“Surprise, surprise, surprise!” says Gomer Pyle.

Thousands of Massachusetts public high school graduates arrive at college unprepared for even the most basic math and English classes, forcing them to take remedial courses that discourage many from staying in school, according to a statewide study released yesterday.

The problem is particularly acute in urban districts and vocational schools, according to the first-of-its kind study. At three high schools in Boston and two in Worcester, at least 70 percent of students were forced to take at least one remedial class because they scored poorly on a college placement test.

It can be said that this is true of most public school graduates, but I do find there is a difference between what MA and NH produces in high school. It’s a sign of poor teaching and parenting issues. Dousing school districts with more money isn’t the answer here. Teacher unions, tenure and low expectations are the problem. Accountability should be mandatory. But it’s not. Until these simple things are fixed, expect to see no change. School districts should use this info and go after those who are not doing their job. I haven’t read the data but I can bet there are similar links to all these students….within the schools themselves. Find the link, break it and improvements will come.

Fiction:

The campus rape industry’s central tenet is that one-quarter of all college girls will be raped or be the targets of attempted rape by the end of their college years (completed rapes outnumbering attempted rapes by a ratio of about three to two). The girls’ assailants are not terrifying strangers grabbing them in dark alleys but the guys sitting next to them in class or at the cafeteria.

This claim, first published in Ms. magazine in 1987…

And now the facts:

So what reality does lie behind the campus rape industry? A booze-fueled hookup culture of one-night, or sometimes just partial-night, stands. Students in the sixties demanded that college administrators stop setting rules for fraternization. “We’re adults,” the students shouted. “We can manage our own lives. If we want to have members of the opposite sex in our rooms at any hour of the day or night, that’s our right.” The colleges meekly complied and opened a Pandora’s box of boorish, sluttish behavior that gets cruder each year. Do the boys, riding the testosterone wave, act thuggishly toward the girls? You bet! Do the girls try to match their insensitivity? Indisputably.

College girls drink themselves into near or actual oblivion before and during parties. That drinking is often goal-oriented, suggests University of Virginia graduate Karin Agness: it frees the drinker from responsibility and “provides an excuse for engaging in behavior that she ordinarily wouldn’t.” A Columbia University security official marvels at the scene at homecomings: “The women are shit-faced, saying, OLet’s get as drunk as we can,˜ while the men are hovering over them.” As anticipated, the night can include a meaningless sexual encounter with a guy whom the girl may not even know. This less-than-romantic denouement produces the “roll and scream: you roll over the next morning so horrified at what you find next to you that you scream,” a Duke coed reports in Laura Sessions Stepp’s recent book Unhooked. To the extent that they’re remembered at all, these are the couplings that are occasionally transformed into “rape”—though far less often than the campus rape industry wishes.

We can thank feminism for all this. And if you want your daughter to not become a victim of her own choosing in these matters, teach her to respect herself. It’s also important to teach our sons how to respect girls and women…and not take advantage of them when they do stupid things. There are very few campuses where these behaviors don’t occur- public, private, religious- it doesn’t matter. The drunken hookup scene is the popular scene these days. Self respect. It will go a long way.

One in four Britons don’t believe wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill existed, according to a recent survey.

Churchill is compared to Florence Nightingale and Sir Walter Raleigh, seen by many survey respondents as a mythical person, the London Daily Mail reported Monday.

The survey, conducted with 3,000 respondents to test their general knowledge, reported other historical figures such as Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi, Cleopatra and the Duke of Wellington were made up for books and films, the Mail reported.

The survey, by UKTV Gold, also found that Sherlock Holmes was a real person.

Young Britons under 20 lack a basic historical education according to the survey results, historian Correlli Barnett told the Daily Mail.

“This suggests a complete lack of common sense and respect for our greatest heroes of the past,” Barnett said.

This is what happens when schools start worrying about be politically correct. They teach ’bout “fweewings” and how to put a condom on a bananna. Curriculums focus on revisionist history with multicultualist attitudes that place one’s home country (ya know, the one created and run by old, white, aristocrats) beneath all others in an attempt to placate perceived wrongs.

It was good knowing you Great Britain, hate to eventually lose an ally..

Whoa…a letter to American feminists.

We are encouraged by the fact that these American feminists feel the need to respond to our challenge over their silence as a movement on violence against Muslim women and to assert their opposition to these barbaric practices. We challenge them now to put actions behind their words.

Go read all of this to get context. I have been unable to find words to describe my feelings on THIS article that the NYT published the other day.
This article at FPM describes some of how I feel.

Is this evidence that public schools are indeed a failure? I think so…

Forty students from Creekside High and Bear Creek Middle schools in Fairburn will be the first to try the “Learn & Earn” program, where students will get paid to attend after-school tutoring programs.

Students will make approximately $8 an hour, and be eligible for bonuses if their grades improve, said Kirk Wilks, district spokesman. The initial students are in the eighth and 11th grades.
[...]

With the support of Fulton County Commissioner Robb Pitts, the pilot program will last 15 weeks and pay students for participation and performance. The object of the program is to determine if paying students to study will improve classroom attendance, grades and test scores, according to a news release from the district.

I’m speechless.

About praising the kids:

The downside of too much praise is that kids may start to focus on the reward rather than what they are learning. Worse, failure can be devastating and confusing for a student whose confidence is based on an inflated ego, rather than his or her actual abilities, the magazine notes. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t praise our kids or that teachers shouldn’t try to engender self-confidence. But self-esteem should be the result of good grades and achievement, not false accomplishments.

I think we’re seeing a generation of young adults who are victims of this rah-rah mentality.

Ouch.

“If I suck so bad as a parent that my child won’t talk to me about something as important as sex, I think she should talk to some strange adult who will encourage her to have sex. I’m glad that these strangers, who are government employees, and therefore completely trustworthy, but who might be pedophiles, will encourage my daughter to have sex often, perhaps even with them.”

And much, much worse is what’s also implied by this statement:

“In addition, not only do I trust complete stranger adults encouraging MY child to have promiscuous sex at age 11, I DEMAND that every other adult in the state of Maine equally trust random, unknown adults to encourage every one of their children to have open sex at age 11, too.” Mr. Verrier, you are an evil, horrible person. I don’t want ANY 11-year olds having sex, and you are horrible to demand that I allow ALL 11-year old girls to have rampant sex.

So the very few cases where we know a kid cannot or will not talk to their parents about sex means ALL PARENTS have to pay a price here?? We pay for our kids health care; we provide housing and food and clothing and all those other material items. But we have no right to know of school sponsored/provided medications? And birth control pills and patches are medications. It’s not at all right, this policy at the school in Maine. And I find it so hard to believe ANY parent thinks it is.

**UPDATE**
Cotillion sister Darleen has this:

However, in Maine, anyone having sex with someone under the age of 14 is guilty of “gross sexual assault”, punishable by up to 40 years imprisonment.

Nothing in the article indicates Ms. Rowe went to the police when she discovered sexual assault victims.

If this isn’t an indication of the support and encouragement of the sexual exploitation of minors, then what is?

Sweet eh?

Actually no. It’s damn sickening.

You have to C this to believe this.

Plenty of college students grumble when they get a mediocre grade and feel that they deserved better. When Brian Marquis got a C instead of an A-minus at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, he made a federal case of it.

Literally.

Marquis, a 51-year-old paralegal seeking bachelor’s degrees in legal studies and sociology, filed a 15-count lawsuit in US District Court in Springfield in January after a teaching assistant graded a political philosophy class on a curve and turned Marquis’s A-minus into a C. Marquis contends that the university violated his civil rights and contractual rights and intentionally inflicted “emotional distress.”

No commentary needed. I am emotionally distressed that this can even happen.

He’a BAACCKK…Ward Feather Fondler Churchill that is.

Former University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill on Tuesday began what he told students would become a series of classes held at the school despite being fired from his position in July.

Churchill elicited applause and handshakes from the majority of the 30 or so CU students and area residents who came to hear his lecture, which he titled “ReVisioning American History: Colonization, Genocide and Formation of the U.S. Settler State.”

Churchill, who did not allow the Camera to attend the class, said the group would come up with various topics to discuss.

“I’ve been invited by people who are concerned with content of the mind,” Churchill said.

Hmm….

The controversial former professor was invited to speak in a classroom at CU’s Eaton Humanities Building by a group of student supporters who rented out the space. Churchill handed out a class syllabus, which includes scheduled classes to be held Oct. 9 about colonialism, Oct. 23 on genocide and Oct. 30 about racism.

Yea he’s all about teaching racism. Who cares about the fact that Churchill’s FACTS are made up fairy tales concocted in his mind and spewed out as real history. Who cares that he plagiarized the works of others. Who questions his integrity and ethics?

A written introduction to the class states that it “carries no credit, fulfills no institutional requirements, involves payment of no tuition, entails no paycheck to its instructor. … It is therefore in no sense bound by the rules supposedly governing courses offered in the university catalogue.”

Aaron Smith, a 24-year-old senior political science and ethnic studiesmajor, said he helped organize the class because he and other students wanted to hear what Churchill had to say.

“We were deprived of his teaching,” Smith said of the university’s decision to fire Churchill, who taught American Indian studies. “He was one of the most valuable professors we’ve had on this campus.”

Most valuable? And the kids were deprived eh? Well maybe. But I say the kids at least have a better chance of learning factual history and might get off to a better start in life- vs. looking like a bunch of dumbasses graduating from this college. Why the kids see anything in this non man is beyond me; why they insist upon fondling Churchill’s over bloated and undeserved ego escapes me as well. I suppose he’s become a legend to some. Legends are usually full of half truths and out right BS- as the case with Churchill.

I’ve been avoiding repeating the high coverage on the blogs about Columbia University inviting that diptoad Iranian President to speak…I admit also that I wasn’t fully aware of ALL the details.

This doesn’t surprise me:

NEW YORK — A Columbia University official under fire for inviting Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to campus on Monday has said any notable figure visiting the United States — even Adolf Hitler — would be welcome to speak to students and faculty at the Ivy League college.

The invitation to Ahmadinejad as well as the remarks Saturday by Dean John Coatsworth have raised seeming contradictions over Columbia’s guest policy, with critics asking why the leader of a nation that exports terrorism is allowed to speak, but the leader of an American organization that seeks to secure U.S. borders is not.

School officials won’t allow an ROTC program in its curriculum but have invited one of America’s avowed enemies onto its campus, detractors note. They call it a double standard regarding public speakers and free speech.

Ahmadinejad has called the Holocaust “a myth,” encouraged the destruction of Israel and leads a nation that has supported Hezbollah terrorists in the Middle East and insurgents in Iraq.

The Iranian president will address students and faculty at a forum only days after Columbia retracted a speaking invitation to the president of the Minuteman Project, a controversial citizens’ group that seeks to secure America’s borders from illegal immigrants, even going so far as to try building a fence along the border with Mexico.

Well we all know those pesky little assertions by Mr. Ahmadinejad are just meaningless rhetoric. We all know that many people totally agree with him- and many others just want to hear what the man has to say.

But what about the Minuteman Project fellow? What? Illegal immigration and the debate around it isn’t pesky enough for an elite Ivy League school? Guess not.

Minuteman founder and president Jim Gilchrist said he now feels “sweet and sour” toward Columbia after an invitation to participate in an Oct. 4 talk was taken away last week. Gilchrist appeared at Columbia last year, but his speech was thwarted when students and other opponents stormed the stage as he took the podium.

“I’ve always respected Columbia, but I’ve relegated it to a gutter school after that incident,” Gilchrist said in a phone interview. “They’ve stopped free speech. That’s worse than killing people. With that, you can kill an entire nation.”

Thats the way of it. Free speech is alright so long as that speech is politically correct. And since this school gets to pick and chose which speech is politically correct, Mr. Gilchrist is out of luck.

But if he were alive, Hitler wouldn’t have such bad luck? Come on Columbia. Do better.

I love the bullshit:

But Coatsworth, in an interview with FOX News, said just about anyone would be welcome to speak at the university.

“If Hitler were in the United States and wanted a platform from which to speak, he would have plenty of platforms to speak in the United States,” Coatsworth said. “If he were willing to engage in a debate and a discussion, to be challenged by Columbia students and faculty, we would certainly run it.”

Columbia University President Lee Bollinger issued a lengthy statement defending the school’s decision to host Ahmadinejad and said that during his introduction to the event, he would challenge the Iranian president on the following:

—the Iranian president’s denial of the Holocaust;

—his public call for the destruction of Israel;

—his reported support for international terrorism that targets innocent civilians and American troops;

—Iran’s pursuit of nuclear ambitions in opposition to international sanctions;

—his government’s widely documented suppression of civil society and particularly women’s rights;

—his government’s imprisoning of journalists and scholars, including one of Columbia’s own alumni, Dr. Kian Tajbakhsh.

“Columbia, as a community dedicated to learning and scholarship, is committed to confronting ideas,” Bollinger said in his statement. “On occasion this will bring us into contact with beliefs many, most or even all of us will find offensive and even odious. …

I can’t wait to hear these questions be asked…and I wait with enthusiasm. I’m an optimistic person and will put my faith in the university- and the challenging chatter they promise to bring forth.
(rolling my eyes)

So the long winded saga of the famous, frothing-at-his-mouth, feather licking, forever-smoking, flea infested Ethics Professor, Ward Churchill, has reached a new level. He’s been fired.

Boulder — Regents at the University of Colorado voted 8-1 today to terminate ethnic studies professor Ward Churchill.

The vote was made en masse; regent Cindy Carlisle was the lone vote in favor of keeping Churchill.

There’s always one who has to stick with the losers.

We all know what’s next…more wastes of money and time and resources. Churchill is a dying act, but he refuses to go down without a fight.

Churchill’s lawyer, David Lane, has said he has a lawsuit ready to be filed.

Churcill, Lane and a handful of faculty members held a news conference immediately after the announcement.

Churchill told reporters, “I’m going nowhere. It’s not about break, it’s not about bend, it’s not about compromise. It’s not about negotiate if you negotiate your rights, you will have no rights.”

WHAT rights don’t you have Mr. Churchill?? Please tell me? And when it comes to the things you have been found guilty of, there should be NO bending or negotiations. Your shit has affected the reputation of CU. Your bosses have every right, indeed, an obligation, to fire your feather enema-ed ass.

The controversy that led to today’s action has its roots in January 2005, when Churchill was to speak at Hamilton College in New York.

A student journalist writing an advance article about the speech publicized a piece Churchill had written in which he described some of the victims of the 9/11 attacks as “little Eichmanns” — a reference to World War II war criminal Adolf Eichmann, who helped manage the logistics of the Nazis’ mass exterminations.

The article in the student paper prompted the cancellation of Churchill’s speeches there. Within days, Gov. Bill Owens had called for Churchill to be fired, and Colorado talk shows were awash in invective about the professor.

The university launched an investigation.

And what did they find??

It soon became clear that Churchill’s scholarship had been questioned for years by other professors. Thomas Brown of Lamar University in Texas had long challenged Churchill’s assertion that early European settlers of North America had intentionally spread smallpox among Indians by handing out infected blankets.

Eventually, other revelations about Churchill became public, including that his hiring bypassed most of CU’s normal processes for awarding tenure and that he had no proof of his claimed American Indian ancestry, which was the foundation of his hiring.

Ultimately, a CU faculty committee charged Churchill with inaccurately describing historical facts in some of his writings — including the smallpox case.

The professor was also accused of plagiarizing other authors in his writing. In one case, he was shown to have lifted several passages from a pamphlet on native fishing rights in Canada for his own publications. Churchill has argued that his works are meticulously footnoted, and that he would have no reason to intentionally plagiarize another author.

But the panel charged that sometimes Churchill created fictitious characters to write something inflammatory, then simply footnoted to those works when he published under his own name.

Hmm. A timeline of the tenure of Sir Feather-Stuffer-Upper-His-Butt Churchill.

And the charges…

The saga will continue. Churchill is filing a lawsuit claiming his right to free speech was violated and was the reason he lost his job. Typical of a liberal, he refuses to accept responsibility for his words, speeches and writings. His rants on the Sept. 11th victims drew national attention to him; the negative and repulsive reaction was natural and people began to take a close look at this lunatic and the things he was teaching kids. CU has done the right thing- and maybe it’s not too late to save the academic integrity of this school. Teaching is a huge responsibility; free ideas has a place in education, but not false and untrue ideas disguised as facts.

Ward Churchill is using the “free speech card”, as I suspected he would.

University of Colorado ethnic-studies professor Ward Churchill will formally request a hearing before the Board of Regents in response to CU president Hank Brown’s letter last week recommending his dismissal for academic misconduct, his attorney said Monday.

Attorney David Lane said Churchill has 20 days to respond in writing with a request for a private hearing. After that, unless the regents choose to reinstate Churchill and forgo all forms of discipline, Lane said, Churchill will file a free speech lawsuit against the university.

Churchill used his free speech as anyone can and should, to express an opinion. It offended many people so shortly after the 9-11 attacks. Free speech is a right. Along with it comes responsibility…personal accountability- something many liberals do not accept as a valuable trait.

To Churchill and many like him, this is about free speech and nothing else. I guess if we look at this like they do we would have to agree…if Churchill hadn’t spewed off about 9-11 victims beings Nazi’s he wouldn’t have come under national attention. Then people wouldn’t have noted the obvious and blatant historical errors in his writings; we wouldn’t have noticed that he stole the works of others as passed it off as his own. No one would have cared that his claims of being an Indian were also found to be false. He used his right to free speech; now he doesn’t want to accept any responsibility for the ensuing national attention and scrutiny he got from said speech.

There is a big IF here, however.

Every behavior has a consequence. And yes- vile hateful free speech is a behavior.

More accusations of misconduct for Ward Churchill.

Michael puts it bluntly:

If your going to rock the boat, be prepared to get put under a microscope. This is why so many people don’t want to be in politics.

As I said here the other day, free speech is free…but one has to responsible for it as well. And when you spout off Anti American rhetoric shortly after America is attacked, you best expect to be put under that microscope.

More:

On Friday, January 28, 2005 Bill O’Reilly painted a verbal target on the back of University of Colorado Ethnic Studies Professor Ward Churchill, vowing to bring him down for remarks he wrote online in 2001. Since that time in a systematic, deliberate way O’Reilly and FOX News have decided that Ward Churchill does not deserve to teach and have set out to destroy him. I personally believe this is because anti-academic elements within the right-wing movement thought at the time that this would be an easy case to use to test the concept of “tenure” in federal court. If that was the original intent, it backfired mightily.

This isn’t about his comments regarding September 11th victims being little Nazi’s. Churchill’s writing on this opened him up to scrutiny- as it would to me had I written that. Churchill is a man who has lied about his race; his academic research has been found to not only faulty, but historically inaccurate. He has plagiarized the works of others. To claim anti academic elements within the right wing movement is responsible for Churchill’s downfall is disingenuous, as is calling this censorship. Churchill can blame NO one but himself.

Cradle to College Education in Massachusetts. Sounds sweet huh?

Governor Deval Patrick plans to unveil a proposal today to make Massachusetts’ community colleges, among the priciest in the nation, free to all high school graduates in the state by the year 2015, according to documents obtained by the Globe.

The proposal is the centerpiece of Patrick’s vision for a “cradle to career” education system that would dramatically expand the concept of public education in Massachusetts.

The plan, which he will outline during commencement at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, would also provide preschool for all children, extend the school day and year, and guarantee two years of community college paid for by the state.

Free eh? By whose definition?

But Patrick’s ambitious plan includes neither price tags nor funding proposals as the state struggles financially. Instead, it calls for a commission that would be charged with transforming the plan into reality.

Of course they won’t talk about funding this. Everyone knows it will fall squarely in the lap of the tax payers. And the costs will be astronomical.

Universal health care, and perhaps universal college education, could sink the state of Massachusetts into a hole it will never come out of. By doing this, these expensive colleges will no longer be able to support the excellent education they DO deliver year after year. Whenever something, anything, is taken over by a government it reduces quality and becomes bogged down with latent bureaucracy. The freeness of this will creep back to haunt- not just with even higher taxes and YET another state government dept of something-or-other, but with the colleges themselves. The professors and staff will see lower salaries and benefits, lower standards of achievement and face oversights galore. What’s wrong with expecting people to take personal responsibility for their higher education? Instead, they are making another entitlement program.