Tennessee Trumps Wisconsin: Kills Teacher Collective Bargaining
To fix public schools, you have to control public schools. And there’s little control when teachers unions, with their self-serving agendas, question every cost-cutting proposal and reform on the table.
That’s why so many state governments have taken swift action to limit the power of organized labor in public schools. Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, Idaho and Michigan were the first, and Tennessee added itself to the list on Wednesday.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam affixed his signature on House Bill 130 and Senate Bill 113, ending collective bargaining and giving local school boards the full authority to operate their districts in the manner they choose.
That doesn't mean the unions are shut out of the discussion. The new laws create a process called “collaborative conferencing,” where the school board, administrators and union officials will be forced to sit and discuss many of the normal issues, including salary, insurance, grievance procedures and working conditions.
If the two sides agree on any number of issues, they can sign binding “memorandums of understanding,” that will serve the same purpose as collective bargaining agreements. But any issues that are left unsettled will be the sole domain of the school board, with no appellate procedure available to the unions.
School boards will also have the option of not entering into any sort of agreement with the union. In that case they would have full authority to deal with all issues in an arbitrary manner.
Nobody elected the unions
Tennessee lawmakers were careful to leave a few key items off the discussion table, including personnel and staffing decisions, how to use grant money, the evaluation process for employees and whether or not payroll deductions can be made for political purposes.
That means the end of the road for the treasured union concept of seniority, particularly when it’s applied at layoff time.
Basically, lawmakers allowed the unions to keep their bark, but wisely took away their bite. And if school boards get tired of the barking, they will be allowed to close the windows, pull the shutters and go about their business.
Democrats in the legislature, outnumbered in both chambers, have been fuming about the legislation.
“This bill does nothing except take away every part of professional negotiation, every single part,” House Minority Leader Craig Fitzhugh told knoxnews.com. “Don’t be fooled.”
Actually, we’re not fooled at all. And we kind of like the unique process created by collaborative conferencing.
There are certainly thousands of great teachers in Tennessee, and they’re the soldiers on the front lines. School boards would be stupid to ignore their input when making major decisions.
On the other hand, it was necessary to take away veto power from the teachers unions, due to their stubborn opposition to money-saving contract concessions and education reform efforts.
School boards are elected by the public to run public schools. Nobody elected the unions.
SOURCE
At last, an Oxbridge for those who can’t get into Oxbridge
A private university that will take on the cream of the rejects is a simply brilliant idea, writes Boris Johnson
A few years ago, I met a man who was almost in tears of rage at the injustice that had been done to his son. I was trying to sneak out of some drinks party when he started telling me about this prodigy. His A-level scorecard was perfect; he held colours for rugby; he had been captain of the school debating team, keeper of the philately club, editor of the magazine – and yet he had been turned down by the dons of virtually every top university in the country.
What was going on, wailed my friend. This kind of thing never happened in his day, he said; and he went on to speculate that there was some kind of secret Pol Pot-style persecution of the children of the bourgeoisie. Since then I have heard many similar complaints about university admissions procedures (and I bet you have, too), and after one particularly harrowing conversation with a disappointed mum I had an idea for a brilliant business venture – a new institution that would be both socially responsible and immensely financially lucrative. I would found Reject’s College, Oxbridge. That is to say, I would find investors for a new elite academic institution, aimed squarely at the wrathful parents – many of them Oxbridge graduates – who simply could not understand how their own offspring could rack up three A-stars and grade 8 bassoon, and yet find themselves turned down.
In my mind’s eye I could see exactly how it would work: we’d get some dusty old goods yard at the back of Oxford or Cambridge. We’d turn it into a gorgeous neo-classical quadrangle, designed by Robert Adam or someone like that. We would have a prospectus full of the Reject’s College arms (Floreant Rejecti) and the lawns with snaggle-toothed lecturers leering at their pupils over a bottle of chilled white wine.
We would vindicate the principles of academic freedom, as famously outlined by Justice Felix Frankfurter, of the US Supreme Court, in 1957. That is to say, we – and I saw myself as provost or master – would decide what should be taught, how it should be taught, and whom to admit for study, and we would decide all these things on academic grounds and academic grounds alone.
Apart from that, I am afraid I was a bit vague about how exactly Reject’s College would work. So you can imagine my joy yesterday when I saw that someone had not only had my idea, but had gone one better: he had found the cash and the backing to make it happen. “Top dons to create new Oxbridge” was a headline to gladden the heart of many a grieving parent and frustrated academic. In fact, the whole thing is such unambiguously good news that I scarcely know where to begin.
It is the brainchild of Prof A C Grayling, who certainly looks and writes like a philosopher (I seem to remember some good stuff on Russell and Wittgenstein), but who turns out to have a Bransonesque practical flair. Together with Richard Dawkins, Niall Ferguson, Sir Christopher Ricks and various other academic superstars, he is setting up a New College of the Humanities, based in Bloomsbury.
They have found the premises, they will start taking applications from next month, and the first one-on-one Oxbridge-style tutorials will take place in autumn 2012. They will ultimately have 1,000 undergraduates, all of whom will be expected to achieve a minimum three As at A level to get in; and since this will mean a whole new higher education institution for London, so lengthening our lead as the university capital of the world, I thought it would not be too pompous if I rang up Prof Grayling to congratulate him.
He explained that the idea had first occurred to him years ago, when he was tutor for admissions at an Oxbridge college. “For every person we admitted, we turned away 12, each of whom could have done outstandingly well at the university,” he said. The trouble with Britain today, he said, was that we simply didn’t have enough elite university provision – and especially not in the humanities subjects, where teaching budgets are under such pressure.
It was absurd, he argued, that so many of our young people are going off to America to do their degrees, and he is surely right. The shortage of places in top universities is now so acute that we have 10,000 UK school leavers a year who are spending $60,000 a year on Animal House-style frat parties on the Podunk Liberal Arts Campus or other American colleges. That cash could be going into the hard-pressed British system.
Which brings us to the key question. Prof Grayling’s New College for the Humanities is going to charge a staggering £18,000 for tuition alone, and that is before we have come to the accommodation costs. How on earth are people going to afford it? He has a ready answer, in that he and his colleagues want to see 30 per cent of undergraduates receive some help with their fees, and a large proportion will have full scholarships, funded either charitably or from the fees of those who can afford to pay. It is this strong commitment to attracting students from disadvantaged families that has earned the project the support of such famous lefties as Prof Linda Colley and Sir David Cannadine.
This is not an attempt to replace the existing taxpayer-funded system or to “privatise” the universities. It is about getting more cash into the teaching of the humanities, and about additional elite provision. It is about creating a new and different model for university education, side by side with the existing system. If well handled, it could be just as successful in widening “access” as any of the current outreach programmes being pursued by other universities. It is the boldest experiment in higher education since the University of Buckingham was founded in 1983, and it fully deserves to succeed and to be imitated.
If academics are fed up with the tyranny of the Research Assessment Exercise; if they are demoralised by endless government attacks on their admissions procedures; if they feel they are being scapegoated for the weaknesses of the schools, then the New College for the Humanities shows the way. Three cheers for A C Grayling.
SOURCE
Quis magistros ipsos docebit?
Australian teacher graduates face a test before registration
ASPIRING primary school teachers are expected to face questions about animal groupings, energy and literacy processes in Queensland's controversial teacher test.
Sample questions of what teaching graduates could face in the nation's first teacher pre-registration exam have been placed on the Queensland College of Teachers website.
The test, which hopeful primary school teachers will be required to pass before they can attain registration in Queensland from the end of this year, will examine a graduate's literacy, numeracy and science skills.
One sample question asks graduates to place a kangaroo, tadpole, echidna, emu and lizard into its right animal grouping - fish, reptiles, amphibians, birds or mammals.
Another in the science category requires graduates to use their knowledge of sound and heat energy to answer a question.
Under numeracy, graduates are asked when a train is scheduled to arrive if it leaves Mount Isa at 1.30pm on Monday and the trip takes 20 hours and 40 minutes.
In literacy, one question asks which word is a preposition and another asks graduates to sequence the typical behaviours of a child learning to read.
It will also test their knowledge of course content and teaching.
The test follows a recommendation by Professor Geoff Masters in a review of how to lift Queensland students' literacy and numeracy standards, after the state came second last in the first national tests in 2008.
The Queensland Teachers Union and Queensland Deans of Education Forum initially said the tests were offensive to universities and a double-up of what was already being taught.
QDEF chair Professor Wendy Patton said extensive consultation had been undertaken on the exams and while there were still some concerns, they were waiting to see the actual tests before making any further judgment.
The Queensland College of Teachers (QCT) website reveals aspiring primary school teachers will face two 90-minute exams with 60 questions each on literacy and numeracy and one 60-minute science test with 40 questions.
The computer-based exams will take place in designated testing centres across Queensland at the end of the year. Teaching graduates will be able to sit the exam as many times as needed to pass and attain registration.
"The purpose of the QCT pre-registration test is to ensure that aspiring primary teachers meet threshold levels of knowledge about the teaching of literacy, numeracy and science and have sound levels of content knowledge in these areas," the QCT website states.
QCT director John Ryan said the tests would not be a panacea for proficiency but would ensure graduates teaching in Queensland schools met a minimum standard.
SOURCE
Tuesday, June 07, 2011
Monday, June 06, 2011
New for-profit colleges regs: Double backlash
The Obama administration's crackdown on for-profit colleges is drawing backlash from conservatives and liberals alike.
On Thursday, the Education Department released the final regulations aimed at what are known as career or vocational schools, which train medical technicians, chefs, welders, electricians and the like. The regulations will cut federal aid to programs that don't lead to "gainful employment."
"These new regulations will help ensure that students at these schools are getting what they pay for: solid preparation for a good job," Education Secretary Arne Duncan said. "We're giving career colleges every opportunity to reform themselves, but we're not letting them off the hook, because too many vulnerable students are being hurt."
Under the regulations introduced Thursday, a program would meet standards if at least 35 percent of former students are repaying their loans and the estimated annual loan payment of graduates doesn't exceed 30 percent of their discretionary income or 12 percent of their total earnings. The first year programs would be deemed ineligible is 2015.
Progressive groups say the new regulations aren’t strong enough, while others say they go too far. "Given the overwhelming evidence that the worst for-profit colleges are abusing students and taxpayers, the rule isn't strong enough, but it's still an important reform that could, over time, help millions of students," said David Halperin, director of Campus Progress, the youth arm of the Center for American Progress.
"We believe that, collectively, the rules issued by the administration, ongoing investigations by state attorney general, and increasing scrutiny by Congress and the media will ultimately compel for-profit schools to clean up their act or else shut their doors."
The National Black Chamber of Commerce called for Congress to derail the implementation of the gainful employment rule because it says it unfairly targets only for-profit schools, doesn't address the excessive cost of higher education and it may be illegal. "It is the result of a biased rule-making process that essentially targeted only one sector of post-secondary institutions," Harry Alford, president chief executive of the chamber, said in a statement. "Moreover, it is beyond the department's legal authority to regulate in such a broad, new policy-making fashion."
For-profit students represent 12 percent of all higher education students, 26 percent of all student loans and 46 percent of all student loan dollars in default, according to the Education Department. More than a quarter of for-profit schools receive 80 percent of their revenues from federal student aid.
"While for-profit schools have profited and prospered thanks to federal dollars, some of their students have not," Duncan said. "This is a disservice to students and taxpayers, and undermines the valuable work being done by the for-profit education industry as a whole."
A half dozen Democratic lawmakers blasted the rule — Reps. Alcee Hastings of Florida, Carolyn McCarthy of New York, Donald Payne of New Jersey, Edolphus Towns of New York, Tim Holden of Pennsylvania and Ted Deutch of Florida. "It is deeply troubling that an administration supposedly committed to increasing college completion in the United States would propose a regulation that restricts minority access to higher education and limits job opportunities for those who need them most," Hastings said.
The Heartland Institute also ripped the rules. "Attacking the industry most responsible for popularizing higher education among the disadvantaged seems to be at odds with the Obama administration's goal of getting more kids into college," said Marc Oestreich, a legislative education specialist at the institute.
Sen. Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat in Senate, also didn't give the rule a ringing endorsement. "This rule may stop the worst violators among the predatory for-profit schools but it will not protect thousands of young students who are being burdened with debt by many worthless diploma mills," he said in a written statement. "If we are serious about protecting taxpayers and students, we should view this rule as the starting point."
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers gave the rule a lukewarm reception. "While this rule is a step in the right direction – accomplished amid intensive lobbying against it – there is more work to be done," she said.
SOURCE
LA: Creationism law skirting US ban survives challenge
The Louisiana law allows teaching contrary to evolution on the grounds it promotes critical thinking. The successful defense last week of a three-year-old Louisiana law is casting a spotlight on how conservative groups are seeking to circumvent a federal ban on the teaching of creationism in public schools.
The Louisiana Science Education Act, which allows teaching contrary to science on the grounds it promotes critical thinking, is increasingly serving as an inspiration to religious conservatives in other states. Its defenders decry the “censorship” of nonscientific ideas and advocate allowing teachers to teach “both sides” on certain scientific theories.
So far in 2011, similarly worded legislation was introduced in Florida, Texas, Missouri, Kentucky, Oklahoma and New Mexico, but all failed at the committee stage. However, a bill in Tennessee passed the state House in early April and is awaiting a Senate vote in the 2012 session.
In Louisiana, the challenge to the Science Education Act was defeated last Thursday in the Senate Education Committee by a 5-to-1 vote. State Sen. Karen Carter Peterson (D), who authored the bill to repeal the 2008 law, said she received letters of support from more than 40 Nobel Prize-winning scientists.
Senator Peterson told the Associated Press on Tuesday it was “fundamentally embarrassing” for her state to have the law remain on the books, adding that it would further damage Louisiana’s ability to attract top talent in the sciences.
The 2008 law gives elementary and secondary school teachers the right to bring materials into science classrooms as supplements to textbooks on matters “including, but not limited to, evolution, the origins of life, global warming and human cloning.”
The scientific community has long advocated that allowing anything but science in the teaching of evolution will be intellectually harmful. [Leftists hate ANY alternative views] In an e-mail sent to the Associated Press, Harold Kroto, a Nobel Prize winner for chemistry in 1996, said voting against the repeal creates a situation that “should be likened to requiring Louisiana school texts to include the claim that the Sun goes round the Earth.”
While evolutionary biology is based in the work of Charles Darwin, which shows how humans evolved through natural selection, creationism is rooted in a fundamental reading of Biblical texts that say mankind is the product of a divine maker.
With the law intact, Louisiana is the state that has gone the furthest in approving legislation that opens the door to allowing alternatives to science taught in its schools.
SOURCE
40 UK universities are now breeding grounds for terror as hardline groups peddle hate on campus
England's universities have become a breeding ground for extremism and terrorist recruitment, according to a disturbing government report.
Officials have identified 40 English universities where ‘there may be particular risk of radicalisation or recruitment on campus’.
A soon to be published Whitehall report – seen by the Daily Mail – will point to a string of examples of students going on to commit terrorist acts against this country or overseas.
Alarmingly the Prevent review says that ‘more than 30 per cent of people convicted for Al Qaeda-associated terrorist offences in the UK . . . are known to have attended university or a higher education institution.
‘Another 15 per cent studied or achieved a vocational or further education qualification. About 10 per cent of the sample were students at the time when they were charged or the incident for which they were convicted took place.’
The report, prepared by Home Office officials, warns of hardline Islamic groups specifically targeting universities which have large numbers of Muslim students in order to peddle a message of hate.
Students are even ‘engaging in terrorism or related activities while members of university societies’.
But it says the universities are not doing enough to respond to this threat to national security. Fewer than half of universities are engaged with the police.
Home Secretary Theresa May will demand universities do more to confront this threat. She also wants more action to deport preachers of hate.
The universities which have given places to fanatics include some of our most prestigious institutions.
The report will say that terrorists who have attended English universities include Taimour Abdulwahab al-Abdaly, the Stockholm suicide bomber who had a BSc in sports therapy from the University of Luton, now the University of Bedfordshire.
The alleged Detroit underpants bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, studied mechanical engineering at University College London between 2005 and 2008.
Two of the fanatics convicted of the transatlantic liquid bomb plot – ringleader Abdulla Ahmed Ali and Assad Sarwar – attended City and Brunel Universities respectively.
The review says the Department for Business, which is in charge of universities, has identified about 40 English universities where there may be a particular risk.
Some now have a dedicated police officer to advise on tackling radicalisation.The document raises particular alarm about the Federation of Student Islamic Societies (FOSIS). It says there are ‘several examples of students engaging in terrorism or related activities while members of university societies affiliated to FOSIS.
Such extremists must have no part in any organisation that wishes to be recognised as a representative body.’
The finger of blame for radicalising students is pointed at Hizb-ut-Tahrir, which David Cameron promised to ban in opposition, and off-shoots of a fanatical group once run by preacher of hate Omar Bakri.
One section warns: ‘We believe there is unambiguous evidence to indicate that some extremist organisations, notably Hizb-ut-Tahrir, target specific universities and colleges (notably those with a large number of Muslim students) with the objective of radicalising and recruiting students.’
Universities UK says that universities ‘are places where ideas and beliefs can be tested without fear of control’, and that they act as a safeguard against ideologies that threaten Britain’s open society.
The worries about the lax attitude of some universities is combined with concern about the student visa route. Ten of the 11 Pakistani nationals seized on suspicion of plotting an atrocity in the North-West in 2009 had student visas.
The alleged ringleader of this plot – Abid Naseer – was a computer studies student at Liverpool John Moores University.
Mrs May is determined to crack down on the abuse of the student visa route.
However, she has faced opposition within government from Michael Gove’s Education Department and Business Secretary Vince Cable.Meanwhile, Whitehall officials are said to be concerned that Mr Gove’s flagship ‘free schools’ policy – where parents can obtain state funding to open and run their own schools – could be targeted by extremists.
Security officials working in a dedicated unit are expected to vet the backgrounds of all would-be applicants for evidence of extremism or radicalisation.
The Prevent strategy is said to have caused behind-the-scenes rows within the Government.
Mr Gove is understood to have argued that the Government should not engage with groups which hold any extremist beliefs – even though these are the ones most likely to attract would-be terrorists.
Four months ago, in a major speech in Munich, the Prime Minister signalled an end to ‘passive tolerance’ of extremist Islamic organisations which foster hatred against the West and radicalise young Muslims.
SOURCE
The Obama administration's crackdown on for-profit colleges is drawing backlash from conservatives and liberals alike.
On Thursday, the Education Department released the final regulations aimed at what are known as career or vocational schools, which train medical technicians, chefs, welders, electricians and the like. The regulations will cut federal aid to programs that don't lead to "gainful employment."
"These new regulations will help ensure that students at these schools are getting what they pay for: solid preparation for a good job," Education Secretary Arne Duncan said. "We're giving career colleges every opportunity to reform themselves, but we're not letting them off the hook, because too many vulnerable students are being hurt."
Under the regulations introduced Thursday, a program would meet standards if at least 35 percent of former students are repaying their loans and the estimated annual loan payment of graduates doesn't exceed 30 percent of their discretionary income or 12 percent of their total earnings. The first year programs would be deemed ineligible is 2015.
Progressive groups say the new regulations aren’t strong enough, while others say they go too far. "Given the overwhelming evidence that the worst for-profit colleges are abusing students and taxpayers, the rule isn't strong enough, but it's still an important reform that could, over time, help millions of students," said David Halperin, director of Campus Progress, the youth arm of the Center for American Progress.
"We believe that, collectively, the rules issued by the administration, ongoing investigations by state attorney general, and increasing scrutiny by Congress and the media will ultimately compel for-profit schools to clean up their act or else shut their doors."
The National Black Chamber of Commerce called for Congress to derail the implementation of the gainful employment rule because it says it unfairly targets only for-profit schools, doesn't address the excessive cost of higher education and it may be illegal. "It is the result of a biased rule-making process that essentially targeted only one sector of post-secondary institutions," Harry Alford, president chief executive of the chamber, said in a statement. "Moreover, it is beyond the department's legal authority to regulate in such a broad, new policy-making fashion."
For-profit students represent 12 percent of all higher education students, 26 percent of all student loans and 46 percent of all student loan dollars in default, according to the Education Department. More than a quarter of for-profit schools receive 80 percent of their revenues from federal student aid.
"While for-profit schools have profited and prospered thanks to federal dollars, some of their students have not," Duncan said. "This is a disservice to students and taxpayers, and undermines the valuable work being done by the for-profit education industry as a whole."
A half dozen Democratic lawmakers blasted the rule — Reps. Alcee Hastings of Florida, Carolyn McCarthy of New York, Donald Payne of New Jersey, Edolphus Towns of New York, Tim Holden of Pennsylvania and Ted Deutch of Florida. "It is deeply troubling that an administration supposedly committed to increasing college completion in the United States would propose a regulation that restricts minority access to higher education and limits job opportunities for those who need them most," Hastings said.
The Heartland Institute also ripped the rules. "Attacking the industry most responsible for popularizing higher education among the disadvantaged seems to be at odds with the Obama administration's goal of getting more kids into college," said Marc Oestreich, a legislative education specialist at the institute.
Sen. Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat in Senate, also didn't give the rule a ringing endorsement. "This rule may stop the worst violators among the predatory for-profit schools but it will not protect thousands of young students who are being burdened with debt by many worthless diploma mills," he said in a written statement. "If we are serious about protecting taxpayers and students, we should view this rule as the starting point."
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers gave the rule a lukewarm reception. "While this rule is a step in the right direction – accomplished amid intensive lobbying against it – there is more work to be done," she said.
SOURCE
LA: Creationism law skirting US ban survives challenge
The Louisiana law allows teaching contrary to evolution on the grounds it promotes critical thinking. The successful defense last week of a three-year-old Louisiana law is casting a spotlight on how conservative groups are seeking to circumvent a federal ban on the teaching of creationism in public schools.
The Louisiana Science Education Act, which allows teaching contrary to science on the grounds it promotes critical thinking, is increasingly serving as an inspiration to religious conservatives in other states. Its defenders decry the “censorship” of nonscientific ideas and advocate allowing teachers to teach “both sides” on certain scientific theories.
So far in 2011, similarly worded legislation was introduced in Florida, Texas, Missouri, Kentucky, Oklahoma and New Mexico, but all failed at the committee stage. However, a bill in Tennessee passed the state House in early April and is awaiting a Senate vote in the 2012 session.
In Louisiana, the challenge to the Science Education Act was defeated last Thursday in the Senate Education Committee by a 5-to-1 vote. State Sen. Karen Carter Peterson (D), who authored the bill to repeal the 2008 law, said she received letters of support from more than 40 Nobel Prize-winning scientists.
Senator Peterson told the Associated Press on Tuesday it was “fundamentally embarrassing” for her state to have the law remain on the books, adding that it would further damage Louisiana’s ability to attract top talent in the sciences.
The 2008 law gives elementary and secondary school teachers the right to bring materials into science classrooms as supplements to textbooks on matters “including, but not limited to, evolution, the origins of life, global warming and human cloning.”
The scientific community has long advocated that allowing anything but science in the teaching of evolution will be intellectually harmful. [Leftists hate ANY alternative views] In an e-mail sent to the Associated Press, Harold Kroto, a Nobel Prize winner for chemistry in 1996, said voting against the repeal creates a situation that “should be likened to requiring Louisiana school texts to include the claim that the Sun goes round the Earth.”
While evolutionary biology is based in the work of Charles Darwin, which shows how humans evolved through natural selection, creationism is rooted in a fundamental reading of Biblical texts that say mankind is the product of a divine maker.
With the law intact, Louisiana is the state that has gone the furthest in approving legislation that opens the door to allowing alternatives to science taught in its schools.
SOURCE
40 UK universities are now breeding grounds for terror as hardline groups peddle hate on campus
England's universities have become a breeding ground for extremism and terrorist recruitment, according to a disturbing government report.
Officials have identified 40 English universities where ‘there may be particular risk of radicalisation or recruitment on campus’.
A soon to be published Whitehall report – seen by the Daily Mail – will point to a string of examples of students going on to commit terrorist acts against this country or overseas.
Alarmingly the Prevent review says that ‘more than 30 per cent of people convicted for Al Qaeda-associated terrorist offences in the UK . . . are known to have attended university or a higher education institution.
‘Another 15 per cent studied or achieved a vocational or further education qualification. About 10 per cent of the sample were students at the time when they were charged or the incident for which they were convicted took place.’
The report, prepared by Home Office officials, warns of hardline Islamic groups specifically targeting universities which have large numbers of Muslim students in order to peddle a message of hate.
Students are even ‘engaging in terrorism or related activities while members of university societies’.
But it says the universities are not doing enough to respond to this threat to national security. Fewer than half of universities are engaged with the police.
Home Secretary Theresa May will demand universities do more to confront this threat. She also wants more action to deport preachers of hate.
The universities which have given places to fanatics include some of our most prestigious institutions.
The report will say that terrorists who have attended English universities include Taimour Abdulwahab al-Abdaly, the Stockholm suicide bomber who had a BSc in sports therapy from the University of Luton, now the University of Bedfordshire.
The alleged Detroit underpants bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, studied mechanical engineering at University College London between 2005 and 2008.
Two of the fanatics convicted of the transatlantic liquid bomb plot – ringleader Abdulla Ahmed Ali and Assad Sarwar – attended City and Brunel Universities respectively.
The review says the Department for Business, which is in charge of universities, has identified about 40 English universities where there may be a particular risk.
Some now have a dedicated police officer to advise on tackling radicalisation.The document raises particular alarm about the Federation of Student Islamic Societies (FOSIS). It says there are ‘several examples of students engaging in terrorism or related activities while members of university societies affiliated to FOSIS.
Such extremists must have no part in any organisation that wishes to be recognised as a representative body.’
The finger of blame for radicalising students is pointed at Hizb-ut-Tahrir, which David Cameron promised to ban in opposition, and off-shoots of a fanatical group once run by preacher of hate Omar Bakri.
One section warns: ‘We believe there is unambiguous evidence to indicate that some extremist organisations, notably Hizb-ut-Tahrir, target specific universities and colleges (notably those with a large number of Muslim students) with the objective of radicalising and recruiting students.’
Universities UK says that universities ‘are places where ideas and beliefs can be tested without fear of control’, and that they act as a safeguard against ideologies that threaten Britain’s open society.
The worries about the lax attitude of some universities is combined with concern about the student visa route. Ten of the 11 Pakistani nationals seized on suspicion of plotting an atrocity in the North-West in 2009 had student visas.
The alleged ringleader of this plot – Abid Naseer – was a computer studies student at Liverpool John Moores University.
Mrs May is determined to crack down on the abuse of the student visa route.
However, she has faced opposition within government from Michael Gove’s Education Department and Business Secretary Vince Cable.Meanwhile, Whitehall officials are said to be concerned that Mr Gove’s flagship ‘free schools’ policy – where parents can obtain state funding to open and run their own schools – could be targeted by extremists.
Security officials working in a dedicated unit are expected to vet the backgrounds of all would-be applicants for evidence of extremism or radicalisation.
The Prevent strategy is said to have caused behind-the-scenes rows within the Government.
Mr Gove is understood to have argued that the Government should not engage with groups which hold any extremist beliefs – even though these are the ones most likely to attract would-be terrorists.
Four months ago, in a major speech in Munich, the Prime Minister signalled an end to ‘passive tolerance’ of extremist Islamic organisations which foster hatred against the West and radicalise young Muslims.
SOURCE
Sunday, June 05, 2011
FIFTH grader arrested for breaking teacher's nose in California
An 11-year-old California boy at an alternative school for at-risk students is accused of punching his fifth-grade teacher in the face and breaking her nose.
San Bernardino County sheriff's investigators say the teacher was attacked around 9 a.m. Thursday at the Adelanto Community Day School in Adelanto, about 85 miles northeast of Los Angeles. The teacher was taken to a nearby Mojave Desert hospital for treatment.
The boy was arrested for assault with injuries and was taken to the High Desert Juvenile Detention and Assessment Center. He has not been named because of his age.
Investigators tell the Victorville Daily Press that the boy became upset when the teacher asked him to move to another seat in the classroom. The boy allegedly refused to move and yelled at the teacher before getting up and punching her.
The alleged incident was said to take place in one of the classrooms in the school, which is located at 11824 Air Expressway.
Christine McGrew, spokeswoman for the county Superintendent of Schools, told Victorville Daily Press: 'There was an incident that took place at the Adelanto Community Day School. 'At this time, my understanding is that the teacher’s nose is broken'.
Initial reports incorrectly stated the boy was in the fourth grade, as school officials later confirmed he is a fifth grader.
Ms McGrew told the paper the Adelanto Community Day School is an alternative school for at-risk students, many of whom may have been expelled from other institutions, had attendance issues or were otherwise not doing well in traditional settings. The classrooms are smaller to foster more individual attention.
Ms McGrew said: 'This is a rare and isolated incident. Some of the programs have security officers on site and that’s dependent on the number of classrooms. 'This is a rare occurrence that this would happen'.
It is not known if any security personnel were on school grounds during the alleged incident.
SOURCE
Gormless British graduates need more time at the university of life? They lack basic workplace skills, claims study
Employers believe too many graduates are unfit for the workplace, according to a study. They lack skills in communication, problem solving, presentation, customer relations and even punctuality.
Bosses believe all universities should be required to teach employment skills as part of degree courses, say researchers.
Universities were also urged to set up more work experience placements and internships for students to ensure they don't join the dole queue when they graduate.
The study, commissioned by the education charity Edge and carried out by Glasgow University, highlighted a 'notable majority' unable carry out duties in the workplace.
It warned of a systematic failure to 'promote employability across higher education.'
The report follows the publication of statistics which show the number of jobless graduates rocketed to a 15-year high in 2010.
A fifth were out of work in the third quarter of last year which was double the number when the recession began.
The latest study shows one in six employers is unhappy with graduate 'skills and competencies' when they apply for jobs.
It says:'Employers are frustrated that higher education courses do not meet their needs,' says the report.
'Employers expect graduates to demonstrate a range of skills and attributes that include team-working, communication and often managerial abilities or potential.'
Around 40 universities run programmes where students gain official recognition if they complete 100 hours of voluntary work, job placements or carry out extra-curricular activities.
The report says degrees should be more tailored towards the needs of businesses.
SOURCE
New British university to rival Oxbridge will charge £18,000 a year
Subtext: A way for rich families to buy a university place for their kids
A group of the world's leading academics have launched a new British university which they hope will rival Oxford and Cambridge, it was announced today.
New College of the Humanities (NCH) will charge fees of £18,000 a year and offer the "highest-quality" education to "gifted" undergraduates, according to its creators.
The privately-funded independent seat-of-learning will be based in Bloomsbury, central London, and open in September 2012. It will initially offer eight undergraduate humanities degrees taught by some of the globe's most prominent intellectuals, college officials said.
Professor AC Grayling, the philosopher who will be the college's first Master, secured millions of pounds of funding from investors to set up the institution which has been likened to America's elite liberal arts colleges. He said: "At NCH we believe in the importance of the humanities and excellence in education. "Our priorities at the College will be excellent teaching quality, excellent ratios of teachers to students, and a strongly supportive and responsive learning environment. "Our students will be challenged to develop as skilled, informed and reflective thinkers, and will receive an education to match that aspiration."
The college claims to offer a "new model of higher education for the humanities in the UK" and will prepare undergraduates for degrees in Law, Economics and humanities subjects including History, Philosophy and English literature.
Students will also take three "intellectual skills" modules in science literacy, logic and critical thinking and applied ethics. Practical professional skills to prepare them for the world of work including financial literacy, teamwork, presentation and strategy will also be taught.
College chiefs say students will receive a "best in class education", with one-to-one tutorials, more than 12 contact hours a week and a 10/1 student to teacher ratio.
Prof Grayling said that budget cuts and dwindling resources are likely to limit both quantity and quality of teaching in the UK, leaving the fabric of society poorer as a result. He hopes the college - a registered charity - will counteract this. "Our ambition is to prepare gifted young people for high-level careers and rich and satisfying lives," he added.
The 14 professors behind the project include evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and eminent historian Sir David Cannadine. All will teach.
NCH chairman Charles Watson said: "Higher education in the UK must evolve if it is to offer the best quality experience for students and safeguard our future economic and intellectual wealth. "New College offers a different model - one that brings additional, private sector funding into higher education in the humanities when it is most needed, and combines scholarships and tuition fees."
He added: "As well as securing the highest-quality education for hundreds of students, we believe an independent university college, established right in the heart of London, will contribute to the long-term economic welfare of the capital, attracting students and professors who are contributing to the local economy as well as equipping our graduates for jobs in the service economy, such as the financial sector, professional services, the media and the creative industries, all of which are such vital contributors to the UK economy."
Prospective students can apply immediately, with the college offering assisted places to more than 20% of the first year's intake.
SOURCE
An 11-year-old California boy at an alternative school for at-risk students is accused of punching his fifth-grade teacher in the face and breaking her nose.
San Bernardino County sheriff's investigators say the teacher was attacked around 9 a.m. Thursday at the Adelanto Community Day School in Adelanto, about 85 miles northeast of Los Angeles. The teacher was taken to a nearby Mojave Desert hospital for treatment.
The boy was arrested for assault with injuries and was taken to the High Desert Juvenile Detention and Assessment Center. He has not been named because of his age.
Investigators tell the Victorville Daily Press that the boy became upset when the teacher asked him to move to another seat in the classroom. The boy allegedly refused to move and yelled at the teacher before getting up and punching her.
The alleged incident was said to take place in one of the classrooms in the school, which is located at 11824 Air Expressway.
Christine McGrew, spokeswoman for the county Superintendent of Schools, told Victorville Daily Press: 'There was an incident that took place at the Adelanto Community Day School. 'At this time, my understanding is that the teacher’s nose is broken'.
Initial reports incorrectly stated the boy was in the fourth grade, as school officials later confirmed he is a fifth grader.
Ms McGrew told the paper the Adelanto Community Day School is an alternative school for at-risk students, many of whom may have been expelled from other institutions, had attendance issues or were otherwise not doing well in traditional settings. The classrooms are smaller to foster more individual attention.
Ms McGrew said: 'This is a rare and isolated incident. Some of the programs have security officers on site and that’s dependent on the number of classrooms. 'This is a rare occurrence that this would happen'.
It is not known if any security personnel were on school grounds during the alleged incident.
SOURCE
Gormless British graduates need more time at the university of life? They lack basic workplace skills, claims study
Employers believe too many graduates are unfit for the workplace, according to a study. They lack skills in communication, problem solving, presentation, customer relations and even punctuality.
Bosses believe all universities should be required to teach employment skills as part of degree courses, say researchers.
Universities were also urged to set up more work experience placements and internships for students to ensure they don't join the dole queue when they graduate.
The study, commissioned by the education charity Edge and carried out by Glasgow University, highlighted a 'notable majority' unable carry out duties in the workplace.
It warned of a systematic failure to 'promote employability across higher education.'
The report follows the publication of statistics which show the number of jobless graduates rocketed to a 15-year high in 2010.
A fifth were out of work in the third quarter of last year which was double the number when the recession began.
The latest study shows one in six employers is unhappy with graduate 'skills and competencies' when they apply for jobs.
It says:'Employers are frustrated that higher education courses do not meet their needs,' says the report.
'Employers expect graduates to demonstrate a range of skills and attributes that include team-working, communication and often managerial abilities or potential.'
Around 40 universities run programmes where students gain official recognition if they complete 100 hours of voluntary work, job placements or carry out extra-curricular activities.
The report says degrees should be more tailored towards the needs of businesses.
SOURCE
New British university to rival Oxbridge will charge £18,000 a year
Subtext: A way for rich families to buy a university place for their kids
A group of the world's leading academics have launched a new British university which they hope will rival Oxford and Cambridge, it was announced today.
New College of the Humanities (NCH) will charge fees of £18,000 a year and offer the "highest-quality" education to "gifted" undergraduates, according to its creators.
The privately-funded independent seat-of-learning will be based in Bloomsbury, central London, and open in September 2012. It will initially offer eight undergraduate humanities degrees taught by some of the globe's most prominent intellectuals, college officials said.
Professor AC Grayling, the philosopher who will be the college's first Master, secured millions of pounds of funding from investors to set up the institution which has been likened to America's elite liberal arts colleges. He said: "At NCH we believe in the importance of the humanities and excellence in education. "Our priorities at the College will be excellent teaching quality, excellent ratios of teachers to students, and a strongly supportive and responsive learning environment. "Our students will be challenged to develop as skilled, informed and reflective thinkers, and will receive an education to match that aspiration."
The college claims to offer a "new model of higher education for the humanities in the UK" and will prepare undergraduates for degrees in Law, Economics and humanities subjects including History, Philosophy and English literature.
Students will also take three "intellectual skills" modules in science literacy, logic and critical thinking and applied ethics. Practical professional skills to prepare them for the world of work including financial literacy, teamwork, presentation and strategy will also be taught.
College chiefs say students will receive a "best in class education", with one-to-one tutorials, more than 12 contact hours a week and a 10/1 student to teacher ratio.
Prof Grayling said that budget cuts and dwindling resources are likely to limit both quantity and quality of teaching in the UK, leaving the fabric of society poorer as a result. He hopes the college - a registered charity - will counteract this. "Our ambition is to prepare gifted young people for high-level careers and rich and satisfying lives," he added.
The 14 professors behind the project include evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and eminent historian Sir David Cannadine. All will teach.
NCH chairman Charles Watson said: "Higher education in the UK must evolve if it is to offer the best quality experience for students and safeguard our future economic and intellectual wealth. "New College offers a different model - one that brings additional, private sector funding into higher education in the humanities when it is most needed, and combines scholarships and tuition fees."
He added: "As well as securing the highest-quality education for hundreds of students, we believe an independent university college, established right in the heart of London, will contribute to the long-term economic welfare of the capital, attracting students and professors who are contributing to the local economy as well as equipping our graduates for jobs in the service economy, such as the financial sector, professional services, the media and the creative industries, all of which are such vital contributors to the UK economy."
Prospective students can apply immediately, with the college offering assisted places to more than 20% of the first year's intake.
SOURCE
Saturday, June 04, 2011
Don’t nationalize education
A number of educators, academics, and political figures recently signed a statement released by the Albert Shanker Institute favoring a “common content core curriculum” for all public schools in the United States. The idea has an obvious appeal: Simply select what students should learn and tell the schools to teach it. However, as H.L. Mencken wrote, “there is always a well-known solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong.” There is no single best curriculum for all students in all districts, and any attempt to create one at the federal level opens the door to political meddling in educational content.
Across the country, there is widespread disagreement among educators, politicians, and the general public about what constitutes a good curriculum. Even within districts, conflicting interest groups fight heated battles over curricular changes.
On April 26, a group of students took over a board meeting of the Tuscon Unified School District, protesting a proposal that would change the district’s Mexican American Studies program from a social studies credit to an elective. Student supporters of the program chained themselves to the board’s dais and could not be removed by security. Under a national curriculum, disputes such as this would have to be resolved at the federal level. Congress would determine what students should learn. Allowing Congress to serve as the custodian of truth in the teaching of history, social studies, and other subjects is asking for trouble.
In fact, our current system is already too centralized, with state legislators and boards of education committing new crimes against veracity every time curriculum design comes up for debate. Last spring, conservatives on the Texas State Board of Education pushed through a new social studies curriculum. Among other changes, the new curriculum required a greater emphasis on the “conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s,” and excised the insufficiently religious Thomas Jefferson from a list of thinkers who inspired revolutions in the 18th and 19th centuries, replacing him with overtly Christian figures such as John Calvin and Thomas Aquinas. The left plays this game just as much as the right. California’s guidelines forbid textbooks to “cast adverse reflection on any gender, race, ethnicity, religion or cultural group.” That sounds well-meaning, but it has led to a whitewashed version of history for fear of offending any interest group.
We should return decisions about educational content to the local level. That would not make these arguments disappear, but it would give parents the greatest opportunity to find a curriculum that suits their educational preferences.
Furthermore, localized curricula would give teachers more flexibility in meeting students’ individual educational needs. When I pursued teacher certification, I encountered repeatedly in my coursework the idea that every student learns in different ways. Good teachers must vary the information they present and how they present it in order to appeal to the different aptitudes and interests of their students. A national curriculum may not completely strip teachers of the ability to tailor lessons for the particularities of their students, but every new mandate from on high removes a little more autonomy from the educators who know their students best.
Many American schools are in desperate need of reform, but more federal micromanagement is not the solution. We need more autonomy for schools to innovate and serve the individual needs and interests of their students, and greater choice for parents to hold those schools accountable. A national curriculum would take us in the opposite direction — toward heavily politicized subject matter and no alternatives for students whose needs are left out. Reforming education in this country is not one large problem — it’s millions of small ones, and a national curriculum would only make them harder to address.
SOURCE
Florida teacher who punched student won't be charged
Sandra Hadsock clenched her teeth, balled up her right fist and closed her eyes. The 5-foot-5 art teacher's first punch was a wild haymaker, just glancing the towering student's right cheek.
Then, as she drew her arm back again, Hadsock gripped the boy's jacket collar and leveled a right cross, catching him square on the jaw. His head snapped to the side and his mess of orange hair blew back.
Now, three weeks after the incident was caught on a student's cell phone videocamera, the State Attorney's Office has decided not to file criminal charges against Hadsock, who had been arrested on a single count of child abuse.
Hadsock landed at least one punch on the student's face, causing a minor cut on his lip, authorities said. But the video doesn't provide conclusive evidence that the 64-year-old veteran teacher wasn't acting in self-defense when she swung at the student who called her vulgar names, prosecutor Brian Trehy said.
Students who witnessed the incident said the teen made contact first and the teacher was responding to that, Trehy said.
"You couldn't put a piece of paper between them," Trehy said. "You can't tell if he actually made contact, but it's certainly reasonable to believe that it could have happened."
In a phone interview Thursday afternoon with Hadsock and her attorney, Ty Tison, she expressed relief that the criminal chapter is over.
"It was the right thing to do," Hadsock said of Trehy's call. "I was defending myself, and he made the right decision."
Hadsock and Tison offered previously unreleased details that led up to the incident outside Central High School's classroom D102.
The student licked a classroom window and left saliva, Tison said. Hadsock and another teacher asked the boy to clean the window, and he refused. Hadsock told him to go to the principal's office.
At that, the student launched a verbal assault, calling her a "f---ing c---" as he walked across the room toward her in what Hadsock felt was a menacing manner, Tison said.
"Step back right now!" Hadsock shouts. But instead of stepping back, the student steps forward. Hadsock punches him twice, and another boy pulls him back.
"Oh my God!" a girl exclaims. "He didn't do anything. You can't punch him in the face." "He pushed into me," Hadsock, visibly shaken, says.
"I didn't touch her," the student responds. "You guys saw that, right? I didn't touch her."
Tison said the video "speaks for itself." "If she would have done nothing, you might have been talking about some very severe injuries to a 64-year-old teacher," Tison said. "She wasn't going to wait to find out."
The student was suspended but not arrested.
A married mother of two grown daughters, Hadsock started with the district as a substitute teacher in 1985 and became a full-time teacher three years later, a faculty member when Central opened in 1988. She has a clean disciplinary record and was voted by students for the school's Teacher of the Year award last school year.
She said she hopes school officials will consider the facts of her case and her record, and allow her to return to the classroom, but it's still unclear if that will happen.
She was suspended with pay after her arrest and will have a predetermination hearing this summer as the school district conducts its own investigation, said Joe Vitalo, president of the Hernando Classroom Teachers Association.
Superintendent Bryan Blavatt did not return messages Thursday.
"I've been doing this for 22 years, and it's part of who I am, a teacher who makes a positive influence in kids' lives," Hadsock said. "I'm a very optimistic person so I'm seeing a near future where I'm back making lesson plans and getting my room in order for next year and doing the job that I do so well."
In the meantime, she is not allowed to have student contact, which means she won't be able to attend Central's graduation ceremony tonight.
Hadsock's story touched a nerve with readers. Many who posted comments on tampabay.com cheered her for sticking up for herself. She said she has received correspondence from strangers throughout the country offering words of support.
The writers agreed that bad student behavior is an epidemic, she said, and it's causing good teachers to leave the profession.
"For a solution, I think you need well-trained teachers, but you also need good parenting and students who want to learn and who understand the need for, and are grateful for, a good education," she said. "Our values have gotten backward somewhere, and we need to reassess as a nation what's important."
SOURCE
CA: Parents defenseless against gender 'diversity training'
As teachers spent May 23 and 24 using all-girl geckos and transgendered clownfish to teach gender diversity lessons, a California school has raised concerns with teaching that there are more than two genders.
Students in all grades at Oakland's Redwood Heights Elementary School got an introduction to the topic on Monday, as teachers told them there are different ways to be boys and different ways to be girls. In the lesson called "Gender Spectrum Diversity Training," documents released by the school say that students were taught that "gender is not inherently nor solely connected to one's physical anatomy."
Another document from the school advises parents that "when you discuss gender with your child, you may hear them...exploring where they...fit on the gender spectrum and why."
Brad Dacus, president of the Pacific Justice Institute (PJI), says it is difficult to imagine the liberal indoctrination endured by elementary students.
"No child in kindergarten should be introduced to the question of whether or not they really are a boy or really are a girl," he contends. "That has no place in public schools, and these schools are engaging in an area that without question results in children having problems that they likely would not have had otherwise."
He questions the legitimacy of the topic. Meanwhile, legal counsel is being offered to parents who oppose gender-diversity lessons.
"Legally, there is no right under California law for parents to opt out from this kind of outrageous pro-transgender indoctrination," Dacus laments. "Nonetheless though, as legal counsel, we are giving them advice as to how to protect their children."
Some of the reading list includes Boy, girl or both? and My Princess Boy for grades K-1, What is gender? and 10,000 Dresses for grades 2-3, and Three Dimensions of Gender for grades 4-5 -- the age group that was also introduced to the song, "All I Want to Be is Me."
SOURCE
A number of educators, academics, and political figures recently signed a statement released by the Albert Shanker Institute favoring a “common content core curriculum” for all public schools in the United States. The idea has an obvious appeal: Simply select what students should learn and tell the schools to teach it. However, as H.L. Mencken wrote, “there is always a well-known solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong.” There is no single best curriculum for all students in all districts, and any attempt to create one at the federal level opens the door to political meddling in educational content.
Across the country, there is widespread disagreement among educators, politicians, and the general public about what constitutes a good curriculum. Even within districts, conflicting interest groups fight heated battles over curricular changes.
On April 26, a group of students took over a board meeting of the Tuscon Unified School District, protesting a proposal that would change the district’s Mexican American Studies program from a social studies credit to an elective. Student supporters of the program chained themselves to the board’s dais and could not be removed by security. Under a national curriculum, disputes such as this would have to be resolved at the federal level. Congress would determine what students should learn. Allowing Congress to serve as the custodian of truth in the teaching of history, social studies, and other subjects is asking for trouble.
In fact, our current system is already too centralized, with state legislators and boards of education committing new crimes against veracity every time curriculum design comes up for debate. Last spring, conservatives on the Texas State Board of Education pushed through a new social studies curriculum. Among other changes, the new curriculum required a greater emphasis on the “conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s,” and excised the insufficiently religious Thomas Jefferson from a list of thinkers who inspired revolutions in the 18th and 19th centuries, replacing him with overtly Christian figures such as John Calvin and Thomas Aquinas. The left plays this game just as much as the right. California’s guidelines forbid textbooks to “cast adverse reflection on any gender, race, ethnicity, religion or cultural group.” That sounds well-meaning, but it has led to a whitewashed version of history for fear of offending any interest group.
We should return decisions about educational content to the local level. That would not make these arguments disappear, but it would give parents the greatest opportunity to find a curriculum that suits their educational preferences.
Furthermore, localized curricula would give teachers more flexibility in meeting students’ individual educational needs. When I pursued teacher certification, I encountered repeatedly in my coursework the idea that every student learns in different ways. Good teachers must vary the information they present and how they present it in order to appeal to the different aptitudes and interests of their students. A national curriculum may not completely strip teachers of the ability to tailor lessons for the particularities of their students, but every new mandate from on high removes a little more autonomy from the educators who know their students best.
Many American schools are in desperate need of reform, but more federal micromanagement is not the solution. We need more autonomy for schools to innovate and serve the individual needs and interests of their students, and greater choice for parents to hold those schools accountable. A national curriculum would take us in the opposite direction — toward heavily politicized subject matter and no alternatives for students whose needs are left out. Reforming education in this country is not one large problem — it’s millions of small ones, and a national curriculum would only make them harder to address.
SOURCE
Florida teacher who punched student won't be charged
Sandra Hadsock clenched her teeth, balled up her right fist and closed her eyes. The 5-foot-5 art teacher's first punch was a wild haymaker, just glancing the towering student's right cheek.
Then, as she drew her arm back again, Hadsock gripped the boy's jacket collar and leveled a right cross, catching him square on the jaw. His head snapped to the side and his mess of orange hair blew back.
Now, three weeks after the incident was caught on a student's cell phone videocamera, the State Attorney's Office has decided not to file criminal charges against Hadsock, who had been arrested on a single count of child abuse.
Hadsock landed at least one punch on the student's face, causing a minor cut on his lip, authorities said. But the video doesn't provide conclusive evidence that the 64-year-old veteran teacher wasn't acting in self-defense when she swung at the student who called her vulgar names, prosecutor Brian Trehy said.
Students who witnessed the incident said the teen made contact first and the teacher was responding to that, Trehy said.
"You couldn't put a piece of paper between them," Trehy said. "You can't tell if he actually made contact, but it's certainly reasonable to believe that it could have happened."
In a phone interview Thursday afternoon with Hadsock and her attorney, Ty Tison, she expressed relief that the criminal chapter is over.
"It was the right thing to do," Hadsock said of Trehy's call. "I was defending myself, and he made the right decision."
Hadsock and Tison offered previously unreleased details that led up to the incident outside Central High School's classroom D102.
The student licked a classroom window and left saliva, Tison said. Hadsock and another teacher asked the boy to clean the window, and he refused. Hadsock told him to go to the principal's office.
At that, the student launched a verbal assault, calling her a "f---ing c---" as he walked across the room toward her in what Hadsock felt was a menacing manner, Tison said.
"Step back right now!" Hadsock shouts. But instead of stepping back, the student steps forward. Hadsock punches him twice, and another boy pulls him back.
"Oh my God!" a girl exclaims. "He didn't do anything. You can't punch him in the face." "He pushed into me," Hadsock, visibly shaken, says.
"I didn't touch her," the student responds. "You guys saw that, right? I didn't touch her."
Tison said the video "speaks for itself." "If she would have done nothing, you might have been talking about some very severe injuries to a 64-year-old teacher," Tison said. "She wasn't going to wait to find out."
The student was suspended but not arrested.
A married mother of two grown daughters, Hadsock started with the district as a substitute teacher in 1985 and became a full-time teacher three years later, a faculty member when Central opened in 1988. She has a clean disciplinary record and was voted by students for the school's Teacher of the Year award last school year.
She said she hopes school officials will consider the facts of her case and her record, and allow her to return to the classroom, but it's still unclear if that will happen.
She was suspended with pay after her arrest and will have a predetermination hearing this summer as the school district conducts its own investigation, said Joe Vitalo, president of the Hernando Classroom Teachers Association.
Superintendent Bryan Blavatt did not return messages Thursday.
"I've been doing this for 22 years, and it's part of who I am, a teacher who makes a positive influence in kids' lives," Hadsock said. "I'm a very optimistic person so I'm seeing a near future where I'm back making lesson plans and getting my room in order for next year and doing the job that I do so well."
In the meantime, she is not allowed to have student contact, which means she won't be able to attend Central's graduation ceremony tonight.
Hadsock's story touched a nerve with readers. Many who posted comments on tampabay.com cheered her for sticking up for herself. She said she has received correspondence from strangers throughout the country offering words of support.
The writers agreed that bad student behavior is an epidemic, she said, and it's causing good teachers to leave the profession.
"For a solution, I think you need well-trained teachers, but you also need good parenting and students who want to learn and who understand the need for, and are grateful for, a good education," she said. "Our values have gotten backward somewhere, and we need to reassess as a nation what's important."
SOURCE
CA: Parents defenseless against gender 'diversity training'
As teachers spent May 23 and 24 using all-girl geckos and transgendered clownfish to teach gender diversity lessons, a California school has raised concerns with teaching that there are more than two genders.
Students in all grades at Oakland's Redwood Heights Elementary School got an introduction to the topic on Monday, as teachers told them there are different ways to be boys and different ways to be girls. In the lesson called "Gender Spectrum Diversity Training," documents released by the school say that students were taught that "gender is not inherently nor solely connected to one's physical anatomy."
Another document from the school advises parents that "when you discuss gender with your child, you may hear them...exploring where they...fit on the gender spectrum and why."
Brad Dacus, president of the Pacific Justice Institute (PJI), says it is difficult to imagine the liberal indoctrination endured by elementary students.
"No child in kindergarten should be introduced to the question of whether or not they really are a boy or really are a girl," he contends. "That has no place in public schools, and these schools are engaging in an area that without question results in children having problems that they likely would not have had otherwise."
He questions the legitimacy of the topic. Meanwhile, legal counsel is being offered to parents who oppose gender-diversity lessons.
"Legally, there is no right under California law for parents to opt out from this kind of outrageous pro-transgender indoctrination," Dacus laments. "Nonetheless though, as legal counsel, we are giving them advice as to how to protect their children."
Some of the reading list includes Boy, girl or both? and My Princess Boy for grades K-1, What is gender? and 10,000 Dresses for grades 2-3, and Three Dimensions of Gender for grades 4-5 -- the age group that was also introduced to the song, "All I Want to Be is Me."
SOURCE
Friday, June 03, 2011
Fat City: Thank you, Illinois taxpayers, for my cushy life
By David Rubinstein, a professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Illinois at Chicago
After 34 years of teaching sociology at the University of Illinois at Chicago, I recently retired at age 64 at 80 percent of my pay for life. This calculation was based on a salary spiked by summer teaching, and since I no longer pay into the retirement fund, I now receive significantly more than when I “worked.” But that’s not all: There’s a generous health insurance plan, a guaranteed 3 percent annual cost of living increase, and a few other perquisites.
Having overinvested in my retirement annuity, I received a fat refund and—when it rains, it pours—another for unused sick leave. I was also offered the opportunity to teach as an emeritus for three years, receiving $8,000 per course, double the pay for adjuncts, which works out to over $200 an hour. Another going-away present was summer pay, one ninth of my salary, with no teaching obligation.
Easy Street
I haven’t done the math but I suspect that, given a normal life span, these benefits nearly doubled my salary. And in Illinois these benefits are constitutionally guaranteed, up there with freedom of religion and speech.
Why do I put “worked” in quotation marks? Because my main task as a university professor was self-cultivation: reading and writing about topics that interested me. Maybe this counts as work. But here I am today—like many of my retired colleagues—doing pretty much what I have done since the day I began graduate school, albeit with less intensity.
Before retiring, I carried a teaching load of two courses per semester: six hours of lecture a week. I usually scheduled classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays: The rest of the week was mine. Colleagues who pursued grants taught less, some rarely seeing a classroom. The gaps this left in the department’s course offerings were filled by adjuncts, hired with little scrutiny and subject to little supervision, and paid little.
Sometimes my teaching began at 9:30 a.m., but this was hardship duty. A night owl, I preferred to start my courses at 11 or 12. With an hour or so in my office to see an occasional student, I was at the (free) gym by 4 p.m. Department heads sometimes pleaded with faculty to alter their schedules to suit departmental needs, but rarely. Because most professors insist on selected hours, to avoid rush hour and to retain days at home, universities must build extra classroom space that stands empty much of the day.
The occasional seminars were opportunities for professors to kick back and let graduate students do the talking. Committee meetings were tedious but, except for the few good departmental citizens, most of us were able to avoid undue burdens.
Another perquisite of the job was a remarkable degree of personal freedom. Some professors came to class unshaven, wearing T-shirts and jeans. One of the deans scolded the faculty for looking like urban guerrillas. He was ridiculed as an authoritarian prig.
This schedule held for 30 weeks of the year, leaving free three months in summer, a month in December, and a week in spring, plus all the usual holidays. Every six years, there was sabbatical leave: a semester off at full pay to do research, which sometimes actually got done.
Most faculty attended academic conferences at taxpayer expense. Some of these were serious events, but always allowed ample time for schmoozing and sightseeing. A group of professors who shared my interests applied for a grant to fund a conference at Lake Como. It was denied because we had failed to include any women and so we settled for an all-expenses-paid week at Cambridge, England.
The grandest prize of all is, of course, tenure. The tenured live in a different world than ordinary mortals, a world in which fears of unemployment are banished, futures can be confidently planned, and retirement is secure.
All of this at a university without union representation!
To be fair, the first years of a newly hired assistant professor can be harrowing. Writing lecture notes to cover a semester takes effort. But soon I had abundant material which could be reused indefinitely and took maybe 20 minutes of review before class. Adding new material required hardly more effort than the time to read what I would have read anyway.
The only really arduous part of teaching was grading exams and papers. But for most of my classes I had teaching assistants to do this, graduate students who usually knew little more about the topic than the undergraduates.
My colleagues, to their credit, promoted me to full professor knowing my ideological heterodoxy. I fear that a young Ph.D. looking for work today who challenged the increasingly rigid political orthodoxies would have a hard time. But the discipline of sociology is so ideologically homogenous—a herd, as Harold Rosenberg put it, of independent minds—that this problem is rare. Universities cherish diversity in everything except where it counts most: ideas.
According to data from the Center for Responsive Politics, Harvard, donating 4 to 1 in favor of Democrats in 2008, was one of the more politically diverse major American universities. Ninety-two percent of employees at the University of Chicago donated to Democrats. The University of California favored Democrats over Republicans, 90 percent to 10 percent. And William and Mary employees preferred Democrats to the GOP by a margin of 99 percent to 1 percent. Neil Gross of Harvard found that 87.6 percent of social scientists voted for Kerry, 6.2 percent for Bush.
Gross also found that 25 percent of sociologists characterize themselves as Marxists, likely a higher percentage than members of the Chinese Communist party. I would guess that if Lenin were around today he would be teaching sociology and seeking grants to fund the revolution.
The research requirements to achieve tenure and promotion are rigorous. The top journals reject as much as 90 percent of the work submitted, so accumulating the half-dozen or so articles usually required to be tenured took sustained effort.
But it is not clear what value this work has to those who pay the salaries. As Thomas Sowell has argued, building a scholarly reputation requires finding a niche that no one else has explored—often for good reason. I am hard pressed to explain why sometimes exquisitely esoteric interests should be supported by taxpayers: This expertise certainly does not match the educational needs of students. (Full disclosure: The book that established my scholarly reputation is titled Marx and Wittgenstein: Social Science and Social Praxis.)
The work done by most of my colleagues did bear on issues of wider relevance and not all of it was so ideologically compromised as to be useless. But the readership of academic journals is tiny, and most of this work had no impact beyond a small circle of interested academics—for understandable reasons. Philip Tetlock, a research psychologist at Berkeley, tested the accuracy of 82,361 predictions made by 284 experts including psychologists, economists, political scientists, and area and foreign policy specialists, 96 percent with post-graduate training. He found that their prognostications did not beat chance. The increasingly ideological nature of social science will not improve this record.
To be sure, some of my colleagues were prodigious researchers, devoted teachers, and outstanding departmental, university, and professional citizens. But sociologists like to talk about what they call the “structural” constraints on behavior. While character and professional ethics can withstand the incentives to coast, the privileged position of a tenured professor guarantees that there will be slackers.
An argument can be made that, compared with professionals in the private sector, college professors are underpaid, though according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, “by rank, the average [salary] was $108,749 for full professors.” It is difficult to compare the overall goodness of different lives, but there is a back of the envelope shortcut. In my 34 years, just one professor in the sociology department resigned to take a nonacademic job. For open positions, there were always over 100 applicants, several of them outstanding. The rarity of quits and the abundance of applications is good evidence that the life of the college professor is indeed enviable.
The life of a professor is far more attractive than that of most government employees, but elements of professorial privilege can be found in the lives of other public sector workers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the quit rate for government workers is less than one-third that of the private sector. Applications for federal jobs exceed those for the private sector by at least 25 percent, and when workers move from private to federal employment their earnings, according to Princeton’s Alan Krueger, increase by 12 percent.
And then there are the public schools. Because K-12 education is local, generalizations are difficult. But there are many egregious cases. Less than 2 percent of teachers in Los Angeles are denied tenure. In the last decade, according to LA Weekly, the city “spent $3.5 million trying to fire just seven of the district’s 33,000 teachers for poor classroom performance.” Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, a Democrat, liberal, and former union organizer, described union leadership as an “unwavering roadblock to reform.” Teachers in Florida gain tenure after three years of “satisfactory” evaluations and, in 2009, 99.7 percent received this evaluation. Michelle Rhee said that when she took over the D.C. school system in 2007, 95 percent of the teachers were rated excellent and none was terminated. Just 0.1 percent of Chicago teachers were fired for poor performance between 2005 and 2008.
This circumstance has attracted the attention of public officials. Illinois, with the support of some prominent Democrats, is desperate to cut back a public employee pension system that, even with recent reforms, will go broke within 10 years. John Kasich, Republican governor of Ohio, has proposed that the teaching load of college professors be increased by one course every two years.
Such efforts at restraint are routinely met with Wisconsin-like howls of outrage. One of my colleagues, whose retirement benefits exceed the $77,900 household income average for retired government employees in Illinois, was indignant that the state had managed to require an additional $17 a month for his dental insurance. How dare they!
Protests against efforts to reform pay scales, teaching loads, and retirement benefits employ a “solidarity forever, the union makes us strong” rhetoric. What these professors and other government workers do not understand is that they are not demanding a share of the profits from the fat-cat bourgeoisie. They are squeezing taxpayers—for whom the professors purport to advocate—whose lives are in most cases far harsher than their own.
SOURCE
There is a grumpy but shallow reply to Rubinstein by philoophy professor Roderick T. Long here. My own experience (tenured) teaching Sociology for 12 years in a major Australian university was very similar to what Rubenstein reports. The major difference is that I always speed-read student assignments so spent little time on it. My marking was not degraded by that however. Colleagues even congratulated me on how good I was at marking!
I also did what academics are supposed to do: Spend heaps of time on research. But, judging by their output and other things that I saw, I was very much the exception in that regard among my colleagues. There were many periods when I was the only academic in the Department who was actually in his office -- usually poring over computer printouts or hammering away on my old Olivetti typewriter. I also used to spend half a day a week in the "current journals" section of the library -- but I doubt if I ever saw a Sociology colleague there -- JR
Indian-American girl scoops $40,000 spelling-bee prize with 'cymotrichous'
Ms. Roy is the ninth Indian-American in the last 13 years to win. How come such a tiny minority is so outstanding -- even when many would come from homes where English is not the first language? No mystery really. Indians are extremely verbal. Talk is one of India's major exports. When you call the call-centre of a large organization, your query will often be routed through to India
Sukanya Roy, a 14-year-old girl from Pennsylvania, wins the 2011 US National Spelling Bee by spelling the word 'cymotrichous'.
Miss Roy took top prize in the 84th annual US National Spelling Bee after she saw off her competitors over 20 rounds of on-the-spot spelling at the final in Oxon Hill, Maryland.
After winning, the teenager, who was competing in her third championships, was shaking with excitement.
"My heart started pounding, I guess. I couldn't believe it," Miss Roy told broadcaster ESPN, immediately after receiving her trophy.
The finals have been screened live on US television since 2006 and drew and audience of over one million last year.
The winning word, cymotrichous, is an adjective relating to having wavy hair. Miss Roy, who also speaks fluent Bengali, said she knew the word immediately. "I just wanted to spell it right," she said. "I really didn't want to get it wrong."
Besides the trophy, the newly-crowned champion speller took home a $30,000 cash prize, a $2,500 US savings bond, a complete reference library, a $5,000 scholarship, $2,600 in reference works and other prizes.
SOURCE
18 Signs That Life In U.S. Public Schools Is Now Essentially Equivalent To Life In U.S. Prisons
In the United States today, our public schools are not very good at educating our students, but they sure are great training grounds for learning how to live in a Big Brother police state control grid. Sadly, life in many U.S. public schools is now essentially equivalent to life in U.S. prisons.
Most parents don't realize this, but our students have very few rights when they are in school. Our public school students are being watched, tracked, recorded, searched and controlled like never before. Back when I was in high school, it was unheard of for a police officer to come to school, but today our public school students are being handcuffed and arrested in staggering numbers. When I was young we would joke that going to school was like going to prison, but today that is actually true.
The following are 18 signs that life in our public schools is now very similar to life in our prisons....
#1 Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli has announced that school officials can search the cell phones and laptops of public school students if there are "reasonable grounds for suspecting that the search will turn up evidence that the student has violated or is violating either the law or the rules of the school."
#2 It came out in court that one school district in Pennsylvania secretly recorded more than 66,000 images of students using webcams that were embedded in school-issued laptops that the students were using at home.
#3 If you can believe it, a "certified TSA official" was recently brought in to oversee student searches at the Santa Fe High School prom.
#4 A few years ago a class of 3rd grade students at one Kentucky elementary school were searched by a group of teachers after 5 dollars went missing. During the search the students were actually required to remove their shoes and their socks.
#5 At one public school in the Chicago area, children have been banned from bringing their lunches from home. Yes, you read that correctly. Students at that particular school are absolutely prohibited from bringing lunches from home. Instead, it is mandatory that they eat the food that the school cafeteria serves.
#6 The U.S. Department of Agriculture is spending huge amounts of money to install surveillance cameras in the cafeterias of public schools so that government control freaks can closely monitor what our children are eating.
#7 A teenager in suburban Dallas was recently forced to take on a part-time job after being ticketed for using bad language in one high school classroom. The original ticket was for $340, but additional fees have raised the total bill to $637.
#8 It is not just high school kids that are being ticketed by police. In Texas the crackdown extends all the way down to elementary school students. In fact, it has been reported that Texas police gave "1,000 tickets" to elementary school kids over a recent six year period.
#9 A few months ago, a 17 year-old honor student in North Carolina named Ashley Smithwick accidentally took her father's lunch with her to school. It contained a small paring knife which he would use to slice up apples. So what happened to this standout student when the school discovered this? The school suspended her for the rest of the year and the police charged her with a misdemeanor.
#10 A little over a year ago, a 6 year old girl in Florida was handcuffed and sent to a mental facility after throwing temper tantrums at her elementary school.
#11 In early 2010, a 12 year old girl in New York was arrested by police and marched out of her school in handcuffs just because she doodled on her desk. "I love my friends Abby and Faith" was what she reportedly wrote on her desk.
#12 There are actually some public schools in the United States that are so paranoid that they have actually installed cameras in student bathrooms.
#13 Down in Florida, students have actually been arrested by police for bringing a plastic butter knife to school, for throwing an eraser, and for drawing a picture of a gun.
#14 The Florida State Department of Juvenile Justice has announced that it will begin using analysis software to predict crime by young delinquents and will place "potential offenders" in specific prevention and education programs.
#15 A group of high school students made national headlines a while back when they revealed that they were ordered by a security guard to stop singing the national anthem during a visit to the Lincoln Memorial.
#16 In some U.S. schools, armed cops accompanied by police dogs actually conduct surprise raids with their guns drawn. In this video, you can actually see police officers aiming their guns at school children as the students are lined up facing the wall.
#17 Back in 2009, one 8 year old boy in Massachusetts was sent home from school and was forced to undergo a psychological evaluation because he drew a picture of Jesus on the cross.
#18 This year, 13 parents in Duncan, South Carolina were actually arrested for cheering during a high school graduation.
SOURCE
By David Rubinstein, a professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Illinois at Chicago
After 34 years of teaching sociology at the University of Illinois at Chicago, I recently retired at age 64 at 80 percent of my pay for life. This calculation was based on a salary spiked by summer teaching, and since I no longer pay into the retirement fund, I now receive significantly more than when I “worked.” But that’s not all: There’s a generous health insurance plan, a guaranteed 3 percent annual cost of living increase, and a few other perquisites.
Having overinvested in my retirement annuity, I received a fat refund and—when it rains, it pours—another for unused sick leave. I was also offered the opportunity to teach as an emeritus for three years, receiving $8,000 per course, double the pay for adjuncts, which works out to over $200 an hour. Another going-away present was summer pay, one ninth of my salary, with no teaching obligation.
Easy Street
I haven’t done the math but I suspect that, given a normal life span, these benefits nearly doubled my salary. And in Illinois these benefits are constitutionally guaranteed, up there with freedom of religion and speech.
Why do I put “worked” in quotation marks? Because my main task as a university professor was self-cultivation: reading and writing about topics that interested me. Maybe this counts as work. But here I am today—like many of my retired colleagues—doing pretty much what I have done since the day I began graduate school, albeit with less intensity.
Before retiring, I carried a teaching load of two courses per semester: six hours of lecture a week. I usually scheduled classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays: The rest of the week was mine. Colleagues who pursued grants taught less, some rarely seeing a classroom. The gaps this left in the department’s course offerings were filled by adjuncts, hired with little scrutiny and subject to little supervision, and paid little.
Sometimes my teaching began at 9:30 a.m., but this was hardship duty. A night owl, I preferred to start my courses at 11 or 12. With an hour or so in my office to see an occasional student, I was at the (free) gym by 4 p.m. Department heads sometimes pleaded with faculty to alter their schedules to suit departmental needs, but rarely. Because most professors insist on selected hours, to avoid rush hour and to retain days at home, universities must build extra classroom space that stands empty much of the day.
The occasional seminars were opportunities for professors to kick back and let graduate students do the talking. Committee meetings were tedious but, except for the few good departmental citizens, most of us were able to avoid undue burdens.
Another perquisite of the job was a remarkable degree of personal freedom. Some professors came to class unshaven, wearing T-shirts and jeans. One of the deans scolded the faculty for looking like urban guerrillas. He was ridiculed as an authoritarian prig.
This schedule held for 30 weeks of the year, leaving free three months in summer, a month in December, and a week in spring, plus all the usual holidays. Every six years, there was sabbatical leave: a semester off at full pay to do research, which sometimes actually got done.
Most faculty attended academic conferences at taxpayer expense. Some of these were serious events, but always allowed ample time for schmoozing and sightseeing. A group of professors who shared my interests applied for a grant to fund a conference at Lake Como. It was denied because we had failed to include any women and so we settled for an all-expenses-paid week at Cambridge, England.
The grandest prize of all is, of course, tenure. The tenured live in a different world than ordinary mortals, a world in which fears of unemployment are banished, futures can be confidently planned, and retirement is secure.
All of this at a university without union representation!
To be fair, the first years of a newly hired assistant professor can be harrowing. Writing lecture notes to cover a semester takes effort. But soon I had abundant material which could be reused indefinitely and took maybe 20 minutes of review before class. Adding new material required hardly more effort than the time to read what I would have read anyway.
The only really arduous part of teaching was grading exams and papers. But for most of my classes I had teaching assistants to do this, graduate students who usually knew little more about the topic than the undergraduates.
My colleagues, to their credit, promoted me to full professor knowing my ideological heterodoxy. I fear that a young Ph.D. looking for work today who challenged the increasingly rigid political orthodoxies would have a hard time. But the discipline of sociology is so ideologically homogenous—a herd, as Harold Rosenberg put it, of independent minds—that this problem is rare. Universities cherish diversity in everything except where it counts most: ideas.
According to data from the Center for Responsive Politics, Harvard, donating 4 to 1 in favor of Democrats in 2008, was one of the more politically diverse major American universities. Ninety-two percent of employees at the University of Chicago donated to Democrats. The University of California favored Democrats over Republicans, 90 percent to 10 percent. And William and Mary employees preferred Democrats to the GOP by a margin of 99 percent to 1 percent. Neil Gross of Harvard found that 87.6 percent of social scientists voted for Kerry, 6.2 percent for Bush.
Gross also found that 25 percent of sociologists characterize themselves as Marxists, likely a higher percentage than members of the Chinese Communist party. I would guess that if Lenin were around today he would be teaching sociology and seeking grants to fund the revolution.
The research requirements to achieve tenure and promotion are rigorous. The top journals reject as much as 90 percent of the work submitted, so accumulating the half-dozen or so articles usually required to be tenured took sustained effort.
But it is not clear what value this work has to those who pay the salaries. As Thomas Sowell has argued, building a scholarly reputation requires finding a niche that no one else has explored—often for good reason. I am hard pressed to explain why sometimes exquisitely esoteric interests should be supported by taxpayers: This expertise certainly does not match the educational needs of students. (Full disclosure: The book that established my scholarly reputation is titled Marx and Wittgenstein: Social Science and Social Praxis.)
The work done by most of my colleagues did bear on issues of wider relevance and not all of it was so ideologically compromised as to be useless. But the readership of academic journals is tiny, and most of this work had no impact beyond a small circle of interested academics—for understandable reasons. Philip Tetlock, a research psychologist at Berkeley, tested the accuracy of 82,361 predictions made by 284 experts including psychologists, economists, political scientists, and area and foreign policy specialists, 96 percent with post-graduate training. He found that their prognostications did not beat chance. The increasingly ideological nature of social science will not improve this record.
To be sure, some of my colleagues were prodigious researchers, devoted teachers, and outstanding departmental, university, and professional citizens. But sociologists like to talk about what they call the “structural” constraints on behavior. While character and professional ethics can withstand the incentives to coast, the privileged position of a tenured professor guarantees that there will be slackers.
An argument can be made that, compared with professionals in the private sector, college professors are underpaid, though according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, “by rank, the average [salary] was $108,749 for full professors.” It is difficult to compare the overall goodness of different lives, but there is a back of the envelope shortcut. In my 34 years, just one professor in the sociology department resigned to take a nonacademic job. For open positions, there were always over 100 applicants, several of them outstanding. The rarity of quits and the abundance of applications is good evidence that the life of the college professor is indeed enviable.
The life of a professor is far more attractive than that of most government employees, but elements of professorial privilege can be found in the lives of other public sector workers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the quit rate for government workers is less than one-third that of the private sector. Applications for federal jobs exceed those for the private sector by at least 25 percent, and when workers move from private to federal employment their earnings, according to Princeton’s Alan Krueger, increase by 12 percent.
And then there are the public schools. Because K-12 education is local, generalizations are difficult. But there are many egregious cases. Less than 2 percent of teachers in Los Angeles are denied tenure. In the last decade, according to LA Weekly, the city “spent $3.5 million trying to fire just seven of the district’s 33,000 teachers for poor classroom performance.” Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, a Democrat, liberal, and former union organizer, described union leadership as an “unwavering roadblock to reform.” Teachers in Florida gain tenure after three years of “satisfactory” evaluations and, in 2009, 99.7 percent received this evaluation. Michelle Rhee said that when she took over the D.C. school system in 2007, 95 percent of the teachers were rated excellent and none was terminated. Just 0.1 percent of Chicago teachers were fired for poor performance between 2005 and 2008.
This circumstance has attracted the attention of public officials. Illinois, with the support of some prominent Democrats, is desperate to cut back a public employee pension system that, even with recent reforms, will go broke within 10 years. John Kasich, Republican governor of Ohio, has proposed that the teaching load of college professors be increased by one course every two years.
Such efforts at restraint are routinely met with Wisconsin-like howls of outrage. One of my colleagues, whose retirement benefits exceed the $77,900 household income average for retired government employees in Illinois, was indignant that the state had managed to require an additional $17 a month for his dental insurance. How dare they!
Protests against efforts to reform pay scales, teaching loads, and retirement benefits employ a “solidarity forever, the union makes us strong” rhetoric. What these professors and other government workers do not understand is that they are not demanding a share of the profits from the fat-cat bourgeoisie. They are squeezing taxpayers—for whom the professors purport to advocate—whose lives are in most cases far harsher than their own.
SOURCE
There is a grumpy but shallow reply to Rubinstein by philoophy professor Roderick T. Long here. My own experience (tenured) teaching Sociology for 12 years in a major Australian university was very similar to what Rubenstein reports. The major difference is that I always speed-read student assignments so spent little time on it. My marking was not degraded by that however. Colleagues even congratulated me on how good I was at marking!
I also did what academics are supposed to do: Spend heaps of time on research. But, judging by their output and other things that I saw, I was very much the exception in that regard among my colleagues. There were many periods when I was the only academic in the Department who was actually in his office -- usually poring over computer printouts or hammering away on my old Olivetti typewriter. I also used to spend half a day a week in the "current journals" section of the library -- but I doubt if I ever saw a Sociology colleague there -- JR
Indian-American girl scoops $40,000 spelling-bee prize with 'cymotrichous'
Ms. Roy is the ninth Indian-American in the last 13 years to win. How come such a tiny minority is so outstanding -- even when many would come from homes where English is not the first language? No mystery really. Indians are extremely verbal. Talk is one of India's major exports. When you call the call-centre of a large organization, your query will often be routed through to India
Sukanya Roy, a 14-year-old girl from Pennsylvania, wins the 2011 US National Spelling Bee by spelling the word 'cymotrichous'.
Miss Roy took top prize in the 84th annual US National Spelling Bee after she saw off her competitors over 20 rounds of on-the-spot spelling at the final in Oxon Hill, Maryland.
After winning, the teenager, who was competing in her third championships, was shaking with excitement.
"My heart started pounding, I guess. I couldn't believe it," Miss Roy told broadcaster ESPN, immediately after receiving her trophy.
The finals have been screened live on US television since 2006 and drew and audience of over one million last year.
The winning word, cymotrichous, is an adjective relating to having wavy hair. Miss Roy, who also speaks fluent Bengali, said she knew the word immediately. "I just wanted to spell it right," she said. "I really didn't want to get it wrong."
Besides the trophy, the newly-crowned champion speller took home a $30,000 cash prize, a $2,500 US savings bond, a complete reference library, a $5,000 scholarship, $2,600 in reference works and other prizes.
SOURCE
18 Signs That Life In U.S. Public Schools Is Now Essentially Equivalent To Life In U.S. Prisons
In the United States today, our public schools are not very good at educating our students, but they sure are great training grounds for learning how to live in a Big Brother police state control grid. Sadly, life in many U.S. public schools is now essentially equivalent to life in U.S. prisons.
Most parents don't realize this, but our students have very few rights when they are in school. Our public school students are being watched, tracked, recorded, searched and controlled like never before. Back when I was in high school, it was unheard of for a police officer to come to school, but today our public school students are being handcuffed and arrested in staggering numbers. When I was young we would joke that going to school was like going to prison, but today that is actually true.
The following are 18 signs that life in our public schools is now very similar to life in our prisons....
#1 Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli has announced that school officials can search the cell phones and laptops of public school students if there are "reasonable grounds for suspecting that the search will turn up evidence that the student has violated or is violating either the law or the rules of the school."
#2 It came out in court that one school district in Pennsylvania secretly recorded more than 66,000 images of students using webcams that were embedded in school-issued laptops that the students were using at home.
#3 If you can believe it, a "certified TSA official" was recently brought in to oversee student searches at the Santa Fe High School prom.
#4 A few years ago a class of 3rd grade students at one Kentucky elementary school were searched by a group of teachers after 5 dollars went missing. During the search the students were actually required to remove their shoes and their socks.
#5 At one public school in the Chicago area, children have been banned from bringing their lunches from home. Yes, you read that correctly. Students at that particular school are absolutely prohibited from bringing lunches from home. Instead, it is mandatory that they eat the food that the school cafeteria serves.
#6 The U.S. Department of Agriculture is spending huge amounts of money to install surveillance cameras in the cafeterias of public schools so that government control freaks can closely monitor what our children are eating.
#7 A teenager in suburban Dallas was recently forced to take on a part-time job after being ticketed for using bad language in one high school classroom. The original ticket was for $340, but additional fees have raised the total bill to $637.
#8 It is not just high school kids that are being ticketed by police. In Texas the crackdown extends all the way down to elementary school students. In fact, it has been reported that Texas police gave "1,000 tickets" to elementary school kids over a recent six year period.
#9 A few months ago, a 17 year-old honor student in North Carolina named Ashley Smithwick accidentally took her father's lunch with her to school. It contained a small paring knife which he would use to slice up apples. So what happened to this standout student when the school discovered this? The school suspended her for the rest of the year and the police charged her with a misdemeanor.
#10 A little over a year ago, a 6 year old girl in Florida was handcuffed and sent to a mental facility after throwing temper tantrums at her elementary school.
#11 In early 2010, a 12 year old girl in New York was arrested by police and marched out of her school in handcuffs just because she doodled on her desk. "I love my friends Abby and Faith" was what she reportedly wrote on her desk.
#12 There are actually some public schools in the United States that are so paranoid that they have actually installed cameras in student bathrooms.
#13 Down in Florida, students have actually been arrested by police for bringing a plastic butter knife to school, for throwing an eraser, and for drawing a picture of a gun.
#14 The Florida State Department of Juvenile Justice has announced that it will begin using analysis software to predict crime by young delinquents and will place "potential offenders" in specific prevention and education programs.
#15 A group of high school students made national headlines a while back when they revealed that they were ordered by a security guard to stop singing the national anthem during a visit to the Lincoln Memorial.
#16 In some U.S. schools, armed cops accompanied by police dogs actually conduct surprise raids with their guns drawn. In this video, you can actually see police officers aiming their guns at school children as the students are lined up facing the wall.
#17 Back in 2009, one 8 year old boy in Massachusetts was sent home from school and was forced to undergo a psychological evaluation because he drew a picture of Jesus on the cross.
#18 This year, 13 parents in Duncan, South Carolina were actually arrested for cheering during a high school graduation.
SOURCE
Thursday, June 02, 2011
Middle School Yearbook List Compares Hitler and Bin Laden to… George W. Bush
Who says young people aren’t political? A quasi-scandal has broken out at Arkansas’ Russellville Middle School. The school’s yearbook featured a list of the “Top 5 Worst People of All Time.”
Some of the world’s most horrific murderers and maniacs were included: Adolph Hitler, Osama Bin Laden, Charles Manson…
Few people would argue that these individuals don’t deserve a spot on that roster. Each went on murderous rampages and were, arguably, mentally-imbalanced. However, it‘s the list’s last two names that are causing a stir: George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.
The former president and vice-president don’t seem to share many characteristics with the other men they were clumped with.
Once the yearbooks were printed, the district attempted to remedy the alleged oversight. KLRT-TV has more:
"Superintendent Randall Williams calls the list “an oversight.”
Parents caught it after the yearbooks were printed. The district’s solution was to cover the list with tape. It didn’t work.
“Really?” said Williams when told the tape could be pulled off. “Well that’s disappointing because the yearbook supplier told us this was a definite fix.”
There’s no word yet on potential disciplinary measures for the teacher responsible for managing the yearbook’s production process, though the principal maintains that it was an accident.
Mediaite asks another important question: Where did the list come from?
Williams explains that the teacher in charge of the yearbook didn’t put it in and is “very, very, very upset” about missing it before printing.
Apparently some of the students pulled the thing off of the website Ranker.com, a site where people just make lists of stuff.
A cursory search didn’t find the exact list in question although there are a ton of “worst people” rankings that do feature members of the Bush administration like this one, this one, and this one.
SOURCE
Dumb British High School examiners
Impossible maths paper puts university places at risk, say A-level pupils
A-level students fear their university places may be at risk after they were set an ‘impossible’ question in a maths exam.
One of Britain’s biggest exam boards apologised for the blunder yesterday which affected a paper sat by nearly 7,000 students.
A teacher who saw the exam paper spotted the error and alerted the OCR last Friday.
Yesterday furious students flooded social networking sites calling for the exam to be re-run.
The question, which could not be solved, accounted for more than 11 per cent of marks.
The exam board pledged to take the mistake into account, but students said the precious minutes wasted on it meant they failed to reach other parts of the test.
On The Student Room website, one teenager said: ‘They should definitely give us a re-sit.’ Another said: ‘I spent 20 minutes on that question (as it was worth the most marks) and had to rush everything else. I really needed to get an A and now I am scared I won’t even get a B.’
The error centred around a 90-minute ‘decision mathematics’ AS-level exam sat by students in 335 schools and colleges. AS- levels are normally sat in the first year of two-year A-level courses. In the final section, students were presented with a diagram showing a network of tracks in a forest. The exam board failed to calculate the length properly, which meant it failed to tally with their mathematical equation.
An OCR spokesman said: ‘We have several measures in place to ensure candidates are not unfairly disadvantaged as a result of this unfortunate error. ‘Because we have been alerted to this so early, we are able to take this error into account when marking the paper. We will also take it into account when setting the grade boundaries.’ He added: ‘We will be under- taking a thorough review of our quality assurance procedures.’
SOURCE
In Australia's academe, the Left show the totalitarian stuff of which they are made: Larissa Behrendt revisited
Larissa Behrendt claims to be an Aborigine and pretends to wisdom about Aboriginal affairs -- but she is as pink-skinned as I am and has nothing new to offer on Aboriginal policy. She is nothing like a real Aborigine, even if she has some remote Aboriginal ancestry. She is just a conventional Leftist. She is comfortably ensconced with others of her ilk at the University of Technology, Sydney, far away from the day-to-day problems of real Aborigines. Her many awards and honours suggest that her claims of Aboriginality have served her well, however. It's so comforting to give awards to "Aborigines" who are just like us. It helps to hide the real and sad differences that need to be dealt with constructively -- JR
Janet Albrechtsen
This is about a big idea: the human right to free speech. Yet in the academic world devoted to human rights where Larissa Behrendt earns her living, free speech is often scorned. As the poster girl for urban academics, the law professor has done a first-class job of exposing the Left's lack of commitment to free speech.
Behrendt is entitled to her views. But as a high-profile indigenous academic with a long list of public appointments - professor of law and director of research at the Jumbunna Indigenous House of Learning at the University of Technology, Sydney, former chair of one of the Australian Research Council's panels that hands out taxpayer-funded research grants and so on - Behrendt is accountable for what she says and does.
If she wants to follow an out-dated agenda of postcolonial guilt, treaties and indigenous sovereignty, she is free to do so. Some will agree with her. Many others will disagree with an agenda best described by anthropologist Peter Sutton as pie-in-the-sky. They will argue that real progress depends on eradicating violence against indigenous women and children.
Yet when Behrendt tweeted that watching bestiality on television was less offensive than watching Bess Price, a strong supporter of the Northern Territory intervention, on ABC1's Q & A, Behrendt clearly rejected the merits of debate. She undermined her own credibility as a defender of human rights when she transformed an important debate about indigenous violence into something petty and personal.
Behrendt's email apology does not hide her deeper contempt for free speech when she defaulted to the Left's standard tactic of trying to muzzle those with different views. Those who stray from the orthodoxy are not just wrong, they are evil - worse than watching bestiality. Ergo, those with evil views should not be seen or heard.
And then there's the hypocrisy. Behrendt and her fellow travellers are using discrimination laws to try to shut down Herald Sun columnist Andrew Bolt for expressing strongly held views. Behrendt said much worse things about Price.
Just imagine the fatal career consequences had a white academic tweeted in the way Behrendt did. Defending Behrendt and her appointment to the government's review of Aboriginal higher education, chairman of the Indigenous Higher Education Advisory Council Steve Larkin said the tweet fiasco had nothing to do with higher education.
This is not just about a throwaway tweet. As The Australian reported on April 19 and 20, Behrendt tried to stop the National Indigenous Times from publishing the views of human rights lawyer Hannah McGlade, whose focus is protecting indigenous women and children from violence. While Behrendt said she had had no conversations with Stephen Hagan, editor of the Times, she wrote an email to the newspaper's general manager Beverley Wyner and her husband, John, which noted her distress at discovering McGlade was a likely new contributor.
In the email, Behrendt writes: ". . . I felt that this meant that our paper was giving all her views legitimacy, including her personal attacks on me." What happened to debate, Dr Behrendt?
In fact, Behrendt's disdain for free speech has everything to do with higher education. As naive as it sounds, the heartbeat of free speech should be at its healthiest within our universities. Instead, free speech risks flatlining when a professor of law ridicules and shuts down opponents. Warren Mundine told The Australian: "If you don't have free debate in academia, then where the bloody hell are we going?"
Consider this too. Since 2002, Behrendt has been a director of the Sydney Writers Festival, a cosy, taxpayer-subsidised couch where like-minded people sit and nod in agreement. At no stage has historian Keith Windschuttle been invited to talk about his contributions to history. He's been invited to the Adelaide Writers Festival, the Melbourne Writers Festival. Even Byron Bay luvvies have hosted him. But not the writers' clique in his home town.
There is a devastating human cost here. It is no coincidence that the human right to free speech is the critical driver of human progress. Progress doesn't come from sticking with the herd. In every sphere, the best ideas often challenged the mainstream. Behind every advance, there is a dissident voice, a radical idea, a genuinely curious, bravely independent mind. Yet so many on the Left, who mistakenly wrap themselves up as progressives, have little time for such voices of dissent.
As Mundine says: "This is about serious debate. Nothing could be more serious than the issues raised by Bess Price in regard to violence against women and children within our society. This really gets down to the very fabric of what our society stands for."
SOURCE
Who says young people aren’t political? A quasi-scandal has broken out at Arkansas’ Russellville Middle School. The school’s yearbook featured a list of the “Top 5 Worst People of All Time.”
Some of the world’s most horrific murderers and maniacs were included: Adolph Hitler, Osama Bin Laden, Charles Manson…
Few people would argue that these individuals don’t deserve a spot on that roster. Each went on murderous rampages and were, arguably, mentally-imbalanced. However, it‘s the list’s last two names that are causing a stir: George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.
The former president and vice-president don’t seem to share many characteristics with the other men they were clumped with.
Once the yearbooks were printed, the district attempted to remedy the alleged oversight. KLRT-TV has more:
"Superintendent Randall Williams calls the list “an oversight.”
Parents caught it after the yearbooks were printed. The district’s solution was to cover the list with tape. It didn’t work.
“Really?” said Williams when told the tape could be pulled off. “Well that’s disappointing because the yearbook supplier told us this was a definite fix.”
There’s no word yet on potential disciplinary measures for the teacher responsible for managing the yearbook’s production process, though the principal maintains that it was an accident.
Mediaite asks another important question: Where did the list come from?
Williams explains that the teacher in charge of the yearbook didn’t put it in and is “very, very, very upset” about missing it before printing.
Apparently some of the students pulled the thing off of the website Ranker.com, a site where people just make lists of stuff.
A cursory search didn’t find the exact list in question although there are a ton of “worst people” rankings that do feature members of the Bush administration like this one, this one, and this one.
SOURCE
Dumb British High School examiners
Impossible maths paper puts university places at risk, say A-level pupils
A-level students fear their university places may be at risk after they were set an ‘impossible’ question in a maths exam.
One of Britain’s biggest exam boards apologised for the blunder yesterday which affected a paper sat by nearly 7,000 students.
A teacher who saw the exam paper spotted the error and alerted the OCR last Friday.
Yesterday furious students flooded social networking sites calling for the exam to be re-run.
The question, which could not be solved, accounted for more than 11 per cent of marks.
The exam board pledged to take the mistake into account, but students said the precious minutes wasted on it meant they failed to reach other parts of the test.
On The Student Room website, one teenager said: ‘They should definitely give us a re-sit.’ Another said: ‘I spent 20 minutes on that question (as it was worth the most marks) and had to rush everything else. I really needed to get an A and now I am scared I won’t even get a B.’
The error centred around a 90-minute ‘decision mathematics’ AS-level exam sat by students in 335 schools and colleges. AS- levels are normally sat in the first year of two-year A-level courses. In the final section, students were presented with a diagram showing a network of tracks in a forest. The exam board failed to calculate the length properly, which meant it failed to tally with their mathematical equation.
An OCR spokesman said: ‘We have several measures in place to ensure candidates are not unfairly disadvantaged as a result of this unfortunate error. ‘Because we have been alerted to this so early, we are able to take this error into account when marking the paper. We will also take it into account when setting the grade boundaries.’ He added: ‘We will be under- taking a thorough review of our quality assurance procedures.’
SOURCE
In Australia's academe, the Left show the totalitarian stuff of which they are made: Larissa Behrendt revisited
Larissa Behrendt claims to be an Aborigine and pretends to wisdom about Aboriginal affairs -- but she is as pink-skinned as I am and has nothing new to offer on Aboriginal policy. She is nothing like a real Aborigine, even if she has some remote Aboriginal ancestry. She is just a conventional Leftist. She is comfortably ensconced with others of her ilk at the University of Technology, Sydney, far away from the day-to-day problems of real Aborigines. Her many awards and honours suggest that her claims of Aboriginality have served her well, however. It's so comforting to give awards to "Aborigines" who are just like us. It helps to hide the real and sad differences that need to be dealt with constructively -- JR
Janet Albrechtsen
This is about a big idea: the human right to free speech. Yet in the academic world devoted to human rights where Larissa Behrendt earns her living, free speech is often scorned. As the poster girl for urban academics, the law professor has done a first-class job of exposing the Left's lack of commitment to free speech.
Behrendt is entitled to her views. But as a high-profile indigenous academic with a long list of public appointments - professor of law and director of research at the Jumbunna Indigenous House of Learning at the University of Technology, Sydney, former chair of one of the Australian Research Council's panels that hands out taxpayer-funded research grants and so on - Behrendt is accountable for what she says and does.
If she wants to follow an out-dated agenda of postcolonial guilt, treaties and indigenous sovereignty, she is free to do so. Some will agree with her. Many others will disagree with an agenda best described by anthropologist Peter Sutton as pie-in-the-sky. They will argue that real progress depends on eradicating violence against indigenous women and children.
Yet when Behrendt tweeted that watching bestiality on television was less offensive than watching Bess Price, a strong supporter of the Northern Territory intervention, on ABC1's Q & A, Behrendt clearly rejected the merits of debate. She undermined her own credibility as a defender of human rights when she transformed an important debate about indigenous violence into something petty and personal.
Behrendt's email apology does not hide her deeper contempt for free speech when she defaulted to the Left's standard tactic of trying to muzzle those with different views. Those who stray from the orthodoxy are not just wrong, they are evil - worse than watching bestiality. Ergo, those with evil views should not be seen or heard.
And then there's the hypocrisy. Behrendt and her fellow travellers are using discrimination laws to try to shut down Herald Sun columnist Andrew Bolt for expressing strongly held views. Behrendt said much worse things about Price.
Just imagine the fatal career consequences had a white academic tweeted in the way Behrendt did. Defending Behrendt and her appointment to the government's review of Aboriginal higher education, chairman of the Indigenous Higher Education Advisory Council Steve Larkin said the tweet fiasco had nothing to do with higher education.
This is not just about a throwaway tweet. As The Australian reported on April 19 and 20, Behrendt tried to stop the National Indigenous Times from publishing the views of human rights lawyer Hannah McGlade, whose focus is protecting indigenous women and children from violence. While Behrendt said she had had no conversations with Stephen Hagan, editor of the Times, she wrote an email to the newspaper's general manager Beverley Wyner and her husband, John, which noted her distress at discovering McGlade was a likely new contributor.
In the email, Behrendt writes: ". . . I felt that this meant that our paper was giving all her views legitimacy, including her personal attacks on me." What happened to debate, Dr Behrendt?
In fact, Behrendt's disdain for free speech has everything to do with higher education. As naive as it sounds, the heartbeat of free speech should be at its healthiest within our universities. Instead, free speech risks flatlining when a professor of law ridicules and shuts down opponents. Warren Mundine told The Australian: "If you don't have free debate in academia, then where the bloody hell are we going?"
Consider this too. Since 2002, Behrendt has been a director of the Sydney Writers Festival, a cosy, taxpayer-subsidised couch where like-minded people sit and nod in agreement. At no stage has historian Keith Windschuttle been invited to talk about his contributions to history. He's been invited to the Adelaide Writers Festival, the Melbourne Writers Festival. Even Byron Bay luvvies have hosted him. But not the writers' clique in his home town.
There is a devastating human cost here. It is no coincidence that the human right to free speech is the critical driver of human progress. Progress doesn't come from sticking with the herd. In every sphere, the best ideas often challenged the mainstream. Behind every advance, there is a dissident voice, a radical idea, a genuinely curious, bravely independent mind. Yet so many on the Left, who mistakenly wrap themselves up as progressives, have little time for such voices of dissent.
As Mundine says: "This is about serious debate. Nothing could be more serious than the issues raised by Bess Price in regard to violence against women and children within our society. This really gets down to the very fabric of what our society stands for."
SOURCE
Wednesday, June 01, 2011
A school with a difference
And a school that does NOT demand adherence to the party line, unlike most American universities
This might be the most mysterious school in China. The gates are closely guarded by the People's Armed Police, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Headmasters of this place, a training ground for future leaders of the Communist Party of China (CPC), are always one of the country's vice-presidents, if not the president. Former headmasters include Mao Zedong, Liu Shaoqi and Hu Jintao.
It is also a haven where possible cures for China's economic and social ills are discussed and debated, and where policy trends are set.
Situated next to the Summer Palace, an 18th century imperial retreat in suburban Beijing's northwest, the Party School of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China - the Central Party School - is like no other university or college in the country.
Without the usual hustle and bustle, the 100-hectare leafy campus is extremely quiet, and almost empty. There is no bicycle congestion. Instead, the roads outside school buildings are lined with black Audis, the German brand selected as the government's official sedans.
The serenity and security are prepared for those who study there - provincial governors and ministers, young and middle-aged officials, their guest speakers and sometimes the country's top leaders.
The speeches that top leaders deliver at the Central Party School, and their articles printed in the school's publications, often signal new strategies and policies that will be adopted by the central government.
Seeking new solutions
The most recent example is the notion of innovative social governance - keeping a handle on social issues while fulfilling people's fundamental interests - brought about amid growing public concerns over unbalanced and unsustainable development.
In February, at the opening ceremony of a seminar for provincial and ministerial officials at the school, President Hu Jintao called for new methods of social management in a bid to "ensure a harmonious and stable society full of vitality", Xinhua News Agency reported. Hu acknowledged that the country is "still in a stage where many conflicts are likely to arise", despite remarkable social and economic development.
In his speech, Hu highlighted the necessities to "improve the structure of social management", which must be achieved through the Party committee's leadership, government's responsibilities, support from non-governmental organizations and public participation.
In March, at the annual sessions of the National People's Congress and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference National Committee, a proposal high on the agenda called for establishing a sound social management system with Chinese characteristics during the 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-2015) period.
More detailed plans have since been drafted, including one for a comprehensive and dynamic national population database. Zhou Yongkang, secretary of the Central Political and Legislative Affairs Committee of the Communist Party of China, made that proposal in an article published in Qiushi, the CPC central committee's biweekly journal.
Steering the policymaking in China is a tradition for the Central Party School, according to Wang Haiguang, a professor in the school's history department.
Broad range of programs
The Central Party School, founded in 1933 in Jiangxi province, has trained 61,024 officials under different types of programs.
Provincial and ministerial-level officials usually undergo two months of training on political science, public management, economy and history. Young and middle-aged officials spend six months to a year at the school, usually followed by a promotion.
Since 1981, the school also has offered postgraduate and doctoral programs for about 500 non-official students. They focus on philosophy, economics, laws, politics and the history of the Communist Party of China.
"The Central Party School has played an important role in several critical stages in China's history," Wang said. "In some way, it is partly navigating the country's development through influencing decision-makers."
Following the end of the "cultural revolution" (1966-1976), Hu Yaobang, then headmaster of the Central Party School, led a fervent discussion about the criterion for "testing truth" among the officials receiving training at the school.
At the time, whatever Mao said was regarded as the truth or principle to follow. The discussion led by Hu was whether this rule should continue.
The discussion was held in a stubborn social environment still dominated by the notion of "two whatevers" - "we will resolutely uphold whatever policy and decisions Chairman Mao made, and unswervingly follow whatever instructions Chairman Mao gave."
It led to the publication in May 1978 of a commentary piece, titled "Practice Is the Sole Criterion for Testing Truth," in Guangming Daily. The concept put forward in the article won approval by the majority of Party members, but it also touched off a fierce national debate. The debate was believed to be a great movement to free the minds of Chinese people from personality cults, and also a solid ideological foundation for the economic reforms and opening-up that would follow.
Freedom of speech
Although outsiders expect the Central Party School to be conservative, the school tolerates free internal discussions, even without limits. Li Tao, a 27-year-old postgraduate student at the school, was surprised by the freedom of speech in class.
"Teachers told us there were no taboos in their teaching, and officials can debate on almost any sensitive issues in the country," Li said. "This is actually a place of mind emancipation and free speech."
"Officials might be discreet in talking to strangers or in public, but their internal discussion in class is unbounded," said Wu Zhongmin, a professor at the Central Party School who focuses on social justice research. "Sometimes their opinions can be really audacious and revolutionary.
"The Central Party School is a place where officials and researchers debate about the future of the country and the Party," Wu said. "They have to face the problems and find ways to solve them. Speaking empty words or simply flattering makes no sense here."
Discussions are closely linked to the most sizzling social problems, such as illegal land grabs, inequality between rural and urban areas, and corruption. To give trainees a better understanding of these problems, the Central Party School sometimes invites outspoken scholars to give lectures.
One speaker, in 2009, was Yu Jianrong, head of the Rural Development Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and a prominent advocate for farmers' rights. He addressed the rapid urbanization that has resulted in farmland being taken up for construction projects and the use of the petition system for redress.
Some farmers, believing they had not been adequately compensated for their land, appealed to the petition system. But going over local officials' heads by petitioning can lead to ill treatment by officials whose job performance is downgraded when they do not handle problems well locally.
Wang Changjiang, director of the school's Party Building Teaching and Research Department, said officials are aware that mishandling such social problems could create greater chaos.
"China has so many problems now," Wang said. "As the country's governors, officials have no reason to ignore those problems. They must bear in mind that only reform and changes to the Party can help it stay in power."
Social and economic changes also have led to changes in officials' mindset, he said. In the early 1990s, higher ranked officials were unaware of some of the problems at the grassroots.
Wang said he met strong opposition from trainees when he tried to talk about democratic reform in 1996. But in recent years, more high-ranking Party leaders began to realize the need to carry out government reform following economic progress.
"The Central Party School might be the most ideal place for such discussions," he said, "because you can't find anywhere else where hundreds of high-ranking officials gather for months."
International exchanges
Since the mid-1990s, the Central Party School has welcomed another group of guest speakers - top leaders from foreign countries - in a bid to give Chinese officials a wider horizon and better understanding of different cultures, values and political systems.
Most recently, Herman Van Rompuy, president of the European Council, gave a speech titled "Europe and China in an Interdependent World" on May 17 during his visit to Beijing. Besides talking about the economic crisis, he also addressed human rights, climate change and other concerns common to both Europe and China.
SOURCE
Report reveals one in three children in London doesn't own a single book
Three in ten children live in households that do not contain a single book, a poll has found. The survey of more than 18,000 youths across the country has shown large numbers do not own any books or read on their own, fuelling slumping education standards.
This was coupled with the finding that children with no books are two-and-a-half times more likely to fall below the expected reading level for their age.
One teacher in the capital told how, when he asked his pupils to bring in a book from home to speak about with the rest of the class, a nine-year-old boy brought in the Argos catalogue. 'It's the only book my family have,' the youngster told his teacher.
The study also found almost 40 per cent of those aged eight to 17 live in homes with 10 or fewer books – although 85 per cent of those aged eight to 15 own a games console, and 81 per cent have a mobile phone.
The research, conducted by the National Literacy Trust, follows official statistics showing one in five children leaves primary school without reaching the expected level of progress in English.
The same proportion leaves school without an A* to C grade in both GCSE English and Maths.
Education Secretary Michael Gove has highlighted the problem, which has seen England slip from 7th to 25th in the world literacy rankings, and said he wants children to read 50 books a year.
Researcher Christina Clark, who led the poll of 18,171 eight to 17-year-olds in 111 UK schools, found children with no books had ‘lower levels of attainment, negative attitudes to reading and read less frequently’.
A young girl being given one-on-one reading lessons. According to the National Literacy Trust, 80 per cent of parents rarely find time to read with their young children (stock image)
A young girl being given one-on-one reading lessons. According to the National Literacy Trust, 80 per cent of parents rarely find time to read with their young children (stock image)
Sir Jim Rose, former director of Ofsted, said: ‘We are in serious trouble. We need to do something urgently. It is a responsibility we cannot afford to shirk.’
A separate study of 70,000 people in 27 countries, by Nevada University, recently found that children who grew up in a home with 20 or more books remained in education three years longer than those born to families with empty bookshelves.
SOURCE
Scottish School orders pupils to wear baggy clothes 'to deter paedophiles who like boys in tight trousers'
Furious parents yesterday criticised a school after they were asked to buy their children baggy clothes to deter paedophiles. King's Park Secondary School, in Glasgow, asked parents to ensure modesty in their children's uniform in a bizarre letter which claims sex offenders may be taking pictures of schoolboys in tight trousers.
The letter, dubbed 'paranoid in the extreme' by one parent, was sent home even though police say there have been no incidents of schoolchildren in the area being targeted. And children whose parents fail to conform to the approved dress code could be forced to miss out on fun school trips.
The letter says: 'We believe an appropriate school uniform protects children from being targeted by sexual predators. 'There is recent evidence in south Glasgow of adults photographing schoolgirls in short skirts and schoolgirls/boys in tight trousers, then grooming them through the internet. 'We must do all we can to keep our children safe. A modest school uniform is more appropriate than fashion skirts, trousers or tops.'
The crackdown on pupil attire has been slammed by shocked parents whose children don't want to obey the strict rules. One blasted: 'There is no way an ugly uniform is going to deter a predator and determined sex offender. 'This is just paranoid in the extreme. There are better ways to safeguard children than spreading needless panic.' Another added: 'It is laughable to think the uniform can act as some sort of paedophile-repellent.'
The tough new policy forces cash-strapped parents to shop from an approved list of items available only at high street store Marks and Spencer. Girls can wear only knee-length pleated skirts or trousers and boys loose-fitting trousers.
A school source claimed the rules were sparked by the case of pervert Barry McCluskey, 39, who pretended to be a schoolgirl to target schoolchildren online. He managed to make contact with 49 girls from his King's Park home between 2007 and 2010.
The source said staff were not willing to take any chances and felt clothing could act as a safeguard for the children in their care.
But Scottish Liberal Democrat education spokesman Liam McArthur said school bosses should have spoken to police if they had such real fears of predatory paedophiles. He said: 'The school needs to bring this to the attention of police as a matter of urgency.' Tory MSP Ruth Davidson added: 'This situation sounds very worrying.'
A Glasgow City Council spokesman said there had been 'extensive consultation' over the draconian new uniform rules. He said: 'The welfare and protection of pupils are the highest priority.'
However, the Scottish Parent Teacher Council said 'shock tactics are not required'. Chief executive Eileen Prior said: 'Creating a link between school uniform and paedophilia seems to be a dangerous and unhelpful one for everyone involved.
'It implies that young people are in some way responsible for the activities of paedophiles, which is an extremely dangerous argument and one which has echoes of the comments sometimes made around rapists and women's dress. 'If there is evidence of activity by a paedophile in the area, then police and parents should be informed and involved.'
She added: 'Many parents - and indeed young people themselves - are keen to have a dress code in school which requires everyone in the school community to dress in a way which is appropriate for a working environment.'
Scottish Liberal Democrat education spokesman Liam McArthur said: 'This situation raises some very serious issues. 'The school needs to bring this situation to the attention of the police as a matter of urgency. 'Likewise, if parents have any concerns whatsoever they should be raising these with the police.'
SOURCE
And a school that does NOT demand adherence to the party line, unlike most American universities
This might be the most mysterious school in China. The gates are closely guarded by the People's Armed Police, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Headmasters of this place, a training ground for future leaders of the Communist Party of China (CPC), are always one of the country's vice-presidents, if not the president. Former headmasters include Mao Zedong, Liu Shaoqi and Hu Jintao.
It is also a haven where possible cures for China's economic and social ills are discussed and debated, and where policy trends are set.
Situated next to the Summer Palace, an 18th century imperial retreat in suburban Beijing's northwest, the Party School of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China - the Central Party School - is like no other university or college in the country.
Without the usual hustle and bustle, the 100-hectare leafy campus is extremely quiet, and almost empty. There is no bicycle congestion. Instead, the roads outside school buildings are lined with black Audis, the German brand selected as the government's official sedans.
The serenity and security are prepared for those who study there - provincial governors and ministers, young and middle-aged officials, their guest speakers and sometimes the country's top leaders.
The speeches that top leaders deliver at the Central Party School, and their articles printed in the school's publications, often signal new strategies and policies that will be adopted by the central government.
Seeking new solutions
The most recent example is the notion of innovative social governance - keeping a handle on social issues while fulfilling people's fundamental interests - brought about amid growing public concerns over unbalanced and unsustainable development.
In February, at the opening ceremony of a seminar for provincial and ministerial officials at the school, President Hu Jintao called for new methods of social management in a bid to "ensure a harmonious and stable society full of vitality", Xinhua News Agency reported. Hu acknowledged that the country is "still in a stage where many conflicts are likely to arise", despite remarkable social and economic development.
In his speech, Hu highlighted the necessities to "improve the structure of social management", which must be achieved through the Party committee's leadership, government's responsibilities, support from non-governmental organizations and public participation.
In March, at the annual sessions of the National People's Congress and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference National Committee, a proposal high on the agenda called for establishing a sound social management system with Chinese characteristics during the 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-2015) period.
More detailed plans have since been drafted, including one for a comprehensive and dynamic national population database. Zhou Yongkang, secretary of the Central Political and Legislative Affairs Committee of the Communist Party of China, made that proposal in an article published in Qiushi, the CPC central committee's biweekly journal.
Steering the policymaking in China is a tradition for the Central Party School, according to Wang Haiguang, a professor in the school's history department.
Broad range of programs
The Central Party School, founded in 1933 in Jiangxi province, has trained 61,024 officials under different types of programs.
Provincial and ministerial-level officials usually undergo two months of training on political science, public management, economy and history. Young and middle-aged officials spend six months to a year at the school, usually followed by a promotion.
Since 1981, the school also has offered postgraduate and doctoral programs for about 500 non-official students. They focus on philosophy, economics, laws, politics and the history of the Communist Party of China.
"The Central Party School has played an important role in several critical stages in China's history," Wang said. "In some way, it is partly navigating the country's development through influencing decision-makers."
Following the end of the "cultural revolution" (1966-1976), Hu Yaobang, then headmaster of the Central Party School, led a fervent discussion about the criterion for "testing truth" among the officials receiving training at the school.
At the time, whatever Mao said was regarded as the truth or principle to follow. The discussion led by Hu was whether this rule should continue.
The discussion was held in a stubborn social environment still dominated by the notion of "two whatevers" - "we will resolutely uphold whatever policy and decisions Chairman Mao made, and unswervingly follow whatever instructions Chairman Mao gave."
It led to the publication in May 1978 of a commentary piece, titled "Practice Is the Sole Criterion for Testing Truth," in Guangming Daily. The concept put forward in the article won approval by the majority of Party members, but it also touched off a fierce national debate. The debate was believed to be a great movement to free the minds of Chinese people from personality cults, and also a solid ideological foundation for the economic reforms and opening-up that would follow.
Freedom of speech
Although outsiders expect the Central Party School to be conservative, the school tolerates free internal discussions, even without limits. Li Tao, a 27-year-old postgraduate student at the school, was surprised by the freedom of speech in class.
"Teachers told us there were no taboos in their teaching, and officials can debate on almost any sensitive issues in the country," Li said. "This is actually a place of mind emancipation and free speech."
"Officials might be discreet in talking to strangers or in public, but their internal discussion in class is unbounded," said Wu Zhongmin, a professor at the Central Party School who focuses on social justice research. "Sometimes their opinions can be really audacious and revolutionary.
"The Central Party School is a place where officials and researchers debate about the future of the country and the Party," Wu said. "They have to face the problems and find ways to solve them. Speaking empty words or simply flattering makes no sense here."
Discussions are closely linked to the most sizzling social problems, such as illegal land grabs, inequality between rural and urban areas, and corruption. To give trainees a better understanding of these problems, the Central Party School sometimes invites outspoken scholars to give lectures.
One speaker, in 2009, was Yu Jianrong, head of the Rural Development Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and a prominent advocate for farmers' rights. He addressed the rapid urbanization that has resulted in farmland being taken up for construction projects and the use of the petition system for redress.
Some farmers, believing they had not been adequately compensated for their land, appealed to the petition system. But going over local officials' heads by petitioning can lead to ill treatment by officials whose job performance is downgraded when they do not handle problems well locally.
Wang Changjiang, director of the school's Party Building Teaching and Research Department, said officials are aware that mishandling such social problems could create greater chaos.
"China has so many problems now," Wang said. "As the country's governors, officials have no reason to ignore those problems. They must bear in mind that only reform and changes to the Party can help it stay in power."
Social and economic changes also have led to changes in officials' mindset, he said. In the early 1990s, higher ranked officials were unaware of some of the problems at the grassroots.
Wang said he met strong opposition from trainees when he tried to talk about democratic reform in 1996. But in recent years, more high-ranking Party leaders began to realize the need to carry out government reform following economic progress.
"The Central Party School might be the most ideal place for such discussions," he said, "because you can't find anywhere else where hundreds of high-ranking officials gather for months."
International exchanges
Since the mid-1990s, the Central Party School has welcomed another group of guest speakers - top leaders from foreign countries - in a bid to give Chinese officials a wider horizon and better understanding of different cultures, values and political systems.
Most recently, Herman Van Rompuy, president of the European Council, gave a speech titled "Europe and China in an Interdependent World" on May 17 during his visit to Beijing. Besides talking about the economic crisis, he also addressed human rights, climate change and other concerns common to both Europe and China.
SOURCE
Report reveals one in three children in London doesn't own a single book
Three in ten children live in households that do not contain a single book, a poll has found. The survey of more than 18,000 youths across the country has shown large numbers do not own any books or read on their own, fuelling slumping education standards.
This was coupled with the finding that children with no books are two-and-a-half times more likely to fall below the expected reading level for their age.
One teacher in the capital told how, when he asked his pupils to bring in a book from home to speak about with the rest of the class, a nine-year-old boy brought in the Argos catalogue. 'It's the only book my family have,' the youngster told his teacher.
The study also found almost 40 per cent of those aged eight to 17 live in homes with 10 or fewer books – although 85 per cent of those aged eight to 15 own a games console, and 81 per cent have a mobile phone.
The research, conducted by the National Literacy Trust, follows official statistics showing one in five children leaves primary school without reaching the expected level of progress in English.
The same proportion leaves school without an A* to C grade in both GCSE English and Maths.
Education Secretary Michael Gove has highlighted the problem, which has seen England slip from 7th to 25th in the world literacy rankings, and said he wants children to read 50 books a year.
Researcher Christina Clark, who led the poll of 18,171 eight to 17-year-olds in 111 UK schools, found children with no books had ‘lower levels of attainment, negative attitudes to reading and read less frequently’.
A young girl being given one-on-one reading lessons. According to the National Literacy Trust, 80 per cent of parents rarely find time to read with their young children (stock image)
A young girl being given one-on-one reading lessons. According to the National Literacy Trust, 80 per cent of parents rarely find time to read with their young children (stock image)
Sir Jim Rose, former director of Ofsted, said: ‘We are in serious trouble. We need to do something urgently. It is a responsibility we cannot afford to shirk.’
A separate study of 70,000 people in 27 countries, by Nevada University, recently found that children who grew up in a home with 20 or more books remained in education three years longer than those born to families with empty bookshelves.
SOURCE
Scottish School orders pupils to wear baggy clothes 'to deter paedophiles who like boys in tight trousers'
Furious parents yesterday criticised a school after they were asked to buy their children baggy clothes to deter paedophiles. King's Park Secondary School, in Glasgow, asked parents to ensure modesty in their children's uniform in a bizarre letter which claims sex offenders may be taking pictures of schoolboys in tight trousers.
The letter, dubbed 'paranoid in the extreme' by one parent, was sent home even though police say there have been no incidents of schoolchildren in the area being targeted. And children whose parents fail to conform to the approved dress code could be forced to miss out on fun school trips.
The letter says: 'We believe an appropriate school uniform protects children from being targeted by sexual predators. 'There is recent evidence in south Glasgow of adults photographing schoolgirls in short skirts and schoolgirls/boys in tight trousers, then grooming them through the internet. 'We must do all we can to keep our children safe. A modest school uniform is more appropriate than fashion skirts, trousers or tops.'
The crackdown on pupil attire has been slammed by shocked parents whose children don't want to obey the strict rules. One blasted: 'There is no way an ugly uniform is going to deter a predator and determined sex offender. 'This is just paranoid in the extreme. There are better ways to safeguard children than spreading needless panic.' Another added: 'It is laughable to think the uniform can act as some sort of paedophile-repellent.'
The tough new policy forces cash-strapped parents to shop from an approved list of items available only at high street store Marks and Spencer. Girls can wear only knee-length pleated skirts or trousers and boys loose-fitting trousers.
A school source claimed the rules were sparked by the case of pervert Barry McCluskey, 39, who pretended to be a schoolgirl to target schoolchildren online. He managed to make contact with 49 girls from his King's Park home between 2007 and 2010.
The source said staff were not willing to take any chances and felt clothing could act as a safeguard for the children in their care.
But Scottish Liberal Democrat education spokesman Liam McArthur said school bosses should have spoken to police if they had such real fears of predatory paedophiles. He said: 'The school needs to bring this to the attention of police as a matter of urgency.' Tory MSP Ruth Davidson added: 'This situation sounds very worrying.'
A Glasgow City Council spokesman said there had been 'extensive consultation' over the draconian new uniform rules. He said: 'The welfare and protection of pupils are the highest priority.'
However, the Scottish Parent Teacher Council said 'shock tactics are not required'. Chief executive Eileen Prior said: 'Creating a link between school uniform and paedophilia seems to be a dangerous and unhelpful one for everyone involved.
'It implies that young people are in some way responsible for the activities of paedophiles, which is an extremely dangerous argument and one which has echoes of the comments sometimes made around rapists and women's dress. 'If there is evidence of activity by a paedophile in the area, then police and parents should be informed and involved.'
She added: 'Many parents - and indeed young people themselves - are keen to have a dress code in school which requires everyone in the school community to dress in a way which is appropriate for a working environment.'
Scottish Liberal Democrat education spokesman Liam McArthur said: 'This situation raises some very serious issues. 'The school needs to bring this situation to the attention of the police as a matter of urgency. 'Likewise, if parents have any concerns whatsoever they should be raising these with the police.'
SOURCE
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