Category: Education

  • By Selwyn Duke While dining one evening in NYC with a brilliant man I once knew, we couldn’t help overhearing some moderns espousing progressive ideas at a nearby table. Seeming like typical Manhattanites, they were well spoken, likely had some higher degrees among them, and would have appeared to many to possess good command of…

  • By Selwyn Duke Perhaps man-on-the-street interviews ought to be renamed “Man, beware the street!” interviews if what some Americans know — or don’t know — is any indication. Mark Dice (shown), who has achieved minor fame for illustrating how some Americans are unaware Barack Obama is a Democrat and asking questions such as “Did you…

  • By Selwyn Duke Well, bully for anti-bullying programs. After spending countless millions instituting them nationwide, a university study has concluded that it isn’t just that they don’t work. They actually increase bullying. The head researcher of the study, University of Texas at Arlington criminologist Seokjin Jeong, did not start out as a critic of anti-bullying…

  • By Selwyn Duke The Equality Police are unhappy. It seems that despite their best efforts women still aren’t entering the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) as men are. You may not care about this — but you should. Because when the Equality Police become unhappy, we get bad policy such as the…

  • By Selwyn Duke Seeing high-school student Rachel Jeantel — who can’t read cursive or speak proper English but boasts a B average — testify at the recent George Zimmerman trial certainly could make one wonder what passes for education in 2013 America. And now this question has been brought into even sharper focus by the…

  • By Selwyn Duke When Joshua Baron works delivering food for a local delicatessen, the customers wouldn’t guess that the man handing them their delectable fare is a law-school graduate. But neither the New York City resident’s undergraduate degree in International Affairs nor his law degree has translated into a career. And while he hasn’t yet…

  • By Selwyn Duke Is the “separation of church and state” being applied too literally? Because some U.K. parents may point out that mosque and state seems to be mixing all the time. A case in point is 10-year-old schoolboy Luke Blagden, who was denied water on one of the year’s hottest days in deference to…

  • By Selwyn Duke It isn’t always true that “united we stand.” United in the wrong things we can fall, and sometimes, for some to stand on principle, we must stand divided. Barack Obama is currently taking some heat for what has been characterized as a shot at Catholic education. While in Northern Ireland for the…

  • By Selwyn Duke Call it living in Upside-down Land or the realization of the Bible’s prediction of a time when bad will be called good and good, bad, but once again innocent schoolchildren have been persecuted for, well, just being children. This time the offender was Chase Lake Elementary School (CLES) in Edmonds, WA, where…

  • By Selwyn Duke If I were a governor, the first thing I’d do is scrutinize the school curriculum in my state. For the teachings in the schools today will be the ideology of tomorrow, to paraphrase Abraham Lincoln. I’d review as much of the material as I could myself, and if the volume was too…