Western Europe is home to a cluster of developed economies that boost some of the highest standards of living in the world. But that could soon change. Because as Evan Horowitz writes on NBC News's new "Think" vertical, IQ scores in France, Scandinavia, Britain, Germany and even Australia are beginning to decline.

The trend has been well-documented across Western Europe, and could soon carry over to the US as well. Which means the data have confirmed what millions of Americans who have watched cable news or logged on to twitter over the past three years probably already suspected: The world is getting dumber.

You can’t count on this, she warned.

Don’t expect handouts.

Don’t get into debt in the first place.

Don’t expect billionaires to bail you out of life.

Oh, and college should be affordable for all — courtesy of the U.S. government.

These were some of the messages and vibes Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) shared with today’s young people on her Twitter account in the wake of an extraordinary and surprising gift by billionaire investor Robert F. Smith at Morehouse College over the weekend during its latest commencement.

He’s pledged to take care of all the graduates’ student loans.

Billionaire philanthropist Robert F. Smith pledged to pay off all of the student loan debt for every member of Morehouse College's 2019 graduating class during his commencement speech on Sunday.

In the span of seconds, the CEO and Chairperson of Vista Equity Partners changed the lives of the 430-some graduates of the all-male, historically black college in Atlanta.

The total price tag of Smith's generosity will amount to approximately $40 million.

If Bernie Sanders were an MLB general manager, he would probably be the type who chases bargain players rather than signing free agents to mega contracts.

The presidential contender posted a video on his Twitter account Saturday showing him at a campaign stop talking about raising pay for school teachers. And he used baseball salaries to make his point.

The man behind the scheme to help wealthy students get into elite colleges by cheating on tests and faking athletic credentials also advised some families to falsely claim students were racial minorities, exploiting the push to diversify campuses, according to two people familiar with the situation.

A son of Marjorie Klapper, a parent scheduled to plead guilty Friday for participating in the scheme, was incorrectly listed on his Common Application as being black and Hispanic, the people said. William “Rick” Singer, the college counselor who has agreed to plead guilty in the case and is awaiting sentencing, also arranged for a proctor to cheat on the ACT admissions test for the teen, according to a Federal Bureau of Investigation affidavit filed in the case. …

A High School in Mason, Ohio has eliminated their valedictorian salutatorian honors in order to help the "mental wellness" of other students," according to Fox19.

Instead of the two honors bestowed on the two highest achievers, Mason High School located in a Cincinnati suburb will stick with the Latin honors system - awarding students with a 4.0 GPA summa cum laude, those with a 3.75 - 3.99 GPA magna cum laude, and those with a GPA between 3.51 and 3.74 as cum laude.

The school is also going to begin classes 30 minutes later next year, and are also considering reducing the amount of homework after school and during summer vacation.

If only the real world were so accommodating!

"This will help reduce the overall competitive culture at MHS to allow students to focus on exploring learning opportunities that are of interest to them," said Principal Bobby Dodd.

A school district in Oregon is being sued after a teacher repeatedly grilled an 8-year-old student about whether he thought he is a girl, gave him videos on transgenderism to watch and provided instructional books.

Oddly enough, that type of behavior likely will be standard practice soon in California.

KPTV-TV reported the parents of a student in Woodburn, Oregon, filed a complaint alleging their son was held back from recess by the teacher for multiple one-on-one conversations about his gender identity.

The parents were not told what the teacher was doing, they said.

“The mother and father in Woodburn are now suing a school district for nearly a million dollars after they say a second-grade teacher singled out their son by asking him if he was transgender. The parents say the teacher had inappropriate conversations with the child at school without their permission,” the station reported.

After the collapse of the housing market in 2008, professional historians gave birth to a new sub-field of history usually referred to as “the new history of capitalism.” Economic history is hardly novel, but the new history of capitalism takes the approach that capitalism is the “thing” that needs to be explained. In the past decade, this field has become one of the most fashionable trends in the history profession, with centers for the study of capitalism being established at Cornell and the University of Georgia.

A district in Pennsylvania has prohibited an elementary school principal from saying ‘God Bless America’ after the Pledge of Allegiance, following a single parental complaint on the practice.

Peter Brigg, the principal at Sabold Elementary School, had made a practice of saying the phrase as part of his morning routine for several years.

A parent at the school somehow took offense to Brigg’s patriotic statement, filing a complaint with the Freedom From Religion Foundation.

“When a public school regularly proclaims, ‘God bless America,’ it sends a message to its students that the school is endorsing and compelling belief in God,” the group wrote in a letter.

They argued it violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the Constitution

Journalism has never been free of propaganda. News has always been produced and marketed like any other commodity, satisfying and shaping consumers’ opinions, loyalties and taste. Over the last thirty years, the US elites and their allies have effectively eliminated conventional journalism in favor of propaganda and counter-propaganda serving their relentless war on the majority world. Integral to that war in recent years has been the purposeful manipulation of social media so as to usurp and compromise any remnants of orthodox news reporting.

Up to 21 students have killed themselves in the last week in India after an IT glitch led to them failing their exams.

The victims, from Telangana state, include at least one boy who threw himself in front of a train and another girl who burned herself to death, local media reports.

Ministers have admitted there were 'major failings' with a new IT system used to grade the papers and that human error played a part as well.

A group of Jewish students at the University of Massachusetts Amherst is asking a judge to order a panel discussion about Palestinian human rights off campus because it is anti-Semitic.

The panel, titled "Not Backing Down: Israel, Free Speech, and the Battle for Palestinian Human Rights" is scheduled for Saturday and features Roger Waters, a member of the rock band Pink Floyd. The panelists are expected to argue that pro-Israel groups have tried to silence Palestinian points of view.

A Superior Court judge heard arguments Monday but did not rule.

The panel is sponsored by an organization run by a UMass faculty member, and co-sponsored by two academic departments.

A quarantine order has been issued for hundreds of students and staff at two major Los Angeles universities – the University of California, Los Angeles, and California State University Los Angeles — who may have been exposed to measles and either have not been vaccinated or cannot verify that they have immunity.

UCLA reported that, as of Wednesday, there were 119 students and 8 faculty members were ordered to avoid contact with others. However, by Friday morning than number had fallen, with less than 50 staff and students yet to prove their immunization status. One student remained quarantined on campus.

Via: AZ Central:

Border Patrol officials have begun releasing migrant families in Tucson because they lack the space to detain them and immigration officials are unable to take them into custody.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency that normally takes custody of asylum-seeking families once they have been processed, has continued releasing families in Tucson.

That includes migrants apprehended in the Tucson sector as well as migrants who crossed through the Yuma area. Pima County officials estimate that ICE has released about 7,000 migrants in Tucson in the past eight months.

On top of that, Border Patrol officials in El Paso have been busing hundreds of migrants each day to Tucson so they can be released there instead of El Paso, which has also been struggling greatly with the sheer number of migrant families.

The Shanghai Morning Post notes that Xiamen University is the first university in the world to have developed and flown a hypersonic rocket.

"We call [the design] the double waverider," said Zhu Chengxiang, an assistant professor at the university’s School of Aerospace Engineering and part of the Jia Geng No. 1 team.

Unlike American hypersonic rockets such as Boeing's X-51 Waverider, which rides on a hot layer of gas known as a "shock wave," the Jiageng-1 No.1 rides on two layers of shock waves, one underneath the rocket and the other in the air intake of its ramjet engine.

The Jiageng-1 No.1 has several innovative advantages over Western hypersonic rockets: it can transition from supersonic to hypersonic speeds with ease, and the design produces more lift allowing it to travel further with more efficient fuel consumption.

High School Students in Liberal States could soon be assigned a Left Biased History Book. The textbook is put out by Pearson Education and is titled, “By the People: A History of the United States.”

The Book slanders Trump and anyone that followed Trump. If that were not enough it pits police officers against black folks. The textbook is meant for AP students meaning the writer intends to go after the more knowledgeable students with his propaganda.

“The final section of the book, titled, “The Angry Election of 2016” is especially critical of the president.

“Most thought that Trump was too extreme a candidate to win the nomination, but his extremism, his anti-establishment rhetoric, and, some said, his not very hidden racism connected with a significant number of primary voters,” the author wrote.”

Students at UCLA learned about the “art” of pole dancing last week in a “Sexploration – Pole Class” hosted by two official university divisions at the school, which promised to teach the “basic moves needed to become a magnificent pole dancer.”

The university’s pole dancing class, entitled, “Sexploration – Pole Class,” which was hosted last week by the UCLA Sexual Health Coalition and UCLA Housing, advertised itself as a general introduction to “the basic moves needed to become a magnificent pole dancer” as well as a chance for students “to explore” their “inner-diva and divo.”

“Calling all pole newbies to pole enthusiasts! Your chance to explore your inner-diva and divo!” read the class description on its Facebook event page, “Get introduced to the basic moves needed to become a magnificent pole dancer.”

“Space is limited for this VERY POPULAR class,” added the description.

The California State Senate voted to ban schools and principals from suspending students for “willful defiance” of teachers, staff, and administrators.

The Senate approved SB 419 Monday by a vote of 30-8. It moves to the Assembly next.

A similar bill was vetoed by Governor Jerry Brown last legislative session.

U.S. high schools are graduating nearly 100,000 unauthorized immigrants per year, according to a study released Wednesday.

The Migration Policy Institute’s (MPI) research found 98,000 were graduating per year in 2016, an increase from 65,000 a year in 2003.

California, Texas and Florida graduated 50 percent of unauthorized immigrants.

The report cites several reasons for the increase in graduates like increase in illegal immigration and policies that support unauthorized immigrants to receive higher education.

Unauthorized immigrants who graduated from high school used to be eligible for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which allows children of illegal immigrants to work and study in the U.S. without getting deported. Current recipients can renew the status, but the program no longer accepts new applications.

Authored by Michael Lebowitz via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

Many financial assets, especially those that are the riskiest, are priced well above their respective fundamental values. A thank you primarily belongs to unprecedented monetary policy conducted on a domestic and global scale. The vast financial rewards and temporary economic stability attributed to central bank actions appear to be blinding many investors to the longer-term consequences of these actions and the implications for their investments in an era of monetary policy normalization.

Accordingly, we discuss the proverbial fly in the ointment, or what might prevent central bankers from being able to successfully “manage” markets with their extraordinary policies.

The Fed Put

SOURCE: BOING BOING
Summit Learning is a nonprofit, high-tech "customized learning" group funded by Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan's family charity; under the program, students are equipped with high-surveillance Chromebooks and work on their own "at their own pace" and call on teachers to act as "mentors" when they get stuck.

It's a high-tech version of student-led education, where a high teacher-to-pupil ratio allows students to pursue self-directed education based on their own proclivities and interests, and mentor one another. But in the Zuck version, students work alone in front of screens, in social isolation, taking automated quizzes to assess their progress.

Many students and parents find this incredibly invasive and frustrating. Students with special needs -- exactly the group that you'd expect to benefit most from "customized learning" -- find the systems especially troublesome, and for students with screen-triggered epilepsy, the systems are pure torture.

Hemerd King hasn’t seen his five children for two years. The New York City government broke up his family due to a string of allegations that, upon basic scrutiny, appear unsubstantiated.

The Epoch Times previously explored the twisted incentives in the system that keeps more than 400,000 children in foster homes and shelters, and de facto encourages social workers and administrators to keep families apart.

Homeschooling families like the Kings are especially at risk. The nonprofit Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) has defended thousands of such families that have faced investigations by Child Protective Services (CPS).

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) proposed Monday a new $640 billion student college debt relief program that would also eliminate college tuition for all two and four-year public colleges.
The 2020 Democrat presidential candidate unveiled the ambitious policy proposal as she attempts to distinguish herself from the large and progressive Democrat field. Warren released the proposal ahead of a series of youth-oriented CNN town halls Monday night with 2020 presidential candidates at Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire.

“It’s a problem for all of us,” Warren noting, that student college debt has reached more than $1.5 trillion and affects more than 40 million Americans. “It’s reducing home ownership rates. It’s leading fewer people to start businesses. It’s forcing students to drop out of school before getting a degree.”

A school assistant from England was dismissed after someone reportedly complained to her employer that she shared posts slamming relationship lessons on Facebook. The woman says she paid with her job for Christian beliefs and was discriminated against.

Forty-three-year-old mother of two Kristie Higgs was fired for “gross misconduct” from Farmor's School in Fairford, Gloucestershire after she stood up against so-called relationship education pushed by the government.

“It had everything to do with my Christianity. To suggest otherwise is ridiculous”, she insisted in the interview with the Daily Mail.

State lawmakers are looking to expand in-state tuition.

If it's voted into law, SB 859 would allow undocumented students to pay in-state tuition for public Oregon graduate programs if they:

Qualified for undergraduate tuition equity

Attended Oregon K-12 schools for at least three years, or went to a U.S. school for a minimum of five years

Demonstrate intent to become a U.S. citizen

According to the Higher Education Coordinating Commission, this would currently affect about 250 students.

Multiple sources are saying that one of the daughters of Lori Loughlin and Mossimo Giannulli is now officially being investigated by the Department of Justice over her role in the college bribery scandal.

Daily Mail reported that one of the couple’s two daughters received a letter from federal prosecutors in Massachusetts earlier this month saying that she is the subject of an investigation that could result in her being hit with criminal charges.

“It is a not-so-veiled threat,” said an insider who saw the letter. “[The US Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts] is making it pretty clear that they have evidence that very strongly suggests she knew of the illegal plot.”

Workers preparing to cleanup a fuel storage site near the infamous Dozier reform school—Florida’s first juvenile justice institution—discovered something far worse then pollution. Evidence of more than two dozen “clandestine” child graves was discovered as workers tested the ground.

Shockingly enough, this is the second time secret graves for tortured and raped children have been found nearby the school.

A report out of the Miami Herald detailed the horrific discovery this week:

A company hired to evaluate underground storage tanks adjacent to the Dozier School for Boys in Marianna performed a series of ground-penetrating radar tests on a parcel a little less than 500 feet from what is called the Boot Hill Cemetery at Dozier, an infamous youth prison linked to more than a century of chilling abuse.

Shortly after we wrote about an online software engineering school that was allowing students to pay their tuition by forfeiting 17% of their income after they graduated, it's becoming clearer that the model of selling an "equity stake in yourself" to fund tuition is making its way to the mainstream.

Equitizing students was the topic of an in-depth Bloomberg Businessweek look into the details of what Americans are doing to combat the $1.6 trillion in higher education debt that they owe. Specifically, the article followed the path of 23 year old Amy Wroblewski, who has been literally turning over a set percentage of her salary to investors - and will do so for the 8 1/2 years after graduating college.

Lori Loughlin and her husband are now facing 40 years in prison and over one-million dollars in fines for allegedly bribing officials in a bid to get their daughters into the University of Southern California.

One day after 13 parents entered guilty pleas for their roles in the Operation Varsity Blues scandal, the 19 who did not admit guilt have been hit with a new charge or money laudnering inm addition to mail fraud.

Authored by Justin Spittler via CaseyResearch.com,

As longtime readers know, our founder Doug Casey isn’t just a world-class speculator. He’s a rare, independent thinker and a walking encyclopedia. Best of all, he isn’t afraid to speak his mind… even if that means offending people.

That’s a rare commodity these days.

Today, people would rather be “politically correct”…

And that’s a big mistake.

According to Doug, this “PC” movement is just “one more termite eating away at the foundations of Western civilization itself.”

The University of Kansas is offering a course on angry white men this upcoming fall semester.

The course will examine “manifestations of male anger” and the role of “dominant and subordinate masculinities.”

Students at Hofstra University in Long Island, New York, demanded on Friday that the school remove a statue of Thomas Jefferson, arguing that it is not possible for the university to have the statue on campus while also being an institution that “prides itself on diversity and inclusion.” Students also called on the university to train its faculty and professors to behave in a more politically correct manner.

Hofstra University students held their second annual “Jefferson Has Gotta Go!” protest of a Thomas Jefferson statue on campus on Friday, demanding that the university move the structure into a museum along with the “appropriate context.”

Harvard University’s Undergraduate Council (UC) voted to allocate the Palestine Solidarity Committee (PSC) $2,050 to host Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) at Sunday’s general meeting.

According to student newspaper the Crimson, “the bill to fund IAW passed 21-13-4 and drew money from the UC’s Grant for an Open Harvard College, which subsidizes student initiatives that address one of the UC’s indicated ‘compelling interests’.”

The interests for the 2018-19 academic year are “mental health, race, culture, and faith relations, sexual assault and harassment prevention, social spaces, and financial accessibility.”

The report stated that “the PSC planned much of the programming of Harvard’s event, which began on March 30 and runs until April 4”, including “Palestinian speakers, a student panel, an unveiling of a physical Wall of Resistance, and a movie screening”.

Al Jazeera has obtained exclusive footage that proves the presence of child soldiers in the recruitment camps of the Saudi-UAE-led coalition fighting in Yemen.

The children, desperately poor, are being recruited to fight along the Saudi border to defend it from the Houthis, a rebel group that overran the capital, Sanaa, and large swaths of Yemen's northwest in 2014.

In 2015, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) formed a coalition to overthrow the Houthis - plunging Yemen into a ruinous war - supported by forces loyal to the country's internationally recognised government.

The conflict has created the world's worst humanitarian crisis, pushing Yemen to the brink of famine and leaving about 80 percent of its population - 24 million people - in need of humanitarian assistance.

Insecure parents across the country have been gifted a new scapegoat they can blame their child's shortcomings on: the admissions scandal cheaters. And this Thursday, they may need it - that marks the day that tens of thousands of prospective new students will hear from Ivy League schools like Harvard, Yale and Princeton about admission, according to Bloomberg.

On Friday, one day later, many of the 33 parents charged in the scandal will wind up in federal court in Boston for their first appearance related to the scandal. They should be able to avoid serving jail time if they plead guilty, according to lawyers.

Liz Pleshette, a former Columbia University admissions officer and director of college counseling at the private Latin School of Chicago said: "Families have been overvaluing some smoke and mirrors. The wizard has been revealed behind the curtain."

Amherst College in Massachusetts just did something so ridiculous that it actually had to reverse course, and that never happens.

The Office of Diversity & Inclusion posted and emailed to students a 36-page “Common Language Guide.”

You’re probably thinking: another speech code. Been there, done that.

This thing went way beyond that.

It tells students what words are to be taken to mean, and, in effect, how they are to think about them.

We learn that “capitalism” is an economic arrangement that “leads to exploitative labor practices, which affect marginalized groups disproportionately.”

A 10-year-old girl has died two days after she was injured in a fight with a fellow pupil at her primary school.

RaNiya Wright was found unresponsive by staff at the Forest Hills Elementary School in the South Carolina of Walterboro, after she got into an altercation with another Year 5 student on Monday.

They called the emergency services and RaNiya was taken to hospital where she remained alive, until she passed away on Wednesday.

The other student involved in the fight, who has not been identified, has been suspended from the school, according to NBC News.

“Because this is an ongoing investigation, we ask that the community understands that the information we can share is limited,” district officials said in a statement.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has launched an investigation into the colleges and universities that were named in the college admissions bribery scandal.

According to a report from Politico, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has launched an investigation into the colleges and universities that were named in the Department of Justice’s investigation into bribery in college admissions. Several big-name universities were included in the department’s report, included the University of Southern California, Georgetown University, Yale University, Wake Forest University, the University of Texas at Austin, and Stanford University.

“The allegations made and evidence cited by the Department of Justice raise questions about whether your institution is fully meeting its obligations,” an education department official wrote in a statement.