I know where I’m NOT sending my kids to school.

Posted on November 14th, 2007 in Education, Journalism, Politics by Joe

Earlier today a Stanford student wrote this of Republican Candidate Ron Paul in The Stanford Daily. The obligatory wave of Paul supporters rushed in to leave their detraction’s in the comments listed below the article.

Some of the comments:

“Perhaps if you spent as much time contemplating Paul’s stands on the issues as you do cooking up flavorful ad hominem attacks (Or not so flavorful– “Paul is insane”) you might have found some common ground with him. ”

“I thought Stanford is also a “Research Institution,” no?”

There is something dissapointing about a student at Stanford (ranked 4th in the nation) that would publish this:

“Paul’s views are a contradictory hodgepodge of conservative and libertarian positions. He opposed the Iraq War but supported Afghanistan. He’s strongly pro-life but vaguely pro-gay-marriage.”

It may be particularly disappointing to the Federalist or Constitutionalists to hear an educated person decry Paul’s efforts to protect the life of the unborn while refusing to use federal power to force a definition of marriage on the states. What’s worse is the implication that, if Paul opposes gay-marriage in his private judgment, he must seek to abuse the power of the president to force that judgement on others. It is a threat to the ”institutions and values that have brought the United States to where it is today” when even the educated see nothing wrong with such a fallacious assumption. 

Perhaps Stu will come around. Consider this comment: “Then again, he is graduating in 2009, he still has a lot of growing up to do.”

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Rush Limbaugh Raises Money For Private Scholarships

Posted on October 15th, 2007 in Education, Politics by Wayne

I’m not a fan of Rush by any means, but seeing this made me smile.

A letter sent to Rush Limbaugh’s boss demanding he be chastised for comments he made on the air about “phony soldiers” is now on the auction block, and the latest bid is a cool $45,000.

…

“This historic document may well represent the first time in the history of America that this large a group of U.S. senators attempted to demonize a private citizen by lying about his views. As such, it is a priceless memento of the folly of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and his 40 senatorial co-signers,” reads the eBay announcement.

…

“I would like to issue this challenge to Senator Reid and the 41 senators who signed his letter… I would like for each of you, Senator Reid, and the 40 senators who signed, to match whatever the winning bid is. Show us your support for the U.S. military… match whatever the winning bid is and send that amount to the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation,” Limbaugh said. Limbaugh sits on the board of the foundation that has dispersed $29 million for scholarships.

You can check the status of the EBay auction here.

Update #1: With 3 Days and 15 Hours left, the bidding has reached $50K

Update #2: With 10 Hours left, the bidding has exceeded $2 million. I wonder if they’ll ever actually see that money…

Update #3: The bidding has ended, reaching $2,100,100.

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Breaks Your Legs and Offers You a Great Deal on Crutches!

Posted on September 30th, 2007 in Education, Iran by Wayne

1. When the government funds education, it can only do so with money it has already taken from the people.

2. That taxation reduces the ability of the people to independently fund their own education.

3. If you jump through the right hoops, they will give your money back to you, but only if your education is in line with what they want you to learn.

The `Restore Patriotism to University Campuses Act’ was introduced a few days ago. Some folks are upset that:

Through their invitation, Columbia University provided a public, prestigious platform on United States soil from which on September 24, 2007, President Ahmadinejad spoke and defended his wide-ranging support for terrorist activities.

Oh, what a mucked up situation this is!

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Chavez Won’t Leave Any Child Behind

Posted on September 17th, 2007 in Development, Education by Kyle

From the AP:

 Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez threatened on Monday to close or take over any private school that refuses to submit to the oversight of his socialist government as it develops a new curriculum and textbooks.

“Society cannot allow the private sector to do whatever it wants,” said Chavez, speaking on the first day of classes.

All schools, public and private, must admit state inspectors and submit to the government’s new educational system, or be closed and nationalized, with the state taking responsibility for the education of their children, Chavez said.

How do you say “Lysenkoism” in Spanish?

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Some interesting ideas to think about…

Posted on July 23rd, 2007 in Education by Wayne

It seems like most of the time someone tells you it’s “dangerous” to think about something or “harmful” to talk about something — you should immediately drop what you’re doing and go for it. I’m exaggerating, of course, but the suppression of unpopular opinions is becoming more and more of an issue.

It gets even more sticky when government funding is involved (as just about everything does).

The folks over at Reason did a writeup of this piece by Steven Pinker, a psychology professor at Harvard. It’s an interesting read in which he concludes:

Though I am more sympathetic to the argument that important ideas be aired than to the argument that they should sometimes be suppressed, I think it is a debate we need to have. Whether we like it or not, science has a habit of turning up discomfiting thoughts, and the Internet has a habit of blowing their cover.

Tragically, there are few signs that the debates will happen in the place where we might most expect it: academia. Though academics owe the extraordinary perquisite of tenure to the ideal of encouraging free inquiry and the evaluation of unpopular ideas, all too often academics are the first to try to quash them. The most famous recent example is the outburst of fury and disinformation that resulted when Harvard president Lawrence Summers gave a measured analysis of the multiple causes of women’s underrepresentation in science and math departments in elite universities and tentatively broached the possibility that discrimination and hidden barriers were not the only cause.

Academia has transformed from a breeding ground of new ideas into a disseminator of political correctness. The good people over at the Moving Picture Institute have picked up on this and have put out a documentary entitled Indoctrinate U. The trailer looks great, I’m looking forward to seeing it.

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