Category Archives: Other Columns

Columns concerning any and everything. Enjoy!

Government School is Child Abuse – and Attempted Cover Up

11 Monday Jun 2018

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More and more and more reasons manifest – causes to keep children out of the failed American “public” school cabal. Here’s another stunner: Valedictorian’s mic was cut off when she brought up sex assault in grad speech:

A California high school valedictorian was abruptly cut off when she tried to speak about sexual assault during her graduation speech, according to reports.

“I felt like I was worthless,” recent Petaluma High School grad Lulabel Seitz told CNN about the incident.

The 17-year-old began her speech on June 2 recalling the students’ first days as freshmen, then went on to talk about devastating wildfires, teacher strikes and her own family’s struggles.

But when it seemed like she was about to bring up her own sexual assault, which allegedly happened on school grounds — her mic was cut off.

In a video of the incident, the teen is visibly upset as she yells inaudible words to someone off camera.

Moments later, her peers and people in the crowd started chanting, “Let her speak! Let her speak!”

After nearly a minute of silence, she returns to her seat.

Seitz — a member of student government who played trumpet in jazz band and maintained a GPA of over 4.0 — said administrators warned her not to “speak against them” in her speech.

But the night before commencement, as she watched Martin Luther King Jr. speeches, she was inspired to speak out.

“When they cut my mic, I was appalled at them,” Seitz told the Santa Rosa Press Democrat. “I thought this is a public school with freedom of speech.”

Seitz, who is heading to Stanford in the fall, decided to post the uncensored version of her speech on YouTube.

That speech contains the line: “Even learning on a campus where some people defend perpetrators of sexual assault and silence their victims, we didn’t let that drag us down.”

The teen said she reported her assault, but that the school did nothing about it.

The definitional best student at this “school” was assaulted (I’ll just take her word) and the school did nothing (for her). They did do something against her, shutting her speech down following intimidation. Double abuse. This case is reminiscent of an episode in Florida wherein a middle school girl as abused on campus. Her school did nothing. Frustrated, she reached out to local talk radio for support and help. The school responded – by suspending her.

Our valedictorian by no means should feel worthless. That sentiment is rightfully reserved for her failed school. Thank God she’s moved beyond their reach. Of course, they did nothing about the abuse! They’re in the same business themselves.

She now surely knows that public “schools” and freedom, of speech and otherwise, do not go together. She’s going to be fine. She’s one of those high IQ students who simply cannot be held down, no matter who tries. She’ll do well at Stanford. She’ll be a success.

The “school” won’t. It isn’t. It cannot claim any responsibility for the success of those who happen to excel despite the torment. I don’t even need to consult with one of those services that tell just how bad the schools are; I know this one is failed. Abolish it. Now!

I’m sure they did warn her not to “speak against them.” Her disregard speaks to her fortitude. I’ll also speak against them. Damn you morons to hell! Stop harming children. How’s that?

This is pathetic. It is also the norm these days. As these are our children, can we really continue to tolerate this? I think not.

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YouTube.

Grit and Steel: Fiction at TPC

06 Wednesday Jun 2018

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And, by fiction, for once I don’t mean a goofy political poem. A short, short story:

It was as delightful a late-October afternoon as anyone could want, cooler and quieter than most. Wendell “Dell” Hubbard looked out the office window as the leaves shimmered in a breeze, their autumnal transformation slowly proceeding. It was a great afternoon, a great Friday afternoon. So far as Wendell knew he was the last man in the building. Friday’s usually meant leaving a little early. And now it was a little late – five past five. ‘No rush,’ he thought as his gaze returned to the stack of files on his desk. His blushing bride and her sister were held up at the family beach house for the weekend. He could afford to take it easy. Stay a little longer. Get a little more done. Later, perhaps, a cigar and a little Scotch was in order.

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READ THE WHOLE THING AT TPC

*Is this the beginning of the Dell Hubbard chronicles? Who knows?

**TPC fans: the National Affairs shall return in force next week.

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Perrin.

Another Good Alternative to Public “Schools”

05 Tuesday Jun 2018

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Last week’s TPC column on high schools and its predecessor generated heavy readership and commentary. The people, some of them having direct experience in the government prison schools, raised a myriad of issues even I hadn’t thought of – from expenses to parent disinterest to fidget spinners. All seemed willing to explore options in search of real education.

In furtherance thereof, here’s a piece from LRC, today, on Ron Paul’s Curriculum:

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Of course many parents choose homeschooling as a means of protecting their children from federal education “reforms” such as Common Core. Other parents are motivated by a desire to protect their children from the cultural Marxism that has infiltrated many schools.

The spread of cultural Marxism has contributed to the dumbing down of public education. Too many government schools are more concerned with promoting political correctness than ensuring that students receive a good education. Even if cultural Marxism did not dumb down education, concerns that government schools are indoctrinating children with beliefs that conflict with parents’ political, social, and even religious beliefs would motivate many families to homeschool.

Even when government schools are not intentionally promoting cultural Marxism or other left-wing ideologies, they are still implicitly biased toward big government. For example, how many government schools teach the Austrian economics explanation for the Great Depression — much less question the wisdom of central banking — or critically examine the justifications for America’s hyper-interventionist foreign policy?

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Another installment of TPC cometh tomorrow – and of a totally different make than the usual. Stay tuned.

Valediction – from 2015

01 Friday Jun 2018

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Seems appropriate to run this one again:

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At ceremonies coast to coast these meanings serve a justifiable purpose. The valedictorian speaks first to bid the class farewell to the sheltered academic lives the members have known. The salutatorian then speaks to the promise of the coming years. Or, something like that.

Those acquainted with the works of John Taylor Gatto or who have children of school age, surely understand the decline of quality in American public education. Gatto was formerly New York’s teacher of the year (State and City). His distinguished career spanned decades. Now he speaks and writes of the critical need for drastic school reform. His writing is frequently published at lewrockwell.com. He is the author of The Underground History of American Education: A School Teacher’s Intimate Investigation Into the Problem of Modern Schooling (2000).

Gatto has related the American model of public education to Soviet-era brainwashing:

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The Original.

Homeschooling Rising in Popularity

01 Friday Jun 2018

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For good reasons.

One is avoiding public school culture and violence.

After a gunman opened fire on students in Parkland, Florida, the phones started ringing at the Texas Home School Coalition, and they haven’t stopped yet.

The Lubbock-based organization has been swamped with inquiries for months from parents seeking safer options for their kids in the aftermath of this year’s deadly school massacres, first in Parkland and then in Santa Fe, Texas.

“When the Parkland shooting happened, our phone calls and emails exploded,” said coalition president Tim Lambert. “In the last couple of months, our numbers have doubled. We’re dealing with probably between 1,200 and 1,400 calls and emails per month, and prior to that it was 600 to 700.”

Demands to restrict firearms and beef up school security have dominated the debate following the shootings, but flying under the radar is the surge of interest in homeschooling as parents lose faith in the ability of public schools to protect students from harm.

That’s violent physical harm, the risk of which is actually, statistically lower than it was 20 years ago. The greater danger, outside an immediate, isolated incident, is the admitted harm the schools do by graduating students who can’t read or calculate.

Five Things to Know Before Getting Started, by Melodie Kennedy.

 

A Scale in Every Publix (in Flordia)

30 Wednesday May 2018

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I was with a friend at a South Carolina Publix last year. We walked in, she looked around, and then asked someone where the scale was? They didn’t have one. Turns out that’s a strictly FLA affair:

The scales have actually been there since Publix founder George Jenkins opened his first “food palace” Publix in 1940. At the time, the only opportunity to weigh yourself was at the doctor, or maybe by finding a coin-operated scale. Jenkins offered it as a free service, and it stuck.

That original Publix scale still works. It now sits in the late founder’s old corporate office, where new associates see it when they take tours.

The model No. 2830 people weigher found in a new Publix today is identical to the ones the old Toledo Scale company started manufacturing in Ohio around 1950. Mettler Toledo, a Fortune 500 company headquartered in Switzerland, now makes industrial equipment, precision lab instruments and high-tech scale components. But for decades, they kept manufacturing the low-tech, but reliable, people weighers for Publix, essentially the only company that wanted them.

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In a 1988 feature in the Orlando Sentinel, writer Donna Bouffard, with the help of store employees in Winter Park, identified seven recurring categories of scale users, including “pickpockets,” who set aside keys, change and wallets,” “bashfuls,” who go to great lengths to make sure nobody is looking, “hoppers,” who leap on in a single bound, and “mechanics,” who insist this thing must be broken.

Now you know, if you ever wanted to. I thought it was a So. Tampa thing as just about all the customers are in shape and would want to confirm that metrologically. Maybe it’s all just as well. At that one SC store, there would be a lot of scale mechanics…

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Usually right up front. Martha Asencio Rhine/ TB Times.

Decoration Day 2018

28 Monday May 2018

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Last for I celebrated Memorial Day at an aquarium and attached museum. Not a fish fancier, I did delight in a cigar box.

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This year I loafed at the gym and then enjoyed a cigar. I think that’s about all for the day.

Wait, later I need to wrap up the TPC article for Wednesday. I just read a little reinforcement in this month’s copy of American Consequences, which you might want to inspect.

That’s all…

Remedial America: On the Public Schools

24 Thursday May 2018

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Somewhat fitting with this being graduation season. Yesterday’s TPC piece on schooling, part one of two:

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The top ten schools in several categories are front and center in the USN report. There is other good performance outside the upper extreme, such as one school I found in a large Floridian city: 96% graduation rate; 64.4% college readiness; 84% AP participation with 69% success; and 71% reading and 66% math proficiency.

That school ranks 29th among all Florida schools and 343rd in the nation. However, this “best” school still graduates 96% of students when 29% are not reading at the level and 34% have trouble with arithmetic. It makes one wonder. It should make one suspicious.

Then, there are the “worst” schools. I skewered them recently in a related article. Please pardon any caustic effect therein. The worst offender districts spend more money than the average while delivering single-digit proficiency results. I think it’s safe to say “fraud” again.

The situation, the fraud is much worse than just poor test results. The whole basis and structure of the public schools in this country is so out of touch with American values that placing children in many or most of our schools is tantamount to child abuse. Seriously. The American model, in many states, is built on the fraud and historic bigotry of Blaine Amendment meddling. A beginning based on hating Catholics. Then, segregation and the hampering of black achievement. Next, integration, both of students and of plans to lower expectations and results. No free thinking citizens produced, just barely competent and obedient worker drone units. That was then. Now, the schools have become prisons.

I’ve been to more than a few schools recently. And I’ve been in more jails and prisons (on professional business…) than the average. There really is little difference. To convert a prison into a school, just add some desks. To make a school into a literal prison, just add bars to the windows. Beyond the physical similarities, there is congruence in the treatment of the inmates. And, in many places, the students literally have fewer rights, less freedom that prisoners of war under the Geneva Convention. Click here, read, and think about the application of these principles to your child’s school: Basic Rules and Protocols. In addition to suspicious, you should now be getting angry.

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READ THE WHOLE ARTICLE AT TPC

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Twin Commentary on the Hyper-Sensitive Culture

17 Thursday May 2018

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PC “Right think” is a low-quality cover for no think. Joe Bob Briggs writes, today, for Taki’s Mag (a “wrong think,” thus, not politically correct, thus, actually correct publication) on the failure to grasp humor by the outraged, unintellectual masses.

He takes offense with the offended youth of today:

Satire is a machine gun on a swivel. You aim at a target, fire, move one foot to the right, fire, move again, aim and fire—you hit all the targets, without exception, and about one in ten targets will scream. When that happens, you hit that target twenty more times.

That’s how you identify the sacred cow, then exterminate the sacred cow.

The difference, in 2018, is that it’s not one in ten targets, it’s one in two. Everybody screams, like, all the time. Nobody ever says, “Oh, wow, you caught me, yeah, that’s pretty stupid.” And everybody assumes you have some kind of second agenda, usually political.

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I stopped reading the Comments sections entirely, not because I couldn’t take the heat but because I often couldn’t even understand the context of the argument.

Unreasoned assumptions are bad enough; making an “ass out of u and me.” It’s much, much worse in an era and an area of rapidly declining intelligence. For instance, assuming (wow) that most could even read the above-selected Briggs’s quote, some might assume (again) that he’s promoting gun violence and nothing else.

He’s not communicating at the highest level but at one a good deal higher than the passing average. By strange coincidence, today’s Pearls Before Swine strip tackles the same subject from a slightly different, easier to comprehend angle:

Rat Swarmed by SJWs: (Click):

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Stephan Pastis, Pearls, 5/17/18.

Again, even here, a basic literacy is required, else the viewer merely sees three generic people and a rat holding a beer. But Pastis is saying the same thing as Briggs: mind your own business, brighten up, and lighten up!

The other day we lost the mighty Tom Wolfe. He made a mark offending the pretension, as Monica Showalter observes.

What a treasure he was. He wrote about the world as it is, telling our American story because he loved our American story. How sad that we don’t have him to write about the ongoing story of America. He wrote about the world as an outsider, and he examined the establishment as it needed to be examined, and naturally, that added up to making the left look stupid. There was no other way for a writer this honest, and we are the richer for it.

It’s true that I would love to step into Wolfe’s role, merely lacking the talent and those white suits…

I do hope all this offended someone.