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In my recent article "The Failure of Field Trips," I explained what is wrong with traditional school outings. The typical field trip is irrelevant to the students' education, either because they have been unprepared to appreciate it by their schooling (e.g., City Hall...
Almost all of the writers, reporters, and editors of the paper come from the same educational mold and see practically everything through a far-left prism, with the result that The Times’ reporting is thoroughly slanted to the left.
It is ironic that in the present case, the victims of this anti-capitalistic attitude are colleges and universities. What is ironic is that they systematically instill such anti-capitalistic attitudes in practically every course they offer.
The lecture by Dr. John Lewis last month on Islamic totalitarianism at George Mason University was one of the most surreal public experiences I have witnessed in all my years as an activist and advocate. It evidenced in no uncertain terms that rationality and common...
Many educators stress the importance of field trips--opportunities to get students out of their desks and away from their books, and to give them direct, vivid, sensory experience with the world around them. Reflecting on my own education, these excursions off campus...
How do freewheeling Westerners morph into fanatical Islamists?
One of the most powerful religions in the Western World is environmentalism.
America’s war on terrorism is being undercut–by the administration’s efforts to inject religion into politics.
I began my career as a private teacher for a few families committed to providing their children with a real education. These parents had abandoned a fruitless search for a school in which their children would read the classics of literature, learn the story of...
Last week, I contrasted the cliché junior high classroom--of raucous teenagers throwing spitballs, passing love notes, and giggling at lewd jokes--with a VanDamme Academy junior high classroom--of young adults in raptures over Cyrano de Bergerac. How we produce...
When I tell people that I teach literature to junior high students, the response is nearly universal: an expression of profound sympathy. Teaching junior high is regarded as a martyr's job, to be taken on only by those with such a selfless commitment to children and...
When one reads The New York Times, one should know what one is getting. It is not unvarnished news, but the news as seen through the lens of a distinct philosophical and political doctrine, a doctrine that is hostile to the freedom, prosperity, and happiness of the individual, and thus to the foundations of the United States.
Several weeks ago, in my article "Pattern Recognition vs. Real Understanding," I stressed the crucial connection between writing and understanding: For the student to write explanations, in complete sentences, about every subject--whether history, literature, grammar,...
Even though there may not be formal meetings, strategy sessions, and the like to coordinate its news reporting with its leftist editorial slant, that leftist slant nevertheless very definitely does permeate its reporting.
Every class in elementary and junior high school should be in a lecture format. The teacher must be an authority on the subject, he must grasp its basic purpose, he must carefully define the knowledge to be conveyed by reference to that purpose, and he must present...
After defeating fascists and communists, can the West now defeat the Islamists?
Virtue, according to Christianity, consists of sacrificing one’s desires and goals in the name of fulfilling one’s duties to God. Sex, on this premise, is at best a necessary evil–a sinful act, justifiable only by the duty to procreate.
Every year, when I give my first test in a grammar or literature class, some new student asks me whether the test will be multiple choice. Every year, I look him in the eye and say "I can assure you that you will never, in any class, under any circumstances, at any...
It might be a hilarious comedy routine to have a group of highly educated judges solemnly expounding on something that everybody knows to be utter nonsense. But it isn't nearly as funny when this solemn discourse about nonsense takes place on the Supreme Court of the...
Every year, dozens of parents sit at my desk and describe to me the intense frustration they feel as they watch their children get churned through the public schools. One of the refrains of their complaints: endless homework. And no wonder: The work itself is largely...
Pick Your Gender and We’ll Enforce Your Choice, Says New York City’s Board of Health
The science curriculum for the elementary students at VanDamme Academy is taught primarily through experiments. These students are learning principles that are very close to the perceptual level, so we always demonstrate the principle in carefully designed hands-on...
Recently, I was visited by a mother frustrated with her son's education and looking for something more.She informed me that mid-way through his kindergarten year, they were still learning their letters--most recently, they had been studying the letter "P." And in...
The religious tradition of saying grace before meals becomes especially popular around the holidays, when we all are reminded of how fortunate we are to have an abundance of life-sustaining goods and services at our disposal. But there is a grave injustice involved in...
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