Now, you may not have believed me when I said in the Philippines, they go straight for the hard songs at a young age. Well, even the boys are not immune from singing Celine Dion songs.



That is until puberty has its way with their voices.

Now when was the last time we have ever heard American Idol or any level try to have multiple singers belting out Celine Dion songs? Here, her songs, Whitney’s and Mariah’s are the untouchable do or die songs.

In the Philippines, they are the standard.

One of the hallmarks of a solid education system is the humility to adopt systems that are working well in other countries. In the Philippines, singing and singing well is quite common. Percentage wise, the Philippines produces far more quality singers than the USA does. This is partially due to culture but heavily weighted to their approach to music.

Here in the USA back during the 2006-2007 school year, our daughter entered into public school and the music program offered here. She went into it singing pretty well for a 5 year old having been taught by her Filipino mom (my wife). Her musical skills steadily declined as a result. The program had the standard kid songs that largely are not sung in tune so her skills went down to match.

Having pulled her out of going to public schools, we turned to an online academy but the music program was largely the same. Hence we skim that music curriculum to see if there is anything worthwhile but mainly have shifted back to the music curriculum style of the Philippines and the results have been wonderful.

So what is the music curriculum style of the Philippines? In a general sense, they throw down the gauntlet immediately. They begin with some of the most challenging songs to sing. The majority of the country tries their utmost to sing like the best from the beginning. No, they do not focus on the feelings of the students. No, they do not focus on the social aspect in school. It is known in their culture that you suck it up and do it as that is life. Life is hard, deal with it.

Nearly every household has a karaoke machine as do most places of business for the staff to use. People sing there. Either you find out quickly if you have the skills or don’t but you never stop trying to improve. So what songs do they start with? Not Old MacDonald or That Old Gray Horse. The girls are expected to tackle Whitney Houston, Celine Dion, Mariah Carey, Disney movie songs, Regine Velasquez, or Sarah Geronimo. The boys are to tackle Englebert Humperdink, Tom Jones, Kenny Rogers, Luther Vandross or Jon Bon Jovi. Easy? Heck, no. But it works.

You do find some who are tone deaf and should put down that microphone. Some guys start out well as a kid but puberty is unkind and grants them a voice best not broadcasted over an amped up karaoke machine. But the results by far and large are quite amazing. The average Filipino would be a candidate to making the cut on American Idol here. But they could not begin to try to compete in the Philippines. A prime example is Charice Pempengco who was brought from the Philippines to be on the Ellen DeGeneres show. She would have faded into the background of the country as she placed THIRD on their version of American Idol at the age of then 14!







And she placed THIRD in a contest she had to BEG to get into in the Philippines. We could stand to learn a lot from the Philippines on how to better structure our music curriculum.

Back in November of 2006, we received a notification from the school my daughter went to that they would be teaching the children about the details of the holidays Hanukkah and Kwanzaa in December. Of course, Christmas was about pine trees, Santa and pushing the retail marketing segment as you just can’t mention the religious side. Oh, I forgot to mention a slight detail. My daughter was in Kindergarten. That 5-8 year old age range when the children accept whatever they are told as fact.

Being a responsible parent, I actually read the notification. I had no idea what Kwanzaa was. I had never heard of it. So I looked it up online to have a clue. First, I found the listings of the 7 day holiday ritual complete with lighting black candles, words derived from Swahili, practices, Kwanzaa gifts, honoring ancestors and elders, wearing traditional African clothing, and special meals. What I didn’t initially find was the origin of Kwanzaa.

On the initial face value, the first reaction is neutral. Until you dig further and find out the details. That is where it gets disturbing. The foundation of Kwanzaa does not come from any African traditions. It can barely be traced back to Africa at all. It comes from the mind of Dr. Maulana Karenga. Sounds pretty African and there is a doctor title there. It must be good right? To believe that you will need to ignore that it isn’t his real name then sure. You’ll also have forgotten his past and other rather crucial current details.

Dr. Maulana Karenga was born Ronald McKinley Everett. His past includes a rather disturbing detail. He is an ex-convict who was found guilty of beatings, torture and involvement in shootings. His crimes were committed against primarily black people including placing a hot soldering iron into the mouth of a lady while mashing the toe of another lady in a vice.

There are a number of sources that detail this information and go into it in further depth. So This is Kwanzaa, Happy Kwanzaa, The Kwanzaa Hoax, Kwanzaa: Holiday from the FBI, and a number of other sites are good sources to start with.

Here are more thoughts to ponder. The United States is fracturing quickly into a slew of interest groups each pursuing their values systems and trying to impose them on the rest of the nation. This is primarily done through the public education system and the courts. Because we have gotten away from following the Constitution of the USA, these factions have begun to succeed in splitting the nation by interest groups. The danger in pursuing the rediscovering of your roots as Kwanzaa heavily promotes is underlined from a statement from our foundation as a country. “United we stand, divided we fall.” We are dividing the nation quickly.

Somehow we have come to glorify a self-declared Marxist who participated in torture and other crimes over a man of history who loved others and gave his life for them. In the majority of countries around the world, there would be a category for ‘holidays’ like Kwanzaa – banned.

It is a sad note in the history of the USA that the chant for Barabbas is growing.

What’cha Gonna Do…

When a deer runs wild on you? Live this Sunday, Sunday, Sunday in the Maaain Event, we have a return grudge match between Castle and the Couch Crushing Doe. Let us go to the replay screen to see how this feud began.

“MONROVIA, Md. - A man subdued a deer that ran through the front picture window of his house. Martin "Pete" Castle wrestled the beast to the floor in the living room, and carried it out through the garage door, when Frederick County Animal Control officers took over.

"My couch is ruined," says Castle's wife, Robin. She had to clean blood off her computer, printer and coffee table.

Pete Castle was in the garage when the deer entered the house though a hole no bigger than a large steering wheel on Saturday morning.

The deer ran to the back of the house, Castle said, and it tried to escape through sliding glass doors.

The deer tore the curtains down, then jumped into a second picture window, but fell backward on the couch.

"That's when I went on her," Castle said. "I jumped on this deer."”


That is how this feud began. Wait, wait, I’m getting word that there is an altercation in the back. We are going to take you backstage right now with a live video feed of the fight in progress.



You’ve seen it here ladies and gentlemen!! The Couch Crusher has struck back in a brutal assault demonstrating its skills as a pugilist!

What? Again? There is another fight outside the arena involving the Couch Crusher!! Let us go live to the feed.


This just in our main event is now a Triple Threat No-Holds Barred match involving the Castle, The Couch Crusher, and the mighty Squirrel Boy!! Catch it all live on our Pay-Per-View extravaganza!

($50 per household, some restrictions may vary, no wolves allowed.)

If you are a reader of mine or visiting for the first time, it will not take long for you to pick up on how opposed I am to the teaching of opinions in the education system as opposed to keeping it to the facts. My primary concern is the teaching opinions removes from the children the reasoning skills to differentiate facts from useless information. This shows up especially in mathematics in the form of decreased ability to calculate story problems. Naturally that bleeds over into math dependent fields such as the hard sciences, engineering, and most of the technology sector.

But instead of just writing about opinions vs. facts, it would be best if I showed a very common example of how opinions have overridden what the facts are on a neutral topic. Well, neutral to some while others are passionate.
The topic of choice is Global Warming. In one corner we have the United Nations and Al Gore crying up a storm about how CO2 is destroying our environment and extraordinary procedures need to be adopted globally to confront this issue with ‘massive scientific consensus.’ That would be the example of listening to opinions. Facts are a different matter. In order to make major assertions, there better be undeniable verifiable proof. So what proof do they have? A nice yarn spun by Al Gore and a small number of scientists or writers who were willing to create results for the right price. What’s the problem with it? Well, there are a lot of problems.
  • Climate is an average of weather. Weather is restricted to local or regional effects. To prove there even is a global climate orthogonalities of the Earth have to be taken into account with the data. Too bad the data favors climate and weather is restricted to local or regional effects.
  • CO2 is not a greenhouse gas.
  • You have to discount geologic effects such as magma coming near to the surface and causing melting to occur.
  • You have to discount solar effects. Considering the Mars polar caps are melting as well, that might be a challenge.
  • The scientists disagree. Science depends on the realm of proof not opinion.

The last one needs the most support. So how about a letter sent to the UN on December 13, 2007 with 100 signatories of notable scientists? Not enough yet? Okay, get ready for the link fest because here it comes. How about a nice report? Are one hundred scientists not enough? How about 2 more, or another 35, another 105 along with their position statement, another 500, let’s up it to 4000 more and top it off with 19,000 more scientists. Do you want the full list? Here it is.

Also, you really have to check the sources of who is talking. Would Al Gore stand to profit at all from this and is possibly playing us for a fool for his pocketbook? Oh and how many scientists does Al have in his corner for his consensus? 51

If you want to go by facts, Global Warming is a non to mild issue. If you want to go by sensationalism and blown up opinions, then tell your grandma to put down that cigar.

Please Grandma, lose the cigar for the sake of the world. Or maybe just for the sake of her teeth would be good enough.

First Morris, Now Rudolph

There must truly be some feelings of inadequacy in the white tail deer population. They raid the gumdrop supplies in school, now they are trying to pull a reverse Rudolph / Santa. Rudolph and the other twelve reindeer pull Santa’s sleigh so he can hop into the chimneys and deliver the toys.


Unfortunately for our white-tail friends, they can’t fly and they don’t fit down chimneys too well. It could be a fear of becoming smoked venison though. So what do they do instead? The headline says it all.

Deer invades basement of Mich. home.


“SAULT STE. MARIE, Mich. - When Jody Fabry descended the basement stairs to her seasonal home and saw broken glass on the floor, then spied what caused the mess, she didn't know who was more frightened — her, or the deer that was the culprit.

A young doe apparently got into the basement through a window, then couldn't get out. Fabry called officers to her home, but it was more difficult than it looked to remove the animal. Officers eventually ended up chasing it around the basement until it jumped back out the way it came, then bounded off. The deer, which Fabry guessed had been in the unoccupied home for a day, appeared to be unhurt.”

I guess you could say that the doe learned to fly when given enough motivation. It flew back out that basement window.

Somehow though, I think this white-tail didn’t act like Santa. I’m certain what she left behind wasn’t a toy and wasn’t coal. I’m thinking it may be more in the brown color.

Are those three items in the title related? In some ways yes they are related; but in some important ways the answer is no.

The study of the past no matter what field of study it is in is strongly dependent on what factual data is available. To understand the events of a given point in time, you need to know what was going on in the big picture from interaction between countries or kingdoms, how the ruling class lived, how the working or subordinate classes lived and all the details in between. To be considered history, these facts are recorded on some preserved media and double checked by verification of recorded media from another source.

The issue is did the culture and society at a set time and region record that needed data and did those records survive to the current day. If those records do not or did not exist, we are stuck. This is information we do not know. No matter the opinions, speculations or assumptions of ‘experts’, the information is still unknown.

Anthropology is defined on WordNet by Princeton University as:

Noun - the social science that studies the origins and social relationships of human beings”

Social Science is defined on WordNet by Princeton University as:

Noun - the branch of science that studies society and the relationships of individual within a society “

History is defined on WordNet by Princeton University as:

Noun –

  1. The aggregate of past events;
  2. A record or narrative description of past events;
  3. The discipline that records and interprets past events involving human beings;
  4. The continuum of events occurring in succession leading from the past to the present and even into the future;
  5. All that is remembered of the past as preserved in writing; a body of knowledge; “

What does this all have to do with Jigsaw Puzzles and Curriculum? To properly capture the entirety of the society in the USA today, one would likely have to write a number of books so someone else not familiar with it would comprehend the complexities of life in the USA in the year 2007. Consider this if you will a rather complex snapshot. This snapshot or picture of the past (in about 18 days) can be compared to a jigsaw puzzle. In order to get the full picture you need all of the pieces.

The study of the past is akin to a jigsaw puzzle. Each proven fact is a piece of the puzzle for a specific timeframe or snapshot of the past. However, the fewer facts you have the harder it is to get a complete picture. The fewer pieces of a jigsaw puzzle you have the harder it is to finish it.

The danger comes when that which is outside the realm of History or the recorded past is speculated on or guessing. It is fine to speculate and submit educated guesses for peer review provided that it remains at the appropriate level. Teaching speculations and anthropology to K-6 grade kids when it is a complex collegiate level topic smack of either incompetence or devious intent on the part of the curriculum authors.

To give the proper respect to Historians and the field of Anthropology, do not think of your Spiderman 50 piece jigsaw puzzle from when you were 8 yrs old. (I still have that somewhere.) The fields are far more complex than that. Try something more like this: Your browser may not support display of this image.

“A challenging puzzle concept where nothing is quite as it seems - for a start the puzzle in the box is not the picture on the lid! Just to confuse you even further, the completed puzzle is the picture on the lid as usual - but viewed through a mirror!”

As always, there are also two (or more) ways of looking at the same topic. So let us add in another detail. Let us have the same picture printed on the back but rotated 90 degrees with similarly cut pieces printed equally on the front and back. That would be an appropriate approximation of the topic of Anthropology vs. History and the challenges of creating an accurate picture of the past but with a twist. We have no lid to reference to.

History is based on clear cut facts recorded on multiple media sources. Anthropology tries to insert meaning between the facts. If you have only 50% or less of the puzzle though, your picture is likely wrong. Filling in the missing part with opinion and teaching it as if it is fact is disingenuous at best.

There is no place for teaching opinions to children in what is supposed to be a neutral education environment. Keep it to the facts and let the children formulate their own opinions.

Who is Dr. Grant? Is that some character on House or some soap opera? Nope. I can’t stand soap operas but I do like watching House from time to time. I’m not speaking of a person either but instead an issue our Founding Fathers had the wisdom to avoid but ‘modern wisdom’ has messed up. I’m speaking of how the federal grant system and the doctoral systems have ended up in disrupting our educational system with politics and ego instead of common sense and wisdom.

How can I make such claims? What right do I have or experience the back this up? As my header says, I was once an educator. I sat through my classes in college quietly observing and taking notes. I compared what the Ivory Tower had to say with what my years of experience with children taught me. Then with my K-12 degree in hand, I spent my years working with some 5000 kids taking it all in as I assisted all of the classes, grades and subjects. My experience gave me a valuable lesson. The best professors were those without the doctorates. They had their Master degrees but one other crucial ingredient. They were fresh out of the real world. The Ivory Tower made a cardinal sin. They forgot the K-12 pupils were children.

To achieve a doctorate or a PhD one needs to create a thesis paper for peer review adding something to the field of study. This becomes increasingly difficult as a field of study matures. So to acquire a doctorate requires increasing creative measures to justify adding new members to their rank. One such category is education of the grades K-2. I’ll describe this in more detail in another entry.

Another factor in this equation is the grant system. In order to justify the doctoral positions, research studies are pressed in order to both justify the increasingly ‘creative’ approaches and the justification of the federal grant money to conduct said research. Grant money which was not meant to be a function of the US government as too much control would then rest in the hands of the federal government. The Founding Fathers knew well of checks and balances and the tendency of men towards control and corruption.

How does this factor in with age appropriate education? The answer to that comes in the curriculum that astonishingly ignores basic details about kids. That is if one is to give the benefit of the doubt to those in charge of curriculum decisions. So either it is astonishingly incompetent curriculum planning, self-delusional or intentional actions. I will go into that further on another entry.

In my experience, I’ve seen public school districts attempt to teach 6 year olds the real names for their genitals complete with location, push select religions and a pseudo holiday on Kindergarten children and a litany of other topics as well. Some in particular are a study of the Trojan War, Egyptology, Greek Mythology, Hammurabi, Alexander the Great and nomads founding Mesopotamia to 1st graders who are about 7 years old. Much of which is not history but anthropology. Science side delves into the correct scientific names for the clouds in the sky such as cirrus, stratus, cumulus and cumulonimbus.

Some may say – Wow that is advanced!! And they would be right. But that awe is also forgetting about the children and instead thinking about it as an adult. Consider the following which anyone familiar with kids knows:

  • K-2 kids take everything they are told as if it is fact as they lack the skills yet to discern between a proven fact and opinion. Huge caution flag here.
  • K-2 or ages 6-8 are in various stages of missing their front 8 teeth impacting their ability to pronounce words. (Try saying cumulonimbus with a few front teeth missing or the names of Egyptian pharaohs.)
  • K-2 children are trying to learn a basic thing. How to read. When they are learning the words like, their, were and the like, maybe, just maybe Tutankhamen, cumulonimbus, and Hatshepsut is a bit beyond their skills hmm? Since you learn 10% of what you hear and 20% of what you see/ read, wouldn’t it make sense to wait until the kids can read?
  • No matter how fancy you make the curriculum, the number one time of day for K-2 kids will be – Recess. Time to play. Gee, go figure those short ones might just possibly be – children.

Yes, I’m talking about the quarterback Michael Vick. As it has been pointed out in a number of places, Michael Vick has had his day in court and it was not all that pleasant. It can be safe to conclude that Mr. Vick is thinking now – hopefully.

In review though, let us list his ‘lessons’.
  • He has been sentenced to serve 23 months in jail. No parole for federal charges either. He will have to serve a minimum of 20 months.
  • He is still facing different state charges that could land him another 10 years on top of that.
  • His $120 million dollar contract is toast.
  • The arbitrator ruled the Atlanta Falcons can get back over $19 million from his signing bonus.
  • He lost multiple millions in lost endorsement deals.
  • He has a few banks trying to collect on millions of dollars of loans he has defaulted on.
  • He has to pay just under $1 million for the care of the remaining dogs.
  • When he is done with all of that, before he can play in the NFL again he will have to answer to the NFL Commissioner Roger Goodall to be reinstated or serve an additional suspension. The kicker is Vick lied to the Commissioner. The same Commissioner who has become known as an ultra-disciplinarian. Good luck.

There is no need to comment about Michael Vick’s actions that led to all this anymore. There is also no further need to comment on Michael Vick save for hoping he has learned something. The only place left there is for commentary is the quantity of penalties he is paying.

So with all puns intended it comes down to one word.

Woof.

In the public schools, this is one of the most heated topics regarding the Science curriculum. This article is to potentially serve as a source for school districts in the need of a safe stance. All accounts regarding the origin of life and how such a vast diversification of life (dogs, cats, snakes, etc. kinds vs. species) have the same basic flaw in them.

All origin and diversification of life stories require belief in events not observed and recorded by an independent source. All ‘creation’ stories require periods of time before a human was present. As such, we can never validate any story with science due to lack of observational or empiric data. Flat out, we were not there and the past is the unobservable past.

So to that extent, I recommend any school system that deems itself neutral to adopt the following position statement to be distributed to parents.

Stance on the Origin and Diversification of Life

The debate regarding the origin of life and the subsequent diversification of it will not be addressed in this school district’s Science Curriculum. As all origin stories are unobservable it is not in the interest of this school district to speculate. All students are encouraged to research this topic on their own time if they and their parents so choose.
As a starting point for any research, we have compiled a list of some of the origin stories to begin any research.


AinuApacheAssyrianAustralian AboriginalAztecBabylonian
BoshongoCelticChelanChineseChoctawComanche
DakotaDiguenoEfikEgyptianEkoiEvolution
FansGreekHawaiianHinduHopiHungarian
HuronIndiaInt. DesignInuitIroquisJapanese
Judeo-ChristianKoreanLakotaMandeMaoriMayan
Mik’MaqMiwokMongolianNavajoNorseOlori
PhilippinePimaRomanRomanianSalishShilluk
TahitianVodunYokutYorubaZulu

As you may have noticed, there has been a gap in my posting articles. I am alive and well – now. But for all those out there who have not yet had the luxury of getting a Thanksgiving gift I got, I will give you fair warning. Unfortunately, my wife didn’t get the warning and got the bug too. At least our daughter was spared.

What was this Thanksgiving gift? It was an insidious little viral bug that is just wicked. This is not your garden variety cold or flu bug. Nope, this vicious beast comes camouflaged to maximize the misery for a full 7 days.

How does this bug work? Well, for all purposes it is like a bad head cold. Since the symptoms are a running nose then really stuffed up sinus, sneezing continually and a frontal headache. This gets worse to the point where it prevents you from getting rest on the first two nights as you have to focus on breathing. Your eyes start to hurt so the standard of laying low and just watching the idiot box doesn’t work. That hurts too. But all of the ailments are contained to the head so it is a head cold right? Bring out the chicken soup.

Wrong move. This beast acts like a bad head cold but it sneaks in a 100–101 degree temp. It was the flu in disguise! Of course, you realize this after you ate the chicken soup and standard stuff you do for a cold. So now your gut starts kicking in.

Combine being overtired from little rest or sleep, a temp, drainage into the stomach, and other food in the stomach you get the glorious sensation of feeling like you want to puke. But that is as far as it goes. You feel like you want to throw up for hours on end but never do. The feeling just hangs there.

Add in your hearing becomes ultra sensitive so even the ringing of a phone hurts and makes your headache that much worse. After the sneezing dies down, then here comes the coughing. Eventually, you lose your voice and each cough and sneeze makes the headaches worse and your ribs sore.

7 days later and you finally get a reprieve from the bug. Followed by having to catch up on a week’s worth of dishes, vacuuming, and the laundry build up, this virus ranks as one of the meanest little bugs in a while.

Just when you thought the cold or flu was bad, now they are imitating each other. Sheesh.

Happy Thanksgiving!



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