Education news

Usually education news is on Tuesdays, but since I've been thinking today is Tuesday all day because of the holiday, here we go.

In the What Again Does This Have To Do With Reading, Writing, And Math category (or Secular And Liberal Indoctrination category, take your pick), we have a school board in California redefining marriage in their 9th grade “health” textbooks as an agreement between partners, not a covenant between a man and a woman. On the other coast, Governor Romney of Massachusetts stands up to the gay lobby and vetoes a 70% increase in funding for programs in schools passed by the legislature. But because the pressure toward immorality isn’t great enough on America’s children, yesterday a leading group of pediatricians denounced abstinence-only education in schools.

Michelle Malkin discusses the latest indoctrination in pacifism in our schools. I am all for conflict resolution. And teaching such to children. But I do heartily disagree with the schools encroaching more and more on the family and churches’ province. Enough already! Teaching reading, writing, and math is a big enough job! Here’s a radical idea: let the schools teach academics and leave the social engineering to the parents!

Business Week is urging more computer classes for children. That’s because they have that reading, writing, and math thing down so pat. And in Kansas, a new poll shows a majority of Kansans want schools to teach evolution as well as its alternatives.

Speaking of Kansas, there is a big fight going on there between the legislature and the state supreme court. The legislature, as the people’s representatives, held the line on school spending in the upcoming budget, and did not increase it. The supreme court was not pleased. Don’t the people of Kansas know who their masters are? The backwards clods think it is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. Not willing to let such uppity behavior go unchecked, the court ordered the legislature to increase school funding to a court-approved level. The legislature just missed its deadline. To teach Kansans a lesson, the court is ordering the schools to remain closed until the legislature toes the line. Oh man, is the judiciary out of control in this country.

The battle for control of our children is everywhere manifested in big and little ways. In Illinois, a new law just went into effect that requires children to show proof of having had a dental examination in order to collect their final report cards. Now I am not against dental exams for children. But I do heartily disagree with the schools encroaching … well, you know.

School vouchers are in the news this week. Over at the Foundation for Economic Education, the question is asked if vouchers are the solution to the public school morass, or just another flawed compromise, and their opinion is well worth the read. Ohio is more than tripling the size of its voucher program, making it the nation’s largest since the practice was found constitutional three years ago. And the first D.C. students to graduate from a school of their choice through a new voucher program were honored recently.

There’s a lot more news, which I think I’ll save for next week. I’ll close this week’s post with some good news: Maryland’s only faith-based tutoring service has found a home in a Bladensburg church, where teachers are helping needy students improve their reading, writing and math skills. I am so thrilled our kids are learning reading, writing, and math somewhere!