Culture
Clips —
September 26, 2006
Romney Rides High
Right now John McCain is the front-runner
for the 2008 GOP presidential nomination. But everyone expects
that a single major competitor will emerge to challenge him from
the right. The question hung in the air of this past weekend's
Family Research Council summit in Washington: Who will that candidate
be for the GOP's powerful social conservative base?
FRC officials says they invited Mr.
McCain to speak, but he declined. But another potential candidate
benefited greatly from showing up. Surprisingly, it was Massachusetts'
Gov. Mitt Romney, a Mormon with a Harvard M.B.A who governs the
nation's most liberal state. The 1,800 delegates applauded him
frequently during his Friday speech and gave him a standing ovation
afterward.
Mr. Romney detailed his efforts to
block court-imposed same-sex marriage in the Bay State and noted
that the liberal Legislature has failed to place a citizen-initiated
referendum on the ballot. He excoriated liberals for supporting
democracy only when they think that the outcome is a foregone
conclusion that favors their views. He certainly picked up fans
at the summit.
"I believe Mitt Romney may be
the only hope social conservatives have in 2008," says Maggie
Gallagher, author of a book defending traditional marriage.
The tall barrier many see as blocking
his acceptance by evangelical voters — the fact that many Americans
view Mormonism with suspicion or worse — may prove to be a mirage.
"Everyone I talked to said they didn't have a problem with
it," one attendee told me. "If enough people say that
to each other, Romney creates a virtuous circle in which evangelical
activists decide he's acceptable."
Ralph Reed, the former head of the
Christian Coalition, notes that something similar has happened
in recent years as devout Catholic and evangelical Protestants
have increasingly focused on areas of agreement. "Romney
won't be the ideal choice for evangelicals, but against a McCain
in the primary or a Hillary Clinton in the general election there's
no doubt where most would go," he says.
John Fund
Opinion Journal
http://www.opinionjournal.com/diary/?id=110008991
--
Parents Know the Right Equation
for Teaching Math
It took parents 17 years to overturn
the tragic 1989 curriculum mistake made by so-called education
experts who demanded that schools abandon traditional mathematics
in favor of unproven approaches. The National Council of Teachers
of Mathematics finally reversed course on Sept. 12 and admitted
that elementary schools really should teach arithmetic, after
all.
The new report called "Curriculum
Focal Points for Pre-kindergarten Through Grade 8 Mathematics"
is a back-to-basics victory that rejects the type of math curricula
that parents had derided as "fuzzy math" or "rain
forest math." Experts preferred such hoity-toity titles as
"New New Math," "Connected Math," "Chicago
Math," "Core-Plus Math," "Whole Math,"
"Interactive Math" or "Integrated Math."
Whatever the title, these curricula
imbedded the notion that estimates are acceptable in lieu of accurate
answers to math problems so long as students feel good about what
they are doing and can think up a reason for doing it. Fuzzy curricula
were big on discussion, coloring, playing games, and early use
of calculators.
The 1989 report, which gives the
word "standards" a bad name, flatly opposed drilling
students in basic math facts, taught that memorization of math
facts was bad, and failed to systematically build from one math
concept to another. Children were encouraged to "discover"
math on their own, construct their own math language, and flounder
with their own approaches to solving problems. This silliness
is based on the false notion that children can develop a deeper
understanding of mathematics when they invent their own methods
for performing basic calculations…
Before the 1989 mistake, U.S. students
ranked No. 1 in international mathematics tests. Since then, U.S.
students have dropped to 15th, far behind the consistently high
performance of Singapore and Japan and behind most industrialized
countries.
Added to the humiliation of international
tests is the appalling percentage of college students who must
take remedial math before they can enroll in college courses.
That means the taxpayers have been paying twice to teach students
the same material.
Phyllis Schlafly
Townhall
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/column.aspx?
UrlTitle=parents_know_the_right_equation_for_teaching_math&ns=
PhyllisSchlafly&dt=09/25/2006&page=1
--
This Week’s Revelations
This past week has told us more than
we wanted to know about ourselves and about our enemies.
There was far more controversy over
remarks made by the Pope than over the violence unleashed by Muslims
against people who had nothing to do with what the Pope said.
That our enemies do not understand
the significance of free speech in a free society, where things
that offend us can be denounced without indiscriminate violence,
is bad enough. But that we ourselves seem headed further down
the slippery slope of self-censorship is chilling.
Tolerance has been one of the virtues
of western civilization. But virtues can be carried to extremes
that turn them into vices. Toleration of intolerance is a particularly
dangerous vice to which western nations are succumbing, both within
their own countries and internationally.
Thomas Sowell
Townhall
http://www.townhall.com/Columnists/ThomasSowell
/2006/09/26/the_weeks_revelations
--
Book Reviews that Parents Can Use
“Mom, all my friends are going to
see a movie tonight. Can I go, too?”
How many millions of parents over
the years have been asked this question? It’s all too easy to
simply focus on who is going and forget that we need to
look at what they’re going to before we arrange the transportation
(i.e., whether you’re taking or picking up). Thankfully, for several
years we’ve had great Web sites like Focus on the Family’s “Plugged
In” to provide guidance on content. As a mom of three teens,
I can tell you that no one sees a movie in our home without my
first visiting Plugged In.
Wouldn’t it be great if there were
a Web site that could provide content reviews of books? Well,
I have some good news: Thanks to the Alabama Policy Institute’s
“Facts on Fiction” Web
site, now there is.
Some parents may question the need
for such a service. After all, we’re talking about books,
often ones recommended by teachers. Besides, we’re always trying
to keep kids from spending too much time with electronic entertainment,
and we don’t want to discourage a wholesome activity such as reading,
do we?
As I’ve
written before, though, some of the books that have found
their way into the “teen” section of your local bookstore and
onto school-sponsored “recommended reading” lists are questionable
at best — and downright immoral at worst. Consider this case,
courtesy of Sharon Evans, program director of the Alabama Policy
Institute:
Susan Gamble, founder
and president of Magic City Webs, could not keep up with her third
grader’s voracious appetite for books. She was thrilled that her
eight-year-old loved to read. However, when he came to her with
a question about a curse word in his book, she was curious. Upon
perusal, Susan found the book peppered with expletives. There
also was an instance of a man fondling a woman's breasts, children
looking at pornographic magazines and references of gore and child
abuse.
Visit the new Facts
on Fiction, and you’ll find a list of more than 125 books
(with many more on the way), complete with the kind of specific
information busy parents need to make informed decisions about
whether a particular book is right for their child.
Rebecca Hagelin
Townhall
http://www.townhall.com/Columnists/RebeccaHagelin
/2006/09/22/book_reviews_that_parents_can_use
--
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