Sunday, November 09, 2008

Reason 142 to Homeschool: Obama Teachers Won’t Bully Kids Who Support conservatives

This is a video of Diantha Harris, a lifelong democrat and avid Barack Obama supporter. She is also a lousy schoolteacher, as is evidenced by the mushmouthed kids in her class. And instead of concentrating on grammar and English, math and science, she abuses and ridicules any child who dares to speak up in support of John McCain. This video is part of a Finnish documentary on Obama fans, and it is shocking that you have to go to a foreign country to learn what goes on in our own classrooms.



See how she singles out the little white girl and mocks her for having an absent parent, who is off defending the country, and lies to her, saying her Dad would have to stay in Iraq for a hundred years? The little girl was ready to cry! Disgusting.
Diantha Harris: It’s a senseless war! [Stares at Kathy.] And by the way, Kathy, the person that you’re picking for president said [Harris shakes her head] that our troops could stay in Iraq for another hundred years if they need to! [Kathy bites her lip, looks ashamed. Other kids stare at Kathy, laugh, smirk.] So that means that your daddy could stay in the military for another hundred years!

[Kathy is on verge of tears.]

[In an interview later:]

Diantha Harris: Now I can support whomever I want to support, as long as I don’t browbeat another person for the candidate that they supported. Like I have some students that support John McCain, and when they told me that, I said ah … “that’s good’ and I just moved on. So, I think that everybody is entitled to their own personal opinion.

You know, the schools are banning kickball, dodgeball and tag on the playgrounds because they are afraid of bullies. Seems to me the bullies are the ones with the chalkboard erasers.

Source (See the original for links)






Education is the key to social mobility but Britain has achieved NO improvement in social mobility for a long time

Despite it allegedly being a major goal of the ruling Labour party government

The class divide is as deep as ever in Britain, a Government report has admitted, with "social mobility no greater or less since 1970". Family background "still makes a marked difference" to what chances a person will have in their life, the study says. Working-class children continue to fare badly at school compared with their richer classmates and struggle to get better jobs than their parents had, it is claimed.

The report, by the Prime Minister's Strategy Unit, discloses that the UK's record on making education and employment more fair "does not compare well internationally" and that much more could be done. It goes on to claim that increased investment on education and care for toddlers is starting to have an effect, however, and there have been "positive changes" in narrowing the class divide this decade.

But critics said the modest improvements are a "damning indictment" of Labour's key pledge to reduce the gap between rich and poor, which has seen education funding almost doubling to 77billion pounds a year in addition to reforms of the welfare system. Chris Grayling, the Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, said: "Ministers are claiming this morning that things are getting better - that between 2001 and 2005 in this country social mobility began to improve. Barely. "Firstly, what a damning indictment of 11 years of Labour Government, of vast amounts of money spent on regeneration programmes, on complex new systems of support for people on low incomes, on the New Deal - that the best they can claim is a fractional improvement. If indeed that fractional improvement even exists outside the Downing Street spin machine."

He went on: "Only rarely do you find young people making the social leap that once took the best and the brightest of previous generations brought up in Britain's humblest backgrounds to positions of prominence."

The report, called Getting On, Getting Ahead, says there was a sharp increase in social mobility after the Second World War as children of working-class parents acquired better paid clerical and professional jobs. Social mobility in this report is gauged by comparing the quality of occupation one person has with that of their parents. The trend then went into reverse, however, with the proportion of men getting better jobs than their fathers remaining the same since the 1970s, although it has improved among women. "Broadly, social mobility is no greater or less since 1970," the report states. "Since the war, the UK's record on making sure people have a fair chance to get better jobs does not compare well internationally."

The report says the influence of family background on educational attainment has "remained constant", with poor children less likely to leave school with five good GCSEs or go on to study at university. It states: "One of the UK's major international weaknesses has been the large number of people emerging from school with few qualifications."

However, the report also finds that family background has had less of an impact on GCSE results for those born in 1990 - who took their exams in 2006 - than in 1970, suggesting the younger generation may be more able to move up the social ladder. This group has not yet entered the employment market so comprehensive data on their social mobility is not available. In addition, it says earnings mobility - the chance of getting a better job during a person's career - has "risen slightly since 2000".

Liam Byrne, the Cabinet Office minister, said: "What seems clear is that despite the huge social, economic and political changes between 1970 and 2000, social mobility didn't go up - it stayed the same. Now, things look like they're starting to improve. "The key for the future appears to be capturing a big share of high-value jobs that will come as the world economy changes over the next 20 years plus investing in the things, like Sure Start, school standards, post-16 education and more training at work to give more people a fairer chance to get on."

Source

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