Bedrock

Late last night, I heard John and Jeff talking about schools that are“dropout factories .” They concluded that the responsibility for students dropping out falls on the families of those students who drop out. According to Thomas Sowell’s well-documented research in his book Black Rednecks and White Liberals , that may be the case among some minority families, thanks to their heritage and a black cultural bias against education. I seriously thought about calling their show. I have been tutoring refugee students, many in public schools, for over 4 years, and sometimes I’d like to drop out! I have heard rumors about how teaching had changed for the worse, but I had no idea just how badly. To start, perhaps, I should mention that teaching is not necessarily the complement of learning, although it should be. As a teacher and tutor, I understand teaching to be the facilitation of learning. In other words, my job is to help my students learn, and that should be the goa...

" Public servants say, always with the best of intentions, 'What greater service we could render if only we had a little more money and a little more power.' But the truth is that outside of its legitimate function, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector. Yet any time you and I question the schemes of the do-gooders, we're denounced as being opposed to their humanitarian goals. It seems impossible to legitimately debate their solutions with the assumption that all of us share the desire to help the less fortunate. They tell us we're always 'against,' never 'for' anything ."— Ronald Reagan I haven’t read David Harsanyi’s book Nanny State: How Food Fascists, Teetotaling Do-Gooders, Priggish Moralists, and Other Boneheaded Bureaucrats Are Turning America into a Nation of Children , but I hope to. Anita Allen’s review in the Washington Post both intrigued and infuriated me. She writes: David Harsanyi begins his...

For many years, I have wondered why people who have diverse opinions and loyalties find it necessary to badmouth people who disagree with them. I like chocolate but you don’t; therefore, obviously, you must be an idiot. I enjoy folk music, buy you prefer country; without a doubt, your mother dropped you on your head as a child. Many have regarded politics and religion as controversial, even too contentious for polite social society, but that doesn’t explain name-calling as an alternative to reasoned conversation. The latest case is Bill Maher (Beware, his rant is nasty!). Why does he feel it necessary to speak crudely about a group of people who, for the most part, are guilty of the sin of loving the United States ? His offensive generalization reminds me of those who think flag-burning is a legitimate form of protest against the current government or a particular policy. I think it comes close to what I consider to be treason . He seems to place himself in the cla...