My prayers are with these people fighting for freedom – and willing to lay down their life for it.
Several firefights have broken out in the Venezuelan capital of Caracas with opposition leader Juan Guaido calling for a military uprising against President Nicolas Maduro.
Guaido’s call came Tuesday morning in a three-minute video declaring the uprising as the “final phase” of his plan to oust Maduro, according to CBS News. This comes Guaido has turned the garrison of La Carlota air base to his cause.
“The moment is now,” he said, referring to the moment as “Operation Liberty,” according to The Washington Post. Formerly detained activist Leopoldo Lopez also appeared in the video after being freed on Tuesday, as well as armed soldiers and armored vehicles….
If the above video (sounds of gunfire) doesn’t show the seriousness of the situation, this video surely will (GRAPHIC):
THE DAILY CALLER notes it was only 10-years ago private ownership of guns was banned:
Venezuela banned private citizens from owning guns seven years ago, leaving firearms solely in the hands of the army and the police. Now, as the country’s opposition attempts to oust the oppressive Maduro regime from power, it is a decision some have come to regret.
[….]
In 2013, just 37 weapons were handed over voluntarily. More than 12,500 were confiscated by force.
Maduro ramped up the program in 2014, expending more than $47 million to enforce the ban. His tactics included “grandiose displays of public weapons demolitions in the town square,” according to Fox News.
Citizens who disobey the ban face 20 years in prison.
“Guns would have served as a vital pillar to remaining a free people, or at least able to put up a fight,” Javier Vanegas, a Venezuelan teacher exiled in Ecuador, told Fox News. “The government security forces, at the beginning of this debacle, knew they had no real opposition to their force. Once things were this bad, it was a clear declaration of war against an unarmed population.”
He added, “Venezuelans evolved to always hope that our government would be non-tyrannical, non-violator of human rights, and would always have a good enough control of criminality.”
Omar Adolfo Zares Sanchez, a lawyer and politician, suggested citizens could have combated the Maduro regime much sooner if they had access to guns….
RELATED: MSNBC reporter Kerry Sanders unwittingly made the American case for the Second Amendment during a report Tuesday on the political upheaval in Venezuela. (WASHINGTON FREE BEACON)
Lee Edwards worked as the director of information for the Barry Goldwater campaign in 1964. Later testimony showed that Goldwater’s campaign was being spied on by the CIA, possibly at the direction of the white house.
(JUMP to UPDATE) This post is merely an intro to one of the proginators of a pagan nationalism that has created many violent followers. A “comparative-religion” intro to Alain de Benoist for my site.
Despite a veneer of fashionable progressivism, the fact is that environmentalism’s fundamental opposition to modernity propels it straight into the arms of neofascism. For just like their precursors in the twenties and thirties, today’s ultranationalist and neo-Nazi groups chime with many of the ideas that also march under the green banner. In France, Italy and Belgium, the Nouvelle Droite combined Hellenic paganism with support for the dissolution of national boundaries; it was anticapitalist and anti-American, adopting sociobiological arguments to stress the uniqueness of each race and culture within national boundaries and to oppose colonization and empire. In Germany, the radical-right journal Mut was pacifist and ecological?’ Such groups met the left on the common ground of New Age paganism, expressed in particular through the religions and cultures of the East.
— Melanie Phillips (read her entire chapter discussing this, HERE)
I found the following review of Alain de Benoist’s “On Being a Pagan.” He (and thus his followers) are very confused… especially on the Bible and the Christian faith. While the below video is not done by a stated Christian (I assume she is a pagan from her other videos, but SHE HAS SOME VERY USEFULposts and interviews), she does a great job on summarizing Benoist’s view of YHWH.
PJ-MEDIAhas an excellent article discussing the roots of the “far-right” in Europe. At the beginning of the article they note that the Mosque shooter, Brenton Tarrant, may have been viewed as a “Christian” — “The media may have given the impression that Brenton Tarrant, the New Zealand mosque murderer, was a Christian or accidentally conveyed that sense by spotty coverage.” But they go one to note the trail of these so-called “reborn Knights Templars.” They note the media searching for connections that are more a video game fantasy than real leg-work.
Here is the meat of the article:
…What actually exists is Tarrant’s association with the Identitarian Movement of Austria. “A shadowy far-right group in Europe has been linked to Brenton Tarrant as its leader’s home was raided by intelligence agents who found a large donation from a supporter with the same surname as the accused Christchurch terrorist. Electronic devices were seized from the home of Martin Sellner, head of the Identitarian Movement of Austria (IBO)”.
The white supremacist Identitarian Movement originated in France and is considered the equivalent of the American alt-right, rising out of the ashes of fascism and drawing on European Neo-Nazism and Germany’s New Right.
Its followers idolise anti-immigration French writers including Alain Benoist and Renaud Camus from whom Tarrant borrowed the title of his sickening manifesto, “The Great Replacement”.
Who is Alain Benoist? According to Wikipedia, “Alain de Benoist born 11 December 1943 is a French academic, philosopher, a founder of the Nouvelle Droite (New Right), and head of the French think tank GRECE”, dedicated to the abolition of Christianity and repaganization of Europe.
Benoist is opposed to Christianity, the United States, free markets, neoliberalism, democracy, and egalitarianism. His work has been influential with the alt-right movement in the United States, and he presented a lecture on identity at a National Policy Institute conference hosted by Richard B. Spencer; however, he has distanced himself from the movement…
He is an admirer of Pan-European nationalism and neopaganism… Benoist considers himself both left and right-wing.
Benoist’s manifesto, On Being a Pagan, frankly advocates a sophisticated form of nature-worship. “Paganism, far from being something that can be characterized as a denial of spirituality or a rejection of the sacred, consists on the contrary in the choice (and reappropriation) of another spirituality, another form of the sacred. Far from being confused with atheism or agnosticism, it poses a fundamentally religious relationship between man and the world — and a spirituality that appears to us as much more intense, much more serious, and stronger than what Judeo-Christianity claims for itself. Far from desacralizing the world, it sacralizes it in the literal sense of the word; it regards the world as sacred — and this is precisely, as we shall see, the core of paganism.”
Paganism — and nature worship — are part of the plan to put Europe back on top.
The alt-right is anti-Christian. Not by implication or insinuation, but by confession. Its leading thinkers flaunt their rejection of Christianity and their desire to convert believers away from it. … Alt-right thinkers are overwhelmingly atheists, but their worldview is not rooted in the secular Enlightenment, nor is it irreligious. Far from it. Read deeply in their sources—and make no mistake, the alt-right has an intellectual tradition—and you will discover a movement that takes Christian thought and culture seriously. It is a conflicted tribute paid to their chief adversary. Against Christianity it makes two related charges. Beginning with the claim that Europe effectively created Christianity—not the other way around—it argues that Christian teachings have become socially and morally poisonous to the West. A major work of alt-right history opens with a widely echoed claim: “The introduction of Christianity has to count as the single greatest ideological catastrophe to ever strike Europe.”
Not only is paganism good because it is the original European religion but it is desirable because it “regards the world as sacred — and this is precisely, as we shall see, the core of paganism.” The link between paganism and fringe environmentalism is yet another link the media hesitates to explore, yet is essential to the story.
In The Guardian‘s description of Tarrant’s intellectual history, it was clear the killer came to eco-fascism via the left-wing route rather than the churches. “When he was young, he was ‘a communist, then an anarchist and finally a libertarian before coming to be an eco-fascist.'” The term “eco-fascist,” which puzzled Heavy, is now very easy to understand. They wrote that “perhaps bizarrely, the gunman’s manifesto combines environmentalism with racism. He considers himself an ‘eco-fascist.'”
[….]
Once the reader realizes that nature worship, the abolition of Christianity, environmentalism and mass murder can all be part of the same package, a clearer picture of the mosque killer’s belief system emerges. But given the revulsion caused by Tarrant’s actions, it was far more convenient to tie him to the Reborn Knights Templars of World of Warcraft fame rather than a real “established, if somewhat obscure, brand of neo-Nazi” pagan environmentalism.
Great stuff!
You can hear Alain Benoist discuss his aversion to free-markets for yourself (thick French accent warning), thus showing his adherence to Marxism. Benoist is a Leftist, but in European confusion of everything categorical — he is considered “right-wing.” Something that has always infected almost all totalitarian thinking — Leftism.
According to a possible manifesto he left after the shooting. Here are a couple relevant portions from it that coincide a bit with what is already written (added emphasis):
My name is John Earnest and I am a man of European ancestry. The blood that runs in my veins is the same that ran through the English, Nordic, and Irish men of old. I am a descendant of one of the original colonists of Roanoke—John Earnest. What happened to him I do not know, and nor does anyone. But I do know that he left his wife and son, James Earnest, back in England. This son shortly after made the same daring journey across the Atlantic to the New World. From my mother’s side I inherited the blood of very wealthy Yankees—intelligent, resourceful, uncompromising. From my father’s side I inherited the blood of poor Southern farmers—intelligent, musically gifted, self-sufficient. A part of my ancestors lives within me in this very moment. They are the reason that I am who I am. Their acts of bravery, ingenuity, and righteousness live on through me. Truly, I am blessed by God for such a magnificent bloodline.
[….]
“How does killing Jews help the European race? The European race is doomed? What are you talking about? These Jews were innocent!” Every Jew is responsible for the meticulously planned genocide of the European race. They act as a unit, and every Jew plays his part to enslave the other races around him—whether consciously or subconsciously. Their crimes are endless. For lying and deceiving the public through their exorbitant role in news media; for using usury and banks to enslave nations in debt and control all finances for the purpose of funding evil; for their role in starting wars on a foundation of lies which have costed millions of lives throughout history; for their role in cultural Marxism and communism; for pushing degenerate propaganda in the form of entertainment; for their role in feminism which has enslaved women in sin; for causing many to fall into sin with their role in peddling pornography; for their role in voting for and funding politicians and organizations who use mass immigration to displace the European race; for their large role in every slave trade for the past two-thousand years; for promoting race mixing; for their cruel and bloody history of genocidal behavior; for their persecution of Christians of old (including the prophets of ancient Israel—Jeremiah, Isaiah, etc.), members of the early church (Stephen—whose death at the hands of the Jews was both heart-wrenching and rage-inducing), Christians of modern-day Syria and Palestine, and Christians in White nations; for their degenerate and abominable practices of sexual perversion and blood libel (you are not forgotten Simon of Trent, the horror that you and countless children have endured at the hands of the Jews will never be forgiven); for not speaking about these crimes; for not attempting to stop the members of their race from committing them. And finally, for their role in the murder of the Son of Man—that is the Christ. Every Jew young and old has contributed to these. For these crimes they deserve nothing but hell.
I will send them there.
[….]
“ARE YOU A TRUMP SUPPORTER?”
YOU MEAN THAT ZIONIST, JEW-LOVING, ANTI-WHITE, TRAITOROUS COCKSUCKER? DON’T MAKE ME LAUGH.
“Are you affiliated with any political ideology?”
Yes. It’s called not wanting to go extinct.
“Are you a conservative?”
I am not a useless, spineless coward so no—I am not a conservative. Conservative is a misnomer. They conserve nothing. They’ll complain all they want but they won’t take up arms and threaten their government with death (the only thing that works). Ever heard about the Battle of Athens (1946)? Find your balls again you insufferable faggots. If you do not defend your rights you deserve none.
[….]
“Do you feel any remorse for what you did?”
The Jews have depleted our patience and our mercy. I feel no remorse. I only wish I killed more. I am honored to be the one to send these vile anti-humans into the pit of fire—where they shall remain for eternity.
“Do you feel anything but hatred for Jews?”
Disgust. Disgust that a race can become so unrecognizably corrupted that they would commit the most heinous acts that only the most twisted of individuals could put into reality.
[….]
“Do you hate all Jews?”
I hate anyone who seeks the destruction of my race. Every Jew currently alive plays a part in the destruction of my race. Does that answer your question?
“Do you hate other races?”
I hate anyone who seeks the destruction of my race. Spics and niggers are useful puppets for the Jew in terms of replacing Whites. Of course, they aren’t intelligent enough to realize that the Jew is using them and they will be enslaved if Europeans are eliminated. Do they actively hate my race? Yes, I hate them. Are they in my nation but do not hate my race? I do not hate them, but they aren’t staying. Are they out of my nation and do not hate my race? Fine by me.
[….]
“Why did you use guns instead of a flamethrower? Wouldn’t a flamethrower have given you a much higher score?”
Yes. I encourage you to use flamethrowers as well as guns. Use what you think would be best in your situation. I used a gun for the same reason that BRENTON TARRANT used a gun. In case you haven’t noticed we are running out of time. If this revolution doesn’t happen soon, we won’t have the numbers to win it. The goal is for the US government to start confiscating guns. People will defend their right to own a firearm—civil war has just started. Stop the slow boil of the frog—prevent the Jew from using incrementalism. Make the Jew play all of his cards to make it apparent to more people how their rights are being taken away right before their eyes.
“Did your family cause you to think this way?”
Unfortunately, no. I had to learn what they should have taught me from the beginning.
[….]
“How long did it take you to plan this attack?”
Four weeks. Four weeks ago, I decided that I was doing this. Four weeks later I did it. I remember a specific moment in time after BRENTON TARRANT’S sacrifice that something just clicked in my mind. ‘If I won’t defend my race, how can I expect others to do the same?’ I immediately got to planning, and I never looked back. I never had doubts. I never felt afraid. I never felt anxious—just the occasional nervous excitement.
“Who inspires you?”
Jesus Christ, the Apostle Paul, Martin Luther, ADOLF HITLER, ROBERT BOWERS, BRENTON TARRANT, Ludwig van Beethoven, Moon Man, and Pink Guy.
REMEMBER, Bowers was the recent Synagogue shooter in Pittsburgh. He was a hater of Trump and Jews (via PAMELA GELLER)
The cartoon was published in the International edition of the paper and appeared in the opinion section. It depicts Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a dog leading President Trump who is both blind and wearing a yarmulke. (HOTAIR)
At the bottom of the article the correction reads: “Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to Jesus’s background. While he lived in an area that later came to be known as Palestine, Jesus was a Jew who was born in Bethlehem.”
Secular left and Islamic/Islamist left, united. Marxism / Socialism and Islam, are ideological brothers, both are, utopian, anti-capitalism, big state, regulate society, anti-israel, antijudaism, antichristianity, anti-individual liberty, anti-American, trans-national, wants limits of thought and speech freedom, androgyny, against marriage protection, monopolism, etc. (See more from a chapter by Melanie Phillips, HERE)
U.S. Customs and Border Protection released video over the weekend showing the “escalation of tactics” used to smuggle illegal immigrants into the country, which now apparently involves heavily armed security.
Friedman is WRONG. Donald Trump did lay compromise on the table — the Dems rejected it. ALSO, the “hard-liners” Friedman mentions (Stephen Miler) are saying NOTHING DIFFERENT that Democrats a decade ago. Nothing. But at least the HARD-LEFT is admitting Trump is right. To Wit:
(DAILY CALLER) New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman explained on Wednesday on CNN how he thinks the U.S. government can solve the situation at the border, following his trip there.
Friedman’s appearance on the network corresponded with his op-ed from the day before, in which he described the port of entry at San Diego a “troubling scene.”….
…Cuomo apparently didn’t know the attorney general of the United States had the authority to decide whether charges should be filed, or he was being supremely disingenuous. “[W]hat your friend did is not just by the book. He took it on himself to decide this rule. He didn’t have to do that,” he bitterly declared.
Continuing his crusade against Attorney General William Barr, Cuomo wrongly stated that the special counsel was “separate from the DOJ” and insisted Congress had the power to indict.
Mukasey had to undo the damage Cuomo was doing to his audience and called his host out for misleading people:
MUKASEY:Of course he had to do it.
CUOMO: Why?
MUKASEY:Who was going to decide if we were going to indict or not?
CUOMO:Congress, as a political matter. Leave it to them.
MUKASEY: They decide whether to impeach or not. They don’t decide–
CUOMO:And Mike, you’re skipping the big point, which you taught me about very early on.
MUKASEY: That is the big point.
CUOMO: They can’t indict him. That is the opinion from the OLC so there’s nothing to decide on that level. It’s purely political. It always would be.
MUKASEY: Congress doesn’t indict. Congress can impeach.
CUOMO:I’m using it as just a metaphor here.
MUKASEY:But you’re misleading a lot of people.
After Mukasey had to explain all the other ways Special Counsel Robert Mueller could have taken action against the President if he had the goods, Cuomo put on his rhetorical tin foil hat and accused Barr of being part of a cover-up:
CUOMO:AD Barr didn’t need to do it for that reason. He needed to do it to protect the President. That’s why he did it.
MUKASEY: Protect the President from what? When he can’t be indicted?
CUOMO:From criticism in the open question and giving Congress that kind of momentum. That’s why he did it.
MUKASEY: Oh, come on.
CUOMO:That’s why he did it. That’s why he wrote the letter the way he did. That’s why he gave the press conference the way he did. That’s why he misled us to what the report would look like the way he did…..
Before concluding these necessarily very sketchy suggestions, I ought to say why I think it necessary, in these days, to go back to a discipline which we had discarded. The truth is that for the last 300 years or so we have been living upon our educational capital. The post-Renaissance world, bewildered and excited by the profusion of new “subjects” offered to it, broke away from the old discipline (which had, indeed, become sadly dull and stereotyped in its practical application) and imagined that henceforward it could, as it were, disport itself happily in its new and extended Quadrivium without passing through the Trivium.
[….]
But one cannot live on capital forever. A tradition, however firmly rooted, if it is never watered, though it dies hard, yet in the end it dies. And to-day a great number—perhaps the majority—of the men and women who handle our affairs, write our books and our newspapers, carry out research, present our plays and our films, speak from our platforms and pulpits—yes, and who educate our young people, have never, even in a lingering traditional memory, undergone the scholastic discipline. Less and less do the children who come to be educated bring any of that tradition with them. We have lost the tools of learning—the axe and the wedge, the hammer and the saw, the chisel and the plane—that were so adaptable to all tasks. Instead of them, we have merely a set of complicated jigs, each of which will do but one task and no more, and in using which eye and hand receive no training, so that no man ever sees the work as a whole or “looks to the end of the work.” What use is it to pile task on task and prolong the days of labour, if at the close the chief object is left unattained? It is not the fault of the teachers—they work only too hard already. The combined folly of a civilisation that has forgotten its own roots is forcing them to shore up the tottering weight of an educational structure that is built upon sand. They are doing for their pupils the work which the pupils themselves ought to do. For the sole true end of education is simply this: to teach men how to learn for themselves; and whatever instruction fails to do this is effort spent in vain.
I am posting this because I wanted in one place some information on the classroom size, or, teacher-to-pupil-ration throughout some of our recent history. As well as compared to the world. Also, part of the reasoning for this post other than I have debated/discussed this matter over the years is a recent article I have seen on a couple friends Facebook walls, entitled: “Betsy DeVos Wants Larger Class Sizes and Fewer Teachers.” So I wanted to have the reasoning and history of the other side… BUT FIRST…
Let me say… that classrooms in our history were filled with children — even in the public schools — that came from deeply religious backgrounds. So that the student was acting in the sight of God. Not only that, but ost families remained intact, either through devotion to faith or the impracticality of divorce. There are other reasons as well, but this list of teacher complaints from the 1940’s has been for years in my history bank of memory (via NATIONAL PARENTS ORGANIZATION):
So often I write about the effects of fatherlessness. Being who I am, I tend to express myself from the standpoint of the social science on the matter. I’ll point out that children raised without both parents tend more to commit crimes, abuse drugs and alcohol, drop out of school, be unemployed, etc. than their peers raised in intact families. I say that because it’s true. I know it’s true because decades of social science establish the facts. Fine.
But occasionally, something comes along that hits the nail harder than I do (Meridian Star, 4/21/16).
I read that in a survey of public school teachers in 1940, the top disciplinary problems listed included talking out of turn, chewing gum, running in the halls, dress-code violations, and littering. More than a half century later, the problems teachers contend with are drug and alcohol abuse, pregnancy, suicide, rape, robbery, and assault. Teachers and administrators say that things are worse for students now than ever before. One junior high school teacher commented, “I can’t believe the things they do to themselves and to each other.” A kindergarten teacher recently told me that her five and six year old students are restless, angry, and some even have the addictive habit of cutting themselves. A grandmother told me that her grandson, whom she is raising, has admitted to having suicidal thoughts. He is ten years old.
What a comparison. What teacher today wouldn’t fall on her knees and shout Hosannas to have the problems teachers did in 1940? “Andy, is that gum in your mouth?” “Yes, teacher.” “Go to the principal’s office!” Can anyone even imagine?
Of course, many things have changed since FDR was in office, so there’s no single trend we can point to that’s caused the drastic change in our children and the world they face every day. But one of the main things that’s changed for kids is that so many of them have either no father in their lives or one who’s so remote as to be ineffective at being the father they need. Fatherlessness produces exactly the type of dysfunctional behavior in children that we see every day to our dismay and that the Meridian Star writer so aptly describes……
So, really, teachers can never have a classroom small enough to fix students from backgrounds like these, or our culture. Which is a great spot for Larry Elder, who quotes Barack Obama:
Okay, the above reasons (there are more obviously [sex-ed has played a big roll as well, so has quick divorce laws, etc], but those are biggies: religion, discipline, family intact) notes some of the acting out by our culture which is becoming more secular as I type. Even in secular countries we see discipline as holding together the fabric of the classroom, more on this later.
Here is an article from the ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER that introduces us to some of the issues of classroom size (I will add a graphic from another article to help the point):
Under the leadership of its combative President Alex Caputo-Pearl, the United Teachers of Los Angeles is planning to strike, very possibly in January. The union has a laundry list of demands, some of which the Los Angeles Unified School District has agreed to, in part. But unlike the union, LAUSD is constrained by fiscal realities, and has county and state auditors waiting to pounce if it missteps.
UTLA’s main order of business — not surprisingly — is a salary increase for its teachers. But a close second is the class-size issue. The union is calling for an across-the-board cut, while the district is offering to reduce class size in 90 “high-need” schools. According to the latest data, the pupil-to-teacher ratio in Los Angeles is 19.7, not exactly an unreasonable number. While that is above the national average of 14.5 to one, it is far below the 1955 level when the ratio of teachers to students in public schools was 26.9 to one.
As a former teacher, I know that a small class makes life easier — fewer papers to grade and parents to deal with, for example. That said, there is no evidence that it makes any difference in student learning. In fact, a massive meta-analysis — results from multiple studies – was released in October that shows that small class size is a red herring. The report, produced by the Danish Centre of Applied Social Science examined 127 studies, eliminating many that did not meet strict research requirements. The researchers found that there may be tiny benefits to small classes for some students when it comes to reading. But in math, it found no benefits at all, and the researchers “cannot rule out the possibility that small classes may be counterproductive for some students.”
So 127 studies later, it’s basically a wash. The Danish analysis did nothing more than underscore Hoover Institution economist Eric Hanushek’s results of his class-size research in 1998. Examining 277 separate studies on the effect of teacher-pupil ratios and class-size averages on student achievement, he reported that 15 percent of the studies found an improvement in achievement, while 72 percent found no effect at all and 13 percent found that reducing class size had a negative effect on achievement. While Hanushek admits that in some cases, children might benefit from a small-class environment, there is no way “to describe a priori situations where reduced class size will be beneficial.”
In his 2018 book “World Class,” Andreas Schleicher, director of the education and skills unit at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, debunks the myth that smaller classes yield better results. He points out that top-performing nations, such as Japan, South Korea and China tend to have much larger classes than we do, yet manage to produce more successful students.
Additionally, EdChoice researcher and economics professor Benjamin Scafidi found that between 1950 and 2015, the number of teachers increased about 2.5 times as fast as the uptick in students. He adds that despite the staffing surge, students’ academic achievement has stagnated or even fallen over the past several decades……
The above graphic comparing historical class sizes comes from an article at THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION, to wit is a section I wish to highlight:
Growth in Staffing Far Outpacing Student Population. In addition to increases in non-teaching staff positions, more teachers are also now teaching fewer students. From the nine years spanning the 1997–98 school year to the 2006–07 school year, student enrollment in public schools increased 6.8 percent. Over the same time period, the number of teachers in the classroom increased 15.8 percent.[7]
Student-teacher ratios have been on the decline since the mid-20th century. In 1950 for example, there were 27.5 students for every one teacher; by 2006 that number had declined to 15.5 students for every public school teacher.[8] For high school students during the 2006-07 school year, the average student-teacher ratio was just 12:1.[9]
While public schools and districts throughout the country continue to reduce class size, there is little evidence that such reductions have improved student learning. For instance, Florida began implementing sweeping education reforms in 1998, including strong state standards, the transition to an “A–F” system for grading schools, ending “social promotion,” and alternative teacher certification.[10] These systemic education reforms appear to have had a positive impact on student achievement, particularly minority students. However, a 2002 reform to reduce class size found “no detectable benefit” of the class-size mandate and found that “monies restricted for the purpose of funding class-size reduction mandates are not a productive use of limited educational resources.”[11]
* Dr. Wilda V. Heard, or “Dr. Wilda,” has a J.D. from Yale Law School and a doctorate in education leadership from Seattle University. She has been a volunteer at Legal Voice, formerly the Northwest Women’s Law Center.
…quotes Bob Nave saying: “It’s fairly common sense that smaller classes should result in improved student performance…. The problem is the research just doesn’t back that up.”
Here are some graphs to help visualize this topic. The first is noting that classroom sizes are pretty close to a historical low:
Here are primary averages compared to the world:
Of course China has the the largest classrooms (students to teacher ratio)… BUT… #2 is…
SINGAPORE – 35.5 PER CLASS Singapore is a lot smaller than China with a population of 5.399 million (2013), but it’s class sizes are not far behind them. However, despite the larger class sizes, it was stated by the OECD in 2015, that Singapore actually has one of the best education systems in the world.
Fun fact: Singapore schools are all taught in English as well as their native tongue. This means that Singapore has one of the highest fluency rates of English in South-East Asia.
In other words… class size is not the issue. It is what you are teaching and the culture of learning. Instead, the public schools are centered not around teaching classical education, but making sure that what is taught is separating us as a body-politic. A good example of this comes from theST. PAUL STAR TRIBUNE:
…Students from several groups at South St. Paul Secondary— including the Black Pride Organization, Comunidad de Latinos Unidos, the Women’s Society and the Sexuality and Gender Alliance (SAGA), a group for LGBT students — want to wear sashes, also called stoles, to celebrate their identities.
Immigrants, gay students and students of color face extra obstacles during their education, said Jenaye Vergin, a junior and one of four students who addressed the board.
Allowing students to wear the special sashes would “give energy to a collective voice,” Vergin said. “I’m able to repurpose what was once an obstacle into a source of energy and pride.”…
CAUSING RACISM, NOT DEALING WITH IT
California high school English teacher Kali Fontanilla was curious when she noticed many of her students were failing one of their other classes: ethnic studies.
Then she took a look at the ethnic studies class lesson plan and learning materials. What Kali saw shocked her.
“We hear about Critical Race Theory in our schools, well here it is right in front of you, and almost every single lesson had some sort of element of Critical Race Theory,” Kali says. “There was even a slide on Marxism, and these are like interactive slide presentations that were given to the students.”
Kali dedicated years of her life to teaching children in California, often censoring herself so that she wouldn’t run afoul of her school district’s liberal agenda. But now, she’s finally had enough.
“My views and what I believe is now considered white supremacist,” she says. Kali left California and moved to Florida to continue her career as a teacher.
Critical race theory says racism permeates every American institution and exists to uphold white supremacy.
“Is it your assumption that I supported or believe in authoritarian communism that existed in the Soviet Union? I don’t. I never have. And I opposed it.”
(JUMP TO UPDATE) The headlines are in stark contrast to how the corporate media zealously covered the Christchurch terrorist attack by a white supremacist that killed 49 last month, which highlighted not only the attacker’s identity, but his white supremacist motives. But how they and politicians do not report on more than 400% more murders on Easter.
EASTERWORSHIPERS
One of my son’s pointed this out, and so I wish to UPDATE the post with the noting of this odd phenomenon. In all my religious studies I never came across this denomination.
Over at LIBERTY NATION, Leesa Donner writes about Obama and Hillary (in their Tweets) coming up with a new sect of Christians: “Easter Worshippers“
…Those pitching their tent on the left of the American political spectrum can’t seem to make themselves utter the “C” word. Many do verbal somersaults to avoid addressing, writing about, or publicly recognizing those who laud Easter. Are we on some sort of right-wing paranoid rant here? Well, let’s take a moment and see where the facts lead us.
Liberty Nation was first alerted to this odd assault on Christians by PATRICK HAUF, who seems to be a rather savvy college student. Perhaps he isn’t the progenitor of this phenomenon, but that’s where we spotted it. Hauf astutely noticed Hillary Clinton’s tweet that referred to Christians as “Easter worshippers.”
Then he did a taste-test, comparing HRC and former President Obama’s tweets about Easter and how they referred to people in the aftermath of the synagogue terrorist attack in Pittsburgh and the horrific killing of Christians in Sri Lanka.
This naturally led to tongue-in-cheek tweets like this one from LN’s Jeff Charles, “Can anyone actually tell me what an ‘Easter Worshipper’ is? Do these people worship the holiday Easter? Are they going to start calling us ‘Christmas Worshippers’ in December?” Then Charles doubled down with: “What happens if a terrorist targets Jews during the same time period as Easter? Are we supposed to call them ‘Passover Worshippers’?”
[….]
Here we might take a moment to hearken back to a salient proverb of George Orwell. “Political language… is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” Orwell could have added another rubric to language distortion that works just as well: Never write or say the word you despise – just put it on extinction. Then in a generation or so people will ask one another: “Christian? What is a Christian?”
…Woodward reiterated in an interview with Fox News’s Chris Wallace his past statements that the dossier “has got a lot of garbage in it.”
Woodward said that he recently learned that the CIA included outtakes from the dossier in a draft of the January 2017 intelligence community assessment that laid out Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign.
“What I found out recently, which was really quite surprising, the dossier, which really has got a lot of garbage in it and Mueller found that to be the case, early in building the intelligence community assessment on Russian interference, in an early draft, they actually put the dossier on page two in kind of a breakout box.” (RELATED: Mueller Report Undercuts Several Steele Dossier Claims)
“I think it was the CIA pushing this. Real intelligence experts looked at this and said no, this is not intelligence, this is garbage and they took it out,” said Woodward.
“But in this process, the idea that they would include something like that in one of the great stellar intelligence assessments, as Mueller also found out, is highly questionable.”
Larry Elder goes over the media’s portrayal of Trump saying he is fucked: “Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I’m fucked.” AS IF Trump was meaning connections between he and Russia were about to be found out were the reason driving his exclamation.
Larry reads through some headlines and then dives into the full quote.
Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I’m fucked. Everyone tells me if you get one of these independent counsels it ruins your presidency. It takes years and years and I won’t be able to do anything. This is the worst thing that ever happened to me. (WASHINGTON EXAMINER)
He then plays some Lawrence “socialist” O’Donnell to continue the point. The Sage finishes with an analogy to Trump being accused of saying “there are good Nazis and bad Nazis,” so-to-speak.
