Education

Via The Hayride,

HB 1035, a bill by Rep. Valarie Hodges that would have mandated that schoolchildren in Louisiana be taught the Declaration of Independence, sailed through the House Education Committee with a 6-2 vote. But Wednesday, when the bill reached the floor of the House, it had a different fate – amid a torrent of squabbling, Hodges returned the bill to the calendar and it’s likely finished for the session.

Iran flogged dozens of young college students who were caught dancing, jubilating and drinking alcohol at a mixed graduation party by the country’s “morality police” force. More than 30 students were arrested, interrogated and lashed 99 times within 24 hours of their college graduation party, where students had met under a potential volatile situation. Iran’s morality police were discretely keeping an eye on the situation and interfered when they saw morality was about to shatter to smithereens.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have publicly declared that they will aggressively pressure schools and the government to use the Common Core education standards.  In an open letter to authorities, the Gates Foundation say: “Far too many districts report that identifying or developing Common Core-aligned materials is a challenge, meaning that teachers spend their time adapting or creating curriculum, developing lessons, and searching for supplemental materials”.

Students on liberal arts college campuses may have just jumped the shark for special-snowflakedness. As The Week reports, students at Oberlin College are asking the school to put academics on the back burner so they can better turn their attention to activism.

There’s an interesting discussion going on in the comments threads about wages, education, employment, and so forth. Several people are pointing out (correctly) that our society demeans the trades, wrongly, and discourages people who would do well in them from taking them up. A typical comment:

But beyond this, our education system demeans manual labor and respectable professions. Plumbers, electricians, machinists, etc. are all well-paid and respectable professions, but we are churning out people that lump those in with working in fast food.