The stale whiff of McCarthyism stole across the venue of the State of the Union address last week. POTUS played the “socialism” card, or rather he just showed the back of the card, allowing no peeks at the face of the card — not of its value, not of its suit. He was deliberately vague and ambiguous.
Tag: education
Educational Trolling (17m) – Episode 003
Episode 003: Jared shares his five rules to help facilitate better social media communication.
Homeschoolers: Guilty Until Proven Innocent?
What struck me most about revisiting the Salem Witch Trials with my children was the fact that these English Puritans who had recently settled in Massachusetts Bay Colony had no presumption of innocence. Those accused of a crime at the time, both in the New World and elsewhere, were guilty until proven innocent. The presumption of innocence in trials, with court defenders and impartial juries, would take centuries to catch on.
Immigration and Redistribution: The Research to Trust
Evaluating the quality of research is laborious. Unless you re-do the whole paper yourself, how do you know the authors were not only truthful, but careful? Faced with this quandary, one of my favorite heuristics is to ask: Did the authors want to find this result? If the answer is No, I put a lot more credence into the results. In research as in the law, statements contrary to interest count more.
Poverty and Success
Poverty is not the fault of billionaires or of “greedy capitalists” or of some systemic injustice that keeps “po’ folks” down. Poverty is the natural and predictable result of ongoing poor choices, and until people realize this and start taking responsibility for their own culpability in their financial situations, we will continue to hear the growing chorus of complainers demanding political intervention to redistribute money from those who earned it to those who did not.
The Best Things to Learn about Raising Children (37m) – Episode 275
Episode 275 has Skyler giving his commentary on the following topics: using an essay by Leo Babauta of ZenHabits.net, he looks at 18 of the best things to learn about raising children; loving your children unconditionally; helicopter parenting; the harmful effects of harsh discipline; self-directed education; learning independence; democratic family decision-making; leading your children by example; parental contrition; shielding children from sex, drugs, and technology; giving children space; recognizing that your children should be allowed to become their own person; and more.
Astra Taylor: The Unschooled Life (1h12m)
This episode features a lecture by Astra Taylor from 2012 on what it was like for her growing up without school. Raised by independent-thinking bohemian parents, Astra was unschooled until age 13. Join the filmmaker as she shares her personal experiences of growing up homeschooled without a curriculum or schedule, and how it has shaped her educational philosophy and development as an artist.
The Women’s March Stance on Reproductive Rights is All For The Erasure of Fertility, Not For Women
As much as I see myself as a woman who radically cares for the health and well-being and rights of women, I just can’t get behind the modern, liberal feminist movement that feels so rampant today, precisely because I don’t see that it carries similar values as I do. It touts that it does, but I see it all as a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
Market Failure Theory as Reproach to Government Practice
Contrary to popular belief, however, market failure theory is also a reproach to every existing government. How so? Because market failure theory recommends specific government policies – and actually-existing governments rarely adopt anything like them.
Why Steve Jobs, not Bill Gates, Was the True Education Visionary
When it comes to education reform, there are generally two camps: those who want to improve the existing mass compulsory schooling system through tweaking and tuning and those who want to build something entirely new and different. Not surprisingly, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs was in the “think different” camp, advocating for school choice and vouchers, while Microsoft’s Bill Gates backed the Common Core State Standards and other incremental reforms within the conventional mass schooling model.