It’s been a while since I’ve had much faith in the education system anywhere — Canada or United States. It’s stories like this one that prove why…
Attention all kindergarten to Grade 8 students: Cross-dressing day is now cancelled.
This was the news given to students of King City Public School on Thursday after the school pulled the plug on holding an “Opposite Gender Day” on Friday, where kids as young as six would be allowed to come to school dressed as the opposite sex.
According to Ross Virgo of the York Region District School Board, King City PS officials cancelled the day following an outcry of opposition from parents.
“Opposite Gender Day has been cancelled in the wake of concerns of parents,” said Virgo. “The idea of (kids) experiencing being people of the opposite gender has offended some people in the community, and the school does not want to do that.”
Virgo said the chance to dress as the opposite sex was voluntary to students from junior kindergarten to Grade 8. He said it was proposed by the school’s student council and approved by the principal.
First off, I didn’t think that student councils existed to actually do anything. That said, this pushes the boundaries of accepting “alternative” lifestyles by actually encouraging students to participate in it. I don’t see what’s to be gained by pretending to be another gender for a day because, well, boys will always be boys and girls will always be girls (ideally.)
There’s an agenda in the public school system whether you like it or not, and it’s one that has always attempted to push acceptance over competence — both in academics, and now lifestyle. Keep in mind that in most jurisdictions, it’s virtually impossible for a teacher to fail even a high school student, let alone an elementary school student.
All we can be thankful for is that the parents stood up against this. Hopefully people will start to realize that parents can accomplish more than teachers and bureaucrats.
Adam Sandler goes back to school in his film Billy Madison
Within the next couple of weeks, students of all ages, from kindergarten to university, will return to their studies. Over the last half century university has become seen as a necessity to advance in society. As a result, more people enter university every year in the hopes of being a successful. How well placed are these hopes?
First, there is the high probability that if you enter university you will not graduate. In fact, in the United States less than 60% of students graduated with four year degrees after spending six years at university. Six years and nothing to show for it for over 60% of all students. And then there is the cost.
Second, the cost of a higher education has skyrocketed. The chart below shows the increase as a percentage in the price of university tuition in comparison to the Consumer Price Index, and the housing bubble that burst two years ago:
As you can see, the increase in the price of a university education has been exponential. In order to attend a top college (Harvard, Princeton, Yale…) students have to shell out nearly $53,000 a year. If by some miracle of God that student completes his studies in 4 years tuition alone will cost over $200,000. Add to that other living expenses and your looking at an enormous investment. According to Money Magazine “After adjusting for financial aid, the amount families pay for college has skyrocketed 439 percent since 1982. … Normal supply and demand can’t begin to explain cost increases of this magnitude.” Where is this money coming from?
Third, students or families take on enormous debt to pay for university. People are convinced that the a university degree will appreciate in value. They believe that a university degree will not just retain its value, but that the value will appreciate infinity. Therefore, they feel comfortable accumulating debt, through cheap and available credit, in order to pay for their education. Glenn Reynolds at the Washington Examinerputs it this way:
Buyers see that everyone else is taking on mounds of debt, and so are more comfortable when they do so themselves; besides, for a generation, the value of what they’re buying has gone up steadily. What could go wrong? Everything continues smoothly until, at some point, it doesn’t.
That is how bubbles are created. Eventually everyone realizes it is just a tulip bulb, and that the product, in 1637 tulip bulbs, yesterday housing and tomorrow education, comes crashing down. After the crash, the product, good or service will eventually realize its real, sustainable value.
Fourth, what is the value of a university degree? This is a more subjective field. How does one define value? I will look at the two areas I deem important: earnings potential and increase in general knowledge.
Forbes Magazine has a great article dispelling the myth of the earnings potential supposedly unlocked by a university degree. Here is an excerpt, but the entire article is worth reading:
College graduates will earn $1 million more than those with only a high school diploma, brags Mercy College radio ads running in the New York area. The $1 million shibboleth is a favorite of college barkers.
Like many good cons, this one contains a kernel of truth. Census figures show that college grads earn an average of $57,500 a year, which is 82% more than the $31,600 high school alumni make. Multiply the $25,900 difference by the 40 years the average person works and, sure enough, it comes to a tad over $1 million.
But anybody who has gotten a passing grade in statistics knows what’s wrong with this line of argument. A correlation between B.A.s and incomes is not proof of cause and effect. It may reflect nothing more than the fact that the economy rewards smart people and smart people are likely to go to college. To cite the extreme and obvious example: Bill Gates is rich because he knows how to run a business, not because he matriculated at Harvard. Finishing his degree wouldn’t have increased his income.
All the while students have been lulled into thinking of the extra $1 million that will be theirs, they have been forced to disgorge an ever larger fraction of it in pursuit of the degree. While the premium that college grads earn over high schoolers has remained relatively constant over the past five years, the cost of acquiring a degree has risen at twice the rate of inflation, dramatically undermining any value a sheepskin adds.
Offsetting that million-dollar income discrepancy is the $46,700 four-year cost of tuition, fees, books, room and board at a public school and $99,900 at a private one–even after financial aid, scholarships and grants. Add all this to the equation and college grads don’t pull even with high school grads in lifetime income until age 33 on average, the College Board says. Even that doesn’t include the $125,000 in pay students forgo over four years.
“I call it the million-dollar misunderstanding,” says Mark Schneider, vice president of the American Institutes for Research, of the prevailing propaganda.
So if the earnings potential is not there, how about increased general knowledge? Speaking from my own experience, having completed a four year university degree in four years, I can say the process was worthless. The courses, with the exception of one or two outliers, were pointless and repetitive. The general message is to oppose Western civilization, reject religion, reject capitalism, reject your parents and embrace the atheist religion of communism. The lessons taught in arts degrees are not only not helpful in forging a future for graduates, they are detrimental. Students graduate with no understanding or knowledge of history, science or economics. Instead, graduates have tired ideas that have never worked ingrained in them, only to be dispelled once said graduates are forced to leave the academy and enter the real world.
Is university useless? No. There are worthwhile degrees in maths, sciences, economics and so on. There is also a great need for a proper teaching of history, political science and the rest of the arts. However, not everyone needs a university degree. Many people would be better off attending a college and learning a trade, or just entering the work force. University degrees have become over valued and the bubble, like all bubbles, will inevitably burst. Once the education bubble bursts, hopefully a more sound education system can be established in its stead.
In this edition of Strictly Right Ari and Andrew examine anti-smoking zealotry, Obama’s war on freedom, high-school lunacy, the latest administration idiocy surrounding the Arizona border and much more.
The above warning can now be found on… the United States Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the Federalist Papers, and other documents associated with the founding of the United States.
Parents are actually being warned of the evils of the Founding Documents – the bedrock of the United States. Moreover, parents are encouraged to tell their children that their country is inherently racist, bigoted, etc. Do you need any more evidence that the left hates the United States?
Preceding Barack Obama’s ascendancy to the presidency, he promised to “fundamentally transform” the United States. He made this promise because he, and his disciples, view the United States as a fundamentally flawed nation. The left believes that the federal government is too limited by the “horse and buggy” mentality of the Founders, as Franklin Roosevelt put it. The left wants to impose a European style welfare state on the United States. The largest obstacles preventing the final implementation of this leftist distopia are the Constitution and a proper understanding of American history. As such, the left has used the Alinsky tactic of isolating and demonizing their ‘opponent.’ The Founding Fathers and the Framers of the Constitution have been ceaselessly pilloried. They are known to a new generation as racist, sexist bigots – not heroic and brilliant patriots that risked their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to live in freedom. Now the left has moved onto the actual documents that make America great. This warning label is just the next step by the left to delegitimize the checks and balances on the federal government.
According to Fieldstone Secondary School in Rockland County, New York, it is.
Ninth-grader Jason Laguna, a former altar-boy, was suspended for daring to show the Rosary that he wears to school on a regular basis, generally under his clothes. He said that he received it as a gift and liked it so much that he wears it under his shirt, presumably to remind him throughout the day of his faith. Sounds reasonable right? Apparently not to his teacher who ordered him to put it away (despite the bell having rung and him being on his way out the door) and to the principal who upheld the teacher’s ruling.
The reason?
Beads are generally indicative of being in a gang. And moreover, wearing of the Rosary “endanger[s] the safety, health, morals or welfare of himself or others.”
Laguna, a straight-A’s student who is also a member of student government is nevertheless seeking assistance with his mother from the ACLU who has yet to comment. The superintendent put the suspension on hold pending an investigation. It’s unclear at this time if the school district is investigating whether or not the Roman Catholic Church is, in fact, a gang or something else.
A math teacher at Corner High School in Jefferson County, Ala., decided the best way to teach his students about “parallel lines and angles” would be to have them calculate the best angle to use when firing a gun at President Barack Obama
An Alabama newspaper cited the teacher saying, “If you’re in this building, you would need to take this angle to shoot the president” among other legally murky things in his high school math class. Secret Service investigated it and of course found no issues. I was surprised, rumor has it that this teacher was a member of the al-Gebra sect, and in possession of weapons of math instruction. (Don’t hurt me.)
Ever since gay people started teaching teachers started coming out of the closet, school boards have had to defend themselves against the ACLU and lawsuits from the angry Madonna-loving men who get fired and decide to blame it on discrimination. Though, in all fairness, they’re usually right.
Today, we go instead to a bitter obnoxious lesbian (not that there’s any other kind) who got fired from her job teaching for a Catholic school because her and her lesbian lover were going to have a child.
Music teacher Lisa Reimer was teaching at a fully private Catholic school in Vancouver (pretty much the Seattle of Canada) when she requested maternity leave as her and her partner were going to be having a baby (yeah, they let them do that here.) The school, who had opted to not fire her when she announced her homosexuality despite their legal right to do so, said that their hands were tied and decided to pay her out until the end of the year, and just wouldn’t renew her contract.
Whether or not you agree with the tenet of Catholicism frowning upon same-sex relationships is another issue entirely. Reimer signed a “Catholicity Contract” vowing to promote and live by “Catholic” values (I’m unsure at this point whether touching young boys was forbidden or not.) Furthermore, private schools should be able to hire or fire whomever they want. When I blogged a little while back about Constance McMillen, the lesbian who was forbidden from going to her prom, I expressed the belief that because that was a public school, the school didn’t have the right to forbid her from attending — and the other shenanigans that followed were just as bad. With this case, however, the government isn’t involved. It’s a private school, a business, and the teacher has made two major breaches in her contract, ignoring the good grace of the school to give her full pay for another two months.
On the upside, at least she gets full salary for sitting at home watching Ellen now. I’m so jealous.
It would seem that the peace-loving, sodomy-promoting, global warming-quelling, vomit-inducing neo-Marxist teachers union (I thought of a whole bunch of really good adjectives tonight and didn’t know where else to use them) has stooped to a new low — praying for the death of the new Republican Governor, Chris Christie. An internal memo from the president of the New Jersey Education Association had an interesting request for God:
“Dear Lord, this year you have taken away my favorite actor, Patrick Swayze, my favorite actress, Farrah Fawcett, my favorite singer, Michael Jackson, and my favorite salesman, Billy Mays. I just wanted to let you know that Chris Christie is my favorite governor.”
Amusing? Kind of. But, in the nagging words of my mother from my youth, “there’s a time and a place for everything.” And truth be told, I still haven’t figured out the appropriate place for leftism…I’ll get back to you on that one.
So, once again we see that the Right uses debate and intellect for discussion, and the Godless Left resorts to emotional death threats. But yet, at least they’ve learned how to pray now.
There are a few adjectives I’m considering using for this post: clever, mean, petty, frigging hilarious? I give up, take your pick.
I was trying to find an old post to link this to, but apparently I never actually wrote about it. So, here’s the jist: 17-year old lesbian extraordinaire Constance McMillen wanted to attend her prom at Itawamba County School in Mississippi with a female date, and she wanted to wear a tuxedo instead of those lovely dresses that end up wrinkled in a heap on the floor of the empty science classroom a hotel. So, the girl feels she’s being discriminated against and goes to the ACLU, who tells the school that they can’t make her act straight, nor can they ban her from the prom. Then, the school gives up and cancels it, which apparently wasn’t allowed either, so they put it back on.
Now, the story has taken a bit of an interesting turn.
From The Advocate: (No, I had never heard of it either…)
To avoid Constance McMillen bringing a female date to her prom, the teen was sent to a “fake prom” while the rest of her class partied at a secret location at an event organized by parents.
McMillen tells The Advocate that a parent-organized prom happened behind her back — she and her date were sent to a Friday night event at a country club in Fulton, Miss., that attracted only five other students. Her school principal and teachers served as chaperones, but clearly there wasn’t much to keep an eye on.
[...]
Two students with learning difficulties were among the seven people at the country club event, McMillen recalls.
Okay firstly, the school in question is a public school, so I really don’t think they should have been able to discriminate against this girl based on her lifestyle choice. I disagree with her, but I respect her right to freedom of expression. That being said, I also respect the rights of the other students at the school and their parents, and their right to set up a privately-sponsored, separate event that was taking place at the same time. The principal and a few teachers were in attendance to chaperone the country club prom — is it their responsibility if no one shows up?
I must admit, however, that I find it amusing that Miss Holier-Than-Thou-Lesbian feels the need to point out that there were two developmentally-challenged people in attendance of the country club prom. Is she saying that she feels they weren’t worthy of her presence?
If anyone involves themselves in this situation legally apart from the students at the school and the lesbian, a scary precedent will be set for being able to sue people for not inviting you to a party. If that’s the case, then seriously, I’m making a killing off of everyone I went to high school with.
