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Bad news, good news about education

As I turned off the vacuum cleaner and was wrapping the cord, I heard Edward Crane of Cato Institute say (on Book TV, 50th anniversary of Atlas Shrugged) that his 16 year old daughter's Spanish teacher had required the language class to watch Al Gore's "award winning" documentary. The audience twittered, because this movie and the education system's propaganda has become a big joke before the speaker can even get to the punch line. Then he opined (paraphrased, since I didn't have a pencil with me), "The bad news is they're teaching this; the good news is the kids aren't learning anything."

Earlier John Fund (WSJ) told about his role as a pinata at the Aspen Institute Ideas Festival . You almost knew before he described some of the speakers what was going to come--he said something about walking through the deepest thought at the festival and not getting his ankles wet (again, a paraphrase). Apparently while they consumed water from 7,000+ plastic bottles they were hearing that even if we could roll back emissions to the Robert Fulton era (steamboat), it wouldn't be enough. However, I looked through the list of speakers, and some of the program looked pretty interesting. The kids programming looked like 1970s reruns. If it didn't work for their parents, maybe it will work for them. Check out the link. Your experience in Aspen may be different.

I think I read Atlas Shrugged in 1963--all 1100+ pages. It was very interesting and challenging, better than most books by atheists.