If you can’t win elections, change the electorate;

Alberta’s excellent system, based on an intensive study of core knowledge, is still generally intact and is the reason Alberta continues to score highly on tests such as the international PISA exam on complex problem solving. Alberta students finished 4th overall in the world, behind only Japan, Korea and China, other nations where the mastery of knowledge is the core concept of schooling.
Yet Alberta’s system is now under threat. Alberta Education is on a path to completely rewrite our entire school curriculum, setting aside the careful and dogged teaching and testing of knowledge, replacing it with an unproven theory of schooling known as discovery/inquiry learning or “constructivism.”

Mission accomplished.

Op-ed suggests making kids unhappy so that we might fulfill vision some defunct philosopher was convinced was impt http://t.co/uHZ3mAquHO

— Billare (@Billare) February 23, 2014

h/t Kevin B

And that’s why my escape plan includes a CZ7 Zodiac. (h/t Anthony K)

The Loser Generation: Going on 30, Living With Mom and Dad

In follow-up to this item of last week: Math petition presented to Alberta education officials. It’s a start.

Sean, via email;

Something isn’t adding up…
Small town doctor and parent Nhung Tran-Davies is leading a fight against ‘discovery math system’, a faddish new approach to teaching math that has become the basis of Alberta’s math curriculum. After discovering that the new teaching method had not only rendered her daughter Kenya unable to perform basic mathematical operations, but that she had also come to hate math as a result, Dr. Tran-Davies has taken a stand to restore common sense to Alberta’s math instruction by launching a petition to the province’s education minister, Jeff Johnson. Please take some time to read her story and to sign the petition if you too feel we need to revert to the old way of teaching math.
Article: http://goo.gl/7AIGHJ
Petition: https://www.change.org/petitions/back-to-basics-mastering-the-fundamentals-of-mathematics

We all drive a yellow Lamborghini, yellow Lamborghini, yellow Lamborghini!

LA Times: The toll of the anti-vaccination movement, in one devastating graphic.

And that’s why we’re reinforcing the root cellar with 12″ of concrete: “There are millions of kids with no assets, no plans, and no purpose, taking out enormous loans to purchase a piece of paper they’ll likely never use.”

What could possibly go wrong?

There clearly is a subset of Japanese youth who have withdrawn from dating. Instead, they focus on online porn and games like Nintendo’s Love Plus, in which players conduct a relationship with an anime girlfriend. Hundreds of thousands of young men are known as hikikomori, shut-ins who eschew human contact and spend their days playing video games and reading comics in their parents’ homes.

Related…
h/t Anthony K

An interview with Glenn Reynolds about his latest book, The New School. Both in audio and transcript.

Rait My Professer. (h/t Manny)

Separation of History and State: 5th grade student won first place after he gave a speech about the history of people using religion to justify murder, but was stripped of his title the same day by a school official.

Goes horribly right…