Students were told to get out pencils and paper to write down what was told to them.  Today taking notes must be a hard sell because multiple-page, formal syllabi are handed out.  Everything is carefully couched in legal terms, as if faculty attempting to impose discipline may well have to settle things in court.

     Lawyers are hired by universities to give workshops in turning syllabi into legal documents and to prepare faculty for a host of challenges that students will mount if things don’t go their way.   What professor hasn’t been subjected to the intricate “due process” that must be followed if a student is to be charged with plagiarism?

     Hanging on to a job is hard enough, especially with so many adjuncts waiting to teach any course at any salary.  Challenging students who cheat is hardly worth the investment of time, especially if a menacing “race card” is always present.

     Don’t college administrators welcome money from cheaters in order to keep the institution afloat?  Best to be tolerant.  Faculty whose students cheat are branded as lacking motivational skills.  Most will be denied tenure, promotion, and salary increments.  Best not to mention that your students were cheating.

      Some faculty actually draw up “contracts” that make no pretense of the legal mechanics involved.  Students are forced to sign.  Is there a better symbol of an impotent professoriate?

    Legalistic revisionism strikes all parts of society.  The warnings on various products are meant to protect the manufacturer, not the buyer.  Even conversation tends to conform to what should be said, as if a taped recording will be played back later in court or committee somewhere.

      Most syllabi are online on university websites.  Students and parents should check them to find out if academic freedom is more than just a puff phrase today.  Better hurry, though, even as you read this post, lawyers are probably advising college administrators to take them offline.

      The Young Urban Professionals who gave “yuppie” its name actually were an evolutionary step forward from their beginnings in the drug and sex indulgence of the 1960s.  Both yuppies and hippies shared a common pursuit of social hedonism wherever they could find it.  Yuppies flourished in the 1980s, but are still a dominant culture in America.

     Parents and school counselors knew instinctively that money was the key to happiness, a college degree being the ticket to the good life.  The college years were perfect for extending adolescence and dismantling cultural restraints that didn’t fit the Generation-X pursuit of self-indulgence and personal pleasure.

     The college curriculum welcomed the new age of personal computing and the efforts of engineers to make electronic distractions cheap for the masses.  High incomes followed, but divorce rates soared, and so did the erosion of the American family, Christianity, historical roots, and ties to Western identity.

   Federal loans brought students to college, but didn’t teach most of them much.  Nor were the jobs there upon graduation, except for the sons and daughters of the elite.  Today’s yuppies are alive and well, though they hate the name itself.  Kids are all in daycare.  Preschool starts as early as possible.  Who wants to be bothered with families now that double-incomes are the norm.

    They tip well at restaurants, wear stylish clothes, and live in gated communities.  They go into politics to keep power the way they want it.  They love the welfare state because it keeps the masses of people happy consumers for their businesses and service products.  People on welfare won’t upset the apple cart of privilege that yuppies enjoy.  Same with both-parents-working middle-class folks. The world of nouveau riche liberalism has arrived.  Send your kids to elite universities where they can meet the right people.

It is time to take down the picture of Obama .

Yes, I know he is still President.  The office deserves special respect.

This President, however, has crossed the line and represents values that are NOT traditional in any sense of the word.  By endorsing homosexual marriage, he has become the standard-bearer for everything that is WRONG with America.  We have abandoned our Judeo-Christian values little by little.  Now the “commander-in-chief” has become the first gay president. 

This is NOT a role model we want American children to emulate.

Little children should not be taught that a man “marrying” a man, or a woman “marrying” a woman is the same as the holy union established by God between one man and one woman.  

If we are a Christian nation Obama’s picture should be taken down.  If we have utterly abandoned these values, then it probably doesn’t matter. 

***Gordon Howie is a nationally syndicated author, host of Liberty Today TV and CEO of Life and Liberty Media***

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     But “If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in,” Carson adds.  Wonder is the product of education.  It doesn’t just happen.  Nor is it the product of government grants.

     Books can spark a sense of natural wonder.  Carson’s The Sense of Wonder is already well known to properly educated parents.  In the same genre, who doesn’t remember being inspired by the books of Nebraska anthropologist Loren Eiseley, such as The Immense Journey?

      The role of parents and other influential family members counts for a lot more than attempts by groups to instill such learning.  Schools must cater to mass education, where even field trips are diluted by the social demands of others.

     Real education happens in solitude, the individual learner alone, but first the mind must be primed and furnished with ideas.  Carson admonishes that “If facts are the seeds that later produce knowledge and wisdom, then the emotions and the impressions of the senses are the fertile soil in which the seeds must grow.”

    Children on book covers celebrating Rachel Carson always appear as solitary figures.  Reflection must take place that is free from peer distraction.  Best of all, such experiences don’t require big incomes or stylistic clothes, impressive cars, or status houses.

   The payoff, according to Carson, will last a lifetime, making the world much more interesting:  “To stand at the edge of the sea, to sense the ebb and flow of the tides, to feel the breath of a mist moving over a great salt marsh, to watch the flight of shore birds that have swept up and down the surf lines of the continents for untold thousands of year, to see the running of the old eels and the young shad to the sea, is to have knowledge of things that are as nearly eternal as any earthly life can be.”

Solitary study can also be online . . .

A new round of obstruction of education reform has been initiated in New York City.

A new lawsuit was filed by New York’s United Federation of Teachers (UFT) which seeks to stop the city from “closing” two dozen chronically failing public schools and from replacing up to half of the schools’ staff.

After months of unsuccessfully trying to halt the closures, after falsely complaining that the city’s sole education policy boils down to closing schools, the UFT’s lawyers are suddenly shifting gears.

Here is just one example of existing conditions: At Intermediate School 339 in the South Bronx only 10% of students tested on grade level in English and 17% in math.

That’s downright tragic. These are schools where drastic action was needed years ago. Yet, after repeated promises that progress was being made, nothing fundamental changed for the students. The city has no choice but to take urgent action.

Sure, that means people’s jobs may be affected and egos may be bruised along the way. So be it; the adults can handle it. Think about what is happening to the children who are supposed to be getting an education there.

It should be explained here that the schools affected are not actually being closed, but reconstituted. When, after years of dysfunction and horrific results and interventions, management (New York City) finally shutters and reconstitutes a school, changing much of its staff and overhauling its instructional approach, with new resources and attention.

New teachers will be brought in. A school that hasn’t worked for students in years will get a clean slate. And studies have shown that when new schools replace failing ones, the kids perform better.

Whether or not you believe that what the city is doing is technically “closing” a school, as the UFT’s lawyers put it, it’s hard to argue that what the city is proposing isn’t a good thing.

Starting fresh doesn’t guarantee success. But keeping things as they are, as the UFT’s lawyers suggest, is pretty much the easiest way to guarantee continued failure.

***Ed Randazzo, is a nationally syndicated author. He has been a conservative activist and consultant for over 30 years and is currently the Chief News Editor of Life and Liberty Media***

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     Conservatives usually go underground at universities–or risk being purged, passed over for promotion, then denied tenure and salary increments.  In short, they are given poorer faculty evaluations by the liberal hierarchy above them.   Power works this way.   Without courage, some survive perhaps, but don’t grow personally or reform a corrupt system.

     Most conservative faculty simply muzzle their opinions and free speech and always nod in agreement.  But deeply rooted values involving heritage, religion, history, and civilization can’t be easily suppressed for some.  They fight back and assert themselves to the fullest extent possible.  History has always had them:  they have courage and are willing to take risks for what they believe in.  They are willing to struggle.

     In his American Thinker article “What It’s Like to be a Conservative Professor,” Robert Oscar Lopez argues that the combination of “conservative” and “courage” is America’s only hope for education reform, the taking back of heritage and standards that are now missing:

    But there is something to be said for thanking teachers for sticking it out in a profession that remains ideologically toxic. Especially the rare conservative ones. Liberal professors invariably agree on pacifism, multicultural identity politics, and anti-plutocracy. With a liberal consensus on all that, what’s left to argue about it? Somehow the academic left is quarrelsome and internally divided, yet perpetually fascinated with itself.

    A small dose of such intellectual self-importance would do the right wonders. Or maybe just say thanks to a fellow conservative who’s willing to live a life this pathetic.

    You may ask, where are they? I can’t tell you. The academic right simply doesn’t exist. Conservative professors are frightened, invisible, and often embarrassed. Ideological exile is scary. It gets tiring when colleagues ask you to defend birthers, the Westboro Baptist Church, Rush Limbaugh, George Bush, George Zimmerman, and David Horowitz before you’ve even had your morning coffee, especially when they are going to vote on your tenure.  The ignorant asides about Fox News are usually thrown in during department meetings, somewhere between announcements of the latest conference about homosexuality and elections to the personnel review committee.  Hold your tongue and count to ten, then scream as you jog at dawn the next day.

Real education is centered in the family, not just in government schools.  It’s not just homeschooling parents that know this. Most moms and dads remember their own childhoods with outdoor activities involving kites, marbles, hikes, skipping ropes, and gardens. 

     Indoors meant sketching, reading, model airplanes and ships, working with clay, and painting with watercolors.  Jigsaw puzzles were always on a table in well-ordered homes, waiting for passing grandparents and children to contribute what they could.  Solitary and quiet hobbies were actually fun.

      The payoff for puzzles was a cheap form of entertainment that provided durable educational value over a lifetime.  Attention to detail is the mental and academic key that drives understanding at every level.  Noting the parts of things doesn’t always just happen naturally, but must be cultivated through endless repetition and activity.  

      An equally important benefit was protracted attention to a task at hand.  It happens over time by sticking to a subject or project, issuing into character and backbone.  Children miss this if they’re brought up with television cartoons as a babysitter, the emphasis being on quickly changing scenes and passive transition.  The detail might well be present in movies and television shows, but few notices backgrounds very closely or long.    

    In her article “Cheap Summer Fun for Kids: Summer Break Activities That Children Have Always Loved,” Jan Peterson argues that parents can learn how to structure family educational experiences:

    A popular summer activity for families in the “good old days” was working on 500 or 1000 piece jigsaw puzzles. Mom would set up the card table in the corner and dump out all those pieces and help her children get started. She would help them find the corners and straight edges and group some of the similarly colored pieces together. Then the kids would take over. It wasn’t frenzied or fast paced excitement, but rather a calm activity that required concentration, and helped develop several skills without anyone realizing it!

    In her article on searchwarp.com, “Are Jig Saw Puzzles Educational?” Barbara White answers her own title question with a yes! She says, “Most notably developed in this learning process are the abilities to reason, deduce, analyze, sequence, and develop logical thought and problem solving skills. Physically, eye-hand coordination and spatial awareness are also required to complete a jigsaw puzzle”.

Online puzzles are also available . . .

There is also quite a stir if a song of FAITH is presented in the classroom.  It wasn’t always that way.

That great little book, “The New England Primer” provided a song for school children in those days of early American public education.  I can almost hear the little voices even now!!

A Divine Song of Praise to GOD, for a Child,by the Rev. Dr. Watts.

HOW glorious is our heavenly King,
Who reigns above tha Sky!
How shall a Child presume to sing
His dreadful Majesty!

How great his Power is none can tell,
Nor think how large his grace:
Nor men below, nor Saints that dwell,
On high before his Face.

Nor Angels that stand round the Lord,
Can search his secret will;
But they perform his heav’nly Word,
And sing his Praises still.

Then let me join this holy Train;
And my first Off’rings bring;
The eternal GOD will not disdain
To hear an Infant sing.

My Heart resolves, my Tongue obeys,
And Angels shall rejoice,
To hear their mighty Maker’s Praise,
Sound from a feeble Voice.

***Gordon Howie is a nationally syndicated author, host of Liberty Today TV and CEO of Life and Liberty Media***

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Trendy thinking today describes homemaking mothers of the past as having been repressed by breadwinning husbands who wanted to selfishly gather all workday freedom and fun unto themselves. 

     But the Obama-Biden re-election campaign is banking on the belief that women remain dependent creatures even after having been liberated into the workforce.

     In his “Women of the Welfare State” argument, Christopher Chantrill implies that being taken care of may be inbred in women because of their historical roles. 

      Hence, he says they instinctively look to government programs for the sugar-daddy succor that husbands once provided: “Is this what liberation for women amounts to?  A government-centric life sequestered away from the hurly-burly of modern life in the government’s welfare-state harem, voting for metrosexual liberals to tax men and supply women with the goods their hearts desire: health care, education, and welfare?  Maybe it’s the closest we’ll ever get to a matriarchy.”

    This story of dependent, welfare-sympathetic women won’t show up in educational circles led by “liberated” women teachers, but the Obama-Biden campaign hopes that its “Life of Julia” slideshow has correctly judged women’s yearning for the government as surrogate husband.  A sampling includes the following:

Age 3:  Julia is enrolled in a Head Start program to help get her ready for school. Because of steps President Obama has taken to improve programs like this one, Julia joins thousands of students across the country who will start kindergarten ready to learn and succeed.

Age17: Julia takes the SAT and is on track to start her college applications. Her high school is part of the Race to the Top program, implemented by President Obama. Their new college- and career-ready standards mean Julia can take the classes she needs to do well.

Age18: As she prepares for her first semester of college, Julia and her family qualify for President Obama’s American Opportunity Tax Credit—worth up to $10,000 over four years. Julia is also one of millions of students who receive a Pell Grant to help put a college education within reach.

Age 22: During college, Julia undergoes surgery. It is thankfully covered by her insurance due to a provision in health care reform that lets her stay on her parents’ coverage until she turns 26.

Age 23: Because of steps like the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, Julia is one of millions of women across the country who knows she’ll always be able to stand up for her right to equal pay. She starts her career as a web designer.

 Age 25: After graduation, Julia’s federal student loans are more manageable since President Obama capped income-based federal student loan payments and kept interest rates low. She makes her payments on time every month, keeping her on track to repay her student loans.

    “A Better Life for Julia” is a rebuttal slideshow from the Heritage Foundation.

This is one of the many wonderful lessons presented to early American children… in PUBLIC classrooms:

A Lesson for Children.

Pray to God.             Call no ill names.
Love God.                Use no ill words.
Fear God.                Tell no lies.
Serve God.               Hate Lies.
Take not God’s           Speak the Truth.
Name in vain.           Spend your Time well.
Do not Swear.            Love your School.
Do not Steal.            Mind your Book.
Cheat not in your play.  Strive to learn.
Play not with bad boys.  Be not a Dunce.

Wouldn’t it be great if this were a lesson in the classroom today?  Perhaps even better, a lesson for our elected leaders!!

***Gordon Howie is a nationally syndicated author, host of Liberty Today TV and CEO of Life and Liberty Media***

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