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Makes me long for the days of Ronaldus Magnus, when this really was part of the Republican platform.
Hat tip to Neal Boortz, via Jack Lewis for the following bit of comedy from the BBC Comedy series, Yes, Prime Minister. The series ran from 1986 to 1988, and was reportedly, the favorite TV show of Margaret Thatcher.
– Rob Shearer, Director
Schaeffer Study Center
I received this in an email today. It’s a transcript of part of today’s broadcast from the Homeschool Legal Defense’s daily radio program.
Homeschool Heartbeat, Volume 84, Program 6
8/11/2008, Click here to Listen Online.
Do parents have a right to know when their children’s classrooms turn into headquarters for the homosexual agenda? Dr. David Parker thought so, but his five-year-old’s school said otherwise. Hear his alarming story on Home School Heartbeat with Mike Farris.
Mike Farris:
I’m joined today by Dr. David Parker, who’s here to tell us about one of the most flagrant parental rights’ infringement stories of our time. Can you tell our listeners just a little bit about how your case began?
Dr. Parker:
Our first son, Jacob Parker, was entering kindergarten, and within a few months, in Lexington, Massachusetts, they gave my son a diversity book bag—he was five years old at the time—and my son brought it home and it contained the book Who’s In a Family, by Robert Skutch, and this introduces young children to the homosexual relationship.
We did the first thing really any parents would do: we went into the school and asked a lot of questions. Basically, we found out that their intention is to normalize homosexuality and gay marriage in the minds of very young children, and my wife and I asked for parental notification.
In other words, before a teacher, an authority figure, discusses this with our young child, we’d like the option to know first, know what they’re going to say, and opt our child out.
Astoundingly, they said no. In fact, even in a conversation with the former school committee chairman, he said to me, “We’re not going to give parental notification; we’re going to put it all throughout the curriculum. We can’t trust parents with these issues.”
Did you catch that, parents?
“Their intention is to normalize homosexuality and gay marriage in the minds of very young children.”
“We’re not going to give parental notification; we’re going to put it all throughout the curriculum. We can’t trust parents with these issues.”
Here’s a description of the book from its entry at Amazon:
Beginning with a traditional nuclear family and ending with blank spaces in which the child reader is instructed to “draw a picture of your family,” this slight book catalogues multicultural contemporary family units, including those with single parents, lesbian and gay parents, mixed-race couples, grandparents and divorced parents.
The barbarians are no longer at the gates. They have taken over and are running things.
– Rob Shearer (aka RedHatRob)
It is with great pride that Greenleaf Press announces the publication of the Greenleaf Guide to Medieval Literature ($19.95) by Cyndy Shearer
For over ten years, Cyndy has been teaching high school literature classes in home school tutorial settings. For the past five years, she has been teaching all four years of western literature at the Schaeffer Study Center, in Mt. Juliet. We are very pleased to be able to publish the second volume in her four year syllabus. The Greenleaf Guide to Medieval Literature joins the already published Greenleaf Guide to Ancient Literature
($18.95). The Greenleaf Guides for years three & four (Early Modern Lit and Modern Lit) are under development – meaning Cyndy is already teaching them and refining the material.
Like the Greenleaf Guide to Ancient Literature, the Greenleaf Guide to Medieval Literature takes an inductive approach to the study of selected outstanding literary compositions. Rather than studying short excerpts from dozens of possible works, Cyndy has selected a representative set of selections for close study. Students are led by a series of questions that help them to read and understand the text, and then to reflect on the larger questions being dealt with and the authors’ worldviews. A high school student who completes these two literary studies will have a superior background and preparation for the study of modern literature – either in high school or college.
Beginning with Bede and Anglo-Saxon poetry, the Guide (with wry observations by Cyndy) takes students through Beowulf, Gawain, Chaucer, & Hamlet. A worldview bonus is the conclusion of the course with a study of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead – Tom Stoppard’s raucous verbal pyrotechnics on the themes of fate and death which uses two of the minor characters from Hamlet who get caught up in Shakespeare’s play and then try to puzzle out what the intrigues of Denmark mean when all the Shakespearean characters have left the stage.
The text is designed for an instructor (parent, teacher, or tutor) and student who are reading the text together. Some students may be able to complete this study on their own, but the best experiences will be the discussion of themes and issues with another reader. You don’t have to be an expert in medieval lit in order to teach this course – you just have to be willing to do the reading along with your student(s).
Cyndy is eminently well qualified to teach and write on these themes. She is a summa cum laude graduate of Queens College (she graduated in three years and wrote an undergraduate honors thesis on the poetry of T.S.Eliot). She has an MA in English from the University of Virginia, with an emphasis in contemporary American and European poetry. At U.Va. she participated in the graduate poetry writing workshop led by the gifted poet, Gregory Orr. Cyndy has been homeschooling the Shearer children since 1985, having graduated five from high school – and with six more still at home. She co-founded the Francis Schaeffer Study Center in Mt. Juliet with her husband Rob in 2003.
Along with the Greenleaf Guide to Medieval Literature, Greenleaf Press is pleased to make available a complete study package which includes the Guide and all six of the texts selected by Cyndy for her course on Medieval Literature. The texts include:
The Ecclesiastical History of the English People, by the Venerable Bede
Beowulf, trans. Rebsamen
Gawain, trans. Tolkien
Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer
Hamlet, by William Shakespeare
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, by Tom Stoppard
The Greenleaf Guide to Medieval Literature, by Cyndy Shearer
The Medieval Lit Study Package is available for $70.91 (regular retail – $78.70)
Also available from Greenleaf Press is the Ancient Lit Study Package which contains:
The Greenleaf Guide to Ancient Literature ($18.95)
The Epic of Gilgamesh (Sandars translation)
The Odyssey (Robert Fitzgerald translation)
The Oedipus Cycle (Robert Fitzgerald translation)
Antigone by Anouilh (Barbara Bray translation)
The Ancient Lit Study Package
is available for $61.08 (regular retail – $67.85)
Both the Greenleaf Guide to Ancient Literature and the Greenleaf Guide to Medieval Literature are also available as downloadable eBooks, making it easy for a parent/teacher/tutor to provide the text to their student, while using the eBook to follow along on their computer.
Needless to say, I highly recommend these high school literature courses for homeschoolers, classical schools, and any high school program that wants a thoughtful rich study of the history of Western Literature.
- Rob Shearer
Director, Schaeffer Study Center
Publisher, Greenleaf Press
“Political correctness, at its heart, is the effort to dissolve the foundation on which American and European culture has been built. It has been a demolition project: undermine Western civilization in whatever way possible, and build a brave new world from the rubble.”
“Multiculturalism has nothing to do with genuine love for natives of the Australian outback or the monks of Tibet. It is an effort to crowd out our own cultural traditions. Radical secularization – in the name of “separation of church and state” – aims to burn our religious roots. Public education, purveying convenient untruths about our past – the Middle Ages were miserable, the ancients were simpletons, the church is oppressive – has sought to rob us of our heritage. Misrepresentations of the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the last two hundred years serve to create an illusion of unvarying progress made possible by abandoning the old ways. And that is the central myth that justifies the continued discarding of our religious, intellectual, and moral traditions.”
“Once our culture is untethered from Athens, Rome, and Jerusalem – once we’ve forgotten about or dismissed Moses, Plato, and Jesus – then the PC platoons in academia, government, and the media hope to steer the ship of culture to new shores.”
“Because political correctness is a project of destruction, the message has not always been consistent. Either Shakespeare was a subversive, closeted homosexual, or he was an ignorant chauvinist. Either Jesus was a non-judgmental hippie, or he was a preacher of hate. But this much has been consistent: anything that reeks of the West is therefore politically incorrect and must be denigrated or condemned.”
“For those of us who love the West, it’s a daunting battle. The other side has the mainstream media, the Ivy League, the political classes, and a lot more money. Thankfully, on our side, we’ve got thousands of years of history and some pretty big guns – with names like Aristotle, Augustine, Burke, and Eliot.”
“The bad ideas touted today as revolutionary and enlightened are hardly new; the West’s great minds have battled relativism, atheism, materialism, and State-worship for millennia. The great ideas can hold their own against anything today’s most renowned Women’s Studies professor can devise.”
- Anthony Esolen, Professor of English at Providence College
from the Preface to The Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization
I really can’t sum it up any better than Prof. Esolen. If you know a college student taking Western Civ, you should buy them this book. If you plan to teach your own children Western Civ, you should buy yourself this book. Paperback, 340 pages, available directly from Greenleaf Press for $19.95.
- Rob Shearer
Publisher, Greenleaf Press
Director, Schaeffer Study Center
The New Greenleaf Press catalog is done! Yeah!
This is NOT a full catalog, listing ALL of the products we sell. We continue to add products (now over 1400!) and update the online store every week and a full printed catalog would be out of date before it could even be printed. This is, instead a summary of the history study packages, “Famous Men” books, Reformation biographies, and English for the Thoughtful Child, volumes 1 & 2 – and a few selected titles for each time period. ALL of our titles are available and in-stock.
You can download the .pdf by clicking here or on the cover image above. And you can always order online or look up complete reviews on any product we carry at the Greenleaf online store.
Hard-copy should be in the mail next week.
– Rob Shearer
This is a tale of 54,041 high school diplomas. That’s the number of public high school diplomas awarded in Tennessee last year (2006-2007). There are 324 public high schools in Tennessee. The public high schools are operated by 119 public school systems. There are 137 public school systems in Tennessee, but only 119 of them operate high schools.
I got curious this week about tracking down median ACT scores for Public vs. Private vs. Homeschool high school graduates. It turns out, even in the age of public data on the internet that this is not an easy question to answer. If the data to answer this question already exists somewhere on the internet, it’s extraordinarily well hidden. I spent several days searching for it… and I’m pretty handy with google. I did discover a blog in Kentucky which contained interesting articles commenting on the meaning of median ACT scores released for that state. Kentucky’s scores, released by ACT, Inc. of Iowa, give the median for ALL high school seniors, public, private, and homeschool. From the ACT data alone, you cannot tell how the public schools are performing, because ACT will not disagregate the data. Tennessee ACT scores are released in the same format as Kentucky.
But, it turns out, in Tennessee at least, there is a way to calculate median ACT score for the public schools. And if we know the number of public school students who took the ACT, and their median score, then we can calculate the median score for the remaining non-public school students.
In 2007, the median ACT for all students in Tennessee taking the test was 20.7. This is slightly below ( a half a point) the national ACT median score of 21.2. A half a point difference between two individual scores is probably not terribly significant. There are too many variables that can’t be controlled between two individual scores to ever be able to know why one student scored a half a point higher than another. BUT, comparing the median scores of two significantly sized groups IS meaningful… because all the individual variations offset and cancel each other out. 48,113 students took the ACT in Tennessee in 2007. 1,300,599 students took it nationwide. Comparing the averages for those two very large populations does tell us, with a pretty high degree of confidence, that Tennessee students did not perform quite as well as the national average.
But those 48,113 Tennessee students include public school, high school, and homeschool students. I have an inquiry in to ACT, Inc. asking them for the disaggregated data for those three groups, but they haven’t responded to me. The data would be very helpful in discussing some pretty pressing public policy questions about education. I don’t think it’s an accident that ACT doesn’t make the data readily available. I have the feeling that the data are not very flattering to public school administrators. And I suspect that’s why ACT hasn’t made them available.
But in Tennessee, there is another source of data about public school ACT scores – the Tennessee Department of Education itself. The Department has an online database that reports the number of students who took the ACT and the median composite score by school system. Actually, the online database has a great deal more information than that, but the median composite ACT scores are what I was interested in.
I don’t know whether it’s intentional or not, but the Tennessee DOE does not report the statewide median ACT score, nor does it make it easy to calculate, but all the pieces are there, on their website – they just have to be assembled.
So, I spent about four or five hours today, using the free wifi at University Pizza & Deli in Chattanooga, to pull up and copy off the median composite ACT scores for all 119 public high school systems in Tennessee. 35,725 public school students (out of 54,041 who graduate) too the ACT in 2007 – about 66.1% of the graduates. The median composite ACT score for all of them was 20.30. Since there were a total of 48,113 students who took the ACT in Tennessee, we can subtract out the public school students and the remaining 12,388 students were non-public school (private schools and home schools). And since we know the median composite ACT score for ALL students in Tennessee was 20.7 and the median for the PUBLIC school students was 20.30, we can calculate what the median composite score for the non-public schools was: that median composite ACT score in 2007 was 21.85.
So, we can now end the speculation and report with confidence that in 2007, in Tennessee, ALL students averaged a 20.7 composite ACT score, PUBLIC SCHOOL students averaged a 20.30 composite ACT score, and PRIVATE SCHOOL students averaged 21.85 composite ACT score. In other words, in 2007 private schools and home schools averaged 1.15 points higher on the ACT than the public schools. But of course, it’s the private school diplomas that the Department of Education thinks are suspect.
Since I had to compile the data for all 119 systems in a spreadsheet, I’ll post all of the data here – so that others can check my calculations, and so that the data will be available to everyone interested.
There are a number of other interesting observations about the public high schools that can be made from the data.
For example, here are the 10 public school systems in Tennessee with the HIGHEST median composite ACT scores:
| TENNESSEE | REGULAR | % TAKING | 2007 ACT Composite | ||
| SCHOOL SYSTEM | DIPLOMAS | ACT | n | median | |
| 1 | Maryville City | 321 | 76.9% | 247 | 23.67 |
| 2 | Oak Ridge City | 321 | 68.8% | 221 | 23.53 |
| 3 | Kingsport City | 400 | 82.8% | 331 | 22.74 |
| 4 | Greenville City | 209 | 66.5% | 139 | 22.68 |
| 5 | Williamson Co. | 1,966 | 80.6% | 1,584 | 22.54 |
| 6 | Tullahoma City | 239 | 77.4% | 185 | 22.35 |
| 7 | Johnson City | 398 | 73.1% | 291 | 22.34 |
| 8 | Pickett Co. | 46 | 58.7% | 27 | 22.11 |
| 9 | Alcoa City | 107 | 74.8% | 80 | 22.01 |
| 10 | Knox Co. | 3,257 | 66.6% | 2,168 | 21.97 |
And here are the 10 public school systems with the LOWEST median composite ACT scores:
| TENNESSEE | REGULAR | % TAKING | 2007 ACT Composite | ||
| SCHOOL SYSTEM | DIPLOMAS | ACT | n | median | |
| 1 | Fayette Co. | 187 | 65.2% | 122 | 15.80 |
| 2 | Memphis City | 5,741 | 67.9% | 3,898 | 17.56 |
| 3 | Hancock Co. | 62 | 38.7% | 24 | 17.96 |
| 4 | Haywood Co. | 170 | 71.2% | 121 | 17.98 |
| 5 | Lake Co. | 51 | 70.6% | 36 | 18.11 |
| 6 | Grainger Co. | 241 | 53.1% | 128 | 18.41 |
| 7 | W. Carroll | 79 | 54.4% | 43 | 18.47 |
| 8 | Campbell Co. | 299 | 58.2% | 174 | 18.63 |
| 9 | Union Co. | 196 | 53.1% | 104 | 18.63 |
| 10 | Hardeman Co. | 234 | 56.0% | 131 | 18.66 |
Here are the Here are the 10 public school systems in Tennessee with the HIGHEST percentage of graduating seniors who take the ACT:
| TENNESSEE | REGULAR | % TAKING | 2007 ACT Composite | ||
| SCHOOL SYSTEM | DIPLOMAS | ACT | n | median | |
| 1 | McMinn Co. | 292 | 92.5% | 270 | 20.33 |
| 2 | Union City | 77 | 88.3% | 68 | 19.93 |
| 3 | Kingsport City | 400 | 82.8% | 331 | 22.74 |
| 4 | Williamson Co. | 1,966 | 80.6% | 1,584 | 22.54 |
| 5 | Bradford City | 41 | 80.5% | 33 | 19.18 |
| 6 | Oneida City | 83 | 79.5% | 66 | 20.58 |
| 7 | Shelby Co. | 2,561 | 78.5% | 2,010 | 21.72 |
| 8 | Madison Co. | 679 | 78.2% | 531 | 19.27 |
| 9 | Tullahoma City | 239 | 77.4% | 185 | 22.35 |
| 10 | Huntingdon City | 70 | 77.1% | 54 | 20.20 |
And here are the Here are the 10 public school systems in Tennessee with the LOWEST percentage of graduating seniors who take the ACT:
| TENNESSEE | REGULAR | % TAKING | 2007 ACT Composite | ||
| SCHOOL SYSTEM | DIPLOMAS | ACT | n | median | |
| 1 | Hancock Co. | 62 | 38.7% | 24 | 17.96 |
| 2 | Fentress Co. | 60 | 41.7% | 25 | 19.92 |
| 3 | Sequatchie Co. | 116 | 44.8% | 52 | 19.71 |
| 4 | Greene Co. | 488 | 45.7% | 223 | 20.06 |
| 5 | Trousdale Co. | 91 | 47.3% | 43 | 19.12 |
| 6 | Johnson Co. | 156 | 47.4% | 74 | 19.81 |
| 7 | Meigs Co. | 94 | 48.9% | 46 | 20.37 |
| 8 | Washington Co. | 656 | 50.8% | 333 | 20.68 |
| 9 | Bledsoe Co. | 102 | 51.0% | 52 | 20.73 |
| 10 | Jefferson Co. | 449 | 52.1% | 234 | 20.52 |
Here are the 10 public school systems in Tennessee with the LARGEST number of graduating seniors who take the ACT:
| TENNESSEE | REGULAR | % TAKING | 2007 ACT Composite | ||
| SCHOOL SYSTEM | DIPLOMAS | ACT | n | median | |
| 1 | Memphis City | 5,741 | 67.9% | 3,898 | 17.56 |
| 2 | Davidson Co. | 3,601 | 64.1% | 2,307 | 19.11 |
| 3 | Knox Co. | 3,257 | 66.6% | 2,168 | 21.97 |
| 4 | Shelby Co. | 2,561 | 78.5% | 2,010 | 21.72 |
| 5 | Rutherford Co. | 2,328 | 66.1% | 1,539 | 20.91 |
| 6 | Hamilton Co. | 2,322 | 68.0% | 1,580 | 19.60 |
| 7 | Williamson Co. | 1,966 | 80.6% | 1,584 | 22.54 |
| 8 | Sumner Co. | 1,691 | 62.9% | 1,063 | 20.81 |
| 9 | Montgomery Co. | 1,644 | 59.9% | 984 | 21.23 |
| 10 | Wilson Co. | 1,040 | 67.9% | 706 | 20.70 |
And here are the 10 public school systems in Tennessee with the SMALLEST number of graduating seniors who take the ACT:
| TENNESSEE | REGULAR | % TAKING | 2007 ACT Composite | ||
| SCHOOL SYSTEM | DIPLOMAS | ACT | n | median | |
| 1 | S. Carroll | 31 | 58.1% | 18 | 20.28 |
| 2 | Van Buren Co. | 37 | 62.2% | 23 | 18.83 |
| 3 | Richard City | 37 | 70.3% | 26 | 20.15 |
| 4 | Bradford City | 41 | 80.5% | 33 | 19.18 |
| 5 | Pickett Co. | 46 | 58.7% | 27 | 22.11 |
| 6 | Hollow Rock-Bruceton City | 47 | 57.4% | 27 | 20.22 |
| 7 | Lake Co. | 51 | 70.6% | 36 | 18.11 |
| 8 | Fentress Co. | 60 | 41.7% | 25 | 19.92 |
| 9 | Hancock Co. | 62 | 38.7% | 24 | 17.96 |
| 10 | Huntingdon City | 70 | 77.1% | 54 | 20.20 |
The only significant sized sample of homeschoolers with ACT scores that I could find were 1997, 1998, and 2004 data released by ACT (cited on the HSLDA website). ACT reported that in 1997, 1,926 homeschoolers had a median composite ACT score of 22.5. ACT reported that in 1998, 2,610 homeschoolers had a median composite ACT score of 22.8. ACT reported that in 2004, 7,858 homeschoolers had a median composite ACT score of 22.6. These data are remarkably consistent over time AND they are significantly ABOVE the national averages. But remember, according the the Tennessee Department of Education, it is the homeschooler’s diplomas that are suspect.
Now, don’t you feel like you know the public school system in Tennessee much better?
Feel free to discuss amongst yourselves. Comments encouraged and solicited. Once again: here is the data. Or should that be, “here ARE the data…”
– Rob Shearer
Director, Schaeffer Study Center
Contending with the Culture 