“So what’s the solution? The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation thinks it has one – redesign the high schools:
The key problem is political will. Elected officials have not yet done away with the idea underlying the old design. The idea behind the old design was that you could train an adequate workforce by sending only a third of your kids to college and that the other kids either couldn’t do college work or didn’t need to. The idea behind the new design is that all students can do rigorous work, and – for their sake and ours – they have to.
And Gates has put his money where his mouth is. His foundation has already invested almost $1 billion thus far to help redesign the American high school.
I am always amazed at the ignorance of billionaires, smart enough to create great new industries, but totally misinformed when it comes to the problems of our education system. The problems do not start in high school. They start in primary school, and often in kindergarten and pre-school. The blatant educational malpractice that takes place in those early school years is what sets our students on the road to academic disaster.
The educators can get away with this academic genocide because their methods seem to produce acceptable results up to the 4th grade. But after that, it’s all downhill to the bottom of the slope in 12th grade. And by the time we get to the 12th grade, everyone – including Mr. Gates – forgets what happened in the 1st grade.
We’ve written extensively about how the teaching of reading by the whole-word method produces the symptoms of dyslexia. We’ve explained how these teaching methods were devised by our top educators to produce the results they wanted: the dumbing down of America. And Mr. Gates believes that he can stop the dumbing-down process by redesigning the American high school with more rigorous courses in math and science.”
“Dr. Samuel L. Blumenfeld is the author of eight books on education, including: “Is Public Education Necessary?” “NEA: Trojan Horse in American Education,” “The Whole Language/OBE Fraud” and “Homeschooling: A Parents Guide to Teaching Children.” His books are available on Amazon.com.”
Jenny Hatch

“The Democrats are trying to “reframe” their message to make people think they believe abortion is wrong. I think this is going to be a hard sell if they plan to continue ferociously defending abortion-on-demand right up until the moment the baby’s head is through the birth canal.
But both the New York Times and the Washington Post have recently run op-eds by liberals calling for Democrats to abandon their single-minded devotion to Roe v. Wade.
In the Post, Richard Cohen said it was time for liberals to “untether abortion rights from Roe.” Cohen admitted that conservatives (and “some liberals,” he claimed implausibly) have a point when they say abortion ought to be decided by the states. This is another way of saying abortion is not a constitutional right. Kate Michelman: Call your abortion mill!
In the New York Times, William Saletan gently counseled feminists that it was time to admit: “It’s bad to kill a fetus.” And they say liberals have no values!”
Jenny Hatch
UPDATE:
Abortion increases sleep disorders

We have a family rule that on odd birthdays we have only a family party, and on even birthdays we have a friend and a family party. After much deliberation and thought, Allison decided to have an ice skating party and a family party. She turned 14 on the 23rd of January. Since all of the children have even birthdays this year – (Allison 14, Jeffrey 12, Andrew 10, Michelle 18, and Ben 4) we will be having quite a few birthday parties this year.

Allison with Jenny and Ben just before we left for the ice rink. This outdoor rink is a small but fun place to skate. It was very cold that night.

Allison and Ben with her store bought cake. We have a running family joke that Mom can’t bake a decent cake, so for the friend parties, we always get a bakery cake.

Allison and Michelle putting on skates

Allison helped to relight the candles after the wind blew a couple of them out.

Allison skating party

Andy at Allison’s party

Ben and Shelly at the party

Ben at the party

Ben eating pizza

All the girls skating on the rink

Jeff at the party

Of course we still had our family party, Allison baked her own cake and it was delicious. She requested strawberries and pastry for breakfast and hoagie sandwiches for supper. I let the children pick whatever foods they desire for birthdays and such an easy meal was a treat for me. Everyone just made their own sandwich.

Ben and Allison blowing out candles

Licking the icing off the candles
It is hard to believe our sweet girl is fourteen. I was pregnant with her when we showed up here in Boulder so many years ago. It has been a happy time, having her in our home. She is such a bright light, and so fun to be around. We really had a great time at the parties.
Jenny Hatch

“First lady Laura Bush and a growing number of physicians, educators and psychologists say Americans need to wake up and see that boys lag far behind girls in school, and then demand that something be done.
Mrs. Bush, mother of two grown daughters, speaks at conferences and in interviews about the declining status of boys in today’s learning environment. She has charged that boys are being overlooked.
“I think we need to pay more attention to boys. I think we’ve paid a lot of attention to girls for the last 30 years … but we have actually neglected boys,” Mrs. Bush told Parade magazine early last year.”
It does help boys when they are taught to read properly…. Phonics first!

Jenny Hatch

President Bush has just read Mao, the Unknown Story book by Jung Chang that I blogged about a few weeks ago!
Here are previous posts…
Go Here and Here
Jenny Hatch
UPDATE:
New Story at International Herald Tribune
Quote:
“Chang and Halliday said in a telephone interview from Paris on Friday, during a long weekend away from their home in London, that they were “thrilled” that Bush had read the book. Chang, whose “Wild Swans,” a memoir of her family’s oppression under Mao, sold 10 million copies, said she surmised that Bush was drawn to the book because “it’s a very dramatic story about a roller-coaster life.” She also said that since Bush was dealing with the current Chinese leadership, “it’s not surprising that he should want to know from what roots this regime has grown.”
American scholars say that Bush was probably also drawn to the book because it is, in effect, an argument for the president’s second-term agenda of spreading democracy around the world.”
Let Freedom Ring!
Jenny Hatch
UPDATE: January 23
Chat at Free Republic…Go Here