Who’s the Best Educator?

Who's the Dunce?

This editorial and follow-up from the Sun-Herald in Biloxi, Mississippi, perfectly sums of the attitude of many progressives regarding home school.  Without using any facts, figures or statistics, the argument instead falls back on the worn-out progressive purely emotional reasoning of “because we’re too smart not to always be right, so you must be wrong.”  In the case of homeschooling, they don’t dare talk about the facts because the facts sink their arguments in a second.

What’s the truth of homeschooling?  This response from the Home School Legal Defense Association very neatly sums up the truth.  Home school students not only perform on-par with public school students, they leave the public school students far back in the dust.  Results from the Progress Report 2009 show home school students from every state consistently perform around the 87^th percentile on standardized testing regardless of social-economic status, regardless of education level of the parent-educator and regardless of sex of the student.  Public school students meanwhile consistently perform at the 50^th percentile, with girls averaging worse performance than boys and students from lower social-economic backgrounds and parent(s) with lower educational levels performing worse than those from higher levels.

The editors of the Sun-Herald claim more governmental regulation is required in regards home school.  This progressive argument likewise ignores the fact that home school students’ stellar performance is equally impressive in states with heavy regulation of homeschooling (New York, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts) as it is in states which respect a parent’s fundamental right to educate their own children (Texas, Illinois, Indiana, Alabama, and others).  So the logical conclusion is over-regulation of homeschooling does nothing but waste tax-payer money.  It certainly has no impact on home school student performance.

Speaking of tax-payer money, the average home school parent spends $500 per child per year to achieve the results mentioned above.  Meanwhile, public schools are spending an average of nearly $10,000 of tax-payer money per child per year while consistently producing a child who on average only performs to the 50^th percentile on standardized tests.

As one comment to the Sun-Hearald editorial succinctly put it, “Why would anyone think a state which ranks 48^th in education is qualified to evaluate the competency of home school students?”

So why the progressive bias against home school?  They claim it’s because they “care about the children.”  Yet, the facts clearly demonstrate the superiority of homeschooling, so if one truly cared about a child’s education, he’d stand in strong support of homeschooling.  But, again, progressives do not support homeschooling, believing (despite the facts) the superior education model is state-controlled “public education.”  Why?

Progressives believe education is not about developing thinking skills, but about teaching children what to think.  In other words, teaching their progressive agenda as dogma.  We’re already seen it in history in every totalitarian state.  Educated, critical thinkers are a danger to those whose agendas rest on flimsy reasoning and pure emotion.  Here are some thoughts from Bill Ayers regarding the purpose and function of “education” in a “democracy.”  Never mind, as any home school student could tell you, our founders purposely avoided a democracy in favor of a representative Republic.

Will Israel Bomb Iran?

In this story on NewsRealBlog, Alexander Levkovsky shares the same analysis as I offered yesterday: thanks to the weak foreign policy of the Obama Administration, an Israeli attack against Iran is rapidly becoming only a matter of time – and will likely happen sooner than later.

I simply see no way Israel can (or will) tolerate a nuclear armed Arab neighbor, particularly an Arab neighbor whose leader repeatedly tells the world his goal is to wipe Israel off the map.  The interesting thing about tyrants throughout history is they often tell us exactly what they plan to do, however it’s always written off as “crazy talk.”  Just as Adolf Hitler made clear his plans in Mein Kampf, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has clearly and unequivocally made clear his goal of destroying Israel.  Even worse, Ahmadinejad is part of a group who believe it’s their destiny to usher in the return of the Twelfth Imam.  Similar to Christ’s return, the Twelfth Imam’s return will follow world-wide Armageddon.  The “Twelvers” believe it’s their duty to bring about such Armageddon.  Of course we ignore this since it’s just “crazy talk.”

President Obama’s obsession with apologizing for America instead of standing against evil means he will never seriously stand against Iran.  Instead, I believe his inaction will leave Israel with no choice (in their view) but to attack Iran.  Such an attack will likely draw the entire Middle East into conflict.  The United States, with forces already in the area, will be drawn into this conflict as well.  With their economic ties to Iran, Russia will likely be drawn in as well, pitting the United States in a war against Russia.  But don’t worry,  Ahmadinejad’s desire to create Armageddon is just “crazy talk.”

Phoenix Mayor Blames New Illegal Alien Law on Talk Radio, Lack of Fairness Doctrine

Fairness Doctrine

From this story on NewsRealBlog, we learn that Phil Gordon, the Mayor of Phoenix, is blaming passage of Arizona’s illegal alien law on (you’ll never guess) talk radio and the lack of a “fairness doctrine.”  I wonder what Mr. Gordon blames for his city being the number two city in the world for kidnapping – second only to Mexico City.  But I digress.

Whenever the American public overwhelmingly expresses an opinion contrary to the leftist/progressive agenda, the leftists always blame it on something other than honest public sentiment.  I believe there’re two reasons for this.

First, I think they have truly deluded themselves into believing they’re so enlightened and have all the answers that any disagreement to their positions can’t be from honest disagreement, but from the unenlightened, uninformed and ignorant.  George Stephanopoulos perfectly summed up this attitude when he said during the Clinton administration that sometimes the people don’t know what’s best for them.  Likewise, Obama’s comments (after admitting he knew nothing of the facts) that the police “acted stupidly” in the arrest of his professor friend, as well as the professor’s screams to the police that “you don’t know who you’re dealing with” also show this attitude.  Anyone who holds a position in opposition to the progressive is simply an idiot and not even worth the progressive’s time to listen to the person’s position – after all if the person actually knew what he was talking about, he’d agree with the progressive’s position. 

Second, leftists and progressives very, very clearly operate off talking points developed by a select few.  Don’t believe me?  Just pay attention whenever a big issue comes up.  For some reason, the mainstream media and leftist politicians start using almost the exact same words.  Perhaps they’re just so enlightened they’ve developed telepathy and are like the Borg with one thought for the collective.  Since they don’t tolerate free thinkers among their ranks, they simply assume “the other side” (which actually consists of people of all sorts of political stripes – including “old-fashioned” Democrats) must simply be operating off talking points as well.  Since they rely on a select few to tell the masses what to think, they simple assume that’s how “the other side” operates as well, so in their eyes, “talk radio” (which I believe means Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck) and Fox News are the mouthpieces for dissemination of carefully crafted and approved talking points.  The idea that many Americans remain free and critical thinkers, who examine all sides and evidence before forming their own opinion, is a completely foreign concept. 

Finally, while slightly off-topic, is the progressive’s use of language.  Have you noticed we keep talking about “immigration?”  Notice even NewsRealBlog uses “immigration” in their headline.  But in reality the issues we’re discussing and the issue the Arizona law addresses is not immigration, but illegal aliens – people who are in the country illegally.  If we talk about illegal aliens, the vast majority of people would agree we should not allow people to sneak into the country just as every other nation, including Mexico, prohibits people from sneaking in illegally. 

However, progressives don’t want to discuss facts.  They prefer to sway people with emotion, most often attempting to get people to feel sorry for another group.  Therefore, instead of talking about illegal aliens, they use terms such as “illegal immigration” or the new buzz term, “undocumented workers.”  Both terms designed to lessen the truth and instead create empathy for law-breakers.  The vast majority of people sneaking in are not immigrants in the real sense of the word.  They are not coming to the US to become Americans who share in our system and contribute to our nation – those are the real immigrants who come in the front door and willingly jump through all the hoops because they so love American and want to become American citizens.  Instead, most illegal aliens are here to make money and mooch off the welfare system.  Never mind as well the large numbers of illegal aliens engaged in gang and violent drug-related activity or even the fact illegal aliens, since they’re “off the books,” are paid a patience and kept in worse than slave-like conditions.

The progressives know they can never win on the facts, instead all they are left with is talking points, name calling and appeals to empathy instead of law.

Israel Begins Four-Day Nationwide Drill to Prepare for War

Israeli Soldiers

According to Joel Rosenberg’s blog (see story here), Israel begins a yearly nationwide military drill on Sunday.  The four-day exercise focuses on municipalities’ abilities to respond to massive missile and rocket attacks.  On Wednesday, air raid sirens will sound as a warning for a simulated attack, sending civilians to designated shelters. 

The Obama administration continues to make clear they have no stomach for seriously confronting Iran.  Meanwhile, Iran has made clear its desire to develop a nuclear weapon.  The recent UN “sanctions” will do nothing to dissuade Iran, both because they know the US has no intention of doing anything but talking and because it’s turned out there’s a giant loophole in the sanctions which do not restrict Iran’s purchase of ground-to-air missiles.  Coincidently enough, Iran bought such missiles from Russia a few years ago, but Russia has not yet delivered the weapons. 

Israel knows they’re going to have to “go it alone” in defense of their nation.  It’s highly unlikely Israel will sit by while Iran obtains nuclear weapons.  Therefore, given the current situation (and seeming unlikelihood of any change in the near term), Israel will likely feel forced to launch a preemptive strike in order to protect their national security.  Given the presence of US troops in the region, I see little possibility of the United States not being drawn into such a confrontation.