For three years in these columns, I have implored teachers to recognize what excellent jobs they have and to cease complaining. Well, here is an issue I believe teachers can rightfully remonstrate about.

Arguments were heard today in a federal district court case to determine whether a state university system can dictate that private Christian schools in the state teach their college prep courses from exclusively secular, Bible- and God-free textbooks.

Ask any homeschooling parent why they homeschool, and you’re likely to receive as many different replies as there are families. Some of the common reasons include religious freedom, academic improvement, one-on-one tutoring and increased family closeness.

I met Paul T. Yarbrough through my daughter, Diana, and her husband. My son-in-law, Lieutenant Colonel Craig Pascoe, was stationed at the Air Force base near Albuquerque, and in due course he and Diana became acquainted with the Yarbrough family. They found they had much in common, including their religion and politics. Yarbrough, an attorney in New Mexico, eventually became a supporter of the mission of Free Congress Research and Education Foundation (FCF). Over the years we engaged in a lively e-mail exchange.

A school is punishing two admired high school social studies teachers, one described as conservative, for promoting a “locker room” and “boys club” environment in their classrooms, but students are firing back and demanding the school board reconsider its disciplinary action.

A federal court has declared a Florida law banning representatives of the Gideons from handing out Bibles within 500 feet of any school in the state unconstitutional because it is vague and actually “encourages arbitrary enforcement.”

We have been looking at variations in the four year graduation rate of well over 500 schools, trying to explain variations between them. Why do some schools graduate 80 percent of their students or more in four years --while others graduate just 30 percent? As in many other things, conventional wisdom is often just plain wrong.

The obsession of many high school students and their parents about getting into a prestige college or university is part of the social scene of our time. So is the experience of parents going deep into hock to finance sending a son or daughter off to Ivy U. or the flagship campus of the state university system.

College Plus!, an online program that allows students to complete a regionally accredited bachelor’s degree in as few as two years, is providing an alternative to the dilemmas of high costs and high indoctrination levels facing parents and students.

..."The California Teachers Association ... decided to file an amicus brief arguing before the court that parents should have no right over the education of their children, should not have a right to home school, and that these children should be literally forced to be put back into the public schools—even though parents object,” the attorney explains.

At the University of California, Irvine the Muslim Student Union (MSU), a virulently anti-Semitic and anti-American student group, holds several programs which unabashedly support terrorist groups and unjustly denounce Israel, America, and the Western world. MSU events have featured speakers like Norman Finkelstein, Ward Churchill, Muhammad al-Asi and Amir Abdel Malik Ali, and have had titles such as “Hamas: the People’s Choice” and “Israel: The 4th Reich.”

Most Americans can’t write a decent college paper.  It’s not exactly news.  Half a century ago Bernard Malamud, smart Jewish kid from Brooklyn, taught English at Oregon State University.  He found the experience so grueling that he wrote it up in A New Life. His fictional hero, Levin,

The University of Toledo (UT) has sent a message - loud and clear - to potential employees and students: African-American Christians need not apply.

It’s a claim that liberals make as easily as the rest of us breathe: If you don’t blindly throw infinite piles of money at public K-12 education, you hate children. Never mind that the worst thing any loving parent could do to their child is turn them over to the state to be “educated.” That’s an idea right out of the Soviet Union and Karl Marx’s writings.

Unassisted this year by a media blitz, the May-1st-amnesty marches for illegal aliens limped along American streets. In previous years, the media hype surrounding this issue commanded the nation’s attention. When I taught in Texas, my students found the demonstrations more urgent than their novel The Great Gatsby.