Posted on Thursday, August 21, 2003 - 10:13 pm:

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Overall, students in America score abysmally on tests involving history, science and all other academic subjects...the education system in America is in total meltdown, denying a decent education to all of those who pass through it. This [Head Start] and other programs are just sinkholes of tax dollars because the teacher's unions, i.e., the Democrat [sic] Party, control our school system

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Ravitch concludes that their comments "have the inevitable effect of striping away everything that is potentiall thought-provoking." ... This result is a calculated effect of an entente cordiale between censors of the left and of the right ... California means the multicultural left and Texas means the religious right. They can be brought together only by the most skillful juggling and blending. ... California washes out the language. Texas dumps the content down the drain. ... Thus we have Texas to thank for the caution against fossils and dinosaurs. And California, no doubt, for this: African tribes must be referred to as "groups"; huts should be "little houses".

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Particularly disturbing is introduction of the PowerPoint cognitive style into schools. Instead of writing a report using sentences, children learn how to make client pitches and info-mercials, which is better than encouraging children to smoke. Elementary school PP exercises...typically show 20 to 20 words and a piece of clip art on each slide in a presentation consisting of 3 to 6 slides -- a total of perhaps 80 words (15 seconds of silent reading) for a week of work. Rather than being trained as mini-bureaucrats in PPPhluff and foreshortening fo thought, students would be better off if the schools simply closed down on those days and everyone went to The Exploratorium. Or wrote an illustrated essay explaining something.

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