous turnaround in his literary abilities; the second is that he had major editorial help, up to and including a ghostwriter.”
“The weight of the evidence overwhelming favors the latter conclusion and strongly suggests who that ghostwriter is. In that this remains something of a work in progress, I am willing to test my hypothesis against any standard of proof and appreciate any and all good leads.”

Has any serious research or investigative reporting been applied to the question? I was interested in the question during the campaign because I wanted to know Mr. Obama’s true beliefs. Now the question goes to his honesty as well, after repeated denials of a close relationship to Mr. Ayers.

Mar 10, 2009 - 8:31 am 16. Chemman:

Many of you still don’t get it, “Teacher Colleges” don’t train teachers to teach in Colleges they train teachers for K-12 classrooms. This is where the change agents do all the damage. To you good conservative and or religious parents the few hours a day you interact with your children pale in comparison to the 35 – 40 hours per week the change agents get them. I am a retired conservative high school science teacher. I spent most of my career at one high school that had a teaching staff that averaged about 125 teachers of which an average of 5 were conservatives. We believed in competition and achievement as the basis for setting up our classrooms while the rest were into touchy-feely for awarding grades. Heed well this warning you do not lose your children to college professors, they are already lost before they ever reach college. The entire foundation that the professor builds on was laid in place under your very noses by change agents in K-12. I hate to be so blunt but it is the truth. If you want to save your children and culture then you need to do it yourself. Consider Homeschooling.

Mar 10, 2009 - 9:06 am 17. Wolla Dalbo:

What approach might President Obama take in trying to “fix” our educational system, which he strangely cites as one of the three major culprits that got us into today’s economic crisis? During the campaign, Obama made a speech in which he staked out a claim to be the “Education President.” Perhaps it might be wise to see just what kind of educational philosophy is congenial to him, what kind of world view Obama might want to inculcate in our children.

One good indication might be Obama’s work at the Director of the Annenberg Challenge of Chicago, a four year $110 million dollar program meant to improve Chicago’s abysmal school system. First, we might want to note that all those who have examined this effort agree that it was a total failure.

Next, we might note that the challenge was won for Chicago by the grant proposal written by unrepentant ex-Weatherman and urban terrorist Bill Ayers, who founded the Challenge in Chicago and who, along with Michelle Obama, was involved in the hiring of the totally inexperienced 33 year old Obama as its Director (http://sunspot.mercedsunstar.com/?q=node/4880). Thereafter, Obama and Ayers worked closely together on the Challenge for the next four or five years, with Obama examining grant proposals; selecting some, rejecting others. What kind of grant proposals did Obama favor?

Well, according to what those researching the Challenge papers–just recently opened up for scrutiny—have found so far, some grant money went to:

The Rev. Jeremiah “God Damn America” Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ to carry on; no doubt, their Black Liberation Theology oriented church work.

Money also went to the Arab American Action Network, run by Obama’s friend and “ex-PLO operative” Rashid Khalidi.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars went to the “Small Schools Workshop,” founded by Ayers in 1992 and run by hard core Maoist Mike Klonsky, a former SDS radical and close friend of Ayers, to run a “Peace School.”( http://tinyurl.com/6qxr7v)

The “South Shore Village Cooperative” won money to teach school teachers how to celebrate “Juneteenth,” a June 19 holiday celebrating the abolition of slavery in Texas. Said the grant application, “Negroes celebrate Juneteenth instead of the Fourth of July, as their national independence day.”

But a grant application from the Chicago Algebra Project was rejected.

In other words, Obama, who was in charge of grant selection, gave money for many far left, ideologically and Black identity oriented programs like the teaching of Juneteenth as a substitute for Blacks for the 4th of July but other, more straightforward proposals, just geared to academic improvement, like the Chicago Algebra Project, were turned down.

Perhaps Bill Ayers view of education can best be summed up by a November 2006 speech he gave in Venezuela, when in approving Marxist President Hugo Chavez “education reforms” Ayers declared, “La educacion es Revolucion!”( http://tinyurl.com/696u2y). My guess is that Obama believes that “education is revolution” too.

Mar 10, 2009 - 9:15 am 18. james:

Bill Ayers and I are the same age. I went to college from 1966 to 1970: right through the putrid belly of the rotting beast. Direct experience is required to understand certain things, like car wrecks or getting shot at, or coming of age in the Sixties.
Ayers and the other savages who ruined the sixties made a promise to take a “long walk through the institutions.” They have done so, and the education institution was the first one they picked on, and they have conquered it totally. There is no escape, except to cut off the money. It’s the only thing that will work, because they will never go away and they will never change, and they will never allow anyone in who objects to them. Never.

Mar 10, 2009 - 10:01 am 19. Keith W. Brown:

Fools like Ayers & his ilk are why we will NOT allow our kids to go to any college unless it is a Christian one that we have investigated quite thoroughly. This kind of education at our colleges & unis are why our nation is so screwed up now.

Mar 10, 2009 - 10:12 am 20. TurfMonster:

“one finds many professors whose areas of interest include “representations of diversity in children’s and young adult literature,” “gender issues in science, mathematics, and technology,” “cooperative learning,” and “identity development of Caribbean students.” These education professors also specialize in such things as “postcolonial theory,” “black feminist theory,” “poststructuralism,” “peace education,” and “queer theory.””

Through our government (at least when we have the power to do so), we need to go into our public colleges and universities and have the people who do research on these topics fired. And not let them teach at any level in a public setting using public funds, period.

Until we do so, we will continue to have these problems in our educational system with these people.

Mar 10, 2009 - 10:53 am 21. OSweet:

Marxism will ultimately win.

As the champions of social justice, Marxists occupy the default moral high ground, and are fiercely motivated by a potent concoction of hate and guilt and the need to project that guilt onto their ideological enemies.

Capitalism is the only real hope for a free and prosperous civilization. But capitalists are soft and complacent, and easily chastened, or mocked or ridiculed for their “selfishness” and the supposed damage it does to the culture and the planet, etc.

Situation’s hopeless.

Mar 10, 2009 - 11:58 am 22. newton:

Yet another (powerful) reason to homeschool your child…

Mar 10, 2009 - 1:15 pm 23. JED:

Relax, it is only Obama paying off his political dues with our money. It is also a grand test of the spin-masters to put red, white, and blue lipstick on this pig. Doesn’t freedom of speech extend to justifiable vandalism and attempted murder? The curious is in how Ayers got his money.

Mar 10, 2009 - 1:27 pm 24. Gene Lalor:

Sorry to say, but the nobility of the teaching profession had been in process of destruction even before Ayers.

The Worst Schools in America

“School days, school days/ Dear old golden rule days/ Reading and writing and ‘rithmatic . . .”

That ancient ditty relates to a much simpler lifestyle and a far different time in America and in America’s schools and its lyrics must seem like a foreign language today. In too many of our schools, students couldn’t read the words, in others they would be too busy with other pursuits to even try. Those pursuits, incidentally, probably wouldn’t be academic.

America’s schools are failing. That’s old news, of course, and the reasons for that failure as well as the results of that failure have been explored here on numerous occasions. (See “The NEA and ‘Misedumacation’ in America” for one: http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/wp-admin/post.php?action=edit&post=851 )

As with most things, there are levels of both success and failure and one group has had the temerity to employ what it claims is a “patent-pending school rating algorithm to uncover and identify the 100 worst public schools in America.”

Tall order, that, but its findings, based on “students’ proficiency in reading and math as determined by the ‘No Child Left Behind’ [NCLB] state testing for each school, and the National Assessment for Educational Progress [NAEP]” seem based on very objective criteria. See http://www.walletpop.com/mortgages/worst-performing-public-schools for “Neighborhood Scout’s” listing of “The 25 Worst Performing Public Schools in the U.S.”

Statistics can be very tedious but …

(Read the rest of this article at http://genelalor.com/.)

Mar 10, 2009 - 3:17 pm 25. fred:

Both Ayers and Obonga have inflated views of their own abilities and accomplishments. And so do our kids. Notice a pattern there?

I have had numerous experiences and contacts in the education field and I can tell you that maybe most of the people coming out of those education factories at our universities are very mediocre minds whose only real accomplishment is that they have memorized this drivel.

From his chamber in hell, Antonio Gramsci is laughing hysterically at the success his disciples have had. The Devil has us.

Orthodox scientific socialism (Marx and Engels) has mutated into cultural Marxism (Gramsci). And now cultural Marxism is symbiotically fusing with a revival of Islam. This is the perfect Satanic toxic brew.

Billy Ayers, the small man of a mediocre intellect, has been a masterful vector whose life’s work has been to spread this destructive virus. The vast majority of American parents have absolutely no clue that this is happening.

Mar 10, 2009 - 3:48 pm 26. riservaltes:

“and the fluffy style does indeed support the speculation that he was the ghost writer of Obama’s two autobiographies.”

so since this is admitted speculation with no evidential basis, why repeat this paranoia (and McCarthyism)?

Mar 10, 2009 - 4:22 pm 27. Never For Obama:

As a parent with two daughters who went through the public schools, I have first hand knowledge of just how pervasive this liberal indoctrination of students is in our schools. The terrible thing about this is that students who are NOT liberal and try to present their own viewpoints are ridiculed and put down by the liberal teachers. So kids who can actually think for themselves have to hide this fact or be silenced.

Mar 10, 2009 - 4:44 pm 28. Delia:

HOME-SCHOOL.

‘Nuff said?

My daughter took a pre-test for her GED and ranked the highest in our state. If you have the means and are willing to sacrifice by having a little less to be home with your child/children and school them the reward is well worth it.

Mar 10, 2009 - 4:48 pm 29. Silver Wings:

Will Zero and his Marxist buddies allow homeschooling for long. The probable answer is frightening. It is only in the “public” schools that the rabid indoctrination can be successful.

Ayers should have been in a Supermax prison long ago.

Mar 10, 2009 - 5:27 pm 30. Delia:

29. Silver Wings,

Silver Wings, I gave birth to my daughter at home with a midwife. There are ALWAYS ways around the gov. controlling your offspring.

Mar 10, 2009 - 5:59 pm 31. Moogie:

#3 Maurice: Here ya go: http://www.boycottliberalism.com/Conservative-colleges.htm

Got that link from my 20 year old conservative son.

Mar 10, 2009 - 8:01 pm 32. 13o'clock:

as a recently retired teacher (of 40 years) i can say from experience that the battle is lost. but an ironic observation: note that islam and “the left” are incompatible (theocracy vs. secular atheism); after we allow the left (through complacency & fear) to destroy the west, islam will, over time, destroy the left. (it’s the demographics, stupid!) ah, well, civilization was a bright flame, if brief, but now it gutters…. if it is true that “people get the government they deserve,” then “they”

Mar 10, 2009 - 10:29 pm 33. JackT:

That’s the problem with Republicans, their objective is to exclude, to focus on our differences instead of our similarities, to tolerate hatred and racism within their party, and to label those that do not agree with them as unamerican or ungodly. Ultimately, that’s a rx for failure. This is a free country, if you want a more conservative country then get out there a talk to people, but don’t blame him for your shortcomings. And btw, you guys have been doing a lot of talking lately, and in case you haven’t been paying attention, nobody’s listening. So come up with a better message than that same old tired Republican crap. It’s not selling.

Mar 10, 2009 - 11:44 pm 34. Delia:

33. JackT:

“And btw, you guys have been doing a lot of talking lately, and in case you haven’t been paying attention, nobody’s listening. So come up with a better message than that same old tired Republican crap. It’s not selling.”
~

Really, dipshit? Then STFU already. Remember? Nobody is listening. Shouldn’t that include you oh sayer of sooths?

Nobody is shutting us ‘wingers’ up any time soon. Wallow, you oxymoronic idiot.

Mar 11, 2009 - 1:21 am 35. wm:

Get backed, “JackT.”

You’re just one among legions who have this curious urge to tell us that “no one is listening” to the core values of our platform.

We get told this quite a lot.

Earnest scribes like yourself tell us that we’ve nothing of interest to say and should stop trying.

And you never cease telling us this.

You and your fellow travelers, so to speak, are lined up out the frigging door, yelling about our irrelevance.

You get the picture?

I urge you to adopt a more inclusive, tolerant view of those you seem moved to disagree with.

Mar 11, 2009 - 1:26 am 36. Telly:

I’ve NEVER been more interested in home schooling than I am right now.

Mar 11, 2009 - 9:39 am 37. Cohort Grumbler:

While it’s true that too many in teacher-prep programs drink the Kool-aid of social justice and being change agents, as one who has endured, and endured is often the correct term, these classes I can say that not all future teachers are fired up to go out and become a “change agent”. In fact, a fair number of people ape the party line just to get through with absolutely no plans to implement social justice theories in their classrooms.

Like almost any humanities class, the professors are to the left of many of their students. Many of these students will keep their head down and nod along, whether from sincere agreement, or fear of repercussions (real or imagined) if they speak their mind.

Mar 11, 2009 - 10:01 am 38. Jeff K:

JackT: Get off the kool-aide dude and start thinking for yourself.
Here’s Facts about our school system:
American 15 year olds in Math Literacy Rank 35 out 50 in the world and below average (2006)
Only 68% of Americans Graduate from High School (2006)
In 25 years funding has increased 256% and the quality of student has declined significantly

In Math and Science we are failing and there is an effort to rewrite the history books with left propaganda. Juvenile obesity is at an all time high…Hitler said and I paraphrase, “Keep them fed and stupid and they will follow you” Ayers seems to have completed at one of those goals and the other is taking care of itself.

Home schooling sounds pretty good, but in the end our entire educational system needs to be completely transformed and the unions removed.

Check out the Powerpoint in my linkedin page for references on the math numbers. http://www.linkedin.com/myprofile?trk=hb_upphoto&goback=%2Ehom

Mar 11, 2009 - 10:21 am 39. Albert:

You suggest that some students object to a portion of their school fees going to support talks given by Bill Ayers. Your online student evaluations (Rate my Prof) would suggest that there are a number of students who might object to their fees being spent on having to listen to you. ‘Rate My Prof’ might not represent a source of reliable or valid ratings, overall, but I would be horrified if I had students say things about me that they say about you.

Mar 11, 2009 - 11:50 am 40. tanstaafl:

“…poison a noble profession.”

I think the noble profession had been pretty well done in already, even before the ministrations of arrogant bomber Ayers and his greasy haired, plagiarizing buddy Ward Churchill.

Both of whose brains are significantly addled from decades of drug use. Both of whom hate the America that pays (or paid) their professional salaries.

Mar 11, 2009 - 2:04 pm 41. Milton:

I’m a public school teacher. I’m a bit younger (34) than most. I can honestly say that most of us younger teachers don’t buy into the BS of the older professors that attempted to teach us in college. Profs that came of age during the 60’s have a different view of education. The self-esteem crap, the “molding and changing” students, he social justice BS… Many younger teachers just don’t buy it.

Some perspective is in order. The profs that came of age in the 60’s were and are advocates of change. Fourty years ago, change meant an attempt at an integrated classroom or changing eductaion system to one that would eventually allow girls sports. Those were noble goals, and were worth fighting for. But the agents of change never stopped. Now these same professors seek an educational system that molds students to fit a liberal world view. They forget that “accepting diversity” also means accepting diversity of opinion and not making your classroom a place that is hostile to conservative views.

Mar 11, 2009 - 6:00 pm 42. Milton:

And Jeff K, I would dispute your numbers somewhat, not that they are incorrect, but that they are misleading. If you have the chance, check out the book Freakeconomics. The author really rips into myths about the American education system. Remember, most other countries do not educate everyone. In many countries, lower achieving kids are out of school by age 14 or 15. Most other countries do not test everyone, either. We do. It has a tendency to skew our numbers a bit. When adjusted for target populations (populations not tested in other countries), our education system is far better than all but a very few countries. Or do you really think Germany tests their Turkish immigrants? Do you really think that kids born with fetal alcohol syndrom in Sweden take achievement tests? Heck no! They don’t even go to school. Here, we educate everyone.

Mar 11, 2009 - 6:08 pm 43. Dave D:

The irony is that you can learn more about tolerance just by teaching the material than actively campaigning for change. Good literature will expand the mind and develop empathy, and good history will encourage focusing on the truth of events that have occurred, as opposed to the romantic ideals behind them.

What being an agent for social change does is actually stifle that empathy by only providing one accepted explanation for events. The student isn’t allowed to actually look at the ideas and sources for themselves, but has to evaluate them in the lines of some teacher’s pre-existing framework.

tl;dr: teach the material, it’s the best way to open minds. There’s no need to burden it with ideology, just be objective and balanced, and that will transfer over to your students.

Mar 11, 2009 - 9:29 pm 44. Jeff K:

Thanks 42. Milton
I’ll get the book. The study I quoted was from PISA 2006 (Program for International Student Assessments.) and was published in 2007. Go to my LinkedIn page and message me. I’ll be happy to email you the study. Here’s an overview from the section from “How the Study was Conducted”
PISA 2006 was a 2-hour paper-and-pencil assessment
of 15-year-olds collected from nationally representative
samples in participating jurisdictions. Like other large-scale
assessments, PISA was not designed to provide
individual student scores, but rather national and
group estimates of performance.

Member countries (Jurisdictions) are bound by agreements and the study was conducted and run out of Australia not by the countries themselves. Non Members counties may have skewed numbers a bit since they are not bound my membership. So if you remove them the US ranks 25th out of 35 for 15 year olds in Math literacy and several points below world average.

Let’s put that aside altogether and speak about businesses in the US and what there saying about the METS (Math, Engineering, Technology and Science) jobs. In a 2006 METS conference the CEO of MO Southern Containers said he has to train high school graduates how to use a tape measure a skill they should have mastered in the 5th grade according to the MO GLE’s. Dr. Floyd Edison, former president of the University of Missouri said, “It’s not a problem, it’s a Crisis!” speaking of the Math education in the US. Finally according to the “Hart Rudman Commission on National Security 1999” our declining math and science scores represent the #2 security threat in the United States behind a man with a weapon of mass destruction detonating in a major American city.

The Unions are on the defense on this issue. The “The other guy is cheating” strategy is very common but just doesn’t hold water when you investigate. There is a large body of evidence that supports the assumption of a failing math and science curriculum in this country. I was a teacher for three years myself and I saw it before I knew it was a fact. Today, I run MOMETS.ORG a parent based group designed to help parents become part of a solution and I speak publically on the issue. We could use teacher support if you want to join.

Mar 12, 2009 - 11:00 am 45. Milton:

Jeff, It’s great that you are an advocate for STEM (we call it STEM up here)! If you feel strongly, it is awesome that you are involved. And, yes the unions can be a pain in the butt.

I disagree with your thesis that math ed is in poor shape. In fact, I would argue that most kids take too much math… Math that they don’t ever need later in life. I haven’t used much math beyond algebra in my life and most of the math skills I once had are long gone. Having said that, I would argue that many schools don’t do a good job of finding their math talent. The really good math students sometimes don’t get the opportunities and don’t get pushed, instead they get bored. I assure you this is not the case in my school. We have a school choice option and quite a few kids max-out their math in the HS by their junior year with AP Calc II. Then they go to the local college to take higher level math classes, and the high school pays for it. These are the future engineers. The rando kid that will never need geometry, though… Sure, he sucks at math.

The thing about your argument (the argument that kids are falling behind in STEM) is that every special interest group uses it. The business people say that kids are falling behind. High number of bankruptcies, credit card defaults, etc… Kids need more personal finance. The behavioral sciences people say that kids need more psychology because of the high number of mental illnesses. Then there is obesity. More phy-ed. My wife thinks kids have no art appreciation. And music. And kids can’t change their own oil, so we need required auto shop classes. For each argument, there is a group pushing an agenda on us schools. Kids don’t vote, so more requried civics. They don’t appreciate history or understand economics, so more social studies.

And still, our students are amazing. They are more fit, smarter, more capable of high level critical thinking skills and are FAR better with technology than we ever were.

Regarding the guy that had to teach kids to use a tape measure, what kind of kids was he hiring? Was he paying minimum wage for bad workers? If that’s the case, then he’ll get crappy workers. The good kids, the talented kids, the future engineers, they are working elsewhere for more.

Mar 12, 2009 - 6:10 pm 46. SeosamhM:

This article helps document how radical educational circles are. Thank you, Mary Grabar.

I have worked with educational texts for almost ten years, often fact-checking. Descriptions of education as lopsidedly leftwing are not off-base. Perhaps 5% of incoming manuscripts from educational writers are ideologically neutral, 95% from left of center. I have never seen one that was identifiably conservative, even moderately. (The 5% may be the conservatives–or true liberals.) My feeling is that even moderatly liberal writers are becoming outnumbered by consciously activist writers. Debates in-house are between liberals and radicals.

Many of the science books I have seen present their topics as a logical progression ending in a final chapter with an environmentalist message. Even a book on rock ended (approximate memory, here), There is no shortage of rock, but if we use it wisely and not use too much, plenty will be left for future generations.

As for history and other social studies–forget about it. The level of factual accuracy is usually dreadful, but I do not have a point of comparison, since there are no conservative writers. Activism is extolled. Today’s social activists are portrayed as the inheritors of those who struggled for equal votes for women and civil rights for African-Amnericans. There are no examples of bad activism (although one or two companies I have not worked for have included references to Right-to-Life protests that apparently were meant to be taken negatively).

When I met with editors at one company to prepare for a fact-checking job, one was wearing a Che-Guevara T-shirt. Although I have made an impact on levels of accuracy and neutrality, it feels like a losing battle, and an increasingly insecure one.

Boots- Wolfe was not the only skeptic at the Bernstein party. An older friend who was present recalls an old woman raising her and and saying to the Panthers ‘Don’t you want to kill us?’ My friend also rejected the message, although she is still teaching and quite under the spell of the Ayerses of the world.

Mar 16, 2009 - 7:32 pm

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