Essay
In the May edition of Crisis Magazine, editor Brian Saint-Paul, offers this poignant reflection on the life of the late Pope John Paul II: In the end, it was a beautiful death. Surrounded by those who knew and loved him, within earshot of the cheering thousands who came to be near his broken body, John…
To keep pounding the Education drum, a reader (“CL”) commmented on one of my posts from November of last year on how East Greenwich students rallied at a school committee meeting to agitate for a contract and were cheered on by teachers and parents. Within the context of the piece, I mentioned the now-familiar “work-to-rule”…
Nothing is sweeter in a debate than when your opponent makes outlandish statements and hands you an overwhelming rhetorical victory. This just happened in the East Greenwich teachers’ union contract dispute when NEA union officials made public comments that showed how they live in a delusional world, completely disconnected from any form of reality. Recent…
Part of what makes a danger of modern approaches to addressing public policies that bear on “progress” is that we tend to view them on an individual basis, and when we do realize that they are tangential to each other, we hesitate to follow the implications but so deeply. (Sometimes the hesitance results from the…
One of our local newspapers, The North East Independent, weighed in this week with these editorial comments on the East Greenwich teachers’ union contract dispute: East Greenwich teachers union officials apparently won’t budge on a request for a tiered system for health care co-pays, reasoning that teachers on low steps will not be able to…
We live in a global economy. Our children are going to be competing with the best students not from Central Falls or even Barrington when they grow up. Rather, they will be competing with students from countries like China, Taiwan, Singapore, India, etc. Not to mention students from the best prep schools in America as…
This report is simply over-the-top and contributes to the ongoing destruction of civil society in America: Hollywood once again jumps into bitter DC politics when an episode of NBC’s Law & Order: Criminal Intent suggests a judge killer would wear a ‘Tom DeLay’ T-Shirt! The House Majority Leader plans a letter of protest later this…
Here’s what Hugh Hewitt says about our RINO senator, Lincoln Chafee, in today’s Daily Standard: “Stephen Laffey, the mayor of Cranston, Rhode Island, is being urged to take on Senator Lincoln Chaffee in the 2006 primary so that GOP voters don’t have to vote for a Democrat in November 2006. (Chaffee voted against the war,…
The debate over the fiscal and philosophical aspects of education policy often intertwine, but the current goings-on in Warwick have much more to do with money than education philosophy. The Warwick School Committee and Mayor Scott Avedesian are on opposite sides with regards to the education portion of the FY 2006 Warwick City budget. In…
A previous posting reported the upcoming leadership change – and why – at the Textron Chamber of Commerce Academy, a charter school. Here is a related letter to the editor: …Rick Landau has announced that he will step down as chief executive officer of Textron Chamber of Commerce Academy, in Providence. All because the teachers’-union…