I hope those figures shock everyone reading this, whether you are a parent or a young person. College and student loans are pushed as the solution to your future, when in reality the loans often create economic slavery.

I have a daughter that graduated from college two years ago, a second daughter that will graduate this spring, and a third daughter who is earning college credit while a high school junior, so our family has been very conscious of the expense of college and looked for ways to minimize it.

My oldest daughter was involved in a work-study program, working in a hospital and had half her tuition paid. My middle daughter chose to attend a local community college and benefited from the drastically lower tuition rates. My youngest is following the techniques recommended by College Plus and nearly has half her college credit earned already through CLEP tests. She will complete her bachelor’s degree through online college courses at Thomas Edison State College.

Those are just a few alternatives to the traditional on-campus full-time college high-price-tag track. For that matter, please consider whether a college degree is even necessary. For example rather than spending $100,000 to send your child to a private college to earn a multi-media degree, that money could purchase a lot of multimedia equipment and software as well as one-on-one tutoring with a professional in the field. My area of expertise is computers – programming and web design. The same approach could be taken there. I recently looked at the computer curriculum for a four year college program and felt that it was woefully inadequate to prepare someone for actual work in the computer field. Some careers will require a college degree, but many might not. Be willing to look for alternatives to accomplish the same or better results.

The average undergraduate student graduates with close to $20,000 in student loan debt, a 108% increase in the last decade. The biggest borrowers of all are law students and medical students, with close to $100,000 in student loans.

Fruzsina suggests that part of the problem was that Obama was not willing to forgive private loan debt or that private loans should be regulated or banned. Personally I don’t think the government needs to be involved at all. Forgiving someone’s student loan only means that someone else, taxpayers like you and me, will be paying that debt.

The answer is to be aware of what exactly it means to borrow $43,000 or more in student loans, preferably before you sign the papers. If you can’t see how you will be able to repay that much money, don’t borrow it! The selling point in the past was always how much more you would earn with a college degree. How much more would you have to earn to offset those student loan payments and interest? Is it really worth it? And even with a college degree, in the current economic decline, you are not guaranteed a job.

Don’t get me wrong, I am totally in favor of education. I just think colleges have become far too expensive and that there are viable, affordable alternatives to obtaining an education.

Fruzsina’s article

I have never seen SPR, but looked up a few reviews to see what others thought of the movie. Overall the movie received good reviews, but it was definitely considered extremely violent.

goodnewsfilmreviews.com had this to say about the level of violence:

Cautions: This is a war movie, therefore there’s plenty of brutal violence and grisly death scenes. This film particularly has vibrant battle sequences and deaths that are some of the most striking to ever be put to screen. There’s also plenty of salty language but given the subject matter, it is permissible.

Do many teens watch movies of this type and worse? Undoubtedly, however since the public schools are supported by our tax dollars, they are (or should be) accountable to the taxpayers. Concerned, conservative parents should have input into questionable material such as this. At the very least schools should notify the parents and provide the student the option of sitting out the class.

Although we homeschool, this is the school district we live in. I’m sure R-rated movies with even more questionable content are shown in schools across the country. This one hit pretty close to home though.

“Superintendent Larry Zimmerman said that he put a hold on showing any R or PG-13 movies while the district takes a closer look at its procedures, but stopped short of calling for an all-out ban, pointing out their potential educational value.”

Full Details…

The Robbins became aware of the invasion when the school’s assistant principal, Lynn Matsko, confronted Blake, accusing him of engaging in improper behavior in his home and citing as evidence a photograph from the webcam embedded in the laptop issued by the school.

State grants permitted the district to issue laptops to all 2,300 high school students. The Apple MacBook laptops have a built-in webcam with a “security feature” that can snap a picture of the operator and the screen.

Matsko later told Michael Robbins, that the district “could remotely activate the webcam contained in a student’s personal laptop . . . at any time it chose and to view and capture whatever images were in front of the webcam” without the knowledge or approval of the laptop’s users.

Big Brother is watching you!

Full details…

Gonzalez wrote “Lex was here 2/1/10″  and “I love my friends Abby and Faith.”

The girl was released after being held for several hours at the police station.

Gonzalez must perform eight hours of community service, as well as writing a book report and an essay on what she’s learned from the experience.

While I don’t endorse writing on desks and damaging public property, handcuffing and arresting a child for this is extreme and inexcusable.

Other New York City Student arrests:

2007 – Chelsea Fraser, 13, arrested for writing on her desk
2008 – Dennis Rivera, 5, handcuffed and sent to a psych ward after throwing a fit in his kindergarten class
2009 – 12-year-old sixth-grader arrested for doodling on her desk

In 2004 Donna Busch visited her son’s kindergarten class in Newtown Square, PA. Busch’s son, Wesley, was the featured student for the school’s “All About Me” activity, during which a parent is permitted to read from their child’s favorite book.

Unless, of course, that book happens to be the bible. When Wesley’s teacher saw that his mother intended to read Psalm 118 from the bible, she made her stop and went to ask the principal if that was acceptable. Principal Thomas Cook informed Busch that reading from the bible in public school was against the law and he did not allow her to read the Psalm.

Since it was October, she was invited to read to the children from a book about witches, witchcraft and Halloween, which she declined to do.

In the years since that day a U.S. District Court and Court of Appeals have upheld the school officials’ decision. On January 19, 2010 the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case, allowing the decisions by the lower courts to ban bible reading to stand.

“If these acts of censorship and discrimination are allowed to continue, there will be absolutely no freedom for religious people in public schools in this country.” -John W. Whitehead, president of the Rutherford Institute

Complete article on worldnetdaily

At the time, she thought the children were over-reacting. The bus hit high speeds, ran over a mailbox and started rolling backwards downhill.

Student: “Turn the bus off!”

Driver: “No.”

Student: “You’re backing into the freaking ditch; you’re making the little kids cry. Stop!”

Finally, the children opened the emergency door in the back of the bus to get out, despite Thompson pleading against it.

Driver: “You can’t get off the bus!”

Schwalb attended a school board seminar about bullying and got upset when her daughter’s case wasn’t given the attention she felt it deserved. She became enraged when the district superintendent starting asking her questions, including one about whether her daughter was wearing a thong. Superintendent Joseph Luongo says it was a fair question, “I had to find out what body parts were actually revealed.”

Sounds like another case of blaming the victim. They better not let me near any boy that attempted to do that to one of my daughters, brings out the mother grizzly bear in me!

Complete article: MyFoxNY

Christmas is spelled the way it is for a reason. The holiday (holy day) is a celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ. Whether He was actually born on that day is another question. It is the day that has been chosen to celebrate His birth. If you are a Christian, don’t let anyone tell you or your children that you cannot say “Merry Christmas.”

Last week a 9-year-old fourth grade girl entered a stall in the Walnut Creek Elementary girls’ restroom. According to Genoa Township Detective Molly Welch, “When she went to pull down her pants, she looked down and there was an adult male who had his head under the stall and was looking at the 9-year-old.”

The girl was so frightened and embarrassed that she did not report the incident right away, however school surveillance videos confirm her report. Video shows a man dressed in black who walked past the front desk without signing in and headed directly to the bathroom. The videos indicate that the man was in the school on at least three different days. The time the girl signed out of class to go to the bathroom coincides with the time the man was seen on the video.

Prior to this incident all doors except the front door of the elementary were locked. Now the school is locking the front door also and admittance is by a buzzer/intercom system. Certainly all necessary security measures must be taken and we can all be thankful that this intruder was discovered before an innocent young girl was harmed.

What are our schools becoming? This sounds more like a prison facility than a school. Surveillance cameras, lockdowns, buzzers and intercoms. When I was in college I worked at a juvenile detention center as a security guard. This reminds me very much of one of my main duties there. I sat in a control center and inmates had to request various doors be buzzed open as they moved from the residential area to the dining area, gymnasium, or visitor room.

This incident occurred in the school district we lived in when we began homeschooling, a primarily middle-class, low-crime area. A general warning note was sent to parents after the incident was reported, but the note did not inform them that there had been an intruder in the school.

Bring your kids home!

Full report here…

“According to the Scriptures, education is primarily the parents’ responsibility and is to be a natural part of everyday life. Education is accomplished through a meaningful trusting relationship. Education is discipleship.”

“I realized that I had blindly accepted a limited view of education, simply associating it with an academic pursuit of knowledge. Academic instruction, however, is only a small part of God’s plan—a means to an end, not the end in itself.”

To read the entire article, visit the College Plus website. College Plus has an excellent program for students 13 and over to earn college credit more quickly and at less expense than by traditional methods. Check them out!