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Wednesday, June 13, 2012
Check out this article from 2010 in the New York Times on a school founded by the mime troupe the Blue Man Group:
The school, which is entering its fourth year, has remained true to its
progressive roots, with “imagination stations” and “glow time.” Children
help direct the curriculum, and social and emotional skills are given
equal weight to reading and math.
And:
After a teaching candidate read “The Great Kapok Tree” to a class of first graders, they took interest in the rainforest.
A provocateur built the classroom into a rainforest, replete with a
kapok tree whose (plastic) leaves cover the ceiling. The children have
studied the animals that live in the rainforest and are now exploring
whether the Littles, characters from another story they read, might live
in the kapok tree. They write letters to the Littles and even create
math tests for them.
Well, two years later, and the predictable result has occurred:
Parents are yanking their kids out of the “progressive,” $32,000
per-year private school founded by the Blue Man Group — which has no
books and no tests — because their kids are barely learning to read, The
Post has learned.
Yes, but they are doing great in rain forest. You can't put a pricetag on that kind of knowledge! Well, you can ($32K), but apparently the philistine parents are more concerned with Bush's old formulation: "Is our children learning?"
Friday, June 08, 2012
Lupica: We're All Racists if We Don't Vote for Obama
I always knew this guy was a jerk, from way back in the 1970s, but this just seals it:
Last time, there were just weren’t enough reasons for enough white
voters to vote against the black guy, as much as they wanted to. This
time there are plenty.
Well, I certainly agree with the second part of that formulation; there are plenty of reasons to vote against Obama. But what the heck is it about that first sentence?
Last time, there were just weren’t enough reasons for enough white
voters to vote against the black guy, as much as they wanted to.
Ummm, if we were all as racist as Lupica believes, wouldn't the fact that he was black be enough? And this part is laughable:
Two things that nobody will want to talk about so much in the months between now and November? Race and Romney’s religion.
Pshaw. You seriously don't think we won't hear about golden plates and polygamy thousands of times between now and November?
In Bloomberg's Defense
Somebody had to write it, and Tim Noah apparently drew the short straw:
Yet, even as liberals and conservatives profess to hate the idea of government paternalism, both practice it. Liberals support restrictions on harmful things individuals do to their bodies, like smoking, driving without a seat belt, and riding a motorcycle without a helmet. Conservatives support restrictions on actions they deem harmful to the soul, like having abortions, using contraception, and marrying a person of the same sex.
I don't think conservatives oppose abortion because of what it does to the woman having it; the focus is more on the child. And conservatives (mostly) don't oppose contraception.
This part is pretty silly:
The government doesn’t want me talking on the phone while I drive? I can’t say I’ve given that vice up completely, but fear of getting ticketed makes me do it a lot less than I used to, and I may live longer as a result.
For the most part that's not to protect you; it's to protect the people in the other car.
The government wants me eating less salt? I don’t live in New York, but, when I heard Bloomberg was tightening the noose, I reexamined my attachment to sodium chloride and found it to be fairly weak.
I suspect Tim doesn't know how much NaCl is already in the foods he eats.
Indeed, the 16-ounce limit might actually enhance individual liberty by compelling restaurants and bottlers to sell soda in the smaller quantities that people often want but can’t get. It might become possible once again to order a Coke at a movie theater in something less than a Jacuzzi-sized tub.
I haven't checked at the local theater in awhile, but I suspect a 16-ounce soda is still available there. And by 16-ounce soda, I mean about 6 ounces of soda and 10 ounces of ice.
Friday, June 01, 2012
What Liberal Media Bias?
You gotta love this report from the NY Times on the effort to recall Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, which appears to be headed to defeat.
With more than $30 million raised from conservative donors, many of them from other states, and visits from a who’s who of high-profile Republican governors (Chris Christie, Nikki Haley, Bobby Jindal, Bob McDonnell), Gov. Scott Walker’s campaign to survive a recall vote has the feel, the money and the stakes of a national race.
Notice, no mention of the outside union money pouring into the Democrats' candidate. No mention of Bill Clinton's visit (that comes deeper into the story).
Check out this paragraph:
Mr. Walker’s Democratic opponent, Tom Barrett, the mayor of Milwaukee, who holds the hopes of hundreds of thousands of Wisconsin residents who began seeking Mr. Walker’s recall just a year into the governor’s first term, has trailed in some public polls, though Mr. Walker’s lead has generally fallen within each poll’s margin of sampling error.
No mention about the hopes of hundreds of thousands of Wisconsin residents who support the Republican, needless to say. And I love the "trailed in some public polls" bit. In fact if you look at the RCP summary of all polls, you'll see that "some" is about 87%, and all of the last 11 polls.
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