Author: Papa Giorgio

Heard About This charter School on Hugh Hewitt Yesterday

Published by Papa Giorgio

The following charter school is the kind talked about in WAITING FOR SUPERMAN

(Wiki) As a charter school Veritas Prep offers a Great Books education centering around fundamental texts in the Western pantheon. Veritas Prep’s philosophy includes small class size (no classroom has more than 22 students) and education using the Socratic method.

As a public school in the state of Arizona, Veritas Preparatory Academy has no entrance requirements. Interested families must apply for the school’s annual admissions lottery, which takes place in the spring of each school year. However, if a family has one child enrolled, any other children automatically receive a spot. Software designed by alumnus Joseph Irvine is used to perform these lotteries randomly. Because the academy is a charter school, it has the right to cap its enrollment. An addition in the 2010-2011 school year is one class of sixth grade.

Veritas Preparatory Academy offers few choices in its academic curriculum. 9-12th grade students may choose to study Latin/Greek, French, or Spanish. The rest of the curriculum is fixed. Students at Veritas Prep exceed all requirements for students graduating from the state of Arizona.

Veritas Preparatory Academy has recently added a 6th grade to their school.

  • 7th grade:
    • English Literature and Composition (readings include Shane, A Wind in the Willows, Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Tales of the Greek Heroes, The Miracle Worker, stories by Edgar Allan Poe, and A Christmas Carol)
    • Pre-Algebra
    • Life Science (plants & fungi, single-cell & multi-cell animals)
    • Ancient History (Mesopotamia, Egypt, Israel, Greece, and Rome)
    • Music (including an introduction to theory, note-reading, and soprano recorder performance)
    • Latin I
    • Studio Art I (basic composition and drawing techniques)
  • 8th grade:
    • English Literature and Composition (Readings include Beowulf, The Chosen, The Lord of the Flies, The Hobbit, To Kill a Mockingbird, selections from Canterbury Tales, Legends of King Arthur, and selections from American poetry)
    • Algebra I
    • Earth Science (geology, geography, meteorology, astronomy)
    • Medieval History (England, France, the Holy Roman Empire, Islamic Civilization, the Byzantine Empire, the Crusades, the Christian Church; The Song of Roland is read)
  • Music (including more music theory and recorder ensemble performance involving soprano, alto, and tenor instruments)
    • Latin II
    • Studio Art II (including color theory and painting)
  • 9th grade:
    • Humane Letters: The American Tradition (Readings include the US Constitution and The Federalist Papers, Democracy in America, Thoreau, Frederick Douglass’s autobiography, Huckleberry Finn, My Antonia, The Old Man and the Sea, and The Great Gatsby)
    • Geometry
    • Biology
    • Music (including composition and choral performance)
    • Poetry Composition
    • Modern Language I or Latin III
  • 10th grade:
    • Humane Letters: The Rise of Modern Europe (Readings include Locke’s Second Treatise, Rousseau’s Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities, Shakespeare’s Henry V, Marx’s The Communist Manifesto, Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, and Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch)
    • Algebra II
    • Physics I : Mechanics
    • Music
    • Poetry Composition
    • Modern Language II or Latin IV
  • 11th grade:
    • Humane Letters: Ancient Greece (Readings include the Iliad and Odyssey, Sophocles, Thucydides, Plato’s Republic and selected dialogues, Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, and selections from the Hebrew Bible)
    • Pre-Calculus/Calculus A
    • Physics II: Electromagnetism, Thermodynamics, Wave Motion
    • Drama
    • Art
    • Modern Language II or Ancient Greek I
  • 12th grade:
    • Humane Letters: Western Thought from the Middle Ages to Modernity (Readings include the Aeneid, Augustine’s Confessions, selections from the New Testament, Macbeth and King Lear, Dante’s Divine Comedy, Don Quixote, Machiavelli, Descartes’s Meditations on First Philosophy, and Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov)
    • Calculus B,C
    • Chemistry
    • Drama
    • Art
    • Modern Language IV or Ancient Greek II
    • Senior Thesis

Bigger Fish To Fry-2012

Published by Papa Giorgio

The following is from the guest filler to the Michael Medved Show from the afternoon before the averted shutdown who took the reigns of the show due to Medved running late because of travel delays. He made a point with a caller that was very, very forceful:

This from FoxNews Election Headquarters:

While Republicans wanted to cut more spending in Saturday’s early morning compromise to keep the government open, they think they got the better of the deal.

Here’s why: HR1 was originally to seek spending cuts of $32 billion until Tea Party conservatives insisted on more than $ 60 billion. House Speaker John Boehner won more cuts than he originally sought and got the Senate to agree to votes to defund the health care reform law and groups like the nation’s largest abortion provider Planned Parenthood – once votes Senate Majority leader Harry Reid said he’d never allow to come to the floor.Back on February 3, Reid called $32 billion in cuts “extreme” and “draconian.”

At a news conference New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., agreed, “I happen to think some of their cuts are extreme and go overboard. But every week they keep upping the ante and proposing extreme cuts.”

Over the next decade the cuts are expected to save hundreds of billions of dollars.

The deal mandates a host of studies and audits of Obama administration policies. It also blocks additional funds for the IRS sought by the Obama administration and bans federal funding of abortion in Washington, D.C.

The history of offers on this bill goes something like this. Democrats first offered no cuts, then $4 billion, then $6.5 billion, then $33 billion, then settled at $38.5 billion.

Boehner made numerous adjustments to his offer in recent days too, but started at $32 billion, then with a Tea Party push went to $62 billion, then dropped to $40 billion, then $38.5 billion.

Democrats claimed they met Republicans halfway after the $10 billion in cuts that already passed this year were approved. They settled late Friday night at three and a half times more.

Boehner came in $8.5 billion higher than the halfway point between his high offer of $61 billion in cuts and the Democrats opening bid of zero cuts.

It was not a totally lopsided bargain. Dems have some silver linings. There were no votes on defunding the EPA or PBS and NPR. Democrats fought for and won a $2 billion cut from the Department of Defense, knocking the military appropriation for the rest of the year down to $513 billion.

But the GOP had to be able to see this as a win in the end, because it is puny compared to what they want to do next.

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s 2012 budget resolution proposes cuts of $5 TRILLION in the next 10 yrs.

But the resolution is a non-binding roadmap for the committees to use as they approve tax and spending bills for next year, the resolution will never be signed into law by the president.

The next battle with consequences begins in a matter of two short weeks when the accumulated U.S. debt will be nearing it’s $14 trillion legal limit.  So Congress will have to vote to raise the ceiling so Uncle Sam can borrow still more money.

The administration has said it will need to be raised between April 15 and May 31 or the U.S. could default and create a new fiscal crisis of unknowable magnitude. Fiscal hawks plan to demand strict, enforceable spending caps, triggers for across the board cuts, and austerity measures in exchange for raising the debt limit.

This short-term agreement was just a beginning.

Hopefully this is the micro of the macro to come.


Friday Fodder (4-8-2011)

Published by Papa Giorgio

Dog Prays Before He Eats:

The most elaborate automated performance of Bach’s “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring”:

On Air April Fools i-Pad Joke:

We Came-Saw-Kicked Some Ass!

For All You Tool Junkies Out There:

Road Debris:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

When Sarah Bit Harry (When Harry Met Sally II):

Where Is OSHA When You Really Need Them? (Cleaning the Cobra Pit):

Diesel Drifting:

Mike Adams Vindicated-Free Speech Wins Out

Published by Papa Giorgio

Mike Adams can now write on this win in his counter liberal articles:

Attorneys for a Christian professor in North Carolina are celebrating a decision handed down by an appellate court, calling it a victory for academic freedom.

Alliance Defense Fund attorneys argued that criminology professor Mike Adams was unconstitutionally denied a promotion at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington because school officials were hostile to the political views he delivered in his columns and speeches.

A lower court had ruled against Dr. Adams, saying his comments on matters of public concern constituted “official” speech as part of his job duties as a criminology professor at UNC-Wilmington — and therefore were not protected by the First Amendment. But now the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has found that Adams’ writings and speeches are protected by the First Amendment, and that if Adams winds up winning his case against the university, school officials could be held personally liable for damages.

“No individual loses his ability to speak as a private citizen by virtue of public employment,” wrote the court. “Adams’ columns addressed topics such as academic freedom, civil rights, campus culture, sex, feminism, abortion, homosexuality, religion, and morality. Such topics plainly touched on issues of public, rather than private, concern.”

ADF senior counsel David French argued before the court on Adams’ behalf. “Christian professors should not be discriminated against because of their beliefs,” French states, “and this decision thoroughly upholds that principle.”

French calls the circuit court’s decision “a ringing vindication” of the academic freedom of public university professors.  “Disagreeing with an accomplished professor’s religious and political views is no grounds for refusing him promotion,” he adds.

“It vindicates academic freedom not only for Dr. Adams but for all professors — and re-establishes the principle that the university is a marketplace of ideas. It’s a tremendous outcome, but it’s just one additional step in a long road towards justice for Dr. Adams.” The case now goes back to district court.

…(read more)…