http://www.browniepointsblog.com/2008/01/20/homemade-bacon-vodka/ <== today's moderately mysterious URL
http://www.exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_ID=12841&IBLOCK_ID=35 <== today's mysterious URL #1
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/015/081kkogx.asp?pg=1 <== today's mysterious URL #2
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addenda
The education-industrial complex
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Paul Peterson, director of Harvard’s Program on Education Policy and Governance and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, is doing something more and more people seem to be doing. He’s a respected educator with serious academic credentials and clout among the indoctrinated, and he’s blaming much of public education’s problems on public educators: namely the unions and the government offices who conspire with them. He calls them the “educational-industrial complex.”
Before the education-industrial complex was erected, America led the world in its commitment to education. From the earliest days of our Republic, many small towns each heavily invested in the community’s students, more so than any other nation. Teachers and students were held accountable to community expectations. Local investments contributed to a vibrant educational system that expanded rapidly, helping to propel the nation to the world’s pinnacle by World War II.
Notice the theme here: local control, accountability to the community.
Around 1970 or thereabouts, the educational-industrial complex was hammered into place: School boards gave teachers collective bargaining rights. State governments assumed greater responsibility for financing the schools. The courts instructed schools on the civil liberties of their students. Regulations multiplied. America gained a federal Department of Education. And state and federal dollars poured into the system […] Grades inflated, learning faltered, graduation rates stagnated. The mammoth, expensive, drug-infested, security-obsessed high school was better suited for incarceration than learning.
The only schools that will thrive are those where good teachers can be hired, regardless of “certification”; where bad teachers can be fired, regardless of how long they’ve taught or how nice they are; where students can be held to higher standards, disciplined, rewarded, punished, and pushed; and where administrators can be creative and accountable. The government won’t be able to do much of that. Save Western Civilization. Go private. Go homeschool. Go somewhere. Horace Mann and John Dewey never saw it coming.
lagniappe
Artist: Laine Frankie
Song: Cool Water
All day I've faced the barren waste,
Without the taste of water:
Cool water. (Water.)
Old Dan and I, with throats burned dry,
An' souls that cry for water: (Water.)
Cool, (Water.)
Clear, (Water.)
Water. (Water.)
Keep a-movin, Dan,
Don't you listen to him, Dan,
He's the devil, not a man:
Spreads the burning sand with water. (Water.)
Dan, can you see that big, green tree, (Water.)
Where the water's runnin' free? (Water.)
It's waitin' there for me and you? (Water.)
The nights are cool, I'm a fool.
Each star's a pool of water.
Cool water. (Water.)
But with the dawn I'll wake and yawn,
And carry on to water. (Water.)
Water, (Water.)
Water, (Water.)
Water, (Water.)
Keep a-movin, Dan,
Don't you listen to him, Dan,
He's the devil, not a man:
Spreads the burning sand with water. (Water.)
Dan, can you see that big, green tree, (Water.)
Where the water's runnin' free? (Water.)
Waitin' there for me and you?
Cool, (Water.)
Clear, (Water.)
Water. (Water.)
Cool, (Water.)
Clear, (Water.)
Water. (Cool, clear, water.)
