activistpost--2019-01-29--Education And The Dismantling Of The Mind

Are there any States in the Union that allow public schools to opt out of providing sex education to children?  Of course, a counter-argument would be made that, although there was once a time when our country abounded in responsible two-parent families, that’s not the case anymore. Therefore, education about sex is lacking. Therefore, schools have to step into the breach and supply what is missing.  Otherwise, children won’t know about STDs, pregnancy, contraception, etc.  Over the last 40 years or so, school systems, under the aegis of government, have expanded their role. Using “duty” as the prow, these institutions have generated enormous programs to teach children what to think about everything from aluminum cans to bestiality.  Because it’s “right” and “important” and there is a “duty.”  Translation: outside groups with agendas worm their way into schools.  If I were obsessed with four-legged critters on the moon, and I had enough money and political clout and media/think-tank/foundation support, I could introduce Lunar Critterology as a vital subject into every public school in America.  If I were Bill Gates, I could push the need for computers in schools, despite the fact there is no credible evidence that computers improve literacy.  I went to school in the 1940s and 50s. At that time, the focus was simple. You learned to read, to write, and to do math. The textbooks were often old and worn. There were no visual aids. The lesson plans in every class were step-by-step. Learn a new thing, drill it to death, take a little quiz, learn the next new item, drill it, take a quiz.  It worked. It may have lacked glitz, but it worked because the vast majority of people can’t learn to read, write, or do math any other way.  You can’t gloss over these subjects with a broad brush and a lot of personality or caring. It’s all about digging in the dirt, one scoop at a time.  Some people would call it robotic education. I don’t think it is. It’s just doing what’s necessary—unless reading, writing, and math are deemed unimportant. In which case, you have a whole new idea about what education is.  If you spend time in the classroom on enterprises that are supposed to save the world or revolutionize society or build tolerance or cater to kids who don’t want to learn, then you take away hours from the core idea and practice of what learning is.  When I went to school, there could have been a better curriculum for history and science, but all in all, the teachers did a good job.  Now, we’re in a different world.  It’s assumed that most children are operating at a deficit, and they need to be brought up to speed on morals, on compassion, on sex, on greenness, on hope, on race and religion, on global concerns. At age five, eight, 12, 14.  And a great deal of this “new education” is about cashing in, for book publishers, for educrats, for federal overseers, for busybodies of all stripes who belong to agenda-driven groups that want their say and their moment in the sun.  I say this is all hogwash, and I believe anyone who consults national test scores and current levels of literacy would be compelled to agree.  Education is on the way out.  A few astute writers assert that, perhaps 80 years ago, the whole thrust of early education in America was altered intentionally, to produce worker-ants for a highly controlled society of the future. With all due respect, I think it’s worse than that. Because now we’re turning out kids who are essentially confused, badly schooled, drifting on the wind, lost in a mind-territory of fantasized entitlement. They aren’t androids ready to work on some non-existent assembly line. They’re just lost. They’re riddled with self-esteem that doesn’t work. They’re consumers looking for magic credit so they can buy their way into happiness. They’re loaded with sugar and other chemicals that scramble their synapses. They’re not only unsympathetic toward work, they have no passion of their own.  Logic? Imagination? Never heard of it.  When I went to school, there was virtually no classroom disruption of any kind. And my schools were attended by an economic, social, racial, and religious cross-section of students. We weren’t striving for diversity. We had it. The relatively few kids who were out of control and resisted any kind of discipline were herded into classes together, and teachers dealt with them.  The public schools of today lack the courage to say, “Look, if you’re here to learn, we want you. Otherwise, you’re out. Goodbye.”  If you need metal detectors at the school entrances, you went over the edge a long time ago. No one deserves to be subjected to that kind of environment.  The bullying problem? It’s an industry now. People with degrees write papers and books about it, and task forces gear up to study it and make recommendations. It’s a structure of carbuncles on the body-politic of education.  Once upon a time, no bully was allowed to attend school. If he pressed his attitude and his actions, he was expelled. Period. It wasn’t a question of why he bullied. He was gone. Learning couldn’t take place as long as he was on the scene.  And “gangs in schools?” I’m sorry, but there are no gangs in schools. There are schools in gangs—that’s what you have when groups of kids with violent tendencies inhabit classrooms and corridors. If you can’t expel them en masse, give up. Shut down the place.  If you want to make schools into six-hour-a-day baby-sitting machines, call it that. Try to obtain public funding for it. Hire guards and nurses and cops to staff it. Put it behind barbed-wire fences and install those metal detectors.  Or if schools are really lunch cafeterias, run them that way. Free public lunches. Have kids show up at noon, eat, and leave.  If you think kids of various religions should be allowed to commandeer a room to hold prayer groups, call it Government-Funded God. Rent a hall somewhere and schedule everybody from Christians and Jews to Muslims and Buddhists and Hindus and Zoroastrians.  “Well, we have these kids who are great football players, and they score very badly on all the tests, but we need them on the team.”  No you don’t. Start your own community team. Make up a name. Raise money for uniforms and coaches. Form a league. If these kids want to stay in school—which is a completely different matter—they’ll have to learn how to attain grades for real.  And this long-standing rule about passing kids on to the next grade, no matter how poorly they perform? Graduating them from high school even if they can’t read at fourth-grade level? Because they need to feel good about themselves? Because that’ll somehow help them wend their way through life later on?  Invent a new type of school for them and put it somewhere else. Bring in tutors. If that fails after an honest attempt, teach trades. Some of these kids will end up making more money in a trade than Harvard business-school grads.  All of the above, by the way, makes a good case for home schooling. Unless the parents themselves were shot out the top end of their schools, long ago, ill-prepared to handle reading, writing, and arithmetic.  No, the problem isn’t cookie-cutter education. It’s no education.  Now, of course, hovering over this revolution in education is the wider government becoming mommy and daddy to everyone. “Because they care.” Because they need to do this “caring” in order to obtain budget money for their departments. Because otherwise they would be useless.  And hovering over THAT is the program to convert everyone on the planet to a status much like an eternal patient with an eternal doctor.  This program is advancing based on the notion that “patient status” equals “more controllable.”  “Yes, we have to control you for your own good, because we care.”  No, they want control because they want control.  In my day, the subject that was conspicuously missing from the classroom was Logic. Once upon a time, it had been taught to children when their reading skills had progressed far enough. It was usually presented as a series of fallacies that infected the process of reasoning.  A few years ago, I decided to write a logic course to fill this gap. My strategy was to provide basic background lessons and then launch into a series of text passages seeded with fallacies and flaws. Students with the help of their teachers would find them and understand how they operated to derail lucid thinking.  I offered this 18-lesson course to home schoolers, and adults who wanted to use it for self-study.  Now it’s part of my new collection, The Matrix Revealed.  Twenty-four hundred years ago, in Athens, logic was, for the first time, explained in detail by Aristotle. It marked the beginning of a new era for humankind. Logic allowed a person to peruse a formal argument, differentiate between premises and deductions, and judge the validity of the reasoning process.  When students are taught this subject well, they turn into detectives. They realize that articles and books are more than mere lakes of information. They can trace the progress of a line of thought, and see that authors are offering evidence that leads to a conclusion.  It’s an awakening. I’ve seen it resolve what was foolishly diagnosed as ADHD. The student becomes grounded. He accrues real confidence. He can decide whether an argument is valid or invalid. He can spot flaws and describe them.  Armed with the tool of logic, he becomes independent.  This may explain why logic was dropped out of the secondary school curriculum.  God forbid the educational system should be turning out thousands of students who can really think for themselves, and think powerfully and consistently.  Note: I’m not covering the subject of college education in this piece, but I have an interesting anecdote for you. William E. Kennick taught philosophy at Amherst from 1956 to 1993. Amherst has consistently been rated as one of the top colleges in America. During his tenure, Kennick grew disturbed by the quality of papers his students were turning in. So he wrote and distributed a four-and-a-half page, single-spaced document titled, Some Rules for Writing Presentable English. The cream of the cream of American college students needed that on-the-fly tutorial to come up to basic speed. What other students at other colleges were/are producing in the way of written English is too horrible to contemplate.  So now we come to the central thesis. The modern vision of education, aside from the hard sciences, is all about unhinging or un-gluing the mind from its moorings, from its focus, from its ability to track complex thought.  Instead, we have education as: socialization; community; relativity.  This last factor is key. No particular piece of information is any more “valid” than any other piece, no more important, no more deserving of respect. Information is a soup into which one dips a spoon—coming up with whatever is there.  Over the range of society, you get young people wandering around with barely a clue. They’re dissatisfied, they’re upset, they’re resentful, they’re mystified, they’re rebellious.  To a degree, that describes every generation. But when the legs are missing, when the ability to concentrate and focus is absent, when the reasoning capacity is vastly underdeveloped, you get a stupendous crash.  It’s worse than cookie-cutter graduates heading for an assembly line. It’s the kind of trouble that spreads out in ripples, requiring assistance from the State. And that is the revelation.  For the elites who want to run things, globally, it’s not enough to gather up the most dependent people in a net and bring them over to the collectivist side with promises. No, what’s needed is a machine that PRODUCES huge numbers of newly minted dependents all the time.  Welcome to the educational wing of globalism.  Scour every textbook you can find at any level in the school system of your country. See if you can find the conjunction of the word “powerful” with the word “individual” where the implication isn’t pejorative. Where the thrust is positive. I know where my money is in that bet.  When political and economic collectivism is the goal of a society, certain things have to be done with the school system. Individualism has to be discouraged and sidelined. Status based on pure merit, achievement, and performance has to be minimized. And the core courses must lose their discipline.  Instead, group socialization, random expression of students’ opinions (based on nothing in particular), and bogus self-esteem must take center stage.  As a former teacher, I can tell you it’s rather easy to make this momentous shift. The starting point, from which the whole campaign unfolds, involves grouping together students in classes who are operating at significantly different levels of skill and ability. For example, try teaching geometry to 20 kids who scored across a wide spectrum in their previous final exams in elementary algebra. Just try. Follow your day-to-day lesson plans and see what happens. It’s like crossing a bridge with drivers who never learned the difference between the brake and gas pedal. Chaos. Jammed up in that baffling disorder, teachers will tend to gravitate to social concerns. They’ll encourage, wheedle, praise, empathize. They’ll try to draw out “the feelings” of students. What was once a very straightforward proposition will vaporize. The pernicious effects of elementary-school teachers having failed to impart the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic will explode in a tsunami by the first year of high school. And what happened in the first place, in grades 1-5? The model of repetition, in which each new concept in a subject is drilled over and over, and tested, before moving on to the next concept, was abandoned. When I was a child, in the 1940s, the model of repetition was intact. It was brick and mortar. But somewhere along the line, the “person-centered psychology” of education was invented. Every child automatically became “special.” On the surface, this sounded good. It sounded like enlightenment. But it was really a piece of psy-war. It glossed over the fact that, if each child is innately special, he/she doesn’t have to be informed of it over and over. He only has to be taught well and learn well. More than enough encouragement begins to confuse a child and make him impatient. He wants to get on with things. He wants to prove he can excel. He wants new knowledge. The history of mainstream psychology can be boiled down to two movements. First, there were the experiments of Pavlov. Conditioned reflex. The human as machine. Then there was the therapeutic age. Endless muddled rumination on problems and difficulties, and the need for “re-enforcement.” Everyone is special. The child as beloved pet. The arc went from robot to dependent. They were both gross failures. When pet/dependent became the order of the day, psychiatrists proliferated their invention of mental disorders. ADD. ADHD. Oppositional Defiance Disorder. Clinical depression. Bipolar. And powerful toxic drugs came down the line, to scramble brains. This is the real war on drugs, except the war is being fought against children by “mental-health professionals.” Suddenly, childhood diseases which had been accepted for generations, which came and went and gave children stronger immune systems in the process, were claimed to be a horrific threat, and 20 or 30 vaccines had to be taken to prevent these illnesses. Thus the shaping of a new and false and debilitating image of the child torpedoed children and their education. Creating The Disabled is the cornerstone of Collectivism. I need you. You need me. Everybody needs everybody. Whatever germs of truth lie in this ideal are crushed, because the “need” formula is artificially built. It’s a piece of debased architecture, whose real purpose is the inculcation of a reason to abandon self and individual power. Once, the Carnegie and Rockefeller line of force viewed education as the assembly line for turning out objects that would produce other objects in mindless fashion. But that has changed. Now schools are built to become need-factories, breeding surreal socialized graduates who contemplate how political power has wronged them. The new sign of intelligence is this: how many ways can you imagine you’ve been cheated? And here is the kicker. Surprisingly little of this contemplation reveals the actual methods of manipulation. But then, why would it? If children are engineered long enough, they’ll look everywhere for answers except at their hidden masters, the ones whose objective was to make them into children forever. The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.


activistpost--2019-03-09--37 Million Credit Card Accounts In The US Are Seriously Delinquent Right Now

37 Million Credit Card Accounts In The U.S. Are “Seriously Delinquent” Right Now

Is the consumer debt bubble finally starting to burst?  If the latest numbers on delinquent credit card accounts are any indication, that appears to be precisely what is happening.  As I noted the other day, Americans currently have 480 million credit cards, and they are carrying 870 billion dollars worth of balances on those cards.  That is one giant pile of debt, but there won’t be a problem as long as the vast majority of Americans regularly make their credit card payments.  Unfortunately, the number of credit card accounts that are delinquent has been steadily rising, and now we are being told that the number of “seriously delinquent” accounts has shot up to 37 million…  At the end of 2018, Americans struggled to make payments on the country’s $870 billion worth of credit card debt. About 37 million credit card accounts were marked as seriously delinquent in the fourth quarter, meaning they were 90 or more days past due, an increase of two million from the same period a year earlier.  Remember, those accounts are not just behind.  We are talking about accounts that are at least 90 days past due.  It appears that the credit card industry has a burgeoning crisis on their hands.  Meanwhile, the number of Americans that are behind on their auto loan payments has reached an unprecedented level as well.  At this moment, more than 7 million Americans are delinquent on their auto loan payments.  That is a brand new all-time record, and it smashes the highest level that we witnessed during the last recession by about a million.  If things are this bad already, how high will these numbers go once we get really deep into the next recession?  The student loan debt bubble is starting to burst as well.  According to the most recent numbers, over 166 billion dollars in student loan debt is considered to be “seriously delinquent”.  That number has never been higher in all of U.S. history.  Right now, millions of Americans are deeply struggling with student loan debt, and an increasing number of them have decided to give up on making payments completely.  In an effort to combat this, the industry is encouraging a massive crackdown, and what we are currently witnessing in Florida may soon be coming to the rest of the nation.  The following comes from Zero Hedge…  Some 1,000 healthcare workers have lost their licenses to practice in Florida due to their inability to pay off their student debt, a new report claims. The “crackdown”, as described, could potentially put hundreds of people out of work, and comes as a result of student loan companies lobbying states to enact laws that punish those who default on their loans by taking away their professional licenses. However, so far Florida is the only state actually enforcing the law. Adam Walser, an investigative reporter for ABC, found that the state Board of Health had suspended more than 900 healthcare licenses, including those belonging to registered nurses, nurses assistants and pharmacists, over the last two years. There are additionally 12 other states that still have the power to take away healthcare licenses for unpaid student loans. However, officials in those states said that they haven’t suspended any licenses over the last two years.  In the middle part of the country, farm debt is a major story right now.  Farm debt delinquencies have hit the highest level that we have seen in 9 years, and the global trade war has pushed many family farms to the brink of bankruptcy.  Unfortunately, I don’t think that things are going to get any better for them any time soon.  But I bet that you aren’t hearing much about any of this on the news, are you?  Instead, we are being inundated by mindless stories that really don’t matter.  For example, there is supposedly a huge “controversy” about whether Kylie Jenner is really a “self-made” billionaire or not.  Our country is literally coming apart all around us, and we are supposed to obsess about Kylie Jenner?  On Wednesday, we learned that Dollar Tree Inc. will be closing up to 390 Family Dollar stores in 2019.  When you add that to the other store closings that have already been announced this year, it brings the grand total to nearly 5,000.  Can the mainstream media please talk about our ongoing “retail apocalypse” a little bit more?  That is far more important to the daily lives of most Americans than Kylie Jenner.


activistpost--2019-08-10--Dad Sued for Slander Because He Criticized The Education System And Other Absurd Weekly News

Dad Sued for Slander Because He Criticized The Education System — And Other Absurd Weekly News

Welcome to our Friday roll up, where we highlight the most absurd and concerning stories we are following this week.  Careful what you say about your kid’s public school curriculum.  The company behind a controversial common core math program in North Carolina is suing a dad for libel and slander.  The parent of a high school student has been on a “crusade,” the lawsuit claims, against the math program. Instead of teacher-led instruction, students are taught through self-discovery.  He and many others see strong evidence that the old methods are better. That’s why he created a Facebook group and website where he lays out his criticism of the program.  We checked out the guy’s website, and it is full of well thought out rational criticism. Whether he is correct or not is irrelevant. He is just expressing an opinion on the type of education his child will receive in public school.  We’ve moved beyond gender-neutral pronouns and triggering micro-aggressions. Now just expressing any old opinion offends people.  Apparently, you can’t do that in the USA, anymore. If you offend someone with constructive criticism, they turn around and sue you.  Click here for the full story.  The Pentagon is currently testing high-altitude surveillance balloons in several Midwestern states.  Flying at about 65,000 feet, the balloons are able to track multiple vehicles at once, in any type of weather, using radar.  The Pentagon says the purpose of the solar powered unmanned balloons is to “provide a persistent surveillance system to locate and deter narcotic trafficking and homeland security threats.”  The data gathered over broad swaths of the country will be saved so it can be rewound and reviewed after the fact.  Click here for the full story.  In this week’s edition of no good deed goes unpunished…  An Illinois family let a 19 year old friend of their son stay with them when he became homeless. They kicked him out after he stole from them, and burglarized a nearby restaurant.  And then the family got an eviction notice.  But it didn’t come from the landlord, it came from the local cops. They were enforcing an ordinance which requires private landlords to evict all the occupants of a home when any inhabitant commits a crime.  Even though this young man was a house guest who victimized them as well, the family will be punished for his crimes.  The family’s landlord says they are model tenants, and he does not want to evict them. So he joined their lawsuit against the city.  With the help of the Institute for Justice, the family is suing to protect their due process rights, so that they won’t be punished for someone else’s crime.  Click here for the full story.  But the solution is all too simple for Bernie Sanders. He tweeted in response, “We should cancel it.”  That’s the solution, just cancel $1.65 trillion dollars of debt. What could go wrong?  The idea that you can just solve this problem by canceling the debt shows how clueless these people really are.  Student debt is the number one financial asset of the federal government. There is no bigger money maker in the asset column or the government’s balance sheet.  And in case you missed it, the government isn’t in great financial shape. At $22 trillion dollars, the national debt is larger than the entire US economy.  Cancel the student debt, and you’re wiping away a trillion dollars that the taxpayers will have to pay for.  That’s bigger than the direct costs of the Iraq war. It’s bigger than the 2008 TARP bailout.


activistpost--2019-11-22--The Artists Who Are Challenging The Education Status Quo

On a recent weekday morning, the first floor of Tiffany Pierce’s home in Queens, New York, was abuzz with activity. Six children, ranging in age from five to 12, were making art, learning about mathematical asymmetry and digging deep into topics ranging from geography to science. Pierce runs an art-inspired, micro-learning homeschool co-op, bringing together local families who want a more personalized approach to education for their children. Together, the families hired a teacher four days a week to craft an inviting and intellectually-engaging learning environment, while Pierce volunteers her space and support.  An artist with a master’s degree in teaching and prior classroom experience, Pierce was thoughtful about her son, Liam’s, education. He went to a small, private preschool nearby, but when Pierce sent Liam to a public school for kindergarten, she realized it wasn’t a good fit for him. “It was a high-performing school,” Pierce recalls, “but when I visited I saw his back turned and him just looking out the window. His affect was so low, his confidence was shot, he didn’t want to play. I knew it wasn’t just kindergarten blues. This wasn’t his fit. Then he said: ‘Mommy, will you teach me at home?’”  The timing was right, as Pierce happened to be between jobs and she and Liam’s dad thought they would give homeschooling a try. “We like the freedom of choices and options,” says Pierce. “We like to have a say in how our child operates. This person is so precious to us.” In the beginning, says Pierce, she simply replicated school at home and it became a power struggle between getting her son to do things and him resisting. She was also busy running art classes and doing graphic design work for various clients.  Pierce knew she needed a different model and began posting to neighborhood Facebook groups about launching a co-op out of her home. The response was positive, with many parents expressing interest in alternative learning options for their children. Today, eight-year-old Liam learns with other children in the co-op, along with his mother and their teacher, Mary-Lynn Galindo, who provide structure while emphasizing self-directed learning and ample outside time. According to Pierce:  Pierce sees hybrid homeschooling models and the larger micro-school movement as a harbinger of education innovation: “I see us moving towards education that is self-directed,” she says. “Education does not have to be seen as coming from four walls in a conventional, traditional way.” To that end, she launched a mobile arts studio and is working on purchasing an art bus, to help others to view art and education differently. Inspired by the Harlem Renaissance, and in particular the Harlem Community Arts Center that sprouted from it and nurtured African American artistic talent during the late-1930s and early 1940s, Pierce envisions her mobile studio as a modern off-shoot of the center.  “It is my mission for the mobile arts studio to serve as a 21st century version of a neighborhood-based arts studio where art is mobile and meets children and adults where they are to create, express and connect,” she says. In art, education and the intersection of the two, Pierce is looking to challenge longstanding conventional settings and practices and design something new.  Designing something new is also what drives Gabriel Valles, a professional artist and entrepreneur in Austin, Texas who runs an art apprenticeship studio. Like Pierce, Valles homeschools his children and works closely with other local homeschoolers, while building an innovative art education model. He also began his homeschooling journey by trying to replicate school-at-home and witnessing how coercion had a detrimental effect on his children’s learning and their family relationships. By granting his children more autonomy and opportunity for self-direction, their learning flourished. His older son, now 15, has a passion for stop motion animation and has a successful YouTube channel with over 50,000 subscribers and almost 32 million views.  As Valles observed how his children’s creativity and competence grew when they were allowed to drive their own learning while being supported by adults, he decided to launch an art studio, MentorWings, that would run on a self-directed apprenticeship model for aspiring young artists. “Our program is principle-based and self-directed,” says Valles.  Valles sees how young people quickly build their skills, and become highly competent, doing college or professional-level work as teenagers. “We need to give kids more credit than we’re giving them and acknowledge that they can be doing real-world work before or instead of college,” says Valles. He says that art school is too expensive and often doesn’t lead to the kind of career in-roads that can result in fulfilling work.  This work is increasingly in-demand, says Valles, as digital content development and marketing become ubiquitous and new mediums emerge. “I am trying to make it less expensive to attain professional-level competence and also build bridges into the industry,” says Valles. He has established an endorsement system for young artists based on their portfolios that can provide an alternative signaling mechanism for employers.  “That endorsement versus a general degree really means a lot. It doesn’t guarantee a job, but it shows confidence in a particular student and becomes a much more powerful signal to the people who are hiring,” he says.  Artists have historically played a crucial role in challenging dominant systems and inspiring change. It’s not surprising that today some of them are building unconventional education models and imagining new possibilities for learning. As Valles says:  This article is republished with permission from Forbes.  Kerry McDonald is a Senior Education Fellow at FEE and author of Unschooled: Raising Curious, Well-Educated Children Outside the Conventional Classroom (Chicago Review Press, 2019). She is also an adjunct scholar at The Cato Institute and a regular Forbes contributor. Kerry has a B.A. in economics from Bowdoin College and an M.Ed. in education policy from Harvard University. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with her husband and four children. You can sign up for her weekly newsletter on parenting and education here.  This article was sourced from FEE.org  Subscribe to Activist Post for truth, peace, and freedom news. Become an Activist Post Patron for as little as $1 per month at Patreon. Follow us on SoMee, Flote, Minds, Twitter, and Steemit.  Provide, Protect and Profit from what’s coming! Get a free issue of Counter Markets today.


ageofautism--2019-01-21--Special Education is the Wall We Should Worry About In USA and Abroad

Note: Harsh words in that headline? Maybe. The wall is divisive enough. It's tangible and easy to make a fast mental picture. Special Education is not as easy to imagine.  Special Education will pit parent against parent. From our Anne Dachel, a story that ran yesterday from Minnesota. Years ago, we began reporting on the catastrophic birth of autism within the Somali immigrant population.  Dec 17, 2013, MinnPost.com: Autism highest among Minneapolis' Somali and white children, U study finds Take note of the beautiful child in the photo. Somali.    "We don't need no education. We don't need no thought control." Pink Floyd    ###    By Anne Dachel    Saturday, Jan 19, the Minneapolis Star Tribune posted a very concerning piece online entitled, Minnesota schools facing 'crisis level' in special education funding.  It was featured on the front page of the Sunday Star Tribune.  The COST of special education is increasingly a financial calamity for schools in the state with no signs of leveling off.  The response to this headline from any thinking person would be, why? Why is the cost of SPED now a crisis?  Of course school districts have no choice but to address this because the federal government mandates that they provide a free and appropriate education for every student, even the most disabled children.  School administrators say the mandate's growing financial burden is threatening their ability to provide the same for all students.  Soaring special education costs are squeezing the budgets of Minnesota schools — and quickly becoming school districts’ top priority for the new legislative session.  School administrators are quick to note that they cannot — and would not — deny special education students their right to an education that meets their needs, no matter the cost. But they say the mandate’s growing financial burden is threatening their ability to provide the same for all students.  So what happens when the cost of SPED students sucks dry the funds for regular ed kids?


ageofautism--2019-03-18--Special Education Taking Over in England

Someone who's informed about education in the UK needs to explain how the latest government move to provide 39 MORE SPED SCHOOLS (3,500 more places) relates to a announcement back in 2015, also providing more schools.  How is it possible that without question, the British (England only here) willingly provide MORE AND MORE SPECIAL NEEDS PLACES while expecting things to be even worse in coming years???  I found one story on March 17 th  that could be titled, Britain acquiesces to the decline of childhood.  Four years ago, the talk was about 27 new schools (22 were specifically FOR AUTISTIC STUDENTS). So are we talking about 66 new schools all together? (It's impossible to miss the fact that MORE AUTISM is the reason behind all of this. Stories all say so.)  Is this the future for Britain, just keep on building? And what about the counties that weren’t picked to receive a new school? Will they just go deeper and deeper in debt paying for disabled children to be outsourced for school?  Grim years ahead for those not chosen  The majority of local authorities that have been refused new specialist schools will run out of places three years from now, Schools Week analysis shows.  The Department for Education announced on Monday that 39 local authorities had been successful in their bids for new special needs or alternative provision schools, out of 65 to apply.  But our analysis shows that 54 per cent of the local authorities that were not successful are facing shortfalls in secondary pupil places by 2021.  That compares to just 39 per cent of those given the go-ahead.  Furthermore, the two councils facing the biggest shortfall in secondary places were among those refused.  One of those, Manchester City Council, had two bids for specialist schools rejected – despite needing more than 8,500 school places in three years from now. …  Mar 27, 2015, UK, New Schools Network: 22 new free schools create 2,000 new autism school places  During Autism Awareness Week, analysis by education charity New Schools Network shows that the free school programme has created 2,000 new places open to young people with autism.  There are now over 400 free schools open or approved to open, of these 27 are special schools. Once full, these schools will create more than 2,200 new places, representing an increase of more than two per cent (2.2%) in SEN places available nationally. Together they cater for a wide range of special educational needs, including autism, and will offer a high quality education to thousands of young people.  Of the 27 open or approved to open special schools, 22 will cater for pupils with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), when full, they will be providing over 2,000 new places special school places.  Natalie Evans, Director of the New Schools Network, said:  “Free schools are offering a new choice to parents of children with autism.  When you consider that there are just over 1,000 special schools in England at the moment, these 22 new schools are providing a significant addition to provision in England.  “According to the National Autistic Society, more than half of children with autism are not in the kind of school their parents believe would best support them, which is why charities such as NAS and Ambitious about Autism, existing schools and groups of parents have all embraced the opportunity to set up new schools.  “As Autism Awareness Week puts these issues in the spotlight, the positive contribution that free schools have made to increasing the choice of children with autism and other special educational needs across the country should be recognised.”...  Special free schools are catering for a wide range of needs from social, emotional and mental health (SEMH) and Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) to profound and multiple learning disabilities (PMLD).  Autism now affects about one in 100 children and there are around 100,000 children with autism in the UK (ONS). 71% of children with autism are educated in mainstream schools and the remainder in specialist provision (Department for Education (2012) Special Educational Needs in England). Over 63% of children with autism are not in the kind of school their parents believe would best support them (NAS).  It’s clear that these schools are for children who cannot be educated in traditional school settings. Multiple stories describe these as places for students with autism, social emotional behavior issues and mental health problems. Britain continues to struggle to provide services for the new type of special needs child.  *It should be noted that in 2014 the UK government extended special education services to age 25, instead of stopping at age 19.   While this lessens the burden on adult services, it’s more pressure on schools.    Anne Dachel is Media Editor for Age of Autism.


ageofautism--2019-05-03--Special Education Needs Soaring from Syracuse to Scotland

Special Education Needs "Soaring" from Syracuse to Scotland

By Anne Dachel    Two stories out on April 22, 2019 make it clear that we are expected to accept ANY INCREASE, ANY RATE in childhood illness or disabilities, especially when it comes to the “A” WORD—AUTISM.  By an odd coincidence a piece from Scotland and one from Syracuse, NY both use the word “soaring” to describe increases in autism/special needs.  Herald: Number of pupils with special needs 'soaring'  The number of pupils requiring support for mental health problems has more than tripled between 2012 and 2018, up 252 per cent.  Those with communication support needs have increased by 293% in the same period, while pupils identified as having autism spectrum disorder have more than doubled, rising by 101%.  Students needing help at school for physical health problems have risen by 98% in the six-year period, while those with social, emotional and behavioural difficulties have increased by 86%.  Then we are told that all these disabled children are merely due “to increased recognition and diagnosis of conditions, as well as improvements in recording.”


aljazeera--2019-01-14--Indonesia Calls to include disaster education at schools

Indonesia: Calls to include disaster education at schools

Children's organisations in Indonesia are urging the government to include disaster education in the school curriculum.  Many children died during an earthquake last year because they didn't know how to protect themselves.


aljazeera--2019-05-30--Brazil education budget cuts Tens of thousands protest reforms

Brazil education budget cuts: Tens of thousands protest reforms

Activists in Brazil are vowing to continue their fight against cuts to the education budget that prompted mass protests earlier this month.  They are part of a raft of measures the government says are necessary to get the country out of its financial crisis.  But opponents have called it an attack on critical thinking.


abcnews--2019-03-11--Trump administration proposes 71 billion funding decrease to Education Department

Trump administration proposes $7.1 billion funding decrease to Education Department

The Trump administration is looking to decrease the Education Department’s funding by $7.1 billion compared to what it was given last year, as part of next year’s proposed budget.  The budget proposal suggests eliminating 29 programs, including after-school and summer programs for students in high-poverty areas, among other things.  The budget proposal is unlikely to pass through Congress – especially with Democrats in control of the House, however, it is a glimpse into the Trump administration’s priorities going into the next fiscal year.  In a statement on Monday, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said the proposed cuts show “commitment to spending taxpayer dollars wisely and efficiently by consolidating or eliminating duplicative and ineffective federal programs.”  She also said the “budget at its core is about education freedom,” an apparent nod to the issue of school choice – something DeVos has attempted to champion during her time as head of the department.  The proposed budget includes DeVos’ school choice platform by asking for an increase in $60 million for the Charters Schools Program.  The budget also requests $700 million for school safety measures from multiple agencies, including the Education Department, the Justice Department and Health and Human Services.  “After the tragedy in Parkland, Florida, the President established the Federal Commission on School Safety to assess and develop Federal, State, and local policy recommendations to help prevent violence in schools,” the 2020 budget proposal reads.  “The Budget provides approximately $700 million, an increase of $354 million compared to the 2019 Budget, in Departments of Education, Justice, and Health and Human Services grants to give States and school districts resources to implement the Commission’s recommendations, such as expanding access to mental healthcare, developing threat assessments, and improving school climate.”  American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten issued a statement responding to the proposed cuts, criticizing the DeVos’ leadership at the department.  “Rather than increase funding for kids with special needs or for those who live below the poverty line in both rural and urban America, or addressing the issues raised in their own safety report, DeVos once again seeks to divert funding for private purposes in the name of ‘choice,’” Weingarten said.  The statement continued: “However, if they listened to parents, they would hear that, overwhelmingly, parents want well-funded public schools as their choice.”  Washington Sen. Patty Murray, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, also criticized the budget’s Education Department proposals, saying it showed “how wildly out of sync” DeVos is.  “Secretary DeVos is proposing gutting investments in students, teachers, public schools, and even school safety—all to make ro for her extreme privatization proposal that no one asked for. This is not a serious budget proposal, and I am going to once again work with Republicans in Congress to ensure every student has access to a quality public education in their neighborhood,” Murray’s statement said.


dcgazette--2019-09-26--The Country That Has Oversold Higher Education Even More Than the US

The Country That Has Oversold Higher Education Even More Than the U.S.

There is a college mania in South Korea.


delawareliberal--2019-01-09--BREAKING Laura Sturgeon To Chair Senate Education Committee

BREAKING: Laura Sturgeon To Chair Senate Education Committee

Of course, Exceptional Delaware had it first:  Sokola Out As Chair Of Senate Education Committee, Sturgeon Will Be Chair  Dave will still be on the committee, but, as chair, Sturgeon will have a lot of influence on the state’s education agenda.  Tizzy Lockman is also on the committee, which includes Sokola, DelCollo and Lopez.  Checking now to see if the rest of the committees have been posted.


democracynow--2019-12-05--Sweden Provides Free Higher Education, Universal Healthcare, Free Daycare — Why Can’t the U.S.?

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.  AMY GOODMAN: That’s Norwegian songwriter, vocalist, guitarist Ane Brun performing “One” at the Right Livelihood Award ceremony Wednesday night here in Stockholm. To see all the performances and all the speeches of the Right Livelihood laureates, go to Democracynow.org. This is Democracy Now!, Democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman. We are broadcasting from Stockholm, Sweden, from the Open Channel.  As Democratic presidential candidates debate Medicare for All and making public higher education free, we turn now to look at how Sweden has built one of the world’s most extensive social welfare systems. Here in Sweden, healthcare costs are largely subsidized by the state. Daycare and preschool programs are mostly free. Higher education is free. Public transportation is subsidized for many users. To look at how Sweden does it, we are joined by Mikael Törnwall. He’s a Swedish author and journalist focusing on economic issues at Svenska Dagbladet, a Stockholm daily. His most recent book is titled Who Should Pay for Welfare?.  Mikael, welcome to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you with us. So we just have a few minutes here to explain a lot of issues that I think are very misunderstood in the United States. You have lived in the U.S. You live here in Sweden. Talk about Medicare for All. Talk about your healthcare system. How is it paid for?  MIKAEL TÖRNWALL: It’s almost entirely paid for by taxes. And I know that scares a lot of you guys, but the things we pay, for me at least, I pay almost equivalent in healthcare taxes than you would pay via your employer for health insurance. But what I also get by that is that I don’t have any copayments to talk about. The maximum copayment for healthcare in Sweden is a few hundred dollars a year.  AMY GOODMAN: Explain your own personal situation. What happened with your daughter?  MIKAEL TÖRNWALL: Yeah, that happened a few years ago before we moved to the U.S. She got ill and she had a brain tumor, fortunately not a deadly one. She got operated on by one of the best surgeons in Europe.  AMY GOODMAN: How old was she?  MIKAEL TÖRNWALL: She was 12. She got excellent care afterwards. We stayed as a family with her at the hospital for a week. And she then had follow-up care for several years. She had to go to a doctor every few months. And we paid nothing for that.  MIKAEL TÖRNWALL: Because she’s a child until 18. You don’t pay anything for healthcare.  AMY GOODMAN: So then you come to the United States and you’re shocked.  MIKAEL TÖRNWALL: Yeah. And what happened there was for some reason she needed to go to the hospital in an ambulance, and they asked, “What healthcare company do you have?” And since we are from Sweden, we had a very small one that wasn’t covered, and I had to pay with a credit card to get her to the hospital.  AMY GOODMAN: So you’re watching the presidential debates. Every corporate network journalist who hosts one of these debates, they usually ask a question about healthcare and they say, “Are you going to raise taxes?” Talk about how the Swedish people feel about this. Because you’re talking about an issue that unites people across the political spectrum in Sweden.  MIKAEL TÖRNWALL: Yeah. Nobody, not even the most conservative parties, would like to get rid of this system. And I think there are two reasons for that. One is that—or two misconceptions, also, in the U.S. One is that it costs us a lot of money in terms of taxes. Yes, it does. We pay way higher taxes in Sweden than in the U.S. But we are way lower expenses for copayments for healthcare, health insurance, daycare, saving for children’s college and so on. We don’t need to bother about that. So the higher taxes for most people is more than offset by lower costs for other stuff.  AMY GOODMAN: So you say this makes Sweden far more competitive while the U.S. says, “No, this is much too expensive.” You say, “It’s too expensive not to do this.”  MIKAEL TÖRNWALL: I would say at least it would make a country more competitive to make sure that everybody who is smart enough has access to the best education and everybody who needs healthcare gets that because then they will be able to be part of the workforce instead of worrying about health. And you, as everybody else in the West, need to compete with better and better companies in China, in India, and the best way to do that is not with an unhealthy, undereducated population.  AMY GOODMAN: Talk about school. You have Bernie Sanders and some others talking about free college.  MIKAEL TÖRNWALL: Yeah, we have free college. We don’t pay any tuition for any university in Sweden. Even the best ones that could compete on a global level, you can’t have any tuition. Which means that everybody who has the grades to join these universities can do it. And they obviously then take jobs in our global companies and helps them compete on a global scale.  AMY GOODMAN: And talk about overall welfare, the issue, and what you think are the greatest misconceptions about Sweden.  MIKAEL TÖRNWALL: Well, sometimes they describe Sweden as a paradise, that everything works perfectly in Sweden. It doesn’t. You need to understand that everything doesn’t work perfectly. But there is a difference. You don’t need to worry too much about money. Everybody can send their kids to daycare because it is affordable. Nobody needs to worry, “Will I go bankrupt if I get sick?” Because healthcare is almost free. And if you are smart enough and study hard enough in high school, you will be able to go to university.  AMY GOODMAN: And how do you answer questions here like, “Why should rich kids go to school for free?”  MIKAEL TÖRNWALL: That is a debate that is not easy. Some people would say that why should they. But we decided, I guess, basically, it’s the only way to make it simple. Everybody has access to the basic part of welfare, as we see it, rather than checking your income, because that opens up all kinds of cheating.  AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you so much for joining us, Mikael Törnwall, Swedish author and journalist focusing on economic issues at Svenska Dagbladet, a Stockholm daily. And that does it for our show. If you want to see our three days of coverage from here in Stockholm, Sweden, go to Democracynow.org. Special thanks to Stockholm’s Open Channel, Stockholm’s only independent, grassroots, non-commercial TV station committed to free speech. The Öppna Kanalen carries Democracy Now! four times per day.  And we want to thank our crew here, Lars Erik Nyman, who is the chair of the Open Channel, Larry Berger, Peter Carlsson, Mia Högfeldt, Kent Wirstam and Jacob Bjelfvenstam. Special thanks to our Democracy Now! team here in Stockholm, John Hamilton, Denis Moynihan, Charina Nadura, Libby Rainey, Nermeen Shaikh, and back in New York, the whole team including Robby Karan and Hany Massoud.  Tune in Friday as we begin our live coverage from Madrid, Spain, for the U.N. Climate Summit. We’ll be there for the next week. Tune in to Democracynow.org. Democracynow.org is here because of all of you. We thank you so much. I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks so much for joining us, from Stockholm, Sweden.


fortruss--2019-07-28--RUSSIA HAS A BRIGHT FUTURE High-Tech Education Center Hosts Huge Science Festival VIDEO

RUSSIA HAS A BRIGHT FUTURE: High-Tech Education Center Hosts Huge Science Festival (VIDEO)

Sochi, Russian Federation – Russia is well-known for its high-tech military equipment, including 5th-generation fighter jets, next-generation drones, ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles), space technology, including deep space exploration, etc. But there’s much more to it – the often overlooked Russia’s focus on developing the civilian high-tech sector.  Yesterday, on July 27, a technology of the future festival was held in Sochi’s Sirius educational center. The Big Challenges science projects festival is underway there. Over 400 young inventors present their prototypes from all over Russia. The creators of these prototypes can apply for presidential grants in the future.


foxnews--2019-02-21--Why civics education matters

Why civics education matters

**Want FOX News Halftime Report in your inbox every day? Sign up here.**    On the roster: Why civics education matters - House readies resolution to end national emergency - Harris calls for new election in NC House race - Biden considers his family ahead of 2020 decision - Girl scout of the year     WHY CIVICS EDUCATION MATTERS   You no doubt heard the news. Americans don’t know bupkis about our history and system of government.     The survey from the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation found appallingly low percentages of Americans were conversant even in the basic facts of our system and past.     In order to pass a U.S. citizenship test, an applicant must get at least 60 percent of the questions on a civics and history test correct. You can take a sample test here but knowing you, dear readers, 60 percent will seem like a rock-bottom grade.     If you have been reading us for any length of time you will also know that civics and history education is something of a hobbyhorse for us, so we were certainly happy to see attention brought to the subject. What concerns us, however, is that very few people seem to be discussing why this is a problem.     Knowing civics and history isn’t something that is an abstract good like knowing how to play the clarinet, hit a one-handed backhand or tell the difference between Monet and Manet. It is a practical, vital knowledge the lack of which is creating a crisis for our country.     Civics education, where it still exists, is treated often as something obligatory. You make your bed, you shine your shoes for church, you say “please” and you know how many justices are on the Supreme Court.     If we expect students to care and schools to emphasize the subject, we had better make sure that everyone understands what’s at stake. Without a working knowledge of what this country is and how our system works, each generation becomes less able to operate this miracle that has proven to be a light into the world.     The most significant problems facing our government today aren’t really ideological, they’re systemic.     For example, there are good debates to be had about how the federal government should allocate the nearly $3.5 trillion in tax revue it collects each year. Where should it be spent and in what increments? How much more money should the government borrow?     But politicians have essentially destroyed the system that allowed those questions to be addressed for the previous two centuries. Most of the money that’s being spent is doled out on schedules and rates set decades ago.      Less than a third of federal spending is actually appropriated by the current Congress. The other 70 percent goes to entitlement programs, pensions, pre-programed welfare systems and interest on the $22 trillion national debt. It’s that way because previous generations of lawmakers determined they and their successors were too irresponsible to allocate money anymore.       While most federal outlays cruise on like a deep space probe zooming out past Pluto, what obviously will happen to the discussion over the ever-shrinking slice that Congress really does control? When there was plenty of money, the appropriations system allowed for an orderly, if greasy, means for allocating the money. Now, every time the bills come due at the end of the federal fiscal year, we start jumping off of fiscal cliffs.     We recently endured what was called the “Seinfeld shutdown,” the shutdown about nothing. Lawmakers and the president were at odds over a little flyspeck of spending – four hundredths of a percent of the deficit alone – and closed a substantial part of the government for more than a month only to come to what was an obvious compromise from the start.     However you feel about border barriers and “delayed action for childhood arrivals” and anything else about immigration, that’s not a sensible way to have discussions about spending priorities. That’s not liberal or conservative, Republican or Democratic but rather systemic. The way the U.S. government handles its money is a rotten, chaotic mess.     But there’s little political advantage to be had in addressing that. In fact, there’s substantial political disadvantage.      Listen to the president and his potential general election opponents as they talk about money. They sound like 1970s pornographic actress and disco star Andrea True. “How do you like it? More, more, more.” More tax cuts, more infrastructure spending, more entitlements, more welfare programs. More, more, more.     Spending is just one example. We could say the same of our legal, educational, medical and national security apparatuses. Deep problems continue to churn, but politicians across the spectrum tend to offer painless pabulum.           Now, we should rightly blame the politicians who pander and deceive. But as the scorpion told the frog, we know it is their nature. As comedian Chris Rock once joked about sexual fidelity, “Men are only as faithful as their options.” A dim, if not entirely undeserved view. For politicians, the maxim would hold that they are only about as honest as they have to be.     And voters are letting them get away with murder.     We will not reinvent human nature in such a way that a new generation of selfless politicians rises up to save us from ourselves. But that is what Americans look for each successive election. What do we want each cycle? Change. And each cycle they deliver the kind of surficial change that temporarily gratifies the bloody-minded partisanship of one side but leaves most people with a deeper-still feeling of unease. Something is wrong, but we just can’t say what.      So what will we choose next time? Why change, of course.     The purpose of an educated electorate – the crucial aim of Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and others – was as the ultimate guarantor of good government. If the people do not know what they have, they won’t know how to use it. They won’t know which demands are sensible to make. They will become easy prey for demagogues.     Welp.     The urgent work of educating the next generation in American history and civics isn’t just something that would be nice or to avoid national embarrassment. It is actually about rebuilding a bulwark against tyranny. As our government slips deeper and deeper into dysfunction and people come to have less and less faith in the American system, we become sitting ducks for the kind of authoritarianism that has ruled most of our species for most of our history.      Civic classes are about nothing less than guaranteeing “the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.”           THE RULEBOOK: HOLD YOUR GROUND     “Whatever efficacy the union may have had in ordinary cases, it appears that the moment a cause of difference sprang up, capable of trying its strength, it failed.” – Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, Federalist No. 19    TIME OUT: THE PRICE OF COLLEGE SPORTS  Sports Illustrated: “UNC-Duke at Cameron Indoor Stadium is typically a showcase for everything that's great about sports… But the story was [Zion Williamson’s injury]. He's the presumptive No. 1 pick in the NBA draft, and one of the biggest names in sports at the moment. … What happens when the biggest game in America becomes dominated by the player who left after 30 seconds? For one, after 48 hours of news stories about Duke-UNC ticket prices, there were natural conclusions drawn about the injustice of Zion performing as an unpaid amateur and suffering an injury while almost everyone else in the college sports ecosystem was able to get rich off the game. That argument makes some sense. … And why does Zion Williamson have to be in college at all? … If players are talented enough to be drafted into the NBA after high school, many around the sport think they should be able to make that transition as soon as they graduate.”    Flag on the play? - Email us at HALFTIMEREPORT@FOXNEWS.COM with your tips, comments or questions.    SCOREBOARD   Trump job performance    Average approval: 41.8 percent  Average disapproval: 54.4 percent  Net Score: -12.6 points  Change from one week ago: no change     [Average includes: Fox News: 46% approve - 52% disapprove; Gallup: 44% approve - 52% unapproved; CNN: 42% approve - 54% disapproval; IBD: 39% approve - 57% disapprove; Quinnipiac University: 38% approve - 57% disapprove.]    HOUSE READIES RESOLUTION TO END NATIONAL EMERGENCY  WaPo: “Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Wednesday night that the House will vote in the coming days on a resolution rejecting President Trump’s national emergency declaration, encouraging fellow Democrats to support the effort as they try to stop Trump’s push to expand efforts to build a barrier along the U.S.-Mexico border. In a ‘Dear Colleague’ letter, the California Democrat said Trump’s declaration ‘undermines the separation of powers and Congress’s power of the purse, a power exclusively reserved by the text of the Constitution to the first branch of government, the Legislative branch, a branch co-equal to the Executive.’ By invoking a national emergency, Trump is claiming authority to shift federal funds appropriated by Congress for other purposes to be spent instead on his border wall. Pelosi announced that the House would move ‘swiftly’ to pass a disapproval resolution authored by Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Tex.), although she did not specify an exact date and indicated it would move through a House committee before coming to the floor.”    Sen. Collins backs lawsuit against national emergency - Portland Press Herald: “Republican Sen. Susan Collins said Wednesday that she supports the lawsuit filed by 16 states – including Maine – challenging President Trump’s declaration of a national emergency to build a southern border wall. But Collins also signaled support for a straightforward congressional disapproval of an emergency declaration that she views as having ‘dubious constitutionality’ and setting a dangerous precedent. ‘It may be that the courts will stop what I believe to be a very unwise action, or it may come about through Congress,’ Collins said Wednesday. ‘If the House passes a resolution of disapproval and it is a clean resolution, I will support that.’ … The three other members of Maine’s congressional delegation – independent Sen. Angus King and Democratic Reps. Chellie Pingree and Jared Golden – also have strongly criticized the president’s emergency declaration.”    The Judge’s Ruling: Trump's brazen overreach - This week Fox News Senior Judicial Analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano explains how the president’s national emergency is unconstitutional: “When the president acts pursuant to authority granted to him by the Congress in an area of government delegated to him by the Constitution, his authority is at its peak, and he is free to exercise it as he sees fit. When he acts in an area as to which the Congress has been silent, he acts in a twilight zone and can succeed only if the area of his behavior is delegated to him under the Constitution and if he enjoys broad public support. But when the president acts in an area that the Constitution gives exclusively to Congress -- such as spending money -- and when he acts in defiance of Congress, his acts are unconstitutional and are to be enjoined.” More here.    HARRIS CALLS FOR NEW ELECTION IN NC HOUSE RACE  Raleigh News & Observer: “In a startling statement, Republican candidate Mark Harris Thursday called for a new election in the 9th Congressional District ‘to restore the confidence of voters.’ Harris’ statement came after a break in a hearing after he had testified about his dealings with Bladen County operative McCrae Dowless. On the stand, Harris said he suffered two strokes in January while hospitalized for a severe infection and was ‘struggling’ to get through the hearing. After hearing the evidence of absentee ballot fraud, Harris said, ‘I believe a new election should be called.’ A member of North Carolina’s State Board of Elections had pressed Harris on why he didn’t heed warnings from his son about hiring Dowless to run an absentee ballot operation in his 2018 campaign for Congress. … ‘He raised concerns (about Dowless). I did not consider John’s (emails) to be a warning. I thought he was overreacting,’ [Harris said].”    BIDEN CONSIDERS HIS FAMILY AHEAD OF 2020 DECISION   NBC News: “Joe Biden wants to be president. And each day, he’s closer to being ready to run for the office. But even as he weighs a campaign to unseat President Donald Trump, Biden is carefully considering a key question — what happens when the president or his top allies try to make his family an issue? Conversations with aides to the former vice president and others who’ve spoken with him in recent weeks present the idea of a Biden candidacy as not if but when. … But Biden knows and expects the president to fight as hard to stay in the White House as he did to win it in the first place — and he’s already shown nothing is off limits. … No line of attack would be more reprehensible to the former vice president than one directed at his family, and he and his team have been forced to consider that even as they also weigh the political dynamics.”    Harris swipes at far-left Dems over open borders - Fox News: “Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris said ‘We can't have open borders’ as she continues to disassociate from her party’s calls for unrestricted immigration and tearing down existing barriers at the U.S.-Mexico border. The U.S. senator from California, a leading 2020 hopeful for the White House on the Democratic side, has recently been overshadowed by the entry of Senate colleague Bernie Sanders -- the progressives’ likely first choice -- into the race, and the potential candidacy of Beto O’Rourke the former congressman from Texas who’s been making inroads and positioning himself as the anti-Trump candidate. This prompted Harris to come out against O’Rourke’s call to tear down the existing 700 miles of fencing on the U.S.-Mexico border during a Wednesday night appearance on Comedy Central's ‘The Daily Show.’”    Family matters: Kamala’s dad isn’t happy over her comments on weed - Fox News: “The father of Sen. Kamala Harris is trying to distance himself from the 2020 Democratic presidential hopeful after she said her pot smoking in college stemmed from her Jamaican heritage. … Harris' father, Donald, disapproved of the comments, which he told the Jamaica Global Online constituted ‘identity politics.’ ‘My dear departed grandmothers ... as well as my deceased parents, must be turning in their grave right now to see their family’s name, reputation and proud Jamaican identity being connected, in any way, jokingly or not with the fraudulent stereotype of a pot-smoking joy seeker and in the pursuit of identity politics,’ he said. Donald Harris continued: ‘Speaking for myself and my immediate Jamaican family, we wish to categorically dissociate ourselves from this travesty.’”    Williamson: ‘One last grift for Bernie Sanders’ - National Review: “Right-wing populists and left-wing populists may disagree about such world-changing issues as whether the phrase ‘a man with ovaries’ actually means anything, but on the fundamental policy questions they come down strikingly close to one another. That is because the enemy of populism isn’t the right wing or the left wing — the enemy of populism is liberalism, understood here not in the demented sense we use it in U.S. politics (where liberals are the people opposed to liberalism) but in its proper sense, meaning the classical-liberal regime of property rights, free enterprise, free trade, individual rights, and a worldview based on well-ordered liberty emphasizing cooperation within and between nations.”    Disinformation cyber campaign begins against Dems - Politico: “A wide-ranging disinformation campaign aimed at Democratic 2020 candidates is already underway on social media, with signs that foreign state actors are driving at least some of the activity. The main targets appear to be Sens. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas), four of the most prominent announced or prospective candidates for president. A POLITICO review of recent data extracted from Twitter and from other platforms … suggests that the goal of the coordinated barrage appears to be undermining the nascent candidacies through the dissemination of memes, hashtags, misinformation and distortions of their positions. But the divisive nature of many of the posts also hints at a broader effort to sow discord and chaos within the Democratic presidential primary. The cyber propaganda … is being pushed across a variety of platforms…”    POMPEO RULES OUT ON KANSAS SENATE RUN  Politico: “Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Thursday that he has ruled out running for a soon-to-be-vacant Senate seat in his home state of Kansas next year in favor of remaining the nation's top diplomat. The former Kansas congressman and CIA director had dodged questions about whether he planned on running in 2020 to claim the seat held by retiring GOP Sen. Pat Roberts, fueling speculation that he might by attending certain events and meeting with GOP operatives in the state. But on NBC's ‘Today’ show on Thursday, the secretary of state threw cold water on the prospect, telling anchor Craig Melvin ‘it’s ruled out.’ ‘I love Kansas. I'm going to be the secretary of State as long as President Trump gives me the opportunity to serve as America’s senior diplomat,” Pompeo said. ‘I love doing what I'm doing and I have 75,000 great warriors out and around the world trying to deliver for the American people.’”    Poll: Joni Ernst's approval rating soars ahead of 2020 re-election - Des Moines Register: “U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst’s approval rating has hit its highest point ever as she prepares for a 2020 re-election campaign, a new Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll shows. Fifty-seven percent of Iowans say they approve of the job she’s doing — a 10 percentage-point increase since September. She earns approval from a majority of Iowans in each of the state’s four congressional districts. That includes a high of 65 percent in the Republican-heavy 4th District, in northwest and north central Iowa, and a low of 51 percent in the Democratic-leaning 2nd District, in southeast Iowa. … Ernst, a military veteran from Red Oak, became the first woman in Iowa elected to either chamber of Congress in 2014. … She announced in December that she intends to seek re-election.”    Alabama Rep. Bradley Byrne announces 2020 Senate run - AL.com: “U.S. Rep. Bradley Byrne became the first official Republican entrant into the 2020 U.S. Senate race announcing his intention to run in a race that could become one of the most expensive political contests in Alabama history. … Democratic U.S. Senator Doug Jones, who narrowly defeated Republican Roy Moore in that election, raised more than $24 million. … Byrne said he anticipates, similar to the 2017 special election, national attention paid to the Alabama Senate contest next year. The race is considered one of the few 2020 Senate contests in which a Democratic officeholder is seeking re-election against a Republican inside a state that has long been dominated by GOP leadership.”    PLAY-BY-PLAY  Neal Kaytal: What to expect from the Mueller report - NYT    Poll shows Virginians aren’t demanding Ralph Northam’s resignation - Sabato’s Crystal Ball    AUDIBLE: NO ONE KNOWS   “I have read it and I have reread it and I asked Ed Markey… what in the heck is this?” – Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., discussing his struggle to understand the Green New Deal on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Wednesday.    FROM THE BLEACHERS   “It's midnight. And I'm listening to ITYW podcast and you mentioned a Pawpaw. I hope this finds you because 50 years ago in the movie Jungle Book a Pawpaw is mentioned in the lyrics of Bare Necessities. I sang it all the time and never knew what I was singing about. Now I do. And I love ice cream. So I'll have to [check] that out. Please share my note with Dana.” – Brian Keill, Pearl River, N.Y.     [Ed. note: The 1967 animated version was one of my favorites as a little boy. It’s scary enough to give you some bad dreams — that snake! — but funny enough and tender enough to make it beloved. But I hadn’t remembered that paw paws made an appearance. Makes it even *ahem* sweeter.]     “Yet another polling question, although I understand the ones you use and the methodologies behind them. What does confuse me is that some days you have a certain set of polls, other days you have a different set of polls. The average can go up or down significantly based solely on one poll being included and another one being removed. Any chance you could enlighten us on that piece?” – Mike Schlender, Minneapolis     [Ed. note: As they would say in the business world, Mr. Schlemder, “FIFO” or first in, first out. We cycle out the oldest polls when new one comes in.]    Share your color commentary: Email us at HALFTIMEREPORT@FOXNEWS.COM and please make sure to include your name and hometown.    GIRL SCOUT OF THE YEAR  WISN: “As if any of us needed any more of an incentive to buy even more boxes of Girl Scout cookies, a fifth-grade marketing genius just reinvented her Samoas packaging in the best way possible. The Colorado-based ‘Cookie CEO’ Charlotte Holmberg — who earned the title after selling more than 2,000 boxes in 2018 — is upping her game in a major way in the new year. Turning her Samoas into Momoas, the elementary schooler redesigned her packaging to include a shirtless Jason Momoa, and unsurprisingly, they're flying off the figurative shelves. Holmberg happened to have a marketing professional already on her sales team — her mom — and after spotting a few Momoa Samoa memes, she thought up the rebranding. The pair printed a shot of the ‘Aquaman’ star on the classic purple packaging, and suddenly, everyone was eager for a box.”    AND NOW, A WORD FROM CHARLES…   “Say it and sign it. To get, you have to give. That’s the art of the deal, is it not?” – Charles Krauthammer (1950-2018) writing in the Washington Post on Sept. 1, 2016.    Chris Stirewalt is the politics editor for Fox News. Brianna McClelland contributed to this report. Want FOX News Halftime Report in your inbox every day? Sign up here.


france24--2019-05-31--Students teachers across Brazil protest Bolsonaros education cuts

Students, teachers across Brazil protest Bolsonaro’s education cuts

Miguel Schincariol, AFP | Demonstrators protesting education budget cuts take to the streets of Sao Paulo, Brazil, May 30, 2019.  Thousands of protesters took to the streets in dozens of cities in Brazil Thursday for a second nationwide demonstration in as many weeks over the government's plan to slash education spending.  Far-right President Jair Bolsonaro's government has provoked outrage among students and teachers over its proposal to freeze 30 percent of discretionary spending for public universities in the second half of this year.  A suspension of post-graduate scholarships for students in science and the humanities has also fueled anger.  Protests began in the capital Brasilia in the morning and have since spread across the country to more than 80 cities, local media reported.  "The main message is that a 30 percent cut to education is absurd and makes it impossible for higher education in this country," said Lina Vilela, a teacher at the Brasilia rally where protesters held posters with messages such as "Our books and pencils are our weapons."  Karina Afonseca said she was protesting against "the intellectual setback" Bolsonaro's actions would cause in Brazil.  "I'm here for those who are poor and deserve the right to quality public education," social services student Kaio Duarte said.  "I'm worried that the next generation won't have all of the rights to education that I have had."  In Rio de Janeiro, protesters carried signs describing Bolsonaro as "the enemy of education."  "We can't simply pretend everything is OK -- it is not OK," said university student Isadora Duarte, 24.  Tens of thousands protested across Brazil on May 15 -- the first nationwide demonstration since Bolsonaro took power in January, which underscored growing opposition to the embattled president.  Bolsonaro, who has railed against socialism as he seeks to promote his ultraconservative ideas, described the May 15 protesters as "useful idiots" and accused leftist militants of stoking the rallies.  But Thursday's turnout could be lower after the government said it would free up 1.59 billion reais in funding (about $400 million) for the sector.  Thursday's demonstrations come after thousands of pro-Bolsonaro protesters marched in cities across Brazil on Sunday in a show of support for the leader, who has seen his popularity plummet in his first five months in office.  Among their demands was for Congress to speed up approval of the government's stalled pension overhaul, seen as key to unlocking other much-needed reforms that are crucial to kick-starting economic growth.


freedombunker--2019-02-16--The College Education Racket

The College Education Racket

Although American higher education has been terribly dumbed down since the late 1960s, it still has considerable practical value. College graduates earn more money, enjoy better health, and are less likely to get divorced than those who don’t have such degrees. Plus, their children fare better in these areas than the children of people who don’t get a college education. The credential isn’t necessary to financial success and being able to afford a family, but it’s the surest path to each.  So, it continues to be widely believed that everyone should go to college. And of course, academia itself has no objection to the idea. With the government providing grants to needy students and subsidizing student loans, colleges and universities have raised tuitions at exorbitant rates. But while they have reaped enormous profits, the average student in the class of 2016 has $37,172 in student loan debt. Student loan debt is the nation’s second-highest consumer debt category—trailing only mortgage debt—and is much higher than both credit card debt and auto loans debt.  Student loan debt is the only type of debt that can’t be got rid of by filing for bankruptcy. Getting a bachelor’s degree in sociology or environmental studies can result in a young person trying to climb out of a financial hole for decades while earning wages that lead him to question the prudence of having “followed his passion.”  There are other problems with higher education, reflecting the poor quality of our K–12 education system. In National Affairs, Chester E. Finn Jr. describes the situation well:  Although there’s much talk of school standards designed to yield graduates who are “college and career ready,” the grim fact remains that, in recent years, 96% of colleges enrolled students who required remediation, and over 200 schools placed more than half of their incoming students in at least one remedial course. In Maryland, more than one third of community-college matriculants need remediation in reading and writing, and two-thirds need remediation in math. [T]he completion rate for bachelor’s degrees within eight years of entry has long hovered below 40%—almost precisely where the National Assessment of Educational Progress places the extent of “college readiness” in reading among 12th graders. Yet the matriculation rate—the share of those graduating from high school who head straight into some sort of college—is about 70%. It’s scarcely surprising that so many of them need remediation—and that so few make it to graduation. Simply raising the matriculation rate closer to 100% will only exacerbate this problem.  These figures suggest that universal college education is simply not tenable. It’s not surprising, given its central importance, that so many people want everyone to go to college. The trouble is that people have very different interests and abilities, and those differences would persist even if students were better prepared for college.  To be sure, there are other explanations for why college doesn’t work for many people than sheer ineptitude or lack of interest. The same social problems that beset the K–12 education system—illegitimacy, single-parent families, lack of personal responsibility and of other virtuous habits—hinder success in college as well. But independent of these environmental and personal deficiencies, there never was any reason to believe everyone should go to college, as if it were necessary for the common good or the national interest. Human beings are heterogeneous, so our approach to college education should comprehend that.  The post The College Education Racket appeared first on LewRockwell.


freebeacon--2019-12-09--American Education’s Great Stagnation

American Education’s Great Stagnation

American schoolchildren's educational attainment has stagnated in the 21st century, according to data from two recently updated assessments of reading, math, and science skills.  Results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), released in November, and from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), released Tuesday, indicate that American kids have seen minimal improvement in their academic abilities since the early to mid-2000s.  "For all of these ambitious efforts we've seen unfold, they don't seem to be making much difference, at least when it comes to measured student performance in reading and math," Rick Hess, an education policy expert at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, told the Washington Free Beacon.  Experts who spoke with the Free Beacon agreed that the causes of this stagnation are unclear—as one put it, "it's always kind of a guessing game as to what's behind these numbers." At the same time, this flatlining suggests that the education experiments of the past decade, and in particular of the Obama administration, have had minimal benefits on student achievement and may even have hindered the most disadvantaged students.  The NAEP, commonly referred to as the nation's report card, is an assessment of academic proficiency taken by a sample of 4th, 8th, and 12th graders across the country. The test covers a number of subjects, but the most closely watched indicators of academic improvement are the fourth- and eighth-grade reading and math evaluations.  Through the 1990s and early 2000s, achievement, particularly in mathematics, rose steadily, but then began to flatten out. As a report from the Brookings Institution notes, "for both fourth grade and eighth grade, the average [math] scores from 2017 were identical to the average scores from 2009." Fourth-grade reading scores have been more or less flat since the 2007 assessment; eighth-grade scores have seen improvement, but not on par with the early growth in math scores.  This flatlining obscures an underlying trend: Over the past decade or so, NAEP scores among African-American students, particularly boys and particularly in major cities, have actually declined. That means that the much-bemoaned "achievement gap" between black and white students—which much of education policy is focused on closing—may be widening.  "You saw substantial gains by black children relative to white children from the mid-'70s to the '90s, and you saw some of that in the early years after [No Child Left Behind]," Hess said. "One of the striking things has been that you have actually seen a worsening on some of these fronts, both in terms of low-income children and also black children."  A similar overall trend is apparent in the PISA, a triennial assessment of 15-year-olds in nations around the world. The United States outperforms the OECD average, but that performance is not a product of improving test scores—in fact, PISA scores have been more or less flat since 2000.  The 2018 PISA, released last week, does show at least one bright spot: The share of Americans performing at the top levels in reading increased by about 4 percentage points between 2009 and 2018. But even those gains may not be cause for celebration, as there was no similar improvement among low-achieving students.  The flatlining of test scores has taken place even as national spending on education has risen steadily. Through most of the 1990s, when NAEP scores tended to rise, per-pupil spending in primary and secondary schools was below $10,000. Today, spending has easily cleared $12,000 per pupil with little improvement in performance.  The underlying cause of this stagnation is unclear. Experts the Free Beacon spoke to did not quite agree when it began—most agreed that there was a bump after the implementation of No Child Left Behind, but disagreed about when that increase slackened off. Michael Petrilli, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a leading education think tank, linked the flattening to the Great Recession.  The recession "likely had a huge negative impact on kids, especially poor kids from the most disadvantaged families," Petrilli told the Free Beacon. "When you're looking at some of these latest results, these are kids who were sort of born into the latest recession or were quite small during the worst years of unemployment."  School spending also declined in the wake of the recession, Petrilli noted, although at no point did it fall below pre-Great Recession levels. It's a plausible story—even post-recovery, the recession appears to have fundamentally altered the spending, job-seeking, and even childbearing practices of young adults, so why not also their children's educational outcomes? This, Petrilli argued, means that we may not see more NAEP growth until the Great Recession cohort ages out of school.  Max Eden, an education expert at the Manhattan Institute, is not so sure. While offering the caveat that it is hard to draw many conclusions from the data, he suggested that the Obama administration's Common Core did not deliver on its promises to increase achievement and may have actually harmed socioeconomically disadvantaged students. Eden also pointed to Obama administration efforts to reduce school punishments and suspensions—policies it perceived as racially inequitable. One recent study conducted by the nonpartisan RAND corporation found that "restorative practices" in punishment actually worsened educational outcomes in grades six through eight.  "I'm very much inclined to believe that this push towards discipline reform, to try to lower suspensions and expulsions … will do more harm than good," Eden said. "I don't think policy can do nothing at all, but I think that the policies we have implemented have done more harm than good."  The bad news is not limited to the United States. Eden noted that just as NAEP scores are a blow to Common Core, so too is the rapid decline of PISA scores from Finland, once heralded as a model for education policy.  "The people who had been the central opinion makers of education policy were just pretty fundamentally wrong," Eden said. "About 15 years ago Finland was the top-scoring country, pretty near the top in the world, and if you Google for ‘Finland education,' you'll find just hundreds and hundreds of articles written about how the Finland model works.… But just about no country has fallen farther, faster over the past few years than Finland."  Hess agreed with Eden's skeptical view of what the education establishment has pitched during the stagnation and emphasized that policy can only go so far in changing outcomes.  "The idea that policy can do little to shape education in the short term is always correct," Hess said. "That's been true for a half century plus. Folks have been trying to use federal policy to change school outcomes. All policymakers can really do is move crude levers.… For those things to actually change what happens in schools is at best a multiyear process."


instapundit--2019-01-03--HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE The Push For Unconstitutional College Programs Most efforts to r

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE:  The Push For Unconstitutional College Programs.  “Most efforts to r…

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: The Push For Unconstitutional College Programs. “Most efforts to reduce racial, ethnic, and gender ‘gaps’ and ‘underrepresentation’ are patently unconstitutional.”


abcnews--2019-11-08--Dow agrees to $77M environmental settlement in Michigan

Dow Chemical Co. has agreed to fund environmental restoration projects worth an estimated $77 million to compensate for decades of pollution by its plant in Midland, Michigan, officials said Friday.  A deal between the company and government agencies calls for improvements to fish and wildlife habitats tainted by dioxins and other hazardous substances from Dow's manufacturing complex in its headquarters city of Midland.  The chemical giant also will pay for new public recreation areas with trails, fishing platforms and boating launches.  "This settlement has been more than a decade in the making by a combined team of state, federal and tribal partners working together for the benefit of Michigan's environment and precious natural resources," state Attorney General Dana Nessel said.  The agreement would be legally binding and needs a federal judge's approval to take effect. It would resolve a complaint filed by government agencies that alleges the company's pollution harmed birds, fish, invertebrates and mammals in the Tittabawassee and Saginaw rivers and their watersheds.  Dow's facility began operating in 1897. For generations it dumped or incinerated wastes that contaminated the 50-mile-long (80-kilometer-long) river valley, which extends into Lake Huron's Saginaw Bay, with dioxins and related compounds linked to cancer and other illnesses.  Cleanup of the Tittabawassee River began in 2007 and is expected to be finished in 2021. No completion date has been set for the other waterways.  The pollution has prompted warnings to limit consumption of some fish and wild game, and to avoid touching the soil in certain areas, including parks.  Under the agreement, Dow will pay for 13 natural resource projects in Midland, Saginaw and Bay counties that will affect a combined 8,000 acres (3,200 hectares).  Construction of a fish passage ramp at a Tittabawassee River dam will provide hundreds of miles of new habitat for migratory species, while the state Department of Natural Resources will get funding to build spawning reefs in Saginaw Bay.  Other projects will protect and restore wetlands, farmlands and forests.  About 2,000 acres (800 hectares) of private land will be shielded from development through conservation easements. An expansion of the Shiawassee National Wildlife Reserve will provide more room for hunting.  Biking and nature trails will be developed in preserved Tittabawassee flood plain areas habitat south of Midland.  As part of the settlement, Dow will pay $15 million to a team of trustees including officials with state and federal agencies and the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe of Michigan.  Some of the money will be used to maintain and monitor the effectiveness of the 13 projects, while at least $5 million will fund additional natural resource initiatives selected by the trustees with advice from the public.  Dow also will reimburse government agencies for costs of studying how its pollution affected the environment.  In a statement, the company said it was "committed to working cooperatively with the ... trustees to move forward with implementation of the proposed restoration plan over the next five years" and had set aside money to pay for the settlement.  The trustees will host a public meeting Nov. 21 in Saginaw to provide more details about the plan, said Matthew Schneider, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan.  "We are thankful to Dow and the trustees for their work in reaching this excellent result, which will benefit the residents of the Saginaw Bay area and the wildlife and waterfowl that inhabit it," Schneider said.


abcnews--2019-12-08--Conservation groups' Georgia coast land buy could help save tortoises

Conservation groups have purchased a swath of land in Georgia that they describe as one of the largest unprotected open space parcels along the southeast Atlantic coast.  The Conservation Fund and Open Space Institute announced Friday that they had bought the 16,000-acre (65-square-kilometer) site along the Satilla River east of Woodbine. They declined to say how much they paid for it.  The groups plan to sell it within the next few years to the state of Georgia for use as a wildlife management area where people can hunt, fish and hike.  “It’s providing a tremendous opportunity for the people of Georgia to enjoy our great outdoors,” said Andrew Schock, Georgia state director at The Conservation Fund.  The land near Cumberland Island — dubbed the “Ceylon property” — has several types of habitat, including salt marsh and longleaf pine forest.  Longleaf pine used to cover tens of millions of acres in the southeast U.S., but now only a few million acres remain and most of that is fragmented and in poor condition, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.  The new property is also home to an estimated 2,000 gopher tortoises, whose burrows provide shelter for many other species.  Conservation groups and Georgia officials are aiming to protect 65 of the roughly 122 viable gopher tortoise populations in the state to try to prevent the turtle from a listing under the Endangered Species Act.  The new site alone may have as many as four gopher tortoise populations that are capable of sustaining themselves, said Maria Whitehead, senior program manager for the Open Space Institute.  Whitehead said the property is also remarkably pristine. There are no structures on it, and it has no development except for a well and cemetery, she said.  “That in itself is just incredible," she said.  The property had a timber mill in the 1870s that processed longleaf pine coming down the Satilla River, said Jason Lee, with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources.  But the surrounding town was eventually abandoned, and the property returned to its natural state, Lee said.  “We’re really excited to be able to work on something not just this large but this intact from a habitat standpoint,” he said.  The conservation groups bought it from the investment firm, Stratford Land. Schock said the property was zoned for homes, commercial development and a marina.  The next step is to raise funds to allow the state to purchase it.