The performance of our system of education is dismal, not only in Canada, but to a virtually identical extent in the USA as well.  25% of adults in our population are now functionally illiterate.  That means that one out of every four adults can't read and write well enough to be able to answer and fill out a simple questionnaire, that they can't fill out the simple basic Income Tax Return form without assistance, that they can't figure out a bus schedule, and that they can't perform simple arithmetic operations without the help of a calculator.  The latter problem is often made out to be a trivial one, because in today's society, so it is said, people always have a calculator at arm's length.
    However, what the inability to perform simple mental arithmetic operations means is that one hasn't got the ability to assess the validity of many things.  It means that someone who is driving his car for a distance of 400 miles may not be able to discern that half-way along the trip he has to stop for gas, because his car will take him only 250 miles on a single tank of gasoline.  It means that someone involved with storing goods of some kind into a designated space won't have the ability to determine how much space is required, because he won't have the ability to judge that when 10% of the goods to be stored have used up more than half of the storage space, there'll be no possible way to get the remaining 90% of the goods into the remaining half of the assigned storage space.
    It means that people who are functionally illiterate haven't got the ability to critically evaluate anything they are being told in the way of statistical information and are thereby unable to tell when or that they are being lied to.  It should therefore not surprise us that someone like Hillary Clinton publicly said to a journalist at a convention that under-educated people are easier to govern.

An ever-increasing number of parents have become sufficiently concerned about the sad state of our education system that they enroll their children to an ever-increasing extent in independent schools, schools not under the influence of an education system bureaucracy that is running amok.
    One such parent is Malkin Dare.  In a review of her book "HOW TO GET THE RIGHT EDUCATION FOR YOUR CHILD" the Alberta Report states that: "When her son (now 18) was in Grade 2, his teacher told her he would probably fail because he couldn't read.  So she bought a phonics book and taught him to read after school.  "If I could do that in six weeks, why couldn't they do it in almost three years?" she queries, " and Malkin Dare said also: " "Ultimately, you've got to ensure that your own child is saved."

Malkin Dare asks how it is possible that she managed in the space of six weeks to do what her son's teachers could not manage to do in three years.  As the items shown below indicate, there are many reasons for that.  It seems that it isn't easy to finger one particular reason as the primary cause.  However, the major reason could easily be that the schools seriously discriminate against boys.  Judith Kleinfeld of the University of Alaska examines the myth promoted by the American Association of University Women (AAUW) which stated in a much-publicized report that schools short-change girls.  That myth is based on falsification and misrepresentation of research data.  Judith Kleinfeld's findings indicate the opposite.  It is boys who experience widespread discrimination by teachers.

Additional Reading:

Homeschooling, A Feminist Challenge

September 4, 2001
by Wendy McElroy, mac@ifeminists.com

A peaceful revolution is transforming North America at its roots, and women are in the forefront.

In quiet mutiny against the quality and content of government education, a growing number of women are choosing to stay at home to teach their children one-on-one. A recent federal survey (Parent-NHES:1999) estimates that 850,000 children were homeschooled in 1999: this constituted 1.7 percent of students between the ages of 5 to 17. Other studies put the figure as high as 1.5 million children.... [Full story]

AMERICA'S FAILING PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM

By Ashley Anderson, 16 years old, September 16, 2003

Ruth and I went to the funeral of one of our friends yesterday.  We spoke to a lady who experienced similar problems with her oldest daughter.  All it took was ten one-hour lessons and her daughter was on the right track.  The lady is now doing home schooling for four children.

I mentioned to her the concerns you have for the need of your boys for social contact in school.  She said that that is not an issue with her.  Her children get all of the social contact they need through their involvement with various youth groups, but that the most important thing to her is that her children now receive an education and that she is in control about what moral values will be taught to them.

You can find out more about home schooling at <http://homeschooling.about.com/education/homeschooling/cs/canabsg/>.

Specific information about the School of Hope program that the lady uses is at <https://www.schoolofhope.org/>.

All of our love,

Walter and Ruth

 Lowering Scholastic Test Standards

[National Center for Policy Analysis <http://www.reagan.com/HotTopics.main/document-8.28.1996.3.html>

   A new policy involved in the College Board's Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) implies that the organization believes today's students can never match the scores of their parents and grandparents. Last year, the Board announced that the average score on both the mathematical and verbal tests would be "recentered" -- meaning that the standards would be lowered. The latest SAT scores, announced last week, were the first to be graded on the new curve. After many years of insisting that the test was an "unchanging standard," the average score was recalculated to reflect the results of students who took the test in 1990 -- rather than by the standards of those who took the test in 1941.

    Originally called the Scholastic Aptitude Test when introduced in 1941, the average score was set at 500 on a scale of 200 to 800.

[What this means is that anyone who takes the tests without even answering one single question will be rewarded with 200 points just for attending.  --WHS]

    As a result of the recentering, a student receiving a 508 on the mathematics test this year would have received only a 484 in prior years.

    Someone receiving 505 on the verbal test this year would have received just a 428 last year.

    A score of 800 on the verbal test is no longer a mark of perfection -- it can be the equivalent of a less-than-perfect 730.

    Students' scores have varied over the years, causing some specialists to speculate that the College Board abandoned its "unchanging standard" too soon.

    Scores reached an all-time average high of 478 on the verbal portion of the test and 502 on the math portion in 1963 and 1964.

    Then scores dropped steadily until 1980, when verbal scores leveled off at 424 and math scores at 466.

    But by 1995, math scores had risen to an average of 482 -- with 21 percent of students scoring more than 600.

    Verbal scores, however have not risen above 428 for 20 years.

    Experts say that students are increasing their academic course load in every subject except English. If English teachers do not believe that grammar and proper syntax are important, neither will their students. So the new average, they say, validates mediocrity.

    In 1977, a blue-ribbon panel commissioned by the College Board concluded that the decline in academic achievement among American students was the result, in part, of the increased ethnic diversity of the test takers, less homework, the proliferation of nonacademic courses and grade inflation.

    Source: Diane Ravitch (New York University), "Defining Literacy Downward," New York Times , August 28, 1996.

"What can government do, if anything, to make sure that the overwhelming majority of American children grow up with a mother and father?" Policy Review asked a number of family experts across the political spectrum to address this question, considering state and local government as well as the federal government."

"Government needs to encourage and solicit -- not frustrate -- parental involvement in the education of children. In the early 1930s, there were more than 130,000 school boards in the United States. Today, there are fewer than 15,000. We need to encourage parental participation by restoring local school boards for each and every school and empowering them -- together with faculty and administrators -- to determine education policies and curricula. We must also enact school choice and voucher plans to give parents more control over their children's education."

                                                                -- Rep. Steve Largent

Other contributors are:  James Dobson, Gov. John Engler, D. James Kennedy, Sen. John Ashcroft, William A. Galston, David Blankenhorn, Dan Quayle, Paul Weyrich, and Kay James.

Out-of-wedlock births, particularly among teen-agers [sic], are skyrocketing, says a Congressional Quarterly report. And the federal government is spending $39 billion a year to support families begun by unwed teen mothers, according to Advocates for Youth.

• A million girls ages 15 to 19 get pregnant every year, and 76 percent of   them are unwed, according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute.

• In 1996, the percentage of these unwed teen-age mothers was nearly six times the percentage in 1950 -- reflecting both sharply rising birthrates and a decline in teen marriages since the mid-1970s, reports the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

• Moreover, there are three million new cases of sexually transmitted diseases among U.S. teens reported each year, a rate which is 50 to 100 times higher than in other industrialized countries.

The trend reflects greater sexual activity at a younger age, say experts. For example, 17 percent of 15-year-old girls were sexually active in 1995, compared to 3 percent in the 1950s.

Advocates of sexual abstinence programs, such as obstetrician Joe S. McIlhaney Jr. of Austin, Texas, say that teenagers are receiving mixed messages from sex education programs. While sometimes encouraging abstinence, they also promote "safer sex" through condom use. But there is an admittedly high rate of teen-agers failing to consistently, properly use them. And even then, says McIlhaney, they don't stop transmission of some sexually transmitted diseases, such as the rapidly spreading human papilloma virus.

Source: "Encouraging Teen Abstinence," CQ Researcher, July 10, 1998, Congressional Quarterly.

For more on Out of Wedlock Births http://www.ncpa.org/pd/social/social5.html

(See also: Sex Education (advice to teenagers and to others who care)

Obviously not, as  demonstrated in the forwarded article.  It should have been front page news, but it only made page 27, probably didn't even make it into any of the daily papers.

Is it possible to teach those who can't comprehend or spell?  With great difficulty.  What is frightening about it is that the problem is in a positive feedback loop.  Because those that expect to become teachers are obviously in no position to pass on much knowledge to those whom they want to teach.  It's like a friend of ours often said, "Jeez, I taught him everything I know and he's still stupid."

Political correctness demands some weird and wondrous contortions. Even though the problem can't be hidden any longer, the bureaucracy is in active denial -- "Let's pretend that the problem doesn't exist. Maybe it'll go away, and if not, at least we don't have to deal with it."

===<forwarded article>===
Thanks Timothy Bloedow <lydia@travel-net.com>
 

publik skoole teechrrs
Date:    Mon, 3 Aug 1998 09:33:59 -0400
 

From "The Economist", July 18th, p. 27:

In April...Massachusetts held its first statewide test for nearly 1,800 candidates aspiring to teach in the public schools.  To its astonishment, almost 60% of the candidates failed.  Around 30% failed a basic reading and writing test, with questions along the lines of "What is a preposition?"  and 'Define the word 'abolish'."  Some 63% failed the math paper.  In one section of the reading and writing test, a paragraph from "The Federalist Papers" was read aloud three times as dictation.  Among the interesting words thereby introduced to the lexicon were "improbally", "integraty", "bodyes" and "relif".

Confronted with such results, the state Board of Education did what any other self-preserving body would do:  it voted to lower the pass-mark.

Roughly 260 more of the candidates thereby slid through. Then the board reeinstated the original, higher, passmark, prompting the interim education commissioner to blame the switch on "political forces" and immediately resign.
===<end>===

It surely makes for a good incentive to do home-schooling, doesn't it?  However, in the meantime, can we expect any rational decisions on anything to be made with a reasonable degree of accuracy by the students that graduate from an education system populated by such teachers?  Can we expect our countries to be able to solve the problems that plague us when even our teachers know neither math nor how to spell?  What are the chances that these teachers know anything else of any importance?

--Walter

The report is available at: http://www.uaf.edu/northern/schools/myth.html.  It is an important report that you should try to bring to the attention of your legislators.  The report by Judith Kleinfeld provides additional incentives to parents who feel that the public education system is shortchanging their children to provide home schooling.  If nothing else, it's a way to cope with the detrimental effects of the impact of heterophobia and misandry of radical feminism on your child's education.  But, home schooling will also give your child a better education.  Obviously, the public education system has become incapable of doing the required job.  Unfortunately, that fact is all the more regrettable as it is the result of deliberate changes in policies that changed the quality of the education that our children receive to the worse. (If the term "radical feminism" (a.k.a. Marxist- or socialist-feminism) is somewhat new to you, you need to expand your knowledge.  After all, radical feminism, the currently controlling faction of feminism, governs just about everything that is happening in your life. 

See,

Carey Roberts column

Carey Roberts is an analyst and commentator on political correctness. His best-known work is an exposé on Marxism and the roots of radical feminism.

Carey Roberts' best-known work, his exposé on Marxism and the roots of radical feminism, is not necessarily easy to find, but this link will help with that. (Some of the URLs for the article series appear to keep changing.  For that reason the identified link leads to an Internet search for the series.  The first or second link in the return list will most likely lead you to the series.))

It can be anybody's guess as to the motivation for that.  Perhaps it is simply what Hillary Clinton expressed in the presence of a journalist in Texas some time ago.   She said that people who aren't well educated are much easier to govern.

As the following item shows, the conditions that bring those circumstances about are being deliberately created, promoted, funded and implemented.

The "Fix" That's Destroying Education In America

Have no illusions that the problems with America's education system are national ones. Once you read Tom DeWeese's article and know who's behind "The Fix", you'll come to the conclusion that you know also why  "The Fix" is destroying education in all developed nations.  Furthermore, you'll know why the current push for sex-education is such a large part of it.

Glenn Sacks' column, "The Failing Teacher and the Teachers' Code of Silence"  was the lead opinion piece in the 2001 12 02 edition of the Los Angeles Daily News. It is available at www.GlennJSacks.com.

OECD PISA Study—First Results for Canadians aged 15 (PDF, 525 kB)

Just in case you don't know about it — which is quite possible in the US, since that issue appears to be part of the teachers' code of silence — you may want to look up study results that were in the beginning of December 2001 announced by governments in many parts of the world. A short summary of it is accessible at http://www.pisa.gc.ca/pisa/brochure_e.shtml

The summary presents information on how individual countries rank in the list of the 32 that participated in the evaluation of student performance in three subject areas: Literacy, Mathematics and Science. The summary contains an error. The results of the math tests have been shown twice and the results of the science tests not at all. However, it will give you an idea on whether you should make the effort of downloading the full study report.

The full report report is a PDF document and 525 kB in size.

Measuring up:
The performance of Canada’s youth in reading, mathematics and science

OECD PISA Study—First Results for Canadians aged 15

Although the test results reveal differences in rank between various countries in relative terms, they do not identify changes over time in terms of absolute values. Therefore it will not be possible to determine from the report whether there is a world-wide average decline or improvement of the quality of education. I have my suspicions. If the news were good in that regard, we would be sure to see them, as the social engineers educating out children for the global gynarchia would have something to crow about.

See also:

• Feminism For Male College Students — A Short Guide to the Truth, by Angry Harry (Off-Site)

• THE HATE MONGERS
  From THE CASSANDRA PAPERS, by Andy Turnbull

Neo Nazis and other overt hate groups are amateurs. THE HATE MONGERS explains how some elements of the women movement use lies and hate, to make big money for themselves, and how they harm our culture and our economy.

Read THE HATE MONGERS