The Soviet Socialist Republic of....Legotown?*

Legos. Who doesn't love the little plastic bricks? Every brick from the past thirty-five years will pretty much connect with every other brick. There are literally hundreds of different parts to really bring distinction and creativity to your building project. But apparently that level of individuality just plain irks some people. Specifically, the "educators", and I use the term lightly here, at the Hilltop Children's Center^, who felt the need to take the Lego bricks from the kids due to the fact that the kids actually wanted to build different types, styles, and sizes of buildings with special pieces. Those that were the most active in the building would engage in negotiations and talks about the use of the resources they had, as well as who should build with them. This seemed a little too much like competition for scarce resources to the edu-soviets in charge, so they yanked the Legos until they had enough time to send the kids through self-criticism, er...guided discussions, about the nature of power, wealth, and privilege.

These are 5 to 9 year olds!

After several months of beating the kids individual desires into submission, the allowed the Legos to come back, but only if all the buildings were "public" buildings. Oh, and that they all have to have a uniform size and an equal use of special parts.

Ask the poor souls who spent generations growing up, living, raising a family, and then dying in uniform, soul-crushingly design neutral, size-mandated, Soviet apartment blocks how wonderful that world is.

Words fail me when I try to describe how entirely evil this really is.



File this away under the category of "true tales from education". (Hat tip to Homercles for the category.)

* Yes. I know that the actual trademark name that Lego uses for their town sets is "Legoland". The term "Legotown" was used by the killjoy, plastic brick totalitarians in the article.

^ Yes, I'm aware that Hilltop isn't a school. But the creativity killing knobs are, apparently, teachers.

Local woman bitten while trying to help wounded animal

The WOC radio news is reporting that a Davenport woman who stopped to help an injured raccoon was bitten on the hand for her trouble today. The animal had apparently been hit by a vehicle and was too badly hurt to get completely off the road shoulder. As she tried to push it to the side, it either misjudged her helpful intentions (or more likely just because it’s what wild animals do) chomped down on her hand.

She called 911 for assistance and sheriff’s deputies put the animal out of its misery.

I am reporting this story from memory as there is no link yet, but I’m sure it will be in the QC Times tomorrow. In related news, a lion ate a mouse that was trying to remove a thorn from the lion’s paw, and a polar bear ate an environmental activist who was attempting to measure how much the Arctic Ocean had risen.

Zombie-like ‘Fair-Share’ bill rises from the dead

UPDATE below.
Rumors of the demise of Iowa’s so-called Fair Share bill have proved premature, according to Charlotte Eby’s report in this morning’s QCT. Your humble correspondent (me, not necessarily Charlotte) suspected that Democrat lawmakers would make a second try at paying off their union sponsors and so it is happening in the form of a revised bill.

Democrats took out parts of the proposal that would have applied to the private sector when they failed to get the votes from pro-business Democrats.

The bill that cleared the Senate Labor and Business Relations Committee on a party-line vote would apply only to the public sector and exclude private employers.

The bill could be considered by the full Senate as early as today.

The organized opposition to the original bill came from business groups, so the Dems have apparently decided to settle for enriching public sector unions only. Opposition from city governments, school boards and the like will probably be light as they are frequently wholly-owned subsidiaries of the public sector unions.

One Republican senator claims that 12,000 non-member teachers will have to pay fees to the union. If so, and union dues average $600 per year and the *fair share* is determined to be 90%, that means about $6 ½ million dollars of the teachers’ pay raise (that the Dems are so proud of) will annually flow directly from the taxpayers to the education association. That is a pretty good return on the money the ISEA invested in all those Democrat candidates.

UPDATE:
The bill has passed the Senate with the support of all but two Democrats. Passage in the House is almost guaranteed.

I can’t improve on Daren’s take over at Corn Beltway Boys:

Last night, the Iowa Senate passed a watered down forced unionization bill. This one only applies to state workers, but I guess if you only take away the constitutional rights of several tens of thousands of Iowans instead of ALL of them, that makes it okay.

It's for the children, don't you know

If I know the QCT, there’ll be an editorial appearing in the next few days asking how much longer Iowa has to wait for pre-school for all children. I can make this prediction based on an article in this morning’s edition titled “Pre-school Advantageous”. The gist of the article is that children who participated in Davenport Schools’ expensive new “Children’s Village” preschool were more prepared for kindergarten than those who hadn’t. No doubt this will be seen as evidence that all children need proper pre-school taught by certified dues paying NEA members. In actuality, the report only confirms what previous studies have shown time after time – pre-school is worthwhile for disadvantaged children.

For example, 75 percent of low-income students in the program who were not receiving special education services had mastered letter-naming skills by the time they started kindergarten. Among low-income students who were not part of the program, only 34 percent had done so.

The report also documented another common finding of similar efforts; the improvement doesn’t last.

When the same test was given four months later, 68 percent of Children’s Village students showed mastery, while 60 percent of their peers had done so.

In this case it appears that seven percent of the test group actually regressed when they got into regular classes. In any event, it took only four months for the control group to catch up with the test group’s year of pre-school training.

I don’t dispute the value of pre-school for at-risk kids; I just get tired of the attempts to extrapolate the results to claim it is good for all children. Last month the QCT published an editorial which made this ridiculous statement:

According to Iowa’s top CEOs, the state’s best economic development bet isn’t ethanol. It’s not tax cuts. It’s not deregulation, tort reform, TIF districts, immigration bans, foreign trade agreements or anything coming out of a chamber of commerce.

It is early childhood education.

[snip]

Phillips and other council board members can cite chapter and verse from research attesting to the lucrative dividends of investing in early childhood education. Lower crime. A better work force. Reduced delinquency. Improved productivity by workers who are more adaptable.

The research that backs up the claim was on the at-risk population ONLY, but that doesn’t stop the advocates from using it to support their agenda of pre-school for all.

It’s for the children, after all.