Michael and Jenni With Karmin Grider - Judges NOT To Retain In 2024

We had ROPE Report Regular Karmin Grider on today to talk about Oklahoma's judges. She is continuing to do research of our elected officials and publish it on her website www.KarminGrider.com. We talked about OK SUPREME COURT justices who are appointed by the Governor initially, but then must be either RETAINED or NOT RETAINED on the general election ballot. Most people know very little about Oklahoma's judicial system, let alone who to vote for - OR NOT - in an election cycle. Here we mention THREE Supreme Court justices who should NOT be RETAINED on the ballot this fall. Please watch, remember their names and continue to follow Karmin's website for more information to be uploaded as she has time.

Julianne Romanello - Education Tax Credit; It's NOT The Economy Stupid

Julianne Romanello, on our show Wednesday January 10th, tells us that by making everything about the economy, people have focused on their pocketbooks and NOT their LOSS OF LIBERTY. She asks, why in the world should we have to get our money back from the government to have freedom?

What Would Einstein Think of Common Core?

I commented on an article today regarding Michigan's attempts to shake free from the Common Core.  Many of the comments came from sadly misinformed individuals who seem to believe that "common" is good and anything to which a large number of others subscribe must amount to some kind of awe-inspiring notion, spawning my concern that none apparently had mothers like mine who constantly queried, "If Mary was going to jump off a bridge, would you?"

One man began his comment with this, "Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts." (Sign hanging in Einstein's office at Princeton)

This thought captured my  imagination thoroughly.  I have been blessed to know a man named Dr. Everett Piper, the President of Oklahoma Wesleyan University.  I love to hear him discuss the horrors of Common Core from a philosophical perspective, not only because he is such an excellent orator, but because people tend to forget the philosophical point of view - the notion that ideas shape the human condition and ideas reduced to commonalities do not advance the human condition.

The best opponents of Common Core predicate their arguments on fact - in stark opposition to proponents who tend to use half-truths and lies upon which to base their case - but the philosophy behind our Common Core concerns are palpable and real and I believe we need to advance these arguments at least as often as we tout our facts.

In this thought, I penned the following response:

The Common Core State Standards were written by several individuals - without education degrees I might add - who then, knowing national standards are against federal law, sent them out through a private organization - Achieve - to the nation's governors and superintendents with the promise of federal money waiting in the wings - 500 BILLION dollars through Race to the Top - if they adopted them for their state sight unseen. It happened here in Oklahoma exactly as it happened in Michigan and all other adopting states.

Granted, the term "Common" was used to mean ubiquitous, however, another meaning for "Common" is the OPPOSITE of "individual", which begs the question:  How in the world can America continue to be seen as the most innovative country in the world when states fully intend to collaboratively adopt standards to "commonize" all students across all states? 

How do you INCREASE student knowledge levels by pulling successful students down to the level of the 'common'? 

Are there really that many low performing students in every school in every state in the nation that we need to stop everything to bring them up to the 'common' level of each class? 

Do we bring down 25 kids for 1 kid or even 6 kids in a class? 

If so, then what are we doing to the other 21? 

The simple, straightforward answer is that we're dumbing them down - there is no other characterization possible - and we can't scream "civil rights" for those at the bottom without inquiring about the "civil rights" of the individuals in the majority being pulled down.

For those of you in the Chamber of Commerce sect, how do you convince a company to come to Michigan when your students will be taught in a thoroughly homogenous way, forcing out uniqueness, drive and imagination - the very qualities necessary to produce the Einstein's and Edison's of this world? 

How well do you think Einstein would fair with the Common Core? 

Do you think we would have had a Theory of Relativity with the Common Core...well silly question...of course we would - the Common Core is nothing if not 'relative' among every state and every child.
 
Common Core is what it is - nonsense dreamed up by well-connected philanthropists (Carnegie, Broad, etc)  and innovator/billionaires such as Bill Gates, with a dollar to be made in the education "industry". 

I hope no one escapes the irony imbued in the fact that these people who worked and scrapped and sacrificed to make their dreams reality - who reached the pinnacle of success by truly innovating in America - suddenly seem to forget that the great thing about America - the thing that gave them the ability to get to the top - was the variety inherent in every aspect of the American condition - the FREEDOM to receive the best education one could seek out from the very variety contained within.

John Dewey Would Be So Proud

I am closing out my day today and just realized. My post yesterday is absolutely the dream of John Dewey, our Marxist/Socialist "Father of Progressive (read 'modern') Education". He is taught like a God in teacher ed courses at Universities and Colleges everywhere - just as his followers had hoped.

School will provide all your needs.

That is what he wished - his Utopian fantasy. In fact, he thought parents were mostly morons and that the state could do a better job of raising little American young people than they. After all, some of them were getting divorced - as the Industrial Revolution began to re-define the stable, two parent family - some of them were neglecting their children to go to work...(if you want to really get a good feel for Dewey and his plans for public education - all of which have now come true - I urge you to get the book, John Dewey and the Decline of American Education - How the patron Saint of schools has corrupted teaching and learning by Henry T. Edmondson III)

Think on this a minute...I was told by a superintendent just recently that the reason why his district provided 'early childhood education' (tax-payer subsidized day care) was because the district 'next door' did. He would lose students as parents moved their kids to the OTHER school to take advantage of the program.

Butts + Chairs = dollars in public schools.

So...it was either provide free state-provided day care to parents, or lose his students AND his funding.

Yes folks, it's about the kids.

No. It's about class warfare, it's about building fiefdoms, it's about power, it's about MONEY. That's what public education is about in America today.

Here's what it will be soon - and a big shout out to ROPE board member Jo Joyce for this little nugget today:

Swedish Officials To Take Permanent Custody of Home Schooled Boy

Yes, according to the Home School Legal Defense Fund, little Domenic Johansson, son of Christer and Annie Johansson, has been in foster care since 2009 when he was seized from the plane on which the family was attempting to flee to his mother’s native India.

Home schooling is legal in Sweden, however, it is necessary to get materials with which to home school your child from the principal of the school of your child's prospective attendance.

However, this principal was not in favor of homeschooling and was hostile to the parent’s request.

“He was very short and not at all in favor of homeschooling,” Christer told the HSLDA. “I told him that it was my right under Swedish law to home school and that I was making contact with him to make the necessary arrangements and to get the materials. We were planning to leave Sweden in just a month or two. Mr. Eneqvist told me that he ‘didn’t care about my right’ that I didn’t have a ‘right to educate my son like that’ and that he was going to take the matter farther.”

The couple, who are devout Christians, had been planning to return to India where they were going to start a new ministry with the poor, but decided to delay the trip in order to get their son’s schooling arrangements made.

And so, as it was, the principal was a man of his word and somehow got the 'state' to remove little Domenic from his parents care. He has now been a 'ward of the state' for 24 months.

Let's see. That will never happen here in Oklahoma...REALLY? We now have the FOOD NAZI'S telling kids what they can and can not eat at school and a legislator that every year submits bills to try and kill the home schooling option in Oklahoma.

Even reasonable legislators like Representative Janine Noland expresses 'concern' over the idea of home schooling because she is acquainted with a family made up of crack-addicted parents who 'home school' their kids because they are often too stoned to get them there.

If you have reasonable legislators with this perspective, what about those like the one that tries to outlaw home schooling every year?

I guess, in the end, not only do we get the government we deserve, we also get the life we deserve - we're either free to pursue our lives under the Constitution given us by our Forefathers - which requires WORK to keep in place - or we can live our life in the chains of governmental tyranny because it just takes too much time out of our little Dancing With The Stars, Blackberry-texting, salon-going, lunching-out day to make the effort to secure our liberties for ourselves and our posterity.