This is a perfect reason why checkbooks should be open to not only school board members but the community. School board members in our community need to stop blindly trusting school staff. All are humans have faults.
Cathy
A prostitution sting in Canaan leads to the arrested three local men
including a former Hanover Elementary School Principal. Police say in
each case the men contacted an undercover officer and offered to pay
money for various sexual acts.
On Monday, police arrested former Ray School Principal, Matthew E.
Laramie 48 of Grantham NH on one count of prostitution. Laramie
resigned his position at the Ray School in February and in March, school
administrators said they were investigating more than $30,000 in
unapproved expenses charged to Laramie’s school-issued credit card.
Also arrested Peter G. Bloomfield 55 of Enfield and Alan R. Lane 49
of Sharon VT and charged with one count of prostitution on Tuesday.
After executing a search warrant of Lane’s vehicle, he was also
charged with possession of drugs in a motor vehicle and Misdemeanor and
Acts Prohibited – Possession of Oxycodone.
The prostitution charges are Class B Misdemeanor all men were
released on $7,500 personal recognizance bail each with an arraignment
scheduled for Monday July 11, 2016 in Lebanon District Court.
The Canaan Police Department is committed to these types of
investigations, as prostitution is a major component of human
trafficking and drug use.
Thursday, April 28, 2016
Sunday, April 10, 2016
Wallowing in Mediocrity
The following piece appears in full at Education Views.org.
Cathy
2) Inane Math Instruction. New Math and Reform Math mix advanced concepts with elementary arithmetic, guaranteeing that children are confused and make no progress. Inefficient methods are taught. The rhetoric is that children are learning the meaning behind the numbers. For young children, this is an absurd notion. How many adults know what the meaning is behind 5+2 = 7?
3) Contempt For Knowledge. Everywhere in the public schools, we hear this whine: “Why would children need to know THAT?” Many schools scorn the very notion that there is anything in particular the children need to know, even such basics as who was George Washington and how many ounces are in a pound. Nobody points out that learning stuff can be fun in itself.
4) Inefficient Teaching Methods. Constructivism is the main problem in the public schools. This method requires that teachers stop teaching; they must stand passively aside. Meanwhile children are supposed to figure out everything for themselves. This will be a slow and incoherent process, especially for children who don’t know much when they show up at school.
5) Busywork Is The Norm. There is lots of homework. Children are encouraged to work on large, impressive-sounding projects and to fill up portfolios. The emphasis is on “activity,” a word that John Dewey loved. Knowledge is not primary. Interacting with other students is a goal in itself.
6) Contempt For Accuracy and Precision. Many public schools have abandoned cursive writing. The idea of one correct answer is ridiculed. There is a pervasive acceptance of guessing, fuzziness, approximations, being late, and sloppiness in general. Children are told to explain how they got an answer but it doesn’t matter if the answer is right. (There are better ways to go.)
7) Obsession with Political Correctness and Social Engineering. Ever since the time of John Dewey, “progressive” educators have promoted the idea that the schools are there, not to teach knowledge, but to indoctrinate children into accepting a new kind of society.
8) Parents Are Unable To Influence The Schools. The public is kept confused and distracted by policy discussions about secondary things. Issues that really matter are cloaked in jargon and propaganda. Education’s intellectual machinery is busted.
9) Inferior Preparation Of Teachers. To put it bluntly, teachers are prepared to provide the bad education that most of them are now providing. It’s not their fault. It’s the fault of an Education Establishment that is far more interested in socialist ideology that in making sure the children are well-educated.
Bruce Deitrick Price’s education site is Improve-Education.org. (His four new novels are presented on his literary site Lit4u.com)
Cathy
9 Big Reasons Why Public Schools Wallow in Mediocrity
1) Bad Reading Methods. Whole word (also known as sight-words, Dolch words, and many other aliases) is an 85-year flop that never worked. Children are told to memorize words as graphic designs. For most children, that’s effectively the end of literacy.2) Inane Math Instruction. New Math and Reform Math mix advanced concepts with elementary arithmetic, guaranteeing that children are confused and make no progress. Inefficient methods are taught. The rhetoric is that children are learning the meaning behind the numbers. For young children, this is an absurd notion. How many adults know what the meaning is behind 5+2 = 7?
3) Contempt For Knowledge. Everywhere in the public schools, we hear this whine: “Why would children need to know THAT?” Many schools scorn the very notion that there is anything in particular the children need to know, even such basics as who was George Washington and how many ounces are in a pound. Nobody points out that learning stuff can be fun in itself.
4) Inefficient Teaching Methods. Constructivism is the main problem in the public schools. This method requires that teachers stop teaching; they must stand passively aside. Meanwhile children are supposed to figure out everything for themselves. This will be a slow and incoherent process, especially for children who don’t know much when they show up at school.
5) Busywork Is The Norm. There is lots of homework. Children are encouraged to work on large, impressive-sounding projects and to fill up portfolios. The emphasis is on “activity,” a word that John Dewey loved. Knowledge is not primary. Interacting with other students is a goal in itself.
6) Contempt For Accuracy and Precision. Many public schools have abandoned cursive writing. The idea of one correct answer is ridiculed. There is a pervasive acceptance of guessing, fuzziness, approximations, being late, and sloppiness in general. Children are told to explain how they got an answer but it doesn’t matter if the answer is right. (There are better ways to go.)
7) Obsession with Political Correctness and Social Engineering. Ever since the time of John Dewey, “progressive” educators have promoted the idea that the schools are there, not to teach knowledge, but to indoctrinate children into accepting a new kind of society.
8) Parents Are Unable To Influence The Schools. The public is kept confused and distracted by policy discussions about secondary things. Issues that really matter are cloaked in jargon and propaganda. Education’s intellectual machinery is busted.
9) Inferior Preparation Of Teachers. To put it bluntly, teachers are prepared to provide the bad education that most of them are now providing. It’s not their fault. It’s the fault of an Education Establishment that is far more interested in socialist ideology that in making sure the children are well-educated.
Bruce Deitrick Price’s education site is Improve-Education.org. (His four new novels are presented on his literary site Lit4u.com)
Monday, April 4, 2016
More NH kindergartners are being suspended from school
More NH kindergartners are being suspended from school: More than 100 NH kindergartners were suspended from school last year and the NH Legislature wants to know why. Lawmakers voted to form a six-member committee to look at the reasons why 850 students in kindergarten through third grade were suspended last year and why those numbers are rising.
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Many other countries keep their children home until they are seven, perhaps these children should be at home with a parent, instead of at school.
Cathy
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Many other countries keep their children home until they are seven, perhaps these children should be at home with a parent, instead of at school.
Cathy
Friday, April 1, 2016
“How will children get an education with government?”
As it was 183 years ago, we still find people fighting against children and getting the best education possible for said children. The best education is not always in a dictated compulsory funded government school.
Boy this sounds familiar, " Before the firestorm ended, Crandall would be vilified and threatened in the most vicious and disgusting terms." So many in Croydon were vilified for wanting to do what was best of the parents and children of Croydon. The first battle was won in court, we are waiting with baited breath, for the response from the judge. Hopefully, he will do what is in the best interest of the children and not the government employees. Government teachers and those associated with them go by the mantra, "We must maintain the status quo even if it means keeping children in under performing and failing schools."
Cathy
"How would children learn without government? That’s a perennial question asked by many who assume, mistakenly, that government is an indispensable necessity to the business of education. Prudence Crandall in her day would undoubtedly respond with another query: “How will children get an education with government?” -- Prudence Crandall is this week's Real Hero at FEE.org: "
Friday, April 01, 2016
On April Fool’s Day in 1833, the little hamlet of Canterbury, Connecticut, was in an uproar. A new private school had opened that day, and it was no joke. A few blocks away, with local politicians leading the charge, angry townspeople gathered at the Congregational Church to demand that the state legislature pass a law to put it out of business. The air was thick with wild denunciations of the school’s owner and operator, a 29-year-old teacher and entrepreneur named Prudence Crandall.
What was so reprehensible about this school? Just two years earlier, Crandall had opened her first one, in the same building, to universal acclaim. She and her sister Almira had bought and paid for the spacious, Georgian-style 1805 mansion with a $500 down payment and a $1,500 mortgage. They called it the Canterbury Female Boarding School. The reviews from the families of its more than two dozen white female students were stellar.
However, the new school that Prudence opened on April 1, 1833, carried a name that sent shockwaves throughout Connecticut and prompted the April First commotion: Miss Crandall’s School for Young Ladies and Little Misses of Color.
Prudence Crandall had done the unthinkable. She was determined to run a school exclusively for — hold on to your hats — young black girls. They would come from among free black families in New England, where slavery had largely died out and the nascent abolitionist movement was about to blossom. Before the firestorm ended, Crandall would be vilified and threatened in the most vicious and disgusting terms.
Racism in Connecticut? Weren’t such ugly sentiments confined to the Deep South? Not at all. In America’s early days, it was as widespread in all parts of the country as it was in most of the world — which is to say, it was common. Indeed, slavery itself was not foreign to New England. In his fascinating biography, Prudence Crandall’s Legacy, historian Donald E. Williams Jr. writes,
It wasn’t just whites who owned slaves in early America. From 1654 right through the Civil War, free black people owned fellow blacks in every one of the 13 original states and later in almost every other state as well. As late as 1830, according to Harvard historian Henry Louis Gates, 3,776 free American blacks owned 12,907 slaves.
To read the rest of the story go to Fee.org.
Boy this sounds familiar, " Before the firestorm ended, Crandall would be vilified and threatened in the most vicious and disgusting terms." So many in Croydon were vilified for wanting to do what was best of the parents and children of Croydon. The first battle was won in court, we are waiting with baited breath, for the response from the judge. Hopefully, he will do what is in the best interest of the children and not the government employees. Government teachers and those associated with them go by the mantra, "We must maintain the status quo even if it means keeping children in under performing and failing schools."
Cathy
"How would children learn without government? That’s a perennial question asked by many who assume, mistakenly, that government is an indispensable necessity to the business of education. Prudence Crandall in her day would undoubtedly respond with another query: “How will children get an education with government?” -- Prudence Crandall is this week's Real Hero at FEE.org: "
She Dared to Teach Black Girls
Real Heroes: Prudence Crandall
Friday, April 01, 2016
On April Fool’s Day in 1833, the little hamlet of Canterbury, Connecticut, was in an uproar. A new private school had opened that day, and it was no joke. A few blocks away, with local politicians leading the charge, angry townspeople gathered at the Congregational Church to demand that the state legislature pass a law to put it out of business. The air was thick with wild denunciations of the school’s owner and operator, a 29-year-old teacher and entrepreneur named Prudence Crandall.
What was so reprehensible about this school? Just two years earlier, Crandall had opened her first one, in the same building, to universal acclaim. She and her sister Almira had bought and paid for the spacious, Georgian-style 1805 mansion with a $500 down payment and a $1,500 mortgage. They called it the Canterbury Female Boarding School. The reviews from the families of its more than two dozen white female students were stellar.
However, the new school that Prudence opened on April 1, 1833, carried a name that sent shockwaves throughout Connecticut and prompted the April First commotion: Miss Crandall’s School for Young Ladies and Little Misses of Color.
Prudence Crandall had done the unthinkable. She was determined to run a school exclusively for — hold on to your hats — young black girls. They would come from among free black families in New England, where slavery had largely died out and the nascent abolitionist movement was about to blossom. Before the firestorm ended, Crandall would be vilified and threatened in the most vicious and disgusting terms.
Racism in Connecticut? Weren’t such ugly sentiments confined to the Deep South? Not at all. In America’s early days, it was as widespread in all parts of the country as it was in most of the world — which is to say, it was common. Indeed, slavery itself was not foreign to New England. In his fascinating biography, Prudence Crandall’s Legacy, historian Donald E. Williams Jr. writes,
Many of the free blacks Prudence Crandall
saw in northeastern Connecticut were former slaves. Farmers in her
hometown of Canterbury owned slaves through the end of the 1700s.
Throughout the eighteenth century, slave ships regularly brought
captured blacks from Africa to harbors in the Northeast, including ports
in Connecticut and Newport, Rhode Island. Newport was one of the
busiest slave-trading ports in America during the 1700s; slaves were
held in pens on the Newport waterfront until they could be sold and
transported throughout New England. There were 951 slaves in Connecticut
according to the national census of 1800. By the time Prudence Crandall
began her teaching career in 1830, the number had dropped to
twenty-five as a result of anti-slavery sentiment and legislation that
slowly phased out slavery in Connecticut.
It wasn’t just whites who owned slaves in early America. From 1654 right through the Civil War, free black people owned fellow blacks in every one of the 13 original states and later in almost every other state as well. As late as 1830, according to Harvard historian Henry Louis Gates, 3,776 free American blacks owned 12,907 slaves.
To read the rest of the story go to Fee.org.
Thursday, March 10, 2016
Saturday, January 30, 2016
Court rules Michigan has no responsibility to provide quality public education
Court rules Michigan has no responsibility to provide quality public education: DETROIT — In a blow to schoolchildren statewide, the Michigan Court of Appeals ruled on Nov. 7 the State of Michigan has no legal obligation…
"This speaks volumes about our nation's public education system. --> A
2-1 decision reversed an earlier circuit court ruling that there is a
“broad compelling state interest in the provision of an education to all
children.” The appellate court said the state has no constitutional
requirement to ensure schoolchildren actually learn fundamental skills
such as reading — but rather is obligated only to establish and finance a
public education system, regardless of quality."
Schools have become a gloried jobs programs for employees with little to no accountability that students are actually educated. Google school report cards for New Hampshire, take a look at how the school in your town is doing. .
Cathy
"This speaks volumes about our nation's public education system. --> A
2-1 decision reversed an earlier circuit court ruling that there is a
“broad compelling state interest in the provision of an education to all
children.” The appellate court said the state has no constitutional
requirement to ensure schoolchildren actually learn fundamental skills
such as reading — but rather is obligated only to establish and finance a
public education system, regardless of quality."
Schools have become a gloried jobs programs for employees with little to no accountability that students are actually educated. Google school report cards for New Hampshire, take a look at how the school in your town is doing. .
Cathy
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