“Education” on The Daily Caller

A Manhattan public elementary school will begin requiring students to take a mandatory Arabic class for 45 minutes twice a week, putting it on the same level as science and music courses, the New York Post reports. (more)

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill recently had to discipline a professor after The Charlotte Observer reported that the professor didn’t teach a summer school course he was paid $12,000 to teach. The 19 students who enrolled in the course were to learn about North Carolina’s legacy of racism and slavery. According to The Observer: (more)

“Sharia law requires Muslim leaders to extend religious tolerance to Christians and Jews.” (more)

When I was twelve, my mom took me out of public school and homeschooled me. I chose my own reading list and learned all I could about politics, law, and history. Eventually my mom didn’t have to call meetings at the kitchen table to check on my progress. I wanted to learn — and I wanted to arrive at my own conclusions. (more)

WASHINGTON — Emmy Award-winning actor LeVar Burton, who met with Secretary of Education Arne Duncan in Washington to discuss education technology, told The Daily Caller that the U.S. “can’t afford to sacrifice another generation” to “bureaucratic politics.” (more)

Watch President Obama rail about the rich and brandish his Buffett Rule and it’s hard not to see class warfare. Look at the spending the president proclaims is most important, however — especially on education — and you might conclude that he isn’t prosecuting a class war. He’s just giving up on reality. (more)

Yet another new survey shows that Republican supporters know more about politics and political history than Democrats. (more)

Over the last several decades, Americans have been forced to endure a litany of politically correct terms and phrases to avoid offending others. Back in the ’90s, the Atlanta Braves and Washington Redskins were targeted by Native American groups because their names were deemed to be “offensive.” (more)

Like most Americans, I love a good, juicy hamburger and am pretty thankful for the people who raise the beef, make it into an edible product and cook it for me. (more)

New Jersey Republican Gov. Chris Christie vowed Wednesday to fight for education reform in his state, even if it means sacrificing his political career. (more)

Our nation has a problem: Students are graduating with huge amounts of debt and bleak job prospects. With the average loan size at $12,800, college graduates collectively now shoulder over a trillion dollars in debt. With 60 percent of recent college graduates unable to find full-time jobs in their chosen professions, many have little hope of paying off these loans. (more)

An Atlanta Journal-Constitution investigation released Sunday found that nearly 200 school districts across the country had suspicious test scores, indicating that widespread cheating may be occurring across the country. (more)

Much of the bad rap that religion gets nowadays can be traced to a single source. From a contemporary perspective, many faiths seem to consider the physical body more as part of the problem than as part of the solution. Jokes about Muslim clothes, Christian chastity belts and holes in Jewish sheets speak to a basic concern that the body itself — not just its appetites or desires — is viewed by religion almost as an enemy. Some Christians, aware of the difficulty, have tried to combat it with something approaching a threesome-with-Jesus campaign. One’s abstinent years are presented as the divine cover charge for a lifetime of awesome God-approved sex with one’s husband or wife. (more)

College administrators may be witnessing the end of an era. The blissful days when they could expel a student and force him to undergo ongoing mental health evaluations for posting a collage about a parking garage on Facebook are rapidly slipping into the past. While the heady rush of spending taxpayer dollars on new departments with armies of underlings may soften the blow, can this really outweigh the bitter realization that one can no longer freely violate a student’s constitutional rights? (more)

A year ago this week, more than a dozen students sat in Speaker John Boehner’s viewing box to watch President Obama’s third State of the Union address. (more)

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s State of the State address was a breath of fresh air for New Jersey residents, who have grown tired of hearing that the only acceptable reform in public education is to further balloon schools’ administrative staffs. Why else would the U.S. Census Bureau report that Camden, Jersey City, Newark and Trenton all spend over $20,000 per student per year on public education? That’s over $400,000 of spending for every classroom of 20 kids, folks. Take out the teacher’s salary and benefits, as well as a healthy overhead percentage for management to run the school, and you’ve still got to wonder where another couple hundred grand is going. Then multiply that pecuniary disappearing act by every single classroom in school after school, and it gives you a sense of the situation. When I tell people the town of Newark, New Jersey alone had a $940 million budget last year, many think it’s a joke. In fact, the joke’s on us. (more)

Animal House — also known as Dartmouth College — is making national news again, this time for a controversial op-ed written by a current student, senior Andrew Lohse, on the experience of being hazed in his fraternity. The op-ed brings up some important questions about being a young person today. (more)

During tonight’s State of the Union address, President Obama will once again talk about his plans for higher education. And once again, those plans won’t be appropriately scrutinized. (more)

On Friday the Supreme Court ruled that Indiana’s school voucher program, which is the largest school voucher program in the country, is constitutional. America’s presidential candidates should waste no time realizing the significance of this, not only as an educational issue, but also as an economic one. (more)

Moments ago at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, Apple’s VP of marketing Phil Schiller announced what has been rumored for weeks — Apple is setting its sights on the textbook industry. (more)