U.S. News and World Report (click here) has recently become the latest US media
outlet to abandon print for the Web. According to U.S. News and World Report
president Bill Holiber (November 4, 2008), "We're accelerating this transformation
in response to our rapid growth online where our audience is now about 7 million
uniques a month and growing."
If one news magazine has seven million unique users who are learning
about current events every month, why can't the same thing be done
for tens of millions of students by making excellent textbooks and superb audio
visual content with lectures freely available online? Then tens of millions of
students of all ages would be able to pursue a first class education leading to a
free or very economical online degree or certificate.
As the recent election of a big government President and a big government
Congress shows, big government advances by relying on the public's ignorance and
by creating poorly educated voters who look to the government for handouts. This
is the achievement of decades of wasteful and expensive, politically correct,
secular liberal urban, state and federal government educational programs.
To continue, click on government's lack of authority for teaching truth and wisdom,
and on free choice in education, and on the one true foundation for education.
RESOURCES AND INFORMATION
1. LINKS TO PAGES ON THIS WEBSITE:
A. A Rush Limbaugh commercial model for privately funded Internet educational
excellence. Click here for summary about developing free, privately funded, high
quality, economical, easily accessed, online grade school, high school and college
programs which lead to a degree or certificate and which are independent of
government funding and regulation.
B. A memorandum about reinventing newspapers and magazines as online schools
and colleges with testing for degrees and certificates. Information is also given for
investing in a patent application as a substantial source of funding for "newspaper
and magazine" online schools and colleges.
C. A record of lawsuit activity in U.S. District Court in Greenville, South Carolina to
April 2009.
D. Here is a summary of online advantages of Internet educational programs along
with other links to pages on this website.
E. Reforming American education and classical thoughts about education.
F. Illustrations of possibilities for online educational convenience, access, testing,
excellence and economy: Illustration One and Illustration Two.
G. Controlling expenses for higher education which are destroying American
families: Illustrations one, two, three, four, five, and six.
H. Effects of money driven, politically motivated, spiritually empty educational
programs on American culture and on students are indicated here and here.
I. The failure of grandiose liberal government visions for education in correcting the
terrible tragedy of urban public schools.
J. A few simple distinctions between Trinitarian logic and anti Trinitarian logic. This
link is subject to regular editing for greater clarity and truth in the Holy Spirit.
2. LINKS TO EXTERNAL WEBSITES:
A. 100 free pod casts from the best universities in the world and 200 free online
classes to learn anything.
B. View lectures and course materials from (1) MIT's Open Courseware Program
one and two and three and from (2) Carnegie Mellon University's Open Learning
Initiative and from (3) the UC Berkeley YouTube website.
C. Web sites for MindingTheCampus.com and InsideHigherEd.com and the
National Association of Scholars are recommended as excellent sources of
information about higher education.
D. The Teaching Company offers an excellent selection of lectures given by superb
teachers. A free Internet high school and college would offer a similar assortment
of excellent lectures with a convenient testing program leading to degrees and
certificates. These programs would be paid for through various means such as:
charges for testing, philanthropy, online advertising, minimal charges attached to
cell phone contracts and/or sales of personal computers, etc. etc. etc.
E. Provost Academy is a network of state-of-the-art online public high schools with
programs for grades 9 to 12. According to its website, Provost Academy educates
over 350,000 children annually. Provost Academy is a public high school, so there
is no tuition. Provost Academy provides a computer, all required course materials,
and it will reimburse up to $20/month for high speed Internet.
QUESTION 1: Government spends hundreds of billions of dollars on education
every year. Online programs like this are available to 3 to 4 percent of public
school students. This country can put a cable Internet connection into any home or
apartment in this country. Why aren't programs like this more widely available?
Why should anyone be forced to participate in a lottery when there are not enough
spaces in this program for all of the students who want to participate?
QUESTION 2: There are tens of millions of public school students, including
millions of students who are trapped in failing urban educational systems all over
this country. Recently in the course of spending a trillion dollars to stimulate
everyone else, the President and the Congress decided to end a voucher program
for students in failing schools in our nation's capital. Why can't groups of students
like this --- who may not be living in a good home environment --- go to a church
during the day where they are given an opportunity to participate in FREE online
public educational programs like this one? This would be equivalent to permitting
students to engage in a reasonably decent voucher or charter school public
educational program while obtaining private religious instruction.
QUESTION 3: Why aren't state supported technical schools, colleges and
universities promoting FREE, HIGH QUALITY, ECONOMICAL programs like this
for college students? These students are adults. They are more mature. They
are better able to study on their own. They do not require a lot of hand-holding.
A properly designed, FREE, HIGH QUALITY, ECONOMICAL program would
enable college students (and anyone else) to train for new jobs and new work
opportunities in a constantly changing, competitive, and increasingly dangerous
world in which knowledge and wisdom are essential. It would also do something
about the enormous student loan debt that is being dumped on the younger
generation --- along with the federal government’s recently unprecedented
“stimulus” spending debt. These debt levels are unsustainable.
QUESTION 4: While Provost Academy is certainly more attractive than many
other public school alternatives, can government schools ever educate students to
think and learn consistently in terms of existential questions such as these: Why
am I here? Is there any purpose to life? Is there a God? What is He like? How
do I make decisions in planning my life? What is wisdom? What kind of person do
I want to become? What is original sin? What is glory, and what does it mean to
say that the glory of this world is false? What does it mean to live a lie? What is
idolatry, and why is it wrong? Are human beings just physical machines that are
governed by the rules of bioscience? How is a free and orderly society supposed
to be organized under our constitutional form of government? What are we going
to do about the emerging terror of rogue states with nuclear weapons? Etc. etc.
etc. The list of questions like this is endless.
Students can never learn the answers to existential religious questions from
government educators and bureaucrats. This is the great sin of government funded
education. First, it does a poor job of educating anyone. Second, there is no fool
like a "certified" government "expert" with his hand in the government's till and a
determination to tell the rest of us what the government wants us to think and how
to learn. Consequently, government educational programs are either anemic and
shallow and meaningless and worthless because they must avoid existential
religious questions or they end up teaching (1) government "certified" opinions
about existential religious questions and (2) government certified "no prayer rituals"
etc. in the classroom. The second alternative amounts to the establishment of a
government funded secular religion in violation of the First Amendment.
QUESTION 5:
F. A truncated version of this web site at townhall.com.
This site has been edited/updated in May 2009.
outlet to abandon print for the Web. According to U.S. News and World Report
president Bill Holiber (November 4, 2008), "We're accelerating this transformation
in response to our rapid growth online where our audience is now about 7 million
uniques a month and growing."
If one news magazine has seven million unique users who are learning
about current events every month, why can't the same thing be done
for tens of millions of students by making excellent textbooks and superb audio
visual content with lectures freely available online? Then tens of millions of
students of all ages would be able to pursue a first class education leading to a
free or very economical online degree or certificate.
As the recent election of a big government President and a big government
Congress shows, big government advances by relying on the public's ignorance and
by creating poorly educated voters who look to the government for handouts. This
is the achievement of decades of wasteful and expensive, politically correct,
secular liberal urban, state and federal government educational programs.
To continue, click on government's lack of authority for teaching truth and wisdom,
and on free choice in education, and on the one true foundation for education.
RESOURCES AND INFORMATION
1. LINKS TO PAGES ON THIS WEBSITE:
A. A Rush Limbaugh commercial model for privately funded Internet educational
excellence. Click here for summary about developing free, privately funded, high
quality, economical, easily accessed, online grade school, high school and college
programs which lead to a degree or certificate and which are independent of
government funding and regulation.
B. A memorandum about reinventing newspapers and magazines as online schools
and colleges with testing for degrees and certificates. Information is also given for
investing in a patent application as a substantial source of funding for "newspaper
and magazine" online schools and colleges.
C. A record of lawsuit activity in U.S. District Court in Greenville, South Carolina to
April 2009.
D. Here is a summary of online advantages of Internet educational programs along
with other links to pages on this website.
E. Reforming American education and classical thoughts about education.
F. Illustrations of possibilities for online educational convenience, access, testing,
excellence and economy: Illustration One and Illustration Two.
G. Controlling expenses for higher education which are destroying American
families: Illustrations one, two, three, four, five, and six.
H. Effects of money driven, politically motivated, spiritually empty educational
programs on American culture and on students are indicated here and here.
I. The failure of grandiose liberal government visions for education in correcting the
terrible tragedy of urban public schools.
J. A few simple distinctions between Trinitarian logic and anti Trinitarian logic. This
link is subject to regular editing for greater clarity and truth in the Holy Spirit.
2. LINKS TO EXTERNAL WEBSITES:
A. 100 free pod casts from the best universities in the world and 200 free online
classes to learn anything.
B. View lectures and course materials from (1) MIT's Open Courseware Program
one and two and three and from (2) Carnegie Mellon University's Open Learning
Initiative and from (3) the UC Berkeley YouTube website.
C. Web sites for MindingTheCampus.com and InsideHigherEd.com and the
National Association of Scholars are recommended as excellent sources of
information about higher education.
D. The Teaching Company offers an excellent selection of lectures given by superb
teachers. A free Internet high school and college would offer a similar assortment
of excellent lectures with a convenient testing program leading to degrees and
certificates. These programs would be paid for through various means such as:
charges for testing, philanthropy, online advertising, minimal charges attached to
cell phone contracts and/or sales of personal computers, etc. etc. etc.
E. Provost Academy is a network of state-of-the-art online public high schools with
programs for grades 9 to 12. According to its website, Provost Academy educates
over 350,000 children annually. Provost Academy is a public high school, so there
is no tuition. Provost Academy provides a computer, all required course materials,
and it will reimburse up to $20/month for high speed Internet.
QUESTION 1: Government spends hundreds of billions of dollars on education
every year. Online programs like this are available to 3 to 4 percent of public
school students. This country can put a cable Internet connection into any home or
apartment in this country. Why aren't programs like this more widely available?
Why should anyone be forced to participate in a lottery when there are not enough
spaces in this program for all of the students who want to participate?
QUESTION 2: There are tens of millions of public school students, including
millions of students who are trapped in failing urban educational systems all over
this country. Recently in the course of spending a trillion dollars to stimulate
everyone else, the President and the Congress decided to end a voucher program
for students in failing schools in our nation's capital. Why can't groups of students
like this --- who may not be living in a good home environment --- go to a church
during the day where they are given an opportunity to participate in FREE online
public educational programs like this one? This would be equivalent to permitting
students to engage in a reasonably decent voucher or charter school public
educational program while obtaining private religious instruction.
QUESTION 3: Why aren't state supported technical schools, colleges and
universities promoting FREE, HIGH QUALITY, ECONOMICAL programs like this
for college students? These students are adults. They are more mature. They
are better able to study on their own. They do not require a lot of hand-holding.
A properly designed, FREE, HIGH QUALITY, ECONOMICAL program would
enable college students (and anyone else) to train for new jobs and new work
opportunities in a constantly changing, competitive, and increasingly dangerous
world in which knowledge and wisdom are essential. It would also do something
about the enormous student loan debt that is being dumped on the younger
generation --- along with the federal government’s recently unprecedented
“stimulus” spending debt. These debt levels are unsustainable.
QUESTION 4: While Provost Academy is certainly more attractive than many
other public school alternatives, can government schools ever educate students to
think and learn consistently in terms of existential questions such as these: Why
am I here? Is there any purpose to life? Is there a God? What is He like? How
do I make decisions in planning my life? What is wisdom? What kind of person do
I want to become? What is original sin? What is glory, and what does it mean to
say that the glory of this world is false? What does it mean to live a lie? What is
idolatry, and why is it wrong? Are human beings just physical machines that are
governed by the rules of bioscience? How is a free and orderly society supposed
to be organized under our constitutional form of government? What are we going
to do about the emerging terror of rogue states with nuclear weapons? Etc. etc.
etc. The list of questions like this is endless.
Students can never learn the answers to existential religious questions from
government educators and bureaucrats. This is the great sin of government funded
education. First, it does a poor job of educating anyone. Second, there is no fool
like a "certified" government "expert" with his hand in the government's till and a
determination to tell the rest of us what the government wants us to think and how
to learn. Consequently, government educational programs are either anemic and
shallow and meaningless and worthless because they must avoid existential
religious questions or they end up teaching (1) government "certified" opinions
about existential religious questions and (2) government certified "no prayer rituals"
etc. in the classroom. The second alternative amounts to the establishment of a
government funded secular religion in violation of the First Amendment.
QUESTION 5:
F. A truncated version of this web site at townhall.com.
This site has been edited/updated in May 2009.