Monday, July 10, 2006

FREE SPEECH FOR HOMOSEXUALS ONLY AT GEORGIA TECH

Mike Adams is really angry about how an Asian student has been victimized in the name of "tolerance"

When I began the process of looking for a plaintiff to sue the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech), I had hoped to see the day that a federal court would throw out the university's unconstitutional speech code. The code went so far as to prohibit any speech that would "malign" another individual -- whatever that means. Now, three months after a suit has been filed against Georgia Tech, the school has enacted a new speech code. This one prohibits any speech that is threatening, harassing, intimidating, or "otherwise injurious." The new code is entirely too broad. That is why the suit will proceed as planned.

Under their first illegal speech code, Georgia Tech created a remarkably poisonous atmosphere for free expression by punishing two students -- Ruth Malhotra and Orit Sklar, the co-plaintiffs in the case -- for engaging in constitutionally protected political protest. But now Georgia Tech officials are making matters worse by standing aside as their students create entire organizations designed to malign individual students; namely, the two aforementioned co-plaintiffs. For example, Georgia Tech students have formed "Conservatives and Liberals Against Malhotra (CLAM)" -- a group comprised solely of gays and their allies. Here's how they describe themselves:

"This is a group and forum for students in any political sphere who see what Ruth Malhotra is doing on campus as divisive and degrading to our Georgia Tech community."

And here is a further explanation of the group's mission:

"It is important that we respond to Malhotra's bigoted blather. This fat ugly b****** is getting so desperate (not to mention the fact that she badly needs plastic surgery). Malhotra has a record of fighting Georgia Tech to advance herself, and this isn't the first time she has taken legal action against the school. Just try googling her name. Everyone knows that Malhotra and her ilk are a complete freak show -- setting up tables on Skiles Walkway and ranting against whatever strawman or other minority they decide to hate today. Even the Republicans on campus are embarassed [sic] by their crap. Malhotra wants the right to follow gay students around campus and yell obscenities at them, and now she is forcing the Institute to spend its money to defend against her bull**** lawsuit. Malhotra needs to shut the f*** up and realize that the point of Georgia Tech is to be the best research and engineering school in the country, not to advance her dead end political `career.'"

Of course, CLAM offers no facts to support the contention that Republicans (note: they say "plural" but only one effeminate Republican male seems to be opposed) are embarrassed by Malhotra. They can't even spell the word "embarrassed" and don't seem to be embarrassed about it. Furthermore, they believe that they are able to read Ruth's mind and discern a secret desire to scream obscenities at gay people.

And, of course, members of CLAM were also among those responsible for passing out Hostess Twinkies in the dorms at Georgia Tech. This was accompanied by suggestions that Ruth (a student of Asian descent) is "yellow on the outside, white on the inside" and a "Twinkie b****." These liberals are hardly in a position to call anyone a "racist" or "intolerant." But they can freely express themselves at Georgia Tech -- even holding rallies on campus -- for two reasons:

The constitution allows these gay activists to be intolerant racists even when they are ostensibly fighting for "civil" rights. The constitution does not protect a gay activist from showing his, her, or its ass.

The other reason is that the habitually dishonest and racially insensitive Georgia Tech president applies the speech codes selectively at his school. Despite their valuable contribution to Georgia Tech, Asians are not protected by the speech code until they commit their first act of sodomy. Nonetheless, some people are confused about Georgia Tech's rapid decline since Wayne Clough took over in 1994. And they can't understand why the campus gets more hostile the more they pander to the sodomites.

Source






Teachers: Too bad about the kids

Our teachers' unions love to tell us that their unstinting concern is for the children. Yet, like teachers' unions the world over, their policies hurt children and serve only to entrench the comfort levels of teachers. That much becomes obvious at school report time. Which is right about now.

Under threat of financial sanction from the federal Government, schools will soon be forced to provide more comprehensive reports in plain English, telling you how your child is travelling and then ranking them. Compared with the piffle that most parents received in the past, it's tempting to think we've come a long away. But, boy, have we got a long way to go if we are serious about improving the social mobility of children, especially the most disadvantaged.

For too long, the social engineers in charge of teaching used the classroom as a leveller, where no one failed and no one excelled. Or, if a student was failing or excelling, you wouldn't know it from the school report dropped on the kitchen bench. In the weird world of educrats, the focus on outcomes-based education is code for hiding the real outcomes of students. That information under-load promoted mediocrity for students and teachers alike.

Protecting their own backsides from a caning for poor performance, that is just the way the teachers' unions want it. Greg Combet may daydream about unions one day running the country again, but in our schools unions still rule. Indeed, nowhere is the power of unions more pernicious than in our schools. Unions have been dragged kicking and screaming to the table on the issue of transparency and accountability in our schools. Last year, when former federal education minister Brendan Nelson suggested that schools start delivering meaningful information to parents, unions and their supporters defaulted into hysteria.

NSW Teachers Federation president Maree O'Halloran started waving around the teachers' industrial award that prevents the public release of comparative data on school performance. This information would lead to school leagues tables and we - meaning union members - don't want that, she groaned. Other teachers' unions also preferred the report that doesn't report. With unions as their paymasters, state Labor governments also resisted even these modest reforms. As Nelson said at the time: "Money is the only thing that brings them to the table."

Just how meek those reforms are becomes obvious when you look at what's happening in some American states. In the US a few weeks ago for the American Australian Leadership Dialogue organised by businessman Phil Scanlan, I learned about real education reform. And it's all happening in Florida. With textbooks such as Rethinking Mathematics: Teaching Social Justice by Numbers - which includes chapters on Multicultural Math - the US is home to the same sort of politically correct gimcrackery that infects our schools.

In 1999, Florida decided to see how its students were doing. Governor Jeb Bush introduced the nation's most far-reaching and controversial reforms premised on three ideas: testing, transparency and accountability. For a quick comparison of where we're at compared with Florida, click on the state's Department of Education website (www.fldoe. com). The wealth of information you'll find there puts the information void on our own state education websites to shame.

Bush's A+ program involves so-called high-stakes testing of all students from grades three to 10. It's high stakes because consequences flow from the results. Schools are graded between A to F depending on the performance of their students and, hold on to your seats, in those schools that attract two F-grades in any four-year period, students are given vouchers to attend private schools. As one pundit wrote, it was "the first money-back guarantee in the history of public education".

That the brother of George W. Bush is driving these education reforms will have left-wing union folk frothing about right-wing conspiracies. But the results prove that sunlight is indeed the best disinfectant. In a nutshell, once Florida started testing their students and making schools accountable for the results, student achievement levels kept rising. Released last month, the latest report from Florida's education department reveals record numbers of the state's students in grades three to 10 are reading at or above grade level: 223,000 more students than was the case in 2001. That's a 10 per cent jump on the 2001 results. In maths, 62 per cent of students in grades three to 10 are performing at or above achievement level, up from 50 per cent in 2001. Importantly, the traditional underachievers, African-Americans and Hispanics, have made the biggest gains.

The results for schools are equally remarkable. Putting pressure on F-graded schools was the most contentious part of Jeb Bush's reforms. In an analysis of Florida's failing schools, Jay P. Greene and Marcus A. Winters, from the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, point out that the theory behind the A+ program is that "chronically failing schools will have an incentive to improve if they must compete with other schools for students and the funding they generate". Their research finds that F- graded schools facing competition from vouchers made the biggest improvements when compared with other low-performing schools. So the theory was spot-on. In other words, Florida's willingness to penalise failing schools debunks the myth that economic forces stop at the classroom door.

At the other end of the spectrum, the Florida School Recognition Program awards funds to schools that receive an A grade or improve at least one grade category in any year. Each recognised school gets $100 for each full-time student and can use the money to award bonuses to teachers, buy educational equipment or material and employ additional staff to improve student performance. While there is a penalty for failing, there are also substantial incentives to achieve. Maybe that explains why, since 1999, the number of A-graded schools has jumped 500 per cent. In another radical move to align teaching with the real world, Florida is also awarding teachers performance-based bonuses.

And the reason Florida has been able to reform education to consistently deliver better outcomes for students brings us back to unions. In Florida, the education unions are much less powerful. Although they suffer the American disease of running off to court to complain, in Florida - unlike Australia - they don't have a state government in their back pockets. Our unionistas, dedicated to bankrolling the re-election of politicians who shaft children by cocooning teachers, have much to learn from Florida. For starters, the classroom is no place to be frightened of information if in fact you care deeply about children

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"


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1 comment:

urbansocrates said...

I'll go along with your plan -- and I say this as a former member of a teacher's union -- if you will add in some provisions: to eliminate compulsory education after the age of 14 and the minimum wage, while introducing universal health care. That way all those kids who have been going to school can get jobs that would otherwise go to illegal immigrants. Education after the age of 14 would then be WORTH paying for, and my career as a high school teacher in the private sector could flourish, provided all those privately-run schools have to meet state standards for staff (e.g. teachers would still have to be certified by the states).