A Conversation about Standardized Testing

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I recently had the privilege of recording my first Quiddity podcast for the CiRCE Institute with David Kern.  We had a conversation about standardized testing and classical education.  Take a listen HERE!

Margaret Sanger in Her Own Words

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By Dr. George Grant (from “The Quick and the Dead“)

These quotes, as the title indicates, reflect Margaret Sanger in her own words.  The sources are all footnoted in Dr. Grant’s book “Grand Illusions”:

“We must discourage the defective and diseased elements of humanity from their reckless and irresponsible swarming and spawning.”

“The mass of Negroes, particularly in the South, still breed carelessly and disastrously, with the result that the increase among Negroes, even more than among Whites, is from that portion of the population least intelligent and fit.”

“We propose to hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. And we do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.”

“The most merciful thing a large family can do to one of its infant members is to kill it.”

“The government of the United States deliberately encourages and even makes necessary by its laws the breeding–with a breakneck rapidity–of idiots, defectives, diseased, feebleminded, and criminal classes. Billions of dollars are expended by our state and federal governments and by private charities and philanthropies for the care, the maintenance, and the perpetuation of these classes. Year by year their numbers are mounting. Year by year more money is expended . . . to maintain an increasing race of morons which threatens the very foundations of our civilization.”

“We can all vote, even the mentally arrested. And so it is no surprise to find that the moron’s vote is as good as the vote of the genius. The outlook is not a cheerful one.”

“The dullard, the gawk, the numbskull, the simpleton, the weakling, and the scatterbrain are amongst us in overshadowing numbers–intermarrying, breeding, inordinately prolific, literally threatening to overwhelm the world with their useless and terrifying get.”

“Birth control appeals to the advanced radical because it is calculated to undermine the authority of the Christian churches. I look forward to seeing humanity free someday of the tyranny of Christianity no less than Capitalism.”

“Even if we accept organized charity at its own valuation, and grant it does the best it can, it is exposed to a more profound criticism. It reveals a fundamental and irremedial defect. Its very success, its very efficiency, its very necessity to the social order are the most unanswerable indictment. Organized charity is the symptom of a malignant social disease. Those vast, complex, interrelated organizations aiming to control and to diminish the spread of misery and destitution and all the menacing evils that spring out of this sinisterly fertile soil, are the surest sign that our civilization has bred, is breeding, and is perpetuating constantly increasing numbers of defectives, delinquents, and dependents. My criticism, therefore is not directed at the failure of philanthropy, but rather at its success. These dangers inherent in the very idea of humanitarianism and altruism, dangers which have today produced their full harvest of human waste.”

“The most serious charge that can be brought against modern benevolence is that it encourages the perpetuation of defectives, delinquents, and dependents. These are the most dangerous elements in the world community, the most devestating curse on human progress and expression. Philanthropy is a gesture characteristic of modern business lavishing upon the unfit the profits extorted from the community at large. Looked at impartially, this compensatory generosity is in its final effect probably more dangerous, more dysgenic, more blighting than the initial practice of profiteering.”

“Beauty in the Word”: A Brief Review

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A reprint of my post for the CiRCE Institute.

Stratford Caldecott’s 160-page new book Beauty in the Word has proven difficult for me to finish, and I mean that as a sincere compliment.

Serving as a sequel to his 2009 work Beauty for Truth’s Sake, in which Caldecott offered a study of the mathematical arts of the Quadrivium and called for an education that reintegrates the arts and sciences, Beauty in the Word examines the Trivium – the foundational arts of grammar, logic, and rhetoric – and calls for their application in ways that recognize and honor the human nature of both child and teacher.

Far from a simple (and all-too-familiar) regurgitation of the Trivium as three “stages” of learning that corresponds to natural child development, Caldecott’s work examines the Trivium in more human terms – as Remembering, Thinking, and Communicating.

He argues that “education is not primarily about the acquisition of information.  It is not even about the acquisition of ‘skills’ in the conventional sense, to equip us for particular roles in society.  It is about how we become more human (and therefore more free, in the truest sense of that word)…Too often we have not been educating our humanity.  We have been educating ourselves for doing rather than for being.”  His exploration of the Trivium in that light is truly inspiring.

Beauty in the Word is an inspiring, challenging and even convicting book.  Perhaps that’s why it has proven so difficult to finish.  Stratford Caldecott has done us a great service.  It’s my hope that Beauty in the Word will be widely, but slowly, read by many others.

Natural Flu Prevention & Treatment – Flu Shot Alternatives

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Reprinted from NaturalNews.com (with permission)

by Talya Dagan

(NaturalNews) Natural remedies for the flu, such as vitamins, herbs and homeopathy, can treat and prevent the flu and norovirus. Flu viruses have acquired a “high level of resistance” to the flu vaccine, other remedies and preventive treatments for this year’s flu season are advised. Previously, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s own studies showed that they believe the flu vaccine to be only 16 to 63 percent effective against the flu. This is the same percentages as those who do not have the flu shot.

Flu statistics as of January 2013

This year is a very nasty strain. The number of cases in England, as reported by the British Health Protection Agency is up 83 percent from 2011. Symptoms include nausea and vomiting and diarrhea. Another flu with vertigo and headache is also circulating. The flu season started early and in January 2013 was widespread across the U.S. with 47 states reporting high activity. Strains of viruses identified include two influenza strains–H1N1, H3N2–and influenza B. Two percent of the 1,586 cases tested, which means about 300 cases, were of H1N1. The other 98 percent were of the H3N2 variety. Both H1N1 and H3N2 virus strains are components of the Northern Hemisphere influenza vaccine for the 2012-2013 season, which means that the flu shot this year is not providing coverage for the flu.

Flu strains have developed resistance to the flu vaccine

The CDC explains: “High levels of resistance to the adamantanes (amantadine and rimantadine) persist among 2009 influenza A (H1N1) and A (H3N2) viruses. Adamantanes are not effective against influenza B viruses.”

What are adamantanes?

Adamantanes are a hydrocarbon compound derived from petroleum in 1933. It has been used as an antiviral since 1967, and as a treatment for Parkinson’s disease. The National Institute of Health (NIH) recommended wide use of this drug to prevent epidemics, in 1979.

Natural flu prevention and natural flu treatment recommendations

Homeopathic remedies for the flu

Homeopathy was an effective an effective treatment for the 1918 flu. Vertatrum album as a possible remedy for this year’s flu, if it’s accompanied with cold perspiration on the head. The person may also have simultaneous diarrhea and vomiting. If a person is weak and has cold chills when they have the flu, this might be a good remedy to try. Cocculus indicus is the remedy to consider if you experience dizziness as if drunk, or episodic with a light-headedness and internal trembling. This accompanies a feeling of weakness that is worse from exerting yourself.

Vitamins for natural flu treatment and prevention

Vitamin C

Vitamin C acts as a scavenger to fight the viruses themselves and is concentrated inside the white blood cells. A 1999 study recommended 1,000 mg of vitamin C every hour for six hours and 1,000 three times a day to prevent and relieve flu symptoms.

Vitamin D

Vitamin D has been shown to reduce the symptoms of the flu and to help prevent the flu. A 2007 study showed that only one percent of the people who took vitamin D got the flu.

For links to the research studies and more natural flu remedies, see the links below.

http://www.naturalnews.com/031522_vitamin_D_arthritis_pain.html
http://www.naturalnews.com/026156.html
http://www.naturalnews.com/031273_vitamin_D_depression.html

Sources:

http://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/summary.htm
http://www.naturalnews.com/024911.html
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/206/4422/1058

About the author:
Talya Dagan is a health advocate and health coach, trained in nutrition and gourmet health food cuisine, writing about natural remedies for disease and nutrition and herbal medicine.