For a nation that proudly declared it would leave no child behind, America continues to do so at alarming rates. Despite increased spending and politicians’ promises, our buckling public-education system, once the best in the world, routinely forsakes the education of millions of children. Filmmaker Davis Guggenheim reminds us that education “statistics” have names: Anthony, Francisco, Bianca, Daisy, and Emily, whose stories make up the engrossing foundation of WAITING FOR SUPERMAN. As he follows a handful of promising kids through a system that inhibits, rather than encourages, academic growth, Guggenheim undertakes an exhaustive review of public education, surveying “drop-out factories” and “academic sinkholes,” methodically dissecting the system and its seemingly intractable problems. However, embracing the belief that good teachers make good schools, and ultimately questioning the role of unions in maintaining the status quo, Guggenheim offers hope by exploring innovative approaches taken by education reformers and charter schools that have—in reshaping the culture—refused to leave their students behind. [Synopsis courtesy of Sundance Film Festival]

Hugh Hewitt: Interests of younger, older teachers clash in November
By: Hugh Hewitt
Examiner Columnist
September 7, 2010

More than two-and-a-half million teachers are back at work this week in the nation’s public schools.

Not all of them belong to the National Education Association, but the NEA nevertheless has a membership of 3.2 million. And therein is the political problem facing teachers this November.

Divides exist and are growing between the interests of retired teachers and working teachers, between older teachers and young teachers, and between classroom teachers and everyone else in the NEA’s 3.2 million number.

The NEA, like all public employee unions, approaches every problem as one of insufficient funding, and traditionally the demand for a larger slice of the public pie has been enough to keep various factions together in whatever political battle looms.

That may end in November.

If, for example, you are a young teacher in California, you know the state is in a fiscal crisis the likes of which it has never seen before, that taxpayers are unwilling to shoulder any larger burden, and that every proposal to hike this or that revenue source sends even more employers scurrying to Texas.

The classroom career you have dreamed about and now begun is threatened not by voters who routinely support efforts to direct resources to classroom teachers, but by other embedded Sacramento special interests and increasingly by the demands of retired teachers who, having put their three decades into the classroom, insist on every penny promised them and on health packages agreed to long ago.

Legislators don’t know what to do, but the public does. It wants to slash the size of government in almost every way except public safety and education. Democrats and union bosses want to just demand higher taxes regardless of the consequences, and Jerry Brown is their man.

But the young teacher knows this inverted pyramid of tax-takers versus tax-makers cannot be sustained. Unless radical restructuring is undertaken soon, the collapse of the Golden State’s public sector will be epic, and the promise of a long and productive professional life followed by a comfortable if not extravagant retirement will disappear, replaced by the harsh reality that the retired teachers and non-classroom personnel will have gotten theirs and that the present is very much being sacrificed to the excess of the past.

Which is why younger voters generally, and younger teachers specifically, have got to be looking long and hard at a vote for Meg Whitman in November, and at other Republicans up and down the ballot in California and across the country.

Pure self-interest is telegraphing urgent warnings to the common sense part of their brains, warnings that underscore the sky-high deficits run up by Democratic majorities in D.C., Sacramento, and wherever Democratic majorities gather.

President Obama carried the youth vote decisively in 2008, and Democrats have always had a strong hold on public school teachers. But rarely has the folly of Democratic excess been on display as it has been in the past 18 months.

The Obama-Pelosi-Reid Democrats and their state counterparts have been dining on the seed corn, running up bills that can only be paid by the taxes of people under 40 working until they are 80 and then retiring on 50 percent of what their older colleagues receive now, if that.

Grim reality is knocking on the door of the NEA and every state and local teachers’ union. Young teachers should answer the knock, no matter what the retirees say. If new leadership for state houses in blue states like Whitman in California, John Kasich in Ohio, Bill Brady in Illinois, Rick Snyder in Michigan, and Tom Corbett in Pennsylvania doesn’t arrive soon, the cliff ahead cannot be avoided.

Examiner Columnist Hugh Hewitt is a law professor at Chapman University Law School and a nationally syndicated radio talk show host who blogs daily at HughHewitt.com.

Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/Interests-of-younger_-older-teachers-clash-in-November-752897-102298454.html#ixzz0yuXwYZ00

           There is a growing body of research demonstrating the academic success of homeschoolers. The most recent major study is the Progress Report 2009, which surveyed over 11,000 homeschooled students, and showed homeschoolers K–12 scoring an average 37 percentile points above the national average on standardized achievement tests. However, as the homeschool movement has grown—by 7% per year for each of the past 10 years according to the National Center for Education Statistics—there has been little research on the academic performance of homeschoolers once they reach college. It is well known, however, that for the past decade colleges have actively recruited homeschool students. This was not always the case. As recently as the late 1990s many colleges were having difficulty assessing the suitability of homeschool applicants.

    It was in the late 90s that HSLDA began working with colleges in earnest to help them accurately evaluate homeschooled students. We showed that using a combination of SAT and ACT scores, as well as portfolios of work, and letters of reference, a college could make an informed decision about whether a homeschooled applicant would be a good candidate for a degree program. The main reason colleges were willing to be flexible is that homeschoolers were shown to be accustomed to self-directed and independent learning. Not only did colleges see that homeschoolers were self-motivated, but they also saw that homeschoolers were high academic achievers. Today, the overwhelming majority of colleges either have a homeschool admissions officer or a homeschooled admissions policy.

      Roughly a decade later, and with greater numbers of homeschoolers entering college, it was only a matter of time before research was conducted on homeschool academic performance in college. Therefore, it was with great interest that we read the new study—Exploring Academic Outcomes of Homeschooled Students, by Michael F. Cogan—which shows homeschoolers succeeding in college. The study was based on a medium sized college located in the upper Midwest. The school has 11,000 students with an average 1,320 freshmen each year. The sample size for homeschoolers was 76 which is 1 percent of the 7,776 incoming freshman for 2004–2009. The majority of the student body (54.9%) identified themselves as Catholic.

        Some of the major findings include: Homeschoolers scored higher on the ACT (26.5) compared with the overall student body (25). Homeschoolers earned more college credit (14.7) prior to their freshman year compared to the student body (6). Homeschooled students earned a higher fall semester GPA (3.37) when compared to other freshman students (3.08). Homeschooled students earned a higher first-year GPA (3.41) when compared to other freshman students (3.12). Homeschooled students earned a higher fourth-year GPA (3.46) when compared to other freshman students who completed their fourth year (3.16).

       These results are welcome news for the homeschool community. It’s another testament to the dedication of hundreds of thousands of homeschooling parents who are silencing critics who suggested that mere parents would not be able to prepare their children for college. Furthermore, the study also found that homeschoolers graduated in higher numbers after four years at the college. Homeschooled students achieved a higher graduation rate (66.7 percent) when compared to the overall population (57.5 percent).

      It is very encouraging to see both the academic results for homeschoolers as well as the ability to stay with a four-year college program. Homeschooled parents, especially those with middle school-aged children who demonstrate aptitude for college, should be greatly encouraged by this study.

I have mixed emotions about these plants. They do have pretty flowers but they sure are a pain to clean up. Since I am the sole gardener in the house, I often want to scream when I have to clean up those loose flowers. Not to mention they grow like a weed. I should let my wife take care of them. She runs a hospice for house plants. Seriously. When she takes care of plants they come to our house to die. One time I came home from work to find this very nice looking ivy of some sort in a pot on our kitchen table. I was starting to feel sorry for it when I asked my wife how much money we wasted on it. She said $15. Then I learned it was plastic.

Big sigh.

You can find more here.

It’s about young people throwing off the low expectations found so prevalent in our culture. There are examples of young people making an amazing difference in people’s lives.

I think the most important part that I got from the book is the admonishment for our young adults to not become complacent. If society places the bar so low and a young person exceeds that bar, it’s easy to think that you’ve arrived. Even though it may have been easy, the struggle is to stretch yourself and do the hard things.

I am also reading a book called the Irresistible Revolution, it calls for our Christianity to be radical. Full disclosure here…it will challenge you politically. The author admits that non Christians consider him far right and Christians consider him a liberal. I need the challenge to live as an ordinary radical.

I’ll give a more detailed exposition as I read the book. Here is a review:

Starred Review. If there is such a thing as a disarming radical, 30-year-old Claiborne is it. A former Tennessee Methodist and born-again, high school prom king, Claiborne is now a founding member of one of a growing number of radical faith communities. His is called the Simple Way, located in a destitute neighborhood of Philadelphia. It is a house of young believers, some single, some married, who live among the poor and homeless. They call themselves “ordinary radicals” because they attempt to live like Christ and the earliest converts to Christianity, ignoring social status and unencumbered by material comforts. Claiborne’s chatty and compelling narrative is magnetic—his stories (from galvanizing a student movement that saved a group of homeless families from eviction to reaching Mother Teresa herself from a dorm phone at 2 a.m.) draw the reader in with humor and intimacy, only to turn the most common ways of practicing religion upside down. He somehow skewers the insulation of suburban living and the hypocrisy of wealthy churches without any self-righteous finger pointing. “The world,” he says, “cannot afford the American dream.” Claiborne’s conviction, personal experience and description of others like him are a clarion call to rethink the meaning of church, conversion and Christianity; no reader will go away unshaken. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

I have had a few of these occasions myself, reunions like this are always sweet. Those seasons of separation seemed to last forever.

My brother has reenlisted. He served 8 years in the Navy, got out and had a high paying  job but when the economy went south, so did his job opportunities. Needing to feed his family and feeling the call to serve again he reenlisted at 42. This picture was up at the units Facebook page and we all guessed it was him until he confirmed it. I suggested that the only way we could tell if it was him is if it was oozing love. He has 8 children, one grandchild and of course a wife.  Here he is getting reacquainted with being a warrior.

The Court Report asked Dr. Robert Epstein to share more about his views on the teen brain, and about his new book, The Case Against Adolescence: Rediscovering the Adult in Every Teen (Quill Driver Books, 2007). In his book, Dr. Epstein argues that teens are being shortchanged by the academic institutions and legal systems of American society today, and he explains why and how teens should be given adult rights and responsibilities based on their individual abilities.

Home School Legal Defense Association does not endorse all of the views Dr. Epstein expresses—in his book and in the following interview. Some of the conclusions he has reached based on his research you may find shocking, and some might challenge your thinking. But his basic argument supports our belief that our children are better off not being immersed in the teen culture, that they are better off being socialized by adults, and that our children are able to do more at a younger age and be more responsible than our modern American culture permits.

Court Report: How did you become interested in the topic of the teen brain?

Dr. Robert Epstein: I initially became interested because one of my older sons, at age 14 or 15, was very mature. And I was curious why he was forced to go to high school, why he was not allowed to work, why he was not allowed to own property, to sign contracts, and so on. He had a good business sense, for example. He would have loved to have started a business, but he wasn’t allowed to do much of anything by society.

That got me interested in teen capabilities in general. And the more I looked into it, the more I found that teens have enormous capabilities that we seem to have forgotten about as a culture. In many ways, they’re far superior to adults—in their memory abilities, in intelligence, and in their perceptual abilities, for example.

Then I couldn’t help but notice these headlines—one after another after another—about the so-called “teen brain.” I said, “Wait, this doesn’t seem right—that teens have a brain that necessarily causes them to be irresponsible and incompetent. That can’t be right.” Teen turmoil is often entirely absent in other cultures, so a universal “teen brain” can’t possibly exist. When I looked carefully at the research said to support the idea of a teen brain, I found nothing there. Claims of a teen brain constitute scientific fraud, in my view.

You argue that instead of the teen brain causing teen turmoil, the cause is actually society, and in part, the peer influence found in public schools. As a psychologist, what is your definition of socialization?

Socialization is just a process by which we learn to be part of a community. So the question is, what community do we want our young people to learn to be part of? Some parents have said to me, “Aren’t school and high school, in particular, very important for socialization?” And my emphatic answer is no, because we do not want young people socializing with each other. We want them to learn to join the community that they’ll be part of their whole lives. We want them to learn to become adults. Right now, they learn everything they know from each other—that’s absurd, especially since teens in our society are controlled almost entirely by the frivolous media and fashion industries.

If you look through most of human history or you look at many cultures today, you find that teens spend most of their time learning to become adults. Here, they spend most of their time trying to break away from adults.

What advantages do you think homeschooling could offer teens over the current school model?

Well, individualized learning is extremely important, and so is having some distance from teen culture. Homeschooling can certainly create some distance from teen culture. It can create more meaningful contact with adults. It can individualize instruction. It can be a platform for accelerating maturation. All those things are possible with homeschooling, and they’re all impossible in most school systems.

I’m interested in homeschooling as an alternative to conventional school, an alternative that can provide a good education and that can allow young people to progress at the pace they need to progress.

I’ve actually been discussing homeschooling with my two younger children lately, because their mother and I are talking about homeschooling now. My 8-year-old said, “Dad, will I have any trouble getting into college?” And I said, “Well, actually, given how smart you are, my guess is that if you want to go to college, you can go there years earlier if you are homeschooled.”

I’m shocked by how regular school can hold young people back. Recently our 6-year-old wanted, on her own, to learn cursive. And so she started learning it—her mom was helping her—and she was doing a beautiful job. The next thing we knew, we got a note from the school saying that we were forbidden to teach her cursive writing—that she had to wait until the 3rd grade! We ignored the note, of course.

At this point, I have many reasons for wanting to homeschool. And one reason has to do with my new book [The Case Against Adolescence], because in researching the book I looked at the history, I looked at the model of schooling in our country, I looked at some of the individuals who helped shape compulsory schooling laws. Know what? They didn’t always have the interests of young people in mind—they sometimes had other agendas, some of which were quite dark.

Some people are saying, “Isn’t homeschooling the answer to everything?” And my answer is no. I don’t think it’s the answer to all the issues I’m raising in my book, because schooling of any sort is not appropriate for all young people at all times. The modern compulsory school idea was a product of the Industrial Revolution, which modeled mass education on the new “assembly lines” that were being used in the factories. Homeschooling is still part of a larger system of compulsory education. It’s still governed by education laws in each state, and even the curriculum is still determined, to a large extent, by the larger system. But young people need the option to take a break from education and move out into the working world in meaningful ways. I don’t mean as cashiers, either—they should be able to compete with adults for any job, if they can show that they’re competent. Based on their individual abilities, they need to be able to acquire a variety of adult rights and responsibilities and to learn and work side by side with adults, just as young people often do in the Bible.

In The Case Against Adolescence, you have a list entitled “Reintegrating teens into the adult world.” The rights in your list will be surprising to many parents—could you explain why you created this list?

Yes, first of all, it’s a very long list. I have to say, for the record, I was very uncomfortable creating that list, because I am a parent of four children, and I was raised to believe that young people need to be protected, that they’re inherently incompetent and irresponsible. I want to protect my children, and I want to protect all young people. I really struggled with writing that chapter. The rights I list are shocking in some respects. But the truth is that all young people are not the same, just as all elderly people are not the same. We have to look away from age and look at ability, look at competence.

Again, I learned so much in researching and writing this book over a nine-year period, and my own opinions were deeply challenged.

I know that if we move in the direction of a competency-based system, we’ll start to see teen turmoil disappear, and we’ll have young people working with us, instead of being our enemies. And they will not be so afraid and confused about growing up, because they’ll be growing up where they’re supposed to be growing up—that is, among adults.

If a teen can demonstrate competence in a certain area, does that necessarily mean that he or she should be entrusted with a certain responsibility?

That is the flip side of rights and privileges: responsibility. You can’t get a right or privilege without getting the responsibility that goes with it. I am not talking about giving young people more freedom—they have too much freedom. This is about rights and responsibilities. It’s a distinction that is subtle but very important.

If you give young people incentives and opportunities to join the adult world in various ways, thousands will go for it. If you deny all young people the opportunity to join the adult world, many will become depressed, angry, or oppositional. And that’s why we currently have 5.5 million teens in counseling and 2 million attempted suicides by teens every year.

What evidence can you point to that demonstrates that teens, when treated like adults, will rise to the challenge?

In my book, I talk about teens in other cultures. I talk about, for example, the Lost Boys of Sudan. I look at teens who ended up becoming the head of their family because of the death or illness of parents. I look at teens in programs like the original Boys Town. In the 1930s, Boys Town was run completely by young men, and the chief of police was 15 years old. (Now an elderly man, he is interviewed in my book.) This was a place where young men who were in trouble with the law came and basically ran their own town. Many of them became responsible young citizens overnight, because they were entirely in control of their lives. Unfortunately, the modern Boys Town has abandoned the old responsibility model that Father Flanagan established in 1921. It’s now mainly a “treatment” program.

The point is, there’s extensive evidence, both from other cultures and even from our own culture, that when you give young people meaningful adult responsibility, they become adults almost immediately. Their “inner adult” emerges, I guess you could say.

Competency-based laws would give teens a lot of control. How would you balance that with a parent’s desire to train his or her children and raise them a certain way?

I have certain values, and of course I want my offspring to share those values. If anything, your offspring are going to be more likely to adopt and share your values if you foster their maturity. Teens tend to “rebel” and to reject the values of their parents when they are overly influenced by their peers and when authority figures treat them like children.

In your book, you argue that on average, teens are capable of sound judgment and decision making, but how do you address the issue of parents feeling like they need to protect their children from making wrong decisions?

I struggle with that as a parent of four offspring. That strong tendency we have to want to protect—there’s a reason for that, absolutely. But the best thing we can do for young people is to give them the tools they need to be independent and to make those decisions. There’s only so much you can learn by advice from others. Most of what we learn in our lives comes from experience. You give your sons and daughters the best advice you can, and then you give them the tools they need to become independent.

If you give them incentives and opportunities to join the adult world, that’s not the same as setting them free. You’re not pushing them off a cliff. What you’re doing is saying, “I’m going to welcome you into the adult world. If you show me you can do this, then you’re going to join us.” You’re not pushing them toward oblivion—you’re pulling them with you into the world of responsible adulthood. Given the choice between being infantilized in the frivolous world of teen culture and joining the adult world, I believe most teens will pick the latter.

Have you tried your ideas of treating young people more like adults on your own children?

I can see this working on a daily basis with my two youngest children. It’s amazing. (I hadn’t worked all this out with my two older boys, but even they are pretty responsible young men.) I used to get my kids up in the morning and serve them breakfast, pack their lunches, and so on. Now, they get me up in the morning; they take turns on alternate days. They make their own breakfast, and now my 6-year-old tells me she wants to start packing their lunches. The message I give to them every single day is, “You can do it. I’ll help you, I’ll show you how. Now show me what you can do.” My 8-year-old now helps me do audio editing for my radio show. He loves it, and he’s faster at it than I am!

The only thing that troubles me is, again, that I’m facing a society which is not going to work with me on this. That’s why, as I say, I’m looking very seriously now at homeschooling. But that will only help somewhat; it’s not the whole solution.

What’s the typical reaction you get from adults who work with teens, regarding your argument for treating teens more like adults?

Well, the behind-the-scenes reaction I’ve gotten has been 100% positive. I have not run across one professional who works with teens who has not agreed with me. I’ve been getting letters from middle school teachers, high school teachers, psychologists, all of whom are highly supportive, but not many seem to be talking publicly about these issues. One exception is Dr. Helen Smith, a prominent forensic psychologist in Tennessee who has worked with thousands of young criminals. She’s come out swinging in defense of my book, because she believes as I do that youth violence is just a creation of our culture. The book also carries almost unprecedented endorsements from prominent thinkers: Joyce Brothers, M. Scott Peck, Deepak Chopra, Alvin Toffler, and many others.

Unfortunately, the livelihoods of many mental health professionals depend on the old and mistaken ideas about teens. Look at the business that would dry up in the mental health professions if they acknowledged the truth of what I’m saying—and what I’m saying is true.

Do you think that the idea of teens being treated more like adults will become a reality?

When you have opposing forces, things tend to move very slowly. You have teens on one side, pushing, but they’re currently powerless, and now you’ve got some adults joining with them and they’re pushing with them, but they’re a minority. On the other side, you’ve got my “enemies list.” You’ve got the massive industries that contribute to the maintenance of teen culture, you’ve got fearful parents who want to protect their offspring (and again, I can relate to that), you’ve got the whole pharmaceutical industry desperately wanting to expand that market, and they’re doing a good job of it. I think that, generally speaking, changes are going to come very slowly. If anything, as a culture we’re moving in the wrong direction right now, continuing to restrict young people and to isolate them from adults.

There’s one area where you will see some substantial changes, probably within 10 to 20 years, and that area is education. Why? Because of technology. You’ve got this technology that’s just surrounding young people and parents, saying, “Hey, you know what? We can do better. We can, for the first time in history, provide superb education to every person individually.”

The fraudulent idea of the “teen brain”—now that’s an area where my perspective will probably have no impact, in part because the drug companies support the idea of the teen brain. More money is now being spent on psychoactive drugs for teens than on all other prescription medications combined, including antibiotics and acne medications. The drug companies want us to believe that teens have defective brains that cause them to act irresponsibly. It simply isn’t true.

But education—that will change. And the homeschooling movement is well positioned—better positioned than any other societal force—to make that change happen.

     Dr. Epstein shares from another article:

     First of all, the Old Testament has very few age restrictions of any sort and the Old Testament gives incredible responsibilities to young people based on their individual capacity. So young people serve as kings, they serve as prophets, they serve as heroes, they serve in all kinds of roles based on their individual capabilities. That’s the key here, so there are very few age restrictions in the Old Testament. Now the New Testament, it turns out, has absolutely no age restrictions whatsoever. So again, we look at the Bible as a sign of what young people can do. It’s very clear that young people have these extraordinary capabilities, and I think that we need to recognize that again and look at our young people now and begin to give them new opportunity.

Thanks Heather and Craig, for reminding me of Bruce. His songs remind me of my father, so I’ve often avoided listening to him. Still, I needed a dose.

If you want some more of Bruce, check him out here.

My favorite song is

I Know Where I Stand

Vince Gill was a guest singer

Just like an actor, unsure of my lines
I lived my life for other people, one lie at a time
Desperate for approval, always tryin’ to look good
Never sure of who I was or where I stood
Till You came into my heart, and exposed me with Your light
Till You touched me with Your love, and You healed me with Your life.

I know where I stand, strong and secure
I finally know who I am, I’m myself and I’m Yours
Gonna stand on Your promise, I always stand tall
Even when I fall, I know where I stand

So good to be real now, to know and be known
Resting in Your perfect love, my heart is finally home
Completely forgiven of all that I’ve done
Now I’m living my life for an audience of one
Finally sure of who I am, and I’m sure of who I’m not
The insecurity is gone, because I live on the Rock

I no longer live my life by what other people say
But I only live for You, ’cause Your love will never change
And though people let me down, You’ll never turn away
No You’ll never turn away, that’s why