Category Archives: Education

Business, Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

Home Schooling Is Not For Everyone

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…and neither is public schooling:

…unlike those who wish to suppress homeschooling, homeschool parents are rarely if ever heard demanding that the government pass a law demanding that every other family in the country do things the way they do. Unlike our German friends, homeschool parents do not wish to seize custody of other people’s children simply because they prefer a different model of education. The irony here is that more than a few of our public schools are so dangerous and dysfunctional that sending one’s children there really ought to be considered an act of neglect, if not for the fact that those poor parents have practically no choice in the matter.

It’s not about education. It’s about control.

Business, Economics, Education, History, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

Our Prussian School System

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More thoughts from Glenn Reynolds on the public-school disaster, over at the Daily Caller.

[Update a few minutes later]

Related: Meanwhile, back in the Fatherland:

Got that? Let me repeat it just in case. A German judge took children away from their parents because “he family might move to another country and homeschool, posing a ‘concrete endangerment’ to the children.”

In August, 20 armed police, equipped with a battering ram just in case, arrived at the door of this Darmstadt family and forcibly took four children, ages 7 to 14.

Was there anything wrong with the children? Nope. The judge — whose name, by the way, is Marcus Malkmus, in case you have a voodoo doll handy or wish to burn him in effigy — the judge admitted that the children were 1) academically proficient and 2) well adjusted socially.

He just didn’t like homeschooling.

Why? Pay attention now: this takes us deep into the heart of a leftist: because he feared that “the children would grow up in a parallel society without having learned to be integrated or to have a dialogue with those who think differently and facing them in the sense of practicing tolerance.”

The invocation of “tolerance” is especially cute, don’t you think?

As Glenn writes: “Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state. Gleichschaltung!”

Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Bullies

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When they pretend to be victims:

If the ASA boycotters are receiving unlawful “threats,” they should file criminal complaints or commence legal action under anti-stalking or similar laws. Or they could call out those making the threats by name.

But unlawful threats do not appear to be what is at issue.

Rather, it appears the boycotters cannot withstand the withering criticism from American civil and political society.

The academic boycotters have lived for too long in a bubble in which their views predominated because students were too intimidated to speak up, other professors didn’t want to take on single-issue fanatics, and administrators were intimidated.

But we are not intimidated. As I stated before, this is the hill we will fight on. Lawfully. Intellectually honestly. And without allowing the academic boycotters to play victim.

Good for Professor Jacobson.

Take away their non-profit tax status.

Business, Economics, Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

More Concealed Carry

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…fewer murders.

And this is one of the rhetorical games (i.e., lies) the Democrats always play that infuriate me:

A frequent claim by control advocates this year has been that 80 percent to 90 percent of Americans are in favor of expanded background-checks legislation. But the polls showing such overwhelming support really ask little more than whether people want to stop criminals from obtaining guns, not whether voters actually favor the legislation that the Senate was voting on.

The actual laws being discussed were much less popular.

For example, a mid-April poll by the Pew Research Center provides one such illustration when it asks voters whether they were happy that the Senate bill had been defeated. While 67 percent of Democrats were “disappointed” or “angry” about the defeat, more Republicans and independents were “ very happy” or “relieved” than upset by the defeat.

That’s an interesting conflation of objective and process – claiming support for what a public policy ostensibly seeks to achieve, rather than what it actually does. Needless to say, this tactic is hardly unique to gun control policy.

Yup. For instance, back when the economic ignorami, like Chuck Schumer, were pushing Porkulus, they said things like “almost every economist says that this is necessary,” when at best most economists only thought that some sort of stimulus was necessary. No economist with two brain cells to rub together thought that the Democrats’ payoff to public-employee unions would be helpful.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Also, remember this the next time someone talks about a “Republican” war on science. The Left clings to their gun-control dogma in the face of all empirical evidence. Because it’s not about controlling guns. It’s (as always) about controlling you.

[Update a few minutes later]

Detroit police chief: “Better start carrying.” When seconds count, the police are only minutes (or hours) away. A decade ago, when Michigan reformed its carry laws, the anti-gun nuts predicted blood in the streets. Just the opposite happened. But they remain firmly anti-science.