There were two telling points in an Associated Press story about how the Kansas State Board of Education’s recent actions reflect a growing distrust of “government schools”:
The Rev. Terry Fox (in photo), pastor of Immanuel Baptist Church in Wichita, suggested that half of his 6,600 members have given up on public schools, saying, “I think public education has really become a brainwashing from the far left. These superintendents better realize that they don’t just work for the liberals. I think sometimes they’ve gotten the impression that they own the schools.”
Meanwhile, noted Senate Majority Leader Derek Schmidt, R-Independence, “The real tragedy in all of this brouhaha at the State Board of Education is that very little of it has to do with providing a world-class education for our children.” Schmidt also said: “The Chinese, the Indians, the Koreans and the Japanese are spending their energy teaching their kids math, science, geography and things that make their kids competitive.”
Step back from all this culture warring over public schools, and it’s hard to see how it serves the goals of better schools, smarter kids and a vigorous Kansas economy.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Wichitans have one more thing to be thankful for this Thanksgiving week: Wichita has the cheapest gas in America, according to the latest Lundberg Survey of 7,000 gas stations around the country. At the time of the survey last week, Wichita’s price for a gallon of regular unleaded was $1.94, while the national average was $2.24. Now, our price is even lower. Of course, it’s all relative. Last Thanksgiving, no one would have thought that $1.94-a-gallon gas was cheap.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
Who is the most obnoxious news or talk show personality on TV? Who is the best?
My vote for worst: MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, who can’t keep his mouth shut long enough for guests to get a word in edgewise. I like his energy, but shut your piehole, Chris!
Best: Aaron Brown recently got canned at CNN, but he had a kind of anti-anchor everyman appeal for me with his sad-sack face, and the way he delivered disastrous news with a kind of fatalistic grimace, the corner of his mouth screwed up. As he bravely plodded along, musing on the invariably rotten news, you sensed the existential despair eating a hole in his heart.
And as a print journalist, I also appreciated his nightly rundown of newspaper front pages — OK, maybe it didn’t make for riveting TV, but at least it didn’t condescend to viewers.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
Niall Ferguson, in a commentary for the Los Angeles Times, argued that the United States isn’t quite as divided as it is made out to be. He wrote:
“In their book, ‘Culture War: The Myth of a Polarized America,’ Morris Fiorina, Samuel Abrams and Jeremy Pope comprehensively debunk the notion that American society is deeply divided. On numerous issues, which just don’t get debated because consensus is taken for granted, Americans have quite similar views. Even on the issues about which the political class gets excited — abortion, homosexuality, religion — it’s amazing how much middle ground there is.”
Maybe so, but the middle ground in Washington and Wichita must be harder to find.
Posted by Melissa Cooley
Follow the money, they say. Well, in the case of the Bush administration, the federal money for scientific research has followed the priorities of this wartime president: toward projects related to defense and counterterrorism, according to the nonprofit American Association for the Advancement of Science. And because the overall research funding shared by more than a dozen agencies hasn’t risen much, biodefense’s 48 percent funding gain since 2001 has coincided with only a 14 percent increase in nondefense research. Obviously, if these dollars end up helping deter terrorists and win wars, America will benefit tremendously. But less funding in other areas could send those scientists in search of dollars elsewhere, putting our nation’s once-unrivaled reputation for cutting-edge science at further risk.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Time magazine recently gathered a group of panelists to discuss who should grace the cover of its “Person of the Year” edition for 2005. But the most influential candidate was not a person at all. Mother Nature was cited as the driving force behind the major news stories of 2005 — the tsunami, Hurricane Katrina and the earthquakes in Kashmir. Other suggestions included the first responders to Katrina, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice with Rosa Parks, Bono, Bill Gates, President Bush and the Iraqi voters. Do you have any different ideas?
Posted by Melissa Cooley
