Giving kids a better grasp of what America means usually begins with a good book. The combination of appealing pictures and exciting ideas may spark a young person's interest to learn more about a topic. Several classic children's books offer reasons to celebrate...
Conservatives everywhere were celebrating last week with the announcement that Howell Raines was forced out as executive editor of The New York Times. Raines had pushed the paper yet further to the left and had done so in ways that were intended to be as irritating to...
As you start out on your careers and your adult lives, we urge you to hold two ideas as absolutes, never to be breached or compromised: that reason is your means of knowing reality, and that your life belongs only to you.
On January 27, 2003 the Hamilton College Objectivist Club, Chaplaincy, Hillel, Dean of Students' Office, Arthur Levitt Public Affairs Center, and government department brought Dr. Daniel Pipes to Hamilton College. Dr. Pipes began his visit with a Q&A seminar on the...
When critics point out the abysmal performances of schools in ghetto neighborhoods, teachers defend themselves by pointing out the disinterested, disruptive, and sometimes dangerous students they have to deal with. But teacher failure and student failure are not...
Consider the following scenario: A junior at a major university is majoring in marketing. She is one of the department's most successful and intelligent students. All of her professors agree she will rise to the top of her profession someday. Now suppose this...
Drexel University is very often accused by students and faculty of being "run like a business" while pointing to its shortcomings and ignorant "customer service" as proof of it. When one hears of so many bad experiences with the Drexel administration and considers the...
It has been said that, when Ronald Reagan was governor of California, someone told him that admitting students to the University of California on individual performance alone could mean that all the students at Berkeley might be Asian Americans. "So what?" was the...
Thomas Watkins, Michigan's superintendent of public schools, is on a mission to expand his authority beyond the traditional K-12 boundaries. If given his way, every child in the state--practically from birth--would become the exclusive property of state authorities....
The New York Civil Rights Commission (NYCRC) has put out a report that documents how "little attention has been given to the color-conscious policies of the colleges and universities that permit or encourage, and, oftentimes, fund a balkanized campus environment." The...
Israel is criticized for alleged insensitivity to the risks of casualties among civilians, especially children, during counter-terrorist missions. But the tragedy of unintended casualties from justified military actions cannot be compared to a society's deliberate...
The test results are in: America's children are flunking math. In 1996 American high school seniors finished close to the bottom on an international mathematics test. At the end of last year, American eighth-graders ranked below those of Malaysia, Bulgaria, and...
The public education monopoly can't stand the thought of "unqualified" parents teaching their own children. That is why they are cracking down on home schooling, even as a new study shows that thousands of public school teachers themselves are shamefully unqualified...
Fundamental problems require fundamental solutions-which can only be derived by thinking in fundamental principles. And that’s precisely what’s absent from discussions on education.
While we ought to learn from our own experiences, it is even better to learn from other people's experiences, saving ourselves the painful costs of the lessons. In the case of the dominant educational fads of our times, many have been tried out before in other...
One of the objections by the educational establishment to state-mandated tests for students is that this forces the teachers to teach directly the material that is going to be tested, instead of letting the students "discover" what they need to know through their own...
Florida's school year has already started early, so that its students will have more preparation before the state-mandated tests that will be administered to them later in the school year. Meanwhile, there is much wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth because so...
Physics is the fundamental natural science. Its birth in the 17th century heralded man's coming of age as a rational being. The discovery of the basic laws of nature led to the industrial revolution and modern technology, demonstrating the enormous practical power of...
Most discussions of the problems of American education have an air of utter unreality because they avoid addressing the most fundamental and intractable problem of our public schools -- the low quality of our teachers. There is no point expecting teachers to teach...
Some thought that racial preferences and quotas -- "affirmative action" -- in university admissions decisions were on their way out after they were banned by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in Texas and by Proposition 209 in California. However, the 6th Circuit Court...
Accused pipe bomber Lucas John Helder had barely been taken into custody before people began saying that he was crazy. Apparently no one is responsible for doing wrong things any more. Some of young Mr. Helder's comments may sound illogical to many of us. But they are...
I spent my 21st birthday, in 1973, in Jerusalem, months before the Yom Kippur War. As part of the college junior semester abroad, I lived and traveled in Israel for nearly five weeks. In preparing a thesis called "U.N. Resolution 242 and the Viability of an...
The next time someone receives an award as an outstanding teacher, take a close look at the reasons given for selecting that particular person. Seldom is it because his or her students did higher quality work in math or spoke better English or in fact had any tangible...
Why our disintegrating culture is turning out so many people who are so much less than men can be.
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