To the Tantrum Generation: Forget college ~ By Patrice Lewis

Patrice Lewis suggests School of Hard Knocks for real education

When I read this column, there wasn't a thing that I could disagree with. Patrice has it exactly right, and I like her thinking. The timing of this column could not have better, either, with Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders running around promising free tuition or a government pay-off of all student loans.

So to all you college cupcakes, if you really want to make yourself employable, skip the social justice warrior route and instead spend your time cultivating the intangible but valuable skills all employers seek: a strong work ethic, discipline, self-control, a dedication to your commitments, the ability to arrive on time, to perform a task without complaint and (after training) without supervision, the ability to write coherently instead of like a texting monkey, the ability to speak clearly without saying “like” or use an expletive every fourth word, and other indefinable skills that raise you head and shoulders above the crowd.

After you read this column, you will see the fallacy of the Democrats' vision of free college education. For those students that have worked hard and sacrificed to get through college, it would be the ultimate stab in the back for the nanny state to make it possible to saturate the job market with a much higher supply than there is a demand for college graduates. All that will do is lower everybody's wages when they go into the work force.

And believe me, having a college education doesn't guarantee a good paying job. But, even more compelling is that Patrice pointed out the fact that many people can get into the trades and make a great income, and a military stint can greatly increase the skills of the kids along with helping to pay for further education.

The social justice whiners just don't get it! Do they really think that ANYONE voting next November will vote for a candidate with a plan to educate even more kids with a major in whining for a living? Not a chance. Just sayin'...

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To the Tantrum Generation: Forget college

I'll admit my college days are long behind me. I was an undergrad from 1980-1984 and a graduate student from 1993-1995. What do I know of modern campus concerns? So call me an old fuddy-duddy, but it sure seems college students are becoming dumber and dumber. First there's the serious issue of studying utterly useless subjects.…

Unpaid interns are exploited? ~ By John Stossel

This keeps getting crazier and crazier. Some people think that government has to control everything. John Stossel now tells us that companies may have to start paying interns, because somebody in the Labor Dept. thinks the workers are being exploited.

What's happened to the rights of contract and free association? If student and employer come to an agreement, both expect to benefit or it wouldn't happen. The student is no indentured servant. If the employer "exploits" the student, the student can quit. The contract ought to be nobody's business but theirs.

Butt out, federal bullies. Grown-ups can take care of ourselves.

By John Stossel

Posted: May 05, 2010 ~ 1:00 am Eastern

© 2010

Do you employ unpaid student interns – college students who work in exchange for on-the-job training?

If so, President Obama's Labor Department says that you're an exploiter. The government says an internship is OK only if it meets six criteria, among them that the employer must get "no immediate advantage" from the intern's activities. In fact, the employer's work "may be impeded."

Impeded? No immediate advantage?

I'm in trouble, then. I have an intern at Fox Business News, and I'm getting immediate advantages from her work all the time. I've had interns my whole career and gotten lots of immediate advantage from them. Occasionally, I've been impeded – but the better interns did the research that made my work possible. I'd asked my TV bosses to pay for research help, but they said, "You think we're made of money?"

So I asked colleges if students wanted internships. Many did, and from then on I got much of my best help from unpaid college students.

Did I exploit them? Obama's Labor Department says it's hired 250 new investigators to catch exploiters like me. I tried to get the department to answer my questions on tomorrow's FBN show, but it declined.

So I invited Village Voice writer Anya Kamenetz, who wrote a column titled "Take This Internship and Shove It" in The New York Times.

"We have minimum-wage laws in this country for a very good reason," she replied. "We had them to avoid exploitation like child labor."

But what's wrong with a free internship if a student learns something about the career he wants to pursue?

I was a little stunned by Kamenetz's answer: "Employers could say we cannot afford to pay anybody, so why should we be forced to pay the guy who cleans the floors?"

Because they wouldn't get people to clean floors if they didn't pay. But I guess I shouldn't expect a New York writer to understand markets.

"Interns are people that come in and work for below minimum wage," she said. "They pull the bottom out of the labor market, and it's less fair for everybody."

So it should be banned?

"There are a lot of ways to fill in the need for interns and the need for college students to get experience. One way is for colleges to pay stipends."

But they won't.

"They will if the law is enforced. Another way is for companies to hire students that are eligible for federal work-study."

Oh, I see. The taxpayers should pay for my interns.

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Public schoolers: How's that indoctrination workin' out? ~ By Patrice Lewis

After reading what Patrice has to say in her column, would you really send your kids to a public school? And we can't even blame Obama for the sorry shape our public schools are in, because this started many decades ago, as you will learn here. However, I do kind of wonder if we can blame the public schools for Obama! Just sayin'...

Of course not every teacher agrees with the radical left-wing garbage pushed in schools. Most teachers enter the profession with a sincere love of children and a desire to shape their futures for the good. But their often mandatory involvement with teachers' unions and government mandates wipes away their innocent and naïve interest, leaving behind jaded, bitter and disillusioned people who once hoped to shape our children with great care.

Homeschool your kids, folks. It's the only way to save them.

By Patrice Lewis

Posted: April 24, 2010 ~ 1:00 am Eastern

© 2010

I recently did something I haven't done in decades: I re-read the Laura Ingalls Wilder series (the Little House books). The contrast between the schools of Laura's time (late 1800s) and the schools of today is staggering. Utterly incomprehensible.

To illustrate, consider some recent headlines:

• Obama czar's "homo-genda" proposed for U.S. schools; Congressional legislation called "a sexual revolutionary's dream"

• Look what they're erasing from U.S. history! American heroes could get swapped for hip-hop culture in textbooks

• Survey asks students when they lost virginity; Results in newspaper show classes counseled "why not" be sexually active

• Schools' assignment: Squelch family values; State lawmakers urge "meaningful" counseling for wrong attitudes

• Liberal intolerance alive and well in moronic teacher from Oregon; Oregon teacher panel probes educator determined to "demolish" tea party

• Bill would require sex education starting in kindergarten

• Memo to public schools: Stop pushing sex! Group demands California implement programs promoting abstinence

Can you imagine these headlines happening during Laura's time?

If you read the sobering history of public schools, it becomes painfully clear that their purpose is not (necessarily) education; it's social change. "The public schools movement began in the 1830s, led by Horace Mann," notes George L. O'Brien in "Government Schools in Crisis." "Supposedly, the goal was to ensure that every child would have access to an education. However, from the beginning there was another agenda, and that was to control what was being taught so as to create so-called model citizens. Public schools meant taking control of education from the parents and placing it in the hands of social engineers and the government."

The early successes of these social-engineering experiments were limited because most school districts were independent and under the power of a local school board (meaning parents). But then the "unified school" movement came along at the turn of the century, which destroyed the system of local control. After World War II, educational jurisdiction was transferred to state governments. Things spiraled down even faster under President Carter, who created the U.S. Department of Education.

"Once the parents lost control of the schools," laments Mr. O'Brien, "the schools quickly became laboratories for social-engineering experiments. … The central struggle, of course, is money. As long as the government schools take so much money from parents in taxes, it is hard for parents to afford to send their children to non-government schools. Attempts to change this through tax credits and vouchers have resulted in vicious counter-attacks from the NEA among others."

Since schools are the mandatory gathering place of our society's future, it's the natural laboratory for any agenda – anything at all – to be forced upon our children. Since teachers' unions are extremely left-wing, it's the left-wing propaganda that gets pushed. Anything green, anything abortionist, anything feminist, anything homosexual, anything victimized, anything revisionist – it's all there, shoved down our children's gullets.

And since the liberal education machine is obsessed with sex – and make no mistake, liberals as a whole are obsessed with sex – schools are unwilling to comprehend, much less encourage, family values. Therefore, children become corrupted.

Which is why we now have sex education in kindergarten. Can you imagine this happening during Laura's time?

It's to the point where all the "agenda-izing" has pushed out academics. Who has time for science, history, math, English, etc.? We've got graduates who can't even find the United States on a world map. No wonder we're unable to compete with Korea or Turkey on international math scores.

It also means we now have government thugs whose job it is to catch desperate parents who lie and claim their children are living in a better district (so the kids have a chance at a higher quality education) in order to force those children back to dangerous inner-city schools. "I was actually crying," said a grandmother, "and all I'm wanting to do is just to have my grandchild have a better education. … Why can't they just let parents to get in the school of their choice?"

Because, in the words of John Stossel, the government monopoly thinks it knows best.

As if this isn't bad enough, we hear from a furious mother in Wyoming – Wyoming of all places! – on the Rush Limbaugh show that her high-school son was told by his government teacher, "The old people just need to shut up and go along with what needs to be done for this country. … This country will be better off when the old people are gone."

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An attack on liberty-loving colleges ~ By Joseph Farah

I am so happy that Joseph wrote about this subject. I can guarantee you that most citizens in this once free country probably had no idea that it was included in the ObamaCare legislation, not to mention that many also would be unaware of the danger to our liberty that this will bring.

It's amazingly audacious. It's frighteningly unconstitutional. It's devastating in its effect. It's lethal not only to liberty now, but makes it nearly impossible to prepare free men and women for the world tomorrow.

In some ways, this college-loan power grab is more disturbing and blatantly illegal than even the health-care provisions that shroud it from scrutiny and analysis.

By Joseph Farah

Posted: April 03, 2010 ~ 1:00 am Eastern

© 2010

Ronald Reagan said it best.

"The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'"

I was reflecting on this quote in light of Washington's plan, as part of "health-care reform," to nationalize all college loans.

This is an aspect of the legislation that hasn't received nearly as much attention as it deserves, because it's one of those seemingly innocuous, do-gooder notions that most people just don't understand.

Why would a government deeply, hopelessly in debt seek a monopoly on college loans?

Obviously, Washington under the rulership of Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid intends to grab power any way it can. Obviously, there is a desire to increase the public's dependency on government. Obviously, such a move will result in most college graduates being in servitude to the state.

But there's even more at stake in this ploy.

There are a handful of colleges across the country that remain independent of federal control – Hillsdale College in Michigan, Grove City College in Pennsylvania and Patrick Henry College in Virginia.

These colleges do not accept federal dollars even indirectly through student financial-aid programs. If they did, they understand they would have to accept federal control over their curricula and other matters.

In other words, they have chosen to take a very principled stand to remain free, independent and to pursue academic excellence.

What will happen to those few institutions holding out against intrusions by Washington if students are forced to get loans from the federal government?

Think about it.

Not only is this a way for Washington to expand its tentacles of control over individuals, it is also a way to try to shut down or cripple those few colleges that reject federal strings.

Students seeking an independent education free from state control could have nowhere left to turn.

Right now, because those colleges are so good at equipping their students for the future, they have a disproportionately positive impact on our society and culture. They provide an alternative to the state indoctrination found at virtually every other so-called private college or university in the country – and, of course, from the "public" colleges and universities that are 100 percent state-controlled.

That salt and light could conceivably lose its savor and its illumination because of this attack on liberty by government.

It seems the government might not just be seeking a monopoly on education loans – it might be seeking a monopoly on education. And that is a scary thought.

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