Save the World on Your Own Dime
The taxpayers are being beaten to death by liberalism. Meanwhile academic liberals are complaining that they are taking a beating with recent budget cuts, which they claim are unjust. For the first time in a long time, I agree with the liberals. The budget cuts are unjust. In my view, they aren’t deep enough. If you disagree, consider this: One public university in North Carolina has just found money to start (in the midst of a budget crisis) a new scholarship to reward feminists for engaging in feminist political activism on the job.
Here in the Tar Heel state, this year’s budget cut in higher education is nearly 16%. But there was still enough money in the pot to create a new Janet Mason Ellerby Women and Gender Studies Scholarly Award. The award was created to recognize Ellerby’s “significant contributions to feminist scholarship and activism.”
What are those contributions? Let’s start with activism.
Some years ago, Janet Ellerby learned that the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders were slated to make an appearance at UNC-Wilmington. Ellerby joined an effort to keep the Cowgirls from coming to our campus. Why? Well, you know the reason. They wear too little clothing and help promote unhealthy (read: sexist) images of what a woman should look like. The Cowgirls were young, thin, and happy. UNCW feminists, on the other hand, place a premium on being old, plump, and angry. The Cowgirls had to go!
Of course, anyone who has ever been to UNCW recognizes the futility of banning scantily-clad women from campus. Our co-eds generally make the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders look like nuns. That’s why UNCW is sometimes referred to as UNC-Whorehouse. Personally, I’m offended by those who refer to our young women as “whores.” That’s why I was disappointed when UNCW hired a rapper to come to campus to call women “bitches” and “whores” back in 2003. (Note: He made $130,000 in the process!). But the rapper, unlike the cheerleaders, was not banned from UNCW by the feminists. Some UNCW feminists consider promiscuity to be empowering. So I suppose “whore” is just a term of endearment.
Speaking of whores, another example of Janet Ellerby’s activism would be the fight for free health care for prostitutes. While under the direction of Janet Mason Ellerby, the WRC placed a large display in the lobby of the UNCW library. The display made an argument for free health care for prostitutes with no moral condemnation of prostitution whatsoever. In fact, the display declined to refer to the women as prostitutes. It called them “sex workers.” If you haven’t seen the connection between these first two examples of feminist activism, I’ll just spell it out below (in bold letters):
FEMINISTS DO NOT WANT MEN LOOKING AT CHEERLEADERS. THEY WANT THEM TO HAVE HEALTHIER SEX WITH PROSTITUTES!
None of this should come as a surprise to my readers. Janet Mason Ellerby was the “activist” who placed pictures of naked children in the lobby of the UNCW library as a part of Women’s History Month. Oops! That’s Womyn’s Herstory Month. She did so in connection with her official capacities as director of the Women’s Center. The provost tried to move the naked pictures to another location because pedophiles had previously been caught downloading child pornography right there in the UNCW library. Ellerby had a conniption. And she enlisted the help of the Faculty Senate in the name of academic freedom.
As a result of Janet Mason Ellerby’s activism, faculty members now face no time, place, and manner restrictions on their desire to display pictures of nude post-pubescent minors on public property. But UNCW still refrains from using the term “Christmas Tree” lest they offend the irreligious. Now it’s a holiday tree, wait, no! That’s too holy, now it’s just a tree! And the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders are still banned from the UNCW campus. Man, these bitches and hos are relentless!
Have you have ever wondered why I refer to “feminist scholarship” as an oxymoron on a par with “jumbo shrimp?” Just read Intimate Reading, the personal memoir of Janet Mason Ellerby. It will help you better understand her desire to post pictures of naked children in public libraries. In a soft pornographic romance novel sort of way, Ellerby gives a graphic account of losing her virginity at age 16. She talks in great detail about the experience – including her effort to clean the blood off the couch where she had that first sexual experience. From there, she proceeds to write about blood running from her vagina in the shower afterwards. And, regrettably, the graphic account is required reading for many students in Women’s Studies classes.
The Ellerby sex scene might not be true scholarship. But it does have some symbolic value. Whenever feminist scholarship is taken seriously, we all lose a measure of our innocence. And someone is stuck cleaning up a big mess in the aftermath.
SOURCE
British charter schools obliged to promote marriage
The importance of marriage is to be taught to every pupil at the Government's flagship free schools and academies.
The schools will be made to sign up to strict new rules introduced by Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, setting out what pupils must learn about sex and relationships. Headteachers will be told that children must be "protected from inappropriate teaching materials and learn the nature of marriage and its importance for family life and for bringing up children".
But the decision to spell out an explicit endorsement of marriage in the curriculum for tens of thousands of children is highly politically significant, and likely to be welcomed by Conservative traditionalists who have been concerned at a perceived failure by David Cameron's Government to deliver on pledges to support married life.
Mr Gove has introduced the "model funding agreement" as a template for how every new free school and academy is run. Ministers want a dramatic increase in the numbers of both types of schools.
The new rules on marriage are set out in clause 28 of the funding agreement – an echo of the controversy under Margaret Thatcher's government when Clause 28 of the 1988 Local Government Bill banned schools from promoting homosexuality.
The agreement is a distinct change from current guidelines which state that children should learn the nature and importance of marriage and of stable relationships for family life and bringing up children. The reference to "stable relationships", which alludes to couples living together outside marriage and homosexual partners, has not been included in the model funding agreement documents.
The wording of the section suggests a strengthening of traditional values in schools, but will also provoke opposition from those who believe marriage should not be given a privileged status in the curriculum.
Including the teaching of marriage in funding agreements puts a legal compulsion on headteachers to comply. English, maths, science and RE are the only other curriculum subjects guaranteed in the model document.
If the terms of the agreement are broken, funding for the school can be withdrawn by ministers. It may also be possible for parents to legally challenge schools that are not abiding by the letter of their funding agreements.
The funding agreement clause also bans the use of "inappropriate materials" in schools. It is likely to be seized on by campaigners who last week attacked the use of "explicit" sex education material in primary schools and called for a ban on Channel 4's "Living and Growing" DVD used in thousands of primary schools which shows cartoon characters having sex in a variety of different positions.
Lessons in personal, social and health education (PHSE), which include sex and relationship education, are currently under review as part of the Government's general overhaul of the national curriculum, which applies in schools which are not either academies or free schools.
Tens of thousands of children are now taught in academies across the country. The number of "independent" state schools, which receive funding directly from Government and have freedom over finances, curriculum and teachers pay, has mushroomed under the Coalition.
All schools, whether primary or secondary, rated "outstanding" by inspectors can now become academies without going through a lengthy application process, which has triggered a rise in numbers from just over 200 in 2010 to 1,300 now.
The funding agreement marriage clause also applies to the 24 free schools, set up by parents, teachers, faith groups and charities. Sixty more are in the pipeline and Mr Gove has made their expansion his flagship policy.
Nick Seaton, chairman of the Campaign for Real Education, said: "Given the benefits that derive from marriage for young people, a short statement requiring that pupils learn its importance is entirely sensible."
But Terry Sanderson, president of the National Secular Society, said: "For children brought up by unmarried parents or single parents being told that marriage is the only valid family arrangement will be totally contradictory to everything they know about the world. It opens the door for religious schools to teach a really narrow version of what constitutes an acceptable relationship. "It is telling our children that their own family structure is somehow inferior. A lot of church schools would love to do that and this gives them license to do it."
Putting marriage at the heart of the curriculum will make Mr Gove popular among many Conservatives, but inflame tensions with the Liberal Democrats.
David Cameron, the Prime Minister, promised to recognise marriage in the tax system in this Parliament. But the plan went on the back burner in coalition talks with the Liberal Democrats, who fiercely oppose special recognition for marriage.
Mr Cameron has said that he intends to honour the pledge before 2015, but George Osborne, the Chancellor, suggested last month there would be no room for tax cuts before the election. In the same month, in a keynote speech to the Conservative Party Conference, Mr Cameron urged party members to back gay marriage.
New Office for National Statistics figures show that marriage is steadily declining, with married couples now making up less than half the population.
However research by the Centre for Social Justice, set up by Iain Duncan Smith, the secretary for work and pensions and the main proponent of tax breaks for married couples, found that children have better outcomes if their parents are married.
However, the issue of marriage is steeped in controversy. But critics said that at a time when the number of cohabiting couples was at record levels, focusing on marriage in lessons would confuse and alienate children.
A spokesman for the Department for Education said: "Academies and free schools have to teach a broad and balanced curriculum. They are required to have regard to the statutory guidance covering sex and relationships education."
SOURCE
Oxford's feared admission interviews
This year’s Oxbridge interviews begin tomorrow. I only know this because a friend asked me if I would give her niece a mock one, as she is at a state school where they don’t coach pupils in interview technique, not with quite the same ruthless efficiency as they do at public schools, anyway.
She is hoping to read PPE [Philosophy, Politics and Economics] at Oxford and as I read one of those Ps as a postgraduate - philosophy, at Durham - my friend thought I could perhaps come up with some questions that would test her. She also thought that because I interview celebrities for a newspaper I must know how to throw a curve ball. I tried to explain to her that the average celebrity has a much meaner intelligence than the average Oxbridge candidate, but she wasn’t having it.
We met on Wednesday, then - convenient for the niece because her school was on strike. I don’t know about her, but I learnt a lot. The first thing is that, if she is representative of 17-year-olds, our state education system is far from dumbed-down. Yes, she is expected to get the usual three As, but she was also articulate, composed and thoughtful. And not once in 40 minutes did she say “like”. She even made good eye contact, which I certainly couldn’t at her age.
When I asked her loaded questions - such as “Is a good person more likely to be a good president?” or “Can it ever be moral to cut benefits from the poor?” or “If you have never been to Canada, how do you know it exists?” - she gathered her thoughts for a moment and then gave considered answers.
Before the interview, I’d asked some colleagues who had been to Oxford what kind of questions I should ask. One said that if the niece is asked to throw a brick through the window, she should open it first. Lateral thinking, see. Another said there are no right or wrong answers to the sometimes strange-sounding questions: they are merely opportunities to demonstrate your originality, logic and ability to argue.
This was borne out by Professor Mary Beard on Radio 4. She said that, contrary to the myth that she and her fellow dons are eccentric sadists who enjoy humiliating very bright and very nervous teenagers, all their questions are intended to help rather than hinder the interviewee. “We want them to talk themselves into a place, not out of one.”
Above all, it seems, candidates are judged on their merits, regardless of background. That seems to be confirmed by the news that even Tony Blair couldn’t persuade Oxford to offer a place to Gaddafi’s son in 2002. Saif al-Islam had to make do with a place at LSE (also known as the Libyan School of Economics). I wonder how Saif would have answered one of the questions I put to the niece: Is dictatorship sometimes a better option than democracy?
I’ll leave you with a story a colleague told me. He turned up 24 hours early for his Oxford interview, due to a date mix-up. He sat outside the tutor’s office for an hour before realising, then had to spend the night in college without a change of clothes. The stuff of anxiety dreams, indeed. When it came to the interview he landed a PPE scholarship, but two weeks into his first term he gave up and switched to history, because he found he hated economics.
The politics don was not pleased - but blamed the economics don for not asking him any questions at interview, because he was too keen to disappear for his pre-lunch sherry.
SOURCE
Wednesday, December 07, 2011
Tuesday, December 06, 2011
Apology in 'No Santa' Case
(Nanuet, New York) This story has understandably received a bunch of attention.
(Nanuet, New York) This story has understandably received a bunch of attention.After widespread holiday jeers, a teacher at Nanuet's George W. Miller Elementary School has apologized to her second-grade classroom after reportedly telling them there's no Santa Claus.I suggest it's sinful to corrupt the innocence of children.
Leatrice Ann Eng of Pearl River issued the apology a day after she was accused of saying "no" to Ho-Ho-Ho during a geography class last Tuesday.
When the 7-year-olds told her they knew about the North Pole because of its white-bearded inhabitant, Eng reportedly responded that Santa did not exist and that Christmas presents were bought by their parents.
Robert Owen's vision of educational reform as a road to Socialism
John Dewey (1859 – 1952) is regarded as a great reformer of American education. One of his prime influences was an early advocate of socialism called Robert Owen.
Robert Owen played a large role in Dewey’s formulating ideas. Owen was a social and educational reformer. He was one of the founders of socialism and the cooperative movement. Owen believed that moral reform could only come through the reform of the environment. Once Owen gained ownership of New Lanark, he began to put his vision for its factories and schools into place.
Living in New Lanark, Scotland in the late 1700’s, Owen had the opportunity to purchase the Chorlton Twist Co. Owen openly admired how the previous owner had shown respect for the children of the people working for him which included children. He then went on to purchase the Lanark Company where he found conditions deplorable and implemented a standard of hygiene. The community as a whole found his concern for the welfare of his workers admirable.
At a time when workers in the mills of New Lanark needed saving, Owen provided his workers with decent housing, and banned children under 10 years old from working in his mills. He argued against physical punishment in schools and factories, as well he ensured that this was a standard upheld in his own facilities. Owen hoped that his treatment of children would influence other factory owners to do the same.
Owen’s ideas were shaped by the Scottish Enlightenment and his contact with progressive ideas in Manchester, England as a member of the Literary and Philosophical Society. His general theory was that character is formed by the effects of the environment upon the individual. Hence, education was of central importance to the creation of rational and humane character and the duty of the educator was to provide the wholesome environment, both mental and physical, in which the child could develop. Physical punishment was prohibited and child labor was restricted. In theory, man being naturally good, could grow and flourish when evil was removed. Education, as one historian has put it, was to the "steam engine of his new moral world."
At New Lanark, Owen involved himself in the public affairs of the day, the most important being education, factory reform, and the improvement of the Poor Laws. His first public speech was on education (1812) and was elaborated upon in his first published work, The First Essay on the Principle of the Formation of Character (1813). Together with three further essays (1813-1814), this comprised A New View of Society, which remains Owen’s clearest declaration of principles. In 1816, he opened the New Institution for the Formation of Character and then the Infant School.
Since most children were taken out of school by age 10, Owen offered evening classes, which allowed the children to continue their education while working. Considering the cost of books, paper, and ink, the schooling was nearly free.
Owen’s denunciation of religion evoked a mounting negative campaign against him which in later years damaged his public reputation and the work associated with his name. By the late 1820s, Owen’s roots in New Lanark were loosening. Owen now set about his mission to bring about the new moral world through his plan for well-regulated communities. England, Scotland and Ireland seemed indifferent, but the United States opened up new prospects and in 1824 Owen crossed the Atlantic and viewed the Rappite community at Harmony, Indiana, which was for sale. (Rappite being a Religious Celibate society called the Harmony Society). Owen bought the land in April 1825, initiating New Harmony. The New Harmony community was not a success. By May 1827, there were ten different sub-communities on the estate, and a year later failure was apparent.
About the same time, Owen became convinced that the world of competitive industrial capitalism had reached a stage of crisis and that the leaders of society would now turn to him in their hour of need. What Owen was offering the working class Owenites was social salvation!
These views were expressed in his weekly periodical, The Crisis (1832-1834), and had a following particularly among the labor aristocrats of London who sought to exchange their products according to the labor theory of value at the Gray's Inn Road Labour Exchange, which Owen opened in 1832.
Breaking with these labor movements in 1834, Owen turned back to his plan for a community and founded a journal, The New Moral World (November, 1834) and an organization, the Association of All Classes of All Nations (May, 1835) to prepare public opinion for the millennium.
In the 1840s, Owen embarked on a new settlement. He secured capital from a consortium of capitalist friends and built a luxurious mansion, Harmony Hall, to house a community "normal school" which would train Owenites in a correct communitarian environment. Owen’s concept of a "normal school" was not what many Owenites had hoped for, and in 1844 the annual Owenites Congress rebelled against his despotic control of community policy.
From the age of two the children were cared for and instructed by the community. The youngest spent the day in play school until they progressed to higher classes. There the Greek and Latin classics were discarded; practice in various crafts constituted an essential part of the program. The teachers aimed to impart what the children could most readily understand, making use of concrete objects and avoiding premature abstractions. They banished fear, all artificial rewards and punishments and appealed instead to the spontaneous interest and inclinations of the children as incentives for learning. Girls were on an equal footing with boys.
The educational reformers of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries dealt with the two, what they thought, were distinct aspects of a young child’s problems. One concerned the claims of childhood as a specific and independent stage in human growth. This perennial problem arises from the efforts of adults to subjecting growing children to ends foreign of their own needs and two, pressing them into molds shaped not by the requirements of the maturing personality, but by the external interests of the ruling order.
Owen put a lot of emphasis on observation and experience as a means of educating. Visual aids, diagrams, pictures, and models were incorporated into lessons and were thought to help facilitate learning. However, toys were never used. Owen believed that children could amuse themselves and if they became bored the teacher would provide something that would educate and interest them. Lectures, when they took place, were to be made short and stimulating, as to make the lesson memorable and compensate for the students' short attention spans.
In addition, lessons on dancing and singing played a key role in the students' education, a vast contrast to the education of the present. Furthermore, military style exercises were a major feature of Owen's schools. School marches and uniforms were incorporated to reinforce conformity.
The word "socialism" first became current in the discussions of the "Association of all Classes of all Nations" which Owen formed in 1835 with himself as Preliminary Father. During these years his secularist teaching gained such influence among the working classes as to give occasion for the statement in the Westminster Review (1839) that his principles were the actual creed of a great portion of them.
In 1854, at the age of 83, despite his previous antipathy to religion, Owen was converted to spiritualism after a series of "sittings" with the American medium Maria B. Hayden (credited with introducing spiritualism to England). Owen made a public profession of his new faith in his publication “The Rational” a quarterly review and later wrote a pamphlet entitled “The future of the Human race; or great glorious and future revolution to be effected through the agency of departed spirits of good and superior men and women.”
After Owen's death spiritualists claimed that his spirit dictated the "Seven Principles of Spiritualism" to the medium Emma Hardinge Britten in 1871.
SOURCE
British government appoints hardline disciplinarians to drive up education standards in schools
Michael Gove is seeking to appoint a team of hardline disciplinarians into top jobs in a bid to drive up standards in schools. The Education Secretary wants to put individuals who share his ideas to be handed some of the most powerful positions in the schools system and Whitehall.
The appointments come amid growing frustration from Mr Gove and his allies about the 'left wing' stranglehold on the country's education establishment.
Many of the appointments will go to senior figures at Absolute Return for Kids, an educational charity co-founded nine years ago by the hedge fund tycoon Arpad Busson. Ark runs 11 academies — state schools free of local authority control — mainly in inner London.
The appointees include disciplinarians such as Sir Michael Wilshaw, who is leaving his post as director of education at Ark to become chief of Ofsted, the schools inspectorate. Mr Wilshaw, once described as 'my hero' by Gove, is known for his hardline approach to sub-standard teachers.
Ofsted's chairwoman is Baroness Morgan of Huyton, an adviser to Ark's board and former political secretary to Tony Blair, who was appointed by Mr Gove earlier this year.
Amanda Spielman, the charity's research and development director, who used to work in private equity, has been appointed on Mr Gove's recommendation to shake up the exam system as chairwoman of Ofqual, the qualifications regulator.
Others being lined up for senior posts include Sally Coates, principal of Burlington Danes academy, an Ark school in White City, west London. Among the roles she may be considered for are head of the School Teachers Review Body, in charge of wage negotiations, running teacher training or replacing one of a swathe of senior officials at the Department for Education who have announced their departures recently.
Critics have accused Mr Gove of becoming far too close to a 'cosy cartel' and that Ark was wielding influence out of all proportion to its size.
But senior Department of Education sources insisted: 'We are just trying to get the best people into the best jobs. Ark is a fantastic organisation which has transformed schools and driven up standards. It is not surprising that their top people are getting these jobs. 'One of the appointments was Baroness Morgan, a leading Blairite. So it is ridiculous to suggest these appointments are political. All the appointments have gone through the official processes.'
But John Bangs, visiting professor at the Institute of Education at London University, said: 'The thing that concerns me most about this development of cosy cartels of super-heads in the penumbra of government benevolence is that... we have a gaping absence of a strategy and policy for engaging teachers as a profession and enhancing their learning.'
Chris Keates, general secretary of the NASUWT teaching union, said: 'There is a real issue about public interest and how public interest is being safeguarded when you have the political manipulation of key bodies that are there to hold the system to account. 'Part of the issue is that Gove has this very small circle of people like Ark who seem to share his philosophy and vision.'
A spokeswoman for Ark said: 'It is not our policy to shoehorn our people into positions of influence — that [appointing them] is Michael Gove's opportunism to a certain extent. 'It is nonsense to say we have disproportionate power.'
SOURCE
British supermarket forced to retrain school-leavers
The standard of school-leavers is so poor that one supermarket has sent back three-quarters of its recruits for "remedial pre-job training" before they start work.
Morrisons, Britain's fourth-biggest supermarket with 135,000 employees, found that many of its applicants in Salford, Greater Manchester, lacked even the basic skills needed to stack shelves and serve customers. While some had a poor grasp of maths and English, others lacked simple skills such as turning up on time and making eye contact.
Norman Pickavance, the human resources director of Morrisons, said: "Many of the people were just not job ready. They lacked a lot of confidence and social skills. It is quite clear the education system has failed them. "Whatever the environment has been at school, it has not been conducive to instilling basic skills. It is a crying shame."
The warning will fuel concerns that schools are failing to teach the skills necessary for young Britons to find jobs, forcing firms to recruit migrant workers instead. The number of unemployed 16-to-24-year-olds now stands above one million, with one in five people in the age group now categorised as "Neets" – not in education, employment or training.
When Morrisons drew up plans for a new store in the employment black spot of Ordsall, Salford, it promised to give jobs to local youngsters. Of the 210 staff who will start work when the store opens tomorrow, half left school with not a single GCSE to their name.
Morrisons sent back 150 of them for three to six months of remedial training including refresher courses in literacy and numeracy. Some learnt customer service skills at Salford College while others were sent to Create, a social enterprise where "excluded" individuals practice working in a not-for-profit café and call centre.
Garry Stott, the chairman of Create, said: "Can these people read? Yes, they can. Can they write? That's more of a challenge. With maths most people have the basic skills but they struggle with the confidence to use it." He said the main problem was school-leavers whose parents and grandparents who had never worked and lacked the aspiration to work.
He added: "It is too simple to say it is because of the failure of the education system. It's more complex than that. "But when I left school, many of my contemporaries were kicked out of the door on Monday morning by their Mum and Dad and told to go to work. For whatever reason that is not happening."
Government figures show that in 2.5 per cent of households in north-west England, no adult has ever worked – the highest in the country after inner London.
Morrisons is not the first major employer to lamented the standards of school-leavers. Sir Terry Leahy, the former chief executive of Tesco, the country's largest private employer, said two years ago: "Sadly, despite all the money that has been spent, standards are still woefully low in too many schools. "Employers like us are often left to pick up the pieces."
A survey of big employers six weeks ago found that thousands of young people arrive at interviews without the "vital employability skills" required by employers such as a suitable grasp of English, punctuality and a "can do" attitude.
SOURCE
John Dewey (1859 – 1952) is regarded as a great reformer of American education. One of his prime influences was an early advocate of socialism called Robert Owen.
Robert Owen played a large role in Dewey’s formulating ideas. Owen was a social and educational reformer. He was one of the founders of socialism and the cooperative movement. Owen believed that moral reform could only come through the reform of the environment. Once Owen gained ownership of New Lanark, he began to put his vision for its factories and schools into place.
Living in New Lanark, Scotland in the late 1700’s, Owen had the opportunity to purchase the Chorlton Twist Co. Owen openly admired how the previous owner had shown respect for the children of the people working for him which included children. He then went on to purchase the Lanark Company where he found conditions deplorable and implemented a standard of hygiene. The community as a whole found his concern for the welfare of his workers admirable.
At a time when workers in the mills of New Lanark needed saving, Owen provided his workers with decent housing, and banned children under 10 years old from working in his mills. He argued against physical punishment in schools and factories, as well he ensured that this was a standard upheld in his own facilities. Owen hoped that his treatment of children would influence other factory owners to do the same.
Owen’s ideas were shaped by the Scottish Enlightenment and his contact with progressive ideas in Manchester, England as a member of the Literary and Philosophical Society. His general theory was that character is formed by the effects of the environment upon the individual. Hence, education was of central importance to the creation of rational and humane character and the duty of the educator was to provide the wholesome environment, both mental and physical, in which the child could develop. Physical punishment was prohibited and child labor was restricted. In theory, man being naturally good, could grow and flourish when evil was removed. Education, as one historian has put it, was to the "steam engine of his new moral world."
At New Lanark, Owen involved himself in the public affairs of the day, the most important being education, factory reform, and the improvement of the Poor Laws. His first public speech was on education (1812) and was elaborated upon in his first published work, The First Essay on the Principle of the Formation of Character (1813). Together with three further essays (1813-1814), this comprised A New View of Society, which remains Owen’s clearest declaration of principles. In 1816, he opened the New Institution for the Formation of Character and then the Infant School.
Since most children were taken out of school by age 10, Owen offered evening classes, which allowed the children to continue their education while working. Considering the cost of books, paper, and ink, the schooling was nearly free.
Owen’s denunciation of religion evoked a mounting negative campaign against him which in later years damaged his public reputation and the work associated with his name. By the late 1820s, Owen’s roots in New Lanark were loosening. Owen now set about his mission to bring about the new moral world through his plan for well-regulated communities. England, Scotland and Ireland seemed indifferent, but the United States opened up new prospects and in 1824 Owen crossed the Atlantic and viewed the Rappite community at Harmony, Indiana, which was for sale. (Rappite being a Religious Celibate society called the Harmony Society). Owen bought the land in April 1825, initiating New Harmony. The New Harmony community was not a success. By May 1827, there were ten different sub-communities on the estate, and a year later failure was apparent.
About the same time, Owen became convinced that the world of competitive industrial capitalism had reached a stage of crisis and that the leaders of society would now turn to him in their hour of need. What Owen was offering the working class Owenites was social salvation!
These views were expressed in his weekly periodical, The Crisis (1832-1834), and had a following particularly among the labor aristocrats of London who sought to exchange their products according to the labor theory of value at the Gray's Inn Road Labour Exchange, which Owen opened in 1832.
Breaking with these labor movements in 1834, Owen turned back to his plan for a community and founded a journal, The New Moral World (November, 1834) and an organization, the Association of All Classes of All Nations (May, 1835) to prepare public opinion for the millennium.
In the 1840s, Owen embarked on a new settlement. He secured capital from a consortium of capitalist friends and built a luxurious mansion, Harmony Hall, to house a community "normal school" which would train Owenites in a correct communitarian environment. Owen’s concept of a "normal school" was not what many Owenites had hoped for, and in 1844 the annual Owenites Congress rebelled against his despotic control of community policy.
From the age of two the children were cared for and instructed by the community. The youngest spent the day in play school until they progressed to higher classes. There the Greek and Latin classics were discarded; practice in various crafts constituted an essential part of the program. The teachers aimed to impart what the children could most readily understand, making use of concrete objects and avoiding premature abstractions. They banished fear, all artificial rewards and punishments and appealed instead to the spontaneous interest and inclinations of the children as incentives for learning. Girls were on an equal footing with boys.
The educational reformers of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries dealt with the two, what they thought, were distinct aspects of a young child’s problems. One concerned the claims of childhood as a specific and independent stage in human growth. This perennial problem arises from the efforts of adults to subjecting growing children to ends foreign of their own needs and two, pressing them into molds shaped not by the requirements of the maturing personality, but by the external interests of the ruling order.
Owen put a lot of emphasis on observation and experience as a means of educating. Visual aids, diagrams, pictures, and models were incorporated into lessons and were thought to help facilitate learning. However, toys were never used. Owen believed that children could amuse themselves and if they became bored the teacher would provide something that would educate and interest them. Lectures, when they took place, were to be made short and stimulating, as to make the lesson memorable and compensate for the students' short attention spans.
In addition, lessons on dancing and singing played a key role in the students' education, a vast contrast to the education of the present. Furthermore, military style exercises were a major feature of Owen's schools. School marches and uniforms were incorporated to reinforce conformity.
The word "socialism" first became current in the discussions of the "Association of all Classes of all Nations" which Owen formed in 1835 with himself as Preliminary Father. During these years his secularist teaching gained such influence among the working classes as to give occasion for the statement in the Westminster Review (1839) that his principles were the actual creed of a great portion of them.
In 1854, at the age of 83, despite his previous antipathy to religion, Owen was converted to spiritualism after a series of "sittings" with the American medium Maria B. Hayden (credited with introducing spiritualism to England). Owen made a public profession of his new faith in his publication “The Rational” a quarterly review and later wrote a pamphlet entitled “The future of the Human race; or great glorious and future revolution to be effected through the agency of departed spirits of good and superior men and women.”
After Owen's death spiritualists claimed that his spirit dictated the "Seven Principles of Spiritualism" to the medium Emma Hardinge Britten in 1871.
SOURCE
British government appoints hardline disciplinarians to drive up education standards in schools
Michael Gove is seeking to appoint a team of hardline disciplinarians into top jobs in a bid to drive up standards in schools. The Education Secretary wants to put individuals who share his ideas to be handed some of the most powerful positions in the schools system and Whitehall.
The appointments come amid growing frustration from Mr Gove and his allies about the 'left wing' stranglehold on the country's education establishment.
Many of the appointments will go to senior figures at Absolute Return for Kids, an educational charity co-founded nine years ago by the hedge fund tycoon Arpad Busson. Ark runs 11 academies — state schools free of local authority control — mainly in inner London.
The appointees include disciplinarians such as Sir Michael Wilshaw, who is leaving his post as director of education at Ark to become chief of Ofsted, the schools inspectorate. Mr Wilshaw, once described as 'my hero' by Gove, is known for his hardline approach to sub-standard teachers.
Ofsted's chairwoman is Baroness Morgan of Huyton, an adviser to Ark's board and former political secretary to Tony Blair, who was appointed by Mr Gove earlier this year.
Amanda Spielman, the charity's research and development director, who used to work in private equity, has been appointed on Mr Gove's recommendation to shake up the exam system as chairwoman of Ofqual, the qualifications regulator.
Others being lined up for senior posts include Sally Coates, principal of Burlington Danes academy, an Ark school in White City, west London. Among the roles she may be considered for are head of the School Teachers Review Body, in charge of wage negotiations, running teacher training or replacing one of a swathe of senior officials at the Department for Education who have announced their departures recently.
Critics have accused Mr Gove of becoming far too close to a 'cosy cartel' and that Ark was wielding influence out of all proportion to its size.
But senior Department of Education sources insisted: 'We are just trying to get the best people into the best jobs. Ark is a fantastic organisation which has transformed schools and driven up standards. It is not surprising that their top people are getting these jobs. 'One of the appointments was Baroness Morgan, a leading Blairite. So it is ridiculous to suggest these appointments are political. All the appointments have gone through the official processes.'
But John Bangs, visiting professor at the Institute of Education at London University, said: 'The thing that concerns me most about this development of cosy cartels of super-heads in the penumbra of government benevolence is that... we have a gaping absence of a strategy and policy for engaging teachers as a profession and enhancing their learning.'
Chris Keates, general secretary of the NASUWT teaching union, said: 'There is a real issue about public interest and how public interest is being safeguarded when you have the political manipulation of key bodies that are there to hold the system to account. 'Part of the issue is that Gove has this very small circle of people like Ark who seem to share his philosophy and vision.'
A spokeswoman for Ark said: 'It is not our policy to shoehorn our people into positions of influence — that [appointing them] is Michael Gove's opportunism to a certain extent. 'It is nonsense to say we have disproportionate power.'
SOURCE
British supermarket forced to retrain school-leavers
The standard of school-leavers is so poor that one supermarket has sent back three-quarters of its recruits for "remedial pre-job training" before they start work.
Morrisons, Britain's fourth-biggest supermarket with 135,000 employees, found that many of its applicants in Salford, Greater Manchester, lacked even the basic skills needed to stack shelves and serve customers. While some had a poor grasp of maths and English, others lacked simple skills such as turning up on time and making eye contact.
Norman Pickavance, the human resources director of Morrisons, said: "Many of the people were just not job ready. They lacked a lot of confidence and social skills. It is quite clear the education system has failed them. "Whatever the environment has been at school, it has not been conducive to instilling basic skills. It is a crying shame."
The warning will fuel concerns that schools are failing to teach the skills necessary for young Britons to find jobs, forcing firms to recruit migrant workers instead. The number of unemployed 16-to-24-year-olds now stands above one million, with one in five people in the age group now categorised as "Neets" – not in education, employment or training.
When Morrisons drew up plans for a new store in the employment black spot of Ordsall, Salford, it promised to give jobs to local youngsters. Of the 210 staff who will start work when the store opens tomorrow, half left school with not a single GCSE to their name.
Morrisons sent back 150 of them for three to six months of remedial training including refresher courses in literacy and numeracy. Some learnt customer service skills at Salford College while others were sent to Create, a social enterprise where "excluded" individuals practice working in a not-for-profit café and call centre.
Garry Stott, the chairman of Create, said: "Can these people read? Yes, they can. Can they write? That's more of a challenge. With maths most people have the basic skills but they struggle with the confidence to use it." He said the main problem was school-leavers whose parents and grandparents who had never worked and lacked the aspiration to work.
He added: "It is too simple to say it is because of the failure of the education system. It's more complex than that. "But when I left school, many of my contemporaries were kicked out of the door on Monday morning by their Mum and Dad and told to go to work. For whatever reason that is not happening."
Government figures show that in 2.5 per cent of households in north-west England, no adult has ever worked – the highest in the country after inner London.
Morrisons is not the first major employer to lamented the standards of school-leavers. Sir Terry Leahy, the former chief executive of Tesco, the country's largest private employer, said two years ago: "Sadly, despite all the money that has been spent, standards are still woefully low in too many schools. "Employers like us are often left to pick up the pieces."
A survey of big employers six weeks ago found that thousands of young people arrive at interviews without the "vital employability skills" required by employers such as a suitable grasp of English, punctuality and a "can do" attitude.
SOURCE
Monday, December 05, 2011
Obama Issues New 'Diversity Guidelines' for Schools
(Washington) Released after working hours Friday, the new guidelines include creative affirmative action measures.
(Washington) Released after working hours Friday, the new guidelines include creative affirmative action measures.
The Obama administration has released new guidelines aimed at encouraging school districts and colleges to keep and pursue policies that promote racial diversity. In the process, they withdrew directives put forward during the administration of George W. Bush.The new federal guidance was issued jointly by the Justice Department and the Education Department.
“Diverse learning environments promote development of analytical skills, dismantle stereotypes, and prepare students to succeed in an increasingly interconnected world,” U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric Holder said in a statement Friday. “The guidance announced today will aid educational institutions in their efforts to provide true equality of opportunity.
“Racial isolation ... denies our children the experiences they need to succeed in a global economy, where employers, coworkers, and customers will be increasingly diverse,” U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said in a statement.
The new guidelines are more detailed than the ones they replaced and seek to reverse what officials characterized as a chilling effect on diversity programs based on cautious interpretations of Supreme Court rulings on integration efforts.
The new rules even opened the door, in narrow circumstances, for race-based preferences, commonly known as affirmative action. The guidelines encourage the use of programs that are technically race neutral but informed by race, such as giving school admission preferences to students from a certain ZIP Code. Some school districts have used geography as a stand-in for race.
Texas student's refusal to say Mexican pledge, anthem starts controversy
Every day students in Texas public schools pledge allegiance to the flags of the United States and Texas. But when a teacher in a Rio Grande Valley high school assigned students to stand and pledge allegiance to the Mexican flag and sing Mexico's national anthem, one student refused.
The resulting controversy has one East Texas lawmaker wanting changes in the state's curriculum on how culture and patriotism are taught in schools.
15-year-old Brenda Brinsdon entered her sophomore year at McAllen ISD's Achieve Early College High School just wanting to do well in her classes.
But in mid-September she got an unexpected lesson on personal conviction and taking on the system. "I feel that I did what's right," Brinsdon said. "And I know what I did what's right [...] I'm going to stand my ground."
Brinsdon said she stood her ground by staying seated when first-year Spanish 3 teacher Reyna Santos assigned her class to stand and recite Mexico's pledge of allegiance.
Students stood with right arms straight out and palms down, which is how the school district says Mexicans say their pledge.
Calling the lesson "un-American," Brinsdon recorded the class, which occurred the week of Mexico's Independence Day and also the 10th anniversary of 9/11.
The teacher also told students to memorize and recite the the pledge individually.
And when the time came for the part of the assignment to sing Mexico's national anthem, Brinsdon again refused. With that, Santos asked the class to stand and led the class in the anthem.
"I told her, I was like, 'I thought this was a Spanish class,'" Brinsdon recalled. "And she's like, 'Well, yeah it is, it's like, it's a cultural thing.' And so I was the only one that sat down."
She was given an alternate assignment.
Brinsdon's father, William, backs his daughter. He said that reciting a pledge to any other nation has no place in public schools. "What are we to do? Just lay down and let it happen?" Mr. Brinsdon said. "Or should we stand up for our country?"
Santos couldn't be reached for comment.
The school district declined several News 8 requests to interview someone with the district. But in a statement, said it was a single lesson on Hispanic culture in one class at one campus, the lesson will be reviewed and students recite the U.S. pledge daily.
This Spanish class assignment, Brenda Brisdon's refusal and the school district's response caused a firestorm on the right.
Conservative websites erupted, getting the attention of Republican State Representative Dan Flynn of Canton. "It was a shock to me," he said.
The Texas Education Agency says the state curriculum outlines what must be taught, but local districts decide how it's taught.
Flynn said since the state allows that much discretion, he'll file a bill again to require more mandatory studies on the U.S. Constitution.
"I do have a problem if we're making that the assignment for young people to stand up and pledge to another country," Flynn said. "It lessens the value of the pledge to the United States flag."
After no one with the district agreed to an interview, News 8 confronted McAllen School Board President Sam Saldivar after a meeting. He indicated he didn't agree with the lesson. "I would have taken a different approach, again I'm not an educator," Saldivar said.
But as the leader of the board that sets policy, Saldivar said there's no decision yet on whether to change the curriculum. "That's a curriculum, a teacher working with the administration," Saldiver said. "As I understand it, it's going to be reviewed, and more likely a better approach will be taken in the future."
Dallas Democratic State Representative Roberto Alonzo said to question the loyalty of the teacher and school district is unfair.
"This is a class," Alonzo said. "This is not doing allegiance to Mexico, it's not you know you are going to be part of Mexico, this is just a class to learn Spanish - to learn an aspect of what is Texas."
Brinsdon said she's been pulled from Santos' class and gets her lessons separately now. Despite the controversy, she has no regrets. "I really hope that I was an inspiration to a lot of youth in America to stand up for what's right," Brinsdon said.
SOURCE
California Dream Act: 3 times more costly than previously projected
New research suggests that the recently passed California Dream Act may actually cost taxpayers more than originally estimated. Due in part to continually rising tuition costs, the revised estimated figure stands at $65 million per year, starting in 2013. This is more than 3 times the initial estimate.
Consequently, the amount of funds available to legal California residents applying for student aid will be impacted. There will be less funding available which will be more widely distributed. The end result is less funding available for legal California residents per individual.
Critics have long asserted that in light of current economic conditions, passage of the Dream Act was and is a misguided option, unfair to legal residents, and representative of thinking based on unrealistic evaluations of current financial and economical trends. Many feel that financial aid to illegal citizens should only be considered in a scenario where a surplus of funding exists, not when state and federal budgets are in a state of extreme deficit.
Those who support a referendum on the Dream Act should contact their local state representatives before January 6th. At least 505,000 signatures are needed in order to put the measure on the November, 2012 ballot. The referendum, sponsored by State Assemblyman Tim Donnelly of Hesperia, primarily deals with the second part of the Dream Act. This is the provision that allows for undocumented citizens to apply for taxpayer funded state aid. "This is a really, really bad idea," Donnelly said. “At a time when we're broke, when we have two million people unemployed, when state colleges are underfunded and overbooked, we're creating a brand new entitlement." Donnelly also believes the Dream act will create further incentive for increased illegal immigration.
SOURCE
Row as British school tells 11-year-olds to write letter to PM about retirement income for teachers
A school has been criticised for telling pupils to write letters to David Cameron - asking him not to cut teachers’ pensions. Parents were horrified to learn the Year Six pupils had been ordered to write to the Prime Minister arguing he should not reduce public sector pensions.
The children – aged 10 and 11 - were left bewildered by the task, with some even having to ask teachers what a pension was before starting their letter.
Parents have accused the school, which was closed this week after so many teachers went on strike over pension changes, of trying to politicise the youngsters. One, who did not want to be named, said: ‘Surely this is far too political, especially at the moment, for 11-year-olds to be questioned on. ‘About half of the kids in the exam had no idea what a pension was. I believe a number of the children even asked the teachers.’
The pupils were asked to write the letter as part of a three-hour entrance exam in the top stream at the over-subscribed Poole High School for September next year.
‘These exam questions are to test the children’s ability with English and spelling and how to construct sentences,’ the parent added. ‘They are normally asked to write about a journey or holiday or something like that. ‘The subject matter in this instance was totally inappropriate. ‘It was bringing politics into the classroom and was in danger of politically influencing young minds.’
After complaining to the school the parent was told the question had been a mistake, and the teacher who set it was to be formally rebuked. ‘When I complained to the deputy head teacher she was quite open about it,’ the parent said. ‘She said she was shocked and only realised what the question was two days later. ‘She agreed that it was a completely inappropriate question to ask and that she was sorry. ‘I was told the teacher who set the exam question was due to go before the chair of governors for a telling off.’
The school, where three quarters of staff belong to unions which chose to strike over pension changes this week, is partially selective. The three hour examination process is something parents can choose to send their children to.
The school has since apologised, admitting the test was ‘inappropriate’.
Mrs Fan Heafield, deputy head at Poole High School, said: ‘Students are required to take a three hour academic test as part of the school’s annual admission process. ‘This includes a short writing task on a topical subject in the media, of which the students may have some knowledge.
‘The purpose of the exercise is to assess students’ competency in spelling, punctuation, structure of writing and vocabulary. ‘The writing produced by students in this task is intended solely for the purpose of internal marking by an experienced teacher and is not for wider distribution to external individuals or organisations.
‘Clearly, on this occasion, the subject chosen for this task was inappropriate and we would like to apologise unreservedly for any concerns this may have caused parents or students. ‘We will ensure that our pre-test procedures do not allow this situation to arise again.’
Poole High School has recently been accepted to be a specialised school for Business and Enterprise to train pupils to become ‘wealth creators’.
SOURCE
Every day students in Texas public schools pledge allegiance to the flags of the United States and Texas. But when a teacher in a Rio Grande Valley high school assigned students to stand and pledge allegiance to the Mexican flag and sing Mexico's national anthem, one student refused.
The resulting controversy has one East Texas lawmaker wanting changes in the state's curriculum on how culture and patriotism are taught in schools.
15-year-old Brenda Brinsdon entered her sophomore year at McAllen ISD's Achieve Early College High School just wanting to do well in her classes.
But in mid-September she got an unexpected lesson on personal conviction and taking on the system. "I feel that I did what's right," Brinsdon said. "And I know what I did what's right [...] I'm going to stand my ground."
Brinsdon said she stood her ground by staying seated when first-year Spanish 3 teacher Reyna Santos assigned her class to stand and recite Mexico's pledge of allegiance.
Students stood with right arms straight out and palms down, which is how the school district says Mexicans say their pledge.
Calling the lesson "un-American," Brinsdon recorded the class, which occurred the week of Mexico's Independence Day and also the 10th anniversary of 9/11.
The teacher also told students to memorize and recite the the pledge individually.
And when the time came for the part of the assignment to sing Mexico's national anthem, Brinsdon again refused. With that, Santos asked the class to stand and led the class in the anthem.
"I told her, I was like, 'I thought this was a Spanish class,'" Brinsdon recalled. "And she's like, 'Well, yeah it is, it's like, it's a cultural thing.' And so I was the only one that sat down."
She was given an alternate assignment.
Brinsdon's father, William, backs his daughter. He said that reciting a pledge to any other nation has no place in public schools. "What are we to do? Just lay down and let it happen?" Mr. Brinsdon said. "Or should we stand up for our country?"
Santos couldn't be reached for comment.
The school district declined several News 8 requests to interview someone with the district. But in a statement, said it was a single lesson on Hispanic culture in one class at one campus, the lesson will be reviewed and students recite the U.S. pledge daily.
This Spanish class assignment, Brenda Brisdon's refusal and the school district's response caused a firestorm on the right.
Conservative websites erupted, getting the attention of Republican State Representative Dan Flynn of Canton. "It was a shock to me," he said.
The Texas Education Agency says the state curriculum outlines what must be taught, but local districts decide how it's taught.
Flynn said since the state allows that much discretion, he'll file a bill again to require more mandatory studies on the U.S. Constitution.
"I do have a problem if we're making that the assignment for young people to stand up and pledge to another country," Flynn said. "It lessens the value of the pledge to the United States flag."
After no one with the district agreed to an interview, News 8 confronted McAllen School Board President Sam Saldivar after a meeting. He indicated he didn't agree with the lesson. "I would have taken a different approach, again I'm not an educator," Saldivar said.
But as the leader of the board that sets policy, Saldivar said there's no decision yet on whether to change the curriculum. "That's a curriculum, a teacher working with the administration," Saldiver said. "As I understand it, it's going to be reviewed, and more likely a better approach will be taken in the future."
Dallas Democratic State Representative Roberto Alonzo said to question the loyalty of the teacher and school district is unfair.
"This is a class," Alonzo said. "This is not doing allegiance to Mexico, it's not you know you are going to be part of Mexico, this is just a class to learn Spanish - to learn an aspect of what is Texas."
Brinsdon said she's been pulled from Santos' class and gets her lessons separately now. Despite the controversy, she has no regrets. "I really hope that I was an inspiration to a lot of youth in America to stand up for what's right," Brinsdon said.
SOURCE
California Dream Act: 3 times more costly than previously projected
New research suggests that the recently passed California Dream Act may actually cost taxpayers more than originally estimated. Due in part to continually rising tuition costs, the revised estimated figure stands at $65 million per year, starting in 2013. This is more than 3 times the initial estimate.
Consequently, the amount of funds available to legal California residents applying for student aid will be impacted. There will be less funding available which will be more widely distributed. The end result is less funding available for legal California residents per individual.
Critics have long asserted that in light of current economic conditions, passage of the Dream Act was and is a misguided option, unfair to legal residents, and representative of thinking based on unrealistic evaluations of current financial and economical trends. Many feel that financial aid to illegal citizens should only be considered in a scenario where a surplus of funding exists, not when state and federal budgets are in a state of extreme deficit.
Those who support a referendum on the Dream Act should contact their local state representatives before January 6th. At least 505,000 signatures are needed in order to put the measure on the November, 2012 ballot. The referendum, sponsored by State Assemblyman Tim Donnelly of Hesperia, primarily deals with the second part of the Dream Act. This is the provision that allows for undocumented citizens to apply for taxpayer funded state aid. "This is a really, really bad idea," Donnelly said. “At a time when we're broke, when we have two million people unemployed, when state colleges are underfunded and overbooked, we're creating a brand new entitlement." Donnelly also believes the Dream act will create further incentive for increased illegal immigration.
SOURCE
Row as British school tells 11-year-olds to write letter to PM about retirement income for teachers
A school has been criticised for telling pupils to write letters to David Cameron - asking him not to cut teachers’ pensions. Parents were horrified to learn the Year Six pupils had been ordered to write to the Prime Minister arguing he should not reduce public sector pensions.
The children – aged 10 and 11 - were left bewildered by the task, with some even having to ask teachers what a pension was before starting their letter.
Parents have accused the school, which was closed this week after so many teachers went on strike over pension changes, of trying to politicise the youngsters. One, who did not want to be named, said: ‘Surely this is far too political, especially at the moment, for 11-year-olds to be questioned on. ‘About half of the kids in the exam had no idea what a pension was. I believe a number of the children even asked the teachers.’
The pupils were asked to write the letter as part of a three-hour entrance exam in the top stream at the over-subscribed Poole High School for September next year.
‘These exam questions are to test the children’s ability with English and spelling and how to construct sentences,’ the parent added. ‘They are normally asked to write about a journey or holiday or something like that. ‘The subject matter in this instance was totally inappropriate. ‘It was bringing politics into the classroom and was in danger of politically influencing young minds.’
After complaining to the school the parent was told the question had been a mistake, and the teacher who set it was to be formally rebuked. ‘When I complained to the deputy head teacher she was quite open about it,’ the parent said. ‘She said she was shocked and only realised what the question was two days later. ‘She agreed that it was a completely inappropriate question to ask and that she was sorry. ‘I was told the teacher who set the exam question was due to go before the chair of governors for a telling off.’
The school, where three quarters of staff belong to unions which chose to strike over pension changes this week, is partially selective. The three hour examination process is something parents can choose to send their children to.
The school has since apologised, admitting the test was ‘inappropriate’.
Mrs Fan Heafield, deputy head at Poole High School, said: ‘Students are required to take a three hour academic test as part of the school’s annual admission process. ‘This includes a short writing task on a topical subject in the media, of which the students may have some knowledge.
‘The purpose of the exercise is to assess students’ competency in spelling, punctuation, structure of writing and vocabulary. ‘The writing produced by students in this task is intended solely for the purpose of internal marking by an experienced teacher and is not for wider distribution to external individuals or organisations.
‘Clearly, on this occasion, the subject chosen for this task was inappropriate and we would like to apologise unreservedly for any concerns this may have caused parents or students. ‘We will ensure that our pre-test procedures do not allow this situation to arise again.’
Poole High School has recently been accepted to be a specialised school for Business and Enterprise to train pupils to become ‘wealth creators’.
SOURCE
Sunday, December 04, 2011
Kicking is sexual harassment?
The school is the sick party here
The mother of a Boston elementary school first-grader being investigated for possible sexual harassment for hitting another boy in the groin says her son acted in self-defense.
Mark Curran, 7, tells FOX 25 another boy came up to him on the school bus and strangled him so he defended himself by kicking the boy.
His mother says he was visibly shaken when he got off the school bus following the incident. “He said some kid choked me on the bus. I said excuse me? He said he choked me and stole my gloves,” says Tasha Lynch.
Lynch says she anticipated a simple resolution when she contacted the school to discuss what happened. “They both had a fight. They both should’ve shaken hands, said sorry and they both should have done punishment extra school work,” says Lynch.
Instead of extra school work, Tynan Elementary School in South Boston informed Tasha Lynch of the sexual harassment violation.
A spokesman for the school says the principal is looking into an incident that occurred on one of the school buses, but they will not publicly discuss a student.
Lynch has kept her son out of school for two weeks since the incident fearing for his safety. She says kicking the boy was wrong, but it should not be a sexual harassment issue.
This is a code of discipline by the Boston Public Schools and is not being investigated by police. Mark Curran has a disciplinary hearing on Monday during which the school reserves the right to suspend him for three days if found guilty of the violation.
SOURCE
British teacher suspended for 'gross misconduct' after giving stranded dyslexic pupil a lift
What a messed-up world we live in!
A supply teacher has been suspended for 'gross misconduct' after giving a lift to a 17-year-old pupil. Martin Davis, who has been teaching for 23 years, risks losing his job permanently because he drove a dyslexic boy home when the student did not have money for the bus. He said: 'I still can’t believe what’s happened. I was just trying to do this boy a favour and now I could be out of a job.'
Mr Davis, 58, who teaches maths and science, is appealing against the judgement by the recruitment agency for which he worked.
He had been posted to Tyne Metropolitan College, in North Tyneside, and was giving individual support to a number of dyslexic boys. Two weeks ago, he agreed to give one of his pupils a lift home after school because the boy had forgotten his bus fare.
But father-of-two Mr Davis was later told by a school official that he had been 'stupid' to agree to take the pupil in his car, and he apologised.
Brook Street recruitment agency then told him he would not be allowed to return to the school because of his alleged gross misconduct.
When he tried to argue against this decision, agency bosses led him to believe that he had been dismissed, and he has now been told that he must not work until an investigation into his actions has been concluded.
He told the Daily Telegraph: 'I spoke to the class tutor and she was devastated. I also spoke to the boy in question to say goodbye and he was upset and angry about what was happening because he said I had been a great help to him.'
The agency claimed it was only following 'procedures'. A spokesman said: 'The worker in question has acknowledged there is a safeguarding issue, and he has been suspended whilst we complete this investigation, which is required by regulation.'
Tyne Metropolitan College said it had no involvement in the decision to suspend Mr Davis.
SOURCE
Australia: Boys and girls may be split in Victorian classrooms
THE Baillieu Government will encourage state schools to adopt single-sex classes if a current trial lifts academic results.
Education Minister Martin Dixon said the grassroots trial by at least six primary and secondary schools would examine whether students were more likely to thrive in same-sex classrooms.
He said the model potentially offered students the benefits of a private school-style single-sex learning environment, while giving them the social benefits of co-education.
"If this has benefits, and I think it has, you'll find it makes schools a one-stop shop in terms of social and learning experiences for children," Mr Dixon said. "We're certainly not going to mandate it, it is more a matter of facilitating it."
Oberon Secondary College principal Anne Murphy said the Geelong school would trial two single-sex classes in year 8 next year and consider expanding it schoolwide if successful.
"If, educationally, we find that the kids' learning is advanced from being in a single-sex classroom then I would be hard-pressed to justify not offering that more," Ms Murphy said.
"I know several parents will feel this is a co-educational school and they want their children to have a co-educational experience. In a co-educational school we can give them the best of both worlds."
Dromana Secondary College principal Alan Marr said the school had split boys and girls in year 9 maths and English classes.
"It has been a positive experience, so positive we're considering bringing it down into year 8," he said.
"We've noticed the girls have been much calmer and less hesitant to act things out, and the boys have been more confident to express their own opinions."
Some schools, including Essendon Keilor College and Camberwell High School, have been running boys-only classes for several years to address gender imbalances caused by girls attending local all-girl state schools.
Victoria has seven single-sex girls' public schools but only one for boys. Mr Dixon said it was up to individual schools to decide whether to adopt single-sex classes.
"We will make the findings and all the background material (relating to the trial) available to all the schools in the system and say here is an option that may work for your cohort of students," he said.
Parents Victoria executive officer Gail McHardy said schools considering same-sex classes needed to work around families, many of whom wanted their children to learn alongside the opposite sex. Broad consultation with the school community was critical.
The Queensland Government last week extended trials of single-sex classes after participating schools reported improved results.
SOURCE
The school is the sick party here
The mother of a Boston elementary school first-grader being investigated for possible sexual harassment for hitting another boy in the groin says her son acted in self-defense.
Mark Curran, 7, tells FOX 25 another boy came up to him on the school bus and strangled him so he defended himself by kicking the boy.
His mother says he was visibly shaken when he got off the school bus following the incident. “He said some kid choked me on the bus. I said excuse me? He said he choked me and stole my gloves,” says Tasha Lynch.
Lynch says she anticipated a simple resolution when she contacted the school to discuss what happened. “They both had a fight. They both should’ve shaken hands, said sorry and they both should have done punishment extra school work,” says Lynch.
Instead of extra school work, Tynan Elementary School in South Boston informed Tasha Lynch of the sexual harassment violation.
A spokesman for the school says the principal is looking into an incident that occurred on one of the school buses, but they will not publicly discuss a student.
Lynch has kept her son out of school for two weeks since the incident fearing for his safety. She says kicking the boy was wrong, but it should not be a sexual harassment issue.
This is a code of discipline by the Boston Public Schools and is not being investigated by police. Mark Curran has a disciplinary hearing on Monday during which the school reserves the right to suspend him for three days if found guilty of the violation.
SOURCE
British teacher suspended for 'gross misconduct' after giving stranded dyslexic pupil a lift
What a messed-up world we live in!
A supply teacher has been suspended for 'gross misconduct' after giving a lift to a 17-year-old pupil. Martin Davis, who has been teaching for 23 years, risks losing his job permanently because he drove a dyslexic boy home when the student did not have money for the bus. He said: 'I still can’t believe what’s happened. I was just trying to do this boy a favour and now I could be out of a job.'
Mr Davis, 58, who teaches maths and science, is appealing against the judgement by the recruitment agency for which he worked.
He had been posted to Tyne Metropolitan College, in North Tyneside, and was giving individual support to a number of dyslexic boys. Two weeks ago, he agreed to give one of his pupils a lift home after school because the boy had forgotten his bus fare.
But father-of-two Mr Davis was later told by a school official that he had been 'stupid' to agree to take the pupil in his car, and he apologised.
Brook Street recruitment agency then told him he would not be allowed to return to the school because of his alleged gross misconduct.
When he tried to argue against this decision, agency bosses led him to believe that he had been dismissed, and he has now been told that he must not work until an investigation into his actions has been concluded.
He told the Daily Telegraph: 'I spoke to the class tutor and she was devastated. I also spoke to the boy in question to say goodbye and he was upset and angry about what was happening because he said I had been a great help to him.'
The agency claimed it was only following 'procedures'. A spokesman said: 'The worker in question has acknowledged there is a safeguarding issue, and he has been suspended whilst we complete this investigation, which is required by regulation.'
Tyne Metropolitan College said it had no involvement in the decision to suspend Mr Davis.
SOURCE
Australia: Boys and girls may be split in Victorian classrooms
THE Baillieu Government will encourage state schools to adopt single-sex classes if a current trial lifts academic results.
Education Minister Martin Dixon said the grassroots trial by at least six primary and secondary schools would examine whether students were more likely to thrive in same-sex classrooms.
He said the model potentially offered students the benefits of a private school-style single-sex learning environment, while giving them the social benefits of co-education.
"If this has benefits, and I think it has, you'll find it makes schools a one-stop shop in terms of social and learning experiences for children," Mr Dixon said. "We're certainly not going to mandate it, it is more a matter of facilitating it."
Oberon Secondary College principal Anne Murphy said the Geelong school would trial two single-sex classes in year 8 next year and consider expanding it schoolwide if successful.
"If, educationally, we find that the kids' learning is advanced from being in a single-sex classroom then I would be hard-pressed to justify not offering that more," Ms Murphy said.
"I know several parents will feel this is a co-educational school and they want their children to have a co-educational experience. In a co-educational school we can give them the best of both worlds."
Dromana Secondary College principal Alan Marr said the school had split boys and girls in year 9 maths and English classes.
"It has been a positive experience, so positive we're considering bringing it down into year 8," he said.
"We've noticed the girls have been much calmer and less hesitant to act things out, and the boys have been more confident to express their own opinions."
Some schools, including Essendon Keilor College and Camberwell High School, have been running boys-only classes for several years to address gender imbalances caused by girls attending local all-girl state schools.
Victoria has seven single-sex girls' public schools but only one for boys. Mr Dixon said it was up to individual schools to decide whether to adopt single-sex classes.
"We will make the findings and all the background material (relating to the trial) available to all the schools in the system and say here is an option that may work for your cohort of students," he said.
Parents Victoria executive officer Gail McHardy said schools considering same-sex classes needed to work around families, many of whom wanted their children to learn alongside the opposite sex. Broad consultation with the school community was critical.
The Queensland Government last week extended trials of single-sex classes after participating schools reported improved results.
SOURCE
A Liberal Fails the Test
By Gary Baker
As the SAT cheating scandal in Long Island continues to unfold, it is natural that people across the academic and ideological spectrum reflect on the causes and effects, and strive to determine the meaning of it all in a broader context. True to form, at least one liberal educator has deflected responsibility from the perpetrators to the system.
Rather than confront the challenges of personal ethics, Nicolaus Mills, professor of American Studies at Sarah Lawrence College, has determined that society is to blame. Characterizing the use of college entrance tests as “tyranny,” he all but dismisses the actions of those who hired others to take their examinations as an understandable result of a system that places too much emphasis on testing and not enough on a holistic evaluation of the students seeking entrance to college. In the typical liberal fashion, his analysis turns reason on its head, exchanging the definitions of success and failure to a laughable degree.
Addressing the history of college entrance exams, Mr. Mills notes that they were originally instituted for the purpose of finding worthy students away from the well-to-do areas that so long dominated college admissions, claiming that the current reliance corrupts that worthy cause. What he fails to acknowledge is that the tests have in a large degree accomplished that mission. Students across the nation take the tests annually, with superior achievers being identified from across the spectrum of wealth and geographical area. Many who would never have been admitted decades ago will find themselves welcomed with financial assistance and opportunities their parents and grandparents never dreamed of.
Alas, for Mr. Mills and his ilk, the results are a failure. Though the SAT and ACT have been used for decades as valuable, though imperfect, tools for matching students with appropriate colleges, that goal is no longer paramount for liberal educators. Until a test comes along that produces just the right mixture of accepted race and gender, than testing will be demonized, criticized, and dismissed wherever possible.
If Mr. Mills would truly like to reduce the pressure on college bound students to perform, than I would recommend that he push for the removal of the SAT bonus allotted to black and Hispanic students at many universities, which he cites as 310 and 150 points, respectively. As someone who has looked across the table at a college admissions officer, I know that’s a lot to overcome.
As for the tests themselves, they will continue to do what they were designed to do. They will measure the current level of math and reading achievement in college bound students and aid in gaging the potential for academic success at particular schools. As stated before, the assessment is not perfect, but it has been shown to be useful at finding those who cannot make it academically. Sadly, it appears as though it can also identify some who cannot make it ethically.
As the SAT cheating scandal in Long Island continues to unfold, it is natural that people across the academic and ideological spectrum reflect on the causes and effects, and strive to determine the meaning of it all in a broader context. True to form, at least one liberal educator has deflected responsibility from the perpetrators to the system.
Rather than confront the challenges of personal ethics, Nicolaus Mills, professor of American Studies at Sarah Lawrence College, has determined that society is to blame. Characterizing the use of college entrance tests as “tyranny,” he all but dismisses the actions of those who hired others to take their examinations as an understandable result of a system that places too much emphasis on testing and not enough on a holistic evaluation of the students seeking entrance to college. In the typical liberal fashion, his analysis turns reason on its head, exchanging the definitions of success and failure to a laughable degree.
Addressing the history of college entrance exams, Mr. Mills notes that they were originally instituted for the purpose of finding worthy students away from the well-to-do areas that so long dominated college admissions, claiming that the current reliance corrupts that worthy cause. What he fails to acknowledge is that the tests have in a large degree accomplished that mission. Students across the nation take the tests annually, with superior achievers being identified from across the spectrum of wealth and geographical area. Many who would never have been admitted decades ago will find themselves welcomed with financial assistance and opportunities their parents and grandparents never dreamed of.
Alas, for Mr. Mills and his ilk, the results are a failure. Though the SAT and ACT have been used for decades as valuable, though imperfect, tools for matching students with appropriate colleges, that goal is no longer paramount for liberal educators. Until a test comes along that produces just the right mixture of accepted race and gender, than testing will be demonized, criticized, and dismissed wherever possible.
If Mr. Mills would truly like to reduce the pressure on college bound students to perform, than I would recommend that he push for the removal of the SAT bonus allotted to black and Hispanic students at many universities, which he cites as 310 and 150 points, respectively. As someone who has looked across the table at a college admissions officer, I know that’s a lot to overcome.
As for the tests themselves, they will continue to do what they were designed to do. They will measure the current level of math and reading achievement in college bound students and aid in gaging the potential for academic success at particular schools. As stated before, the assessment is not perfect, but it has been shown to be useful at finding those who cannot make it academically. Sadly, it appears as though it can also identify some who cannot make it ethically.
Saturday, December 03, 2011
Why we must save our sons from feminized education
I have myself seen evidence of the advantages for boys of having male teachers. I sent my son to a private High School where his mathematics teachers were all male and enthusiastic about mathematics. He now has a B.Sc. with a first in mathematics and is working on his Ph.D. in it at a university known for its excellence in mathematics -- JR
By David Thomas
Fred and his father
So now it’s official — young women are outdoing men at work. The Office for National Statistics has confirmed that female twentysomethings earn more than their male peers — 3.6 per cent more, to be precise. As the father of two daughters in their 20s, I can’t say I’m surprised.
I’m incredibly proud of my girls. Holly, 23, is working day and night to make her way in journalism, a profession that is even more competitive and insecure than when I started out 30 years ago.
Lucy, 22, is training to be a doctor, a profession which, it emerged this week, will have more women than men in just six years’ time. I’ve seen how much effort and determination both have displayed, from their first GCSEs onwards.
They went to a comprehensive, so they weren’t spoon-fed their A-grades. They had to put in the hours, keep themselves motivated and sweat for their achievements. They’ve earned their success.
I also have a 13-year-old son, Fred. He attends the same school as his sisters did. He has just as much energy and, when he puts his mind to something, just as much determination. But he is growing up in a world that seems more and more biased against boys; one in which our sons are falling behind our daughters in almost every measurable way.
A world in which politicians still obsess about every conceivable form of discrimination against women, but ignore the young men who so desperately need help.
That’s why it’s time to send out an SOS message: Save Our Sons.
Huge numbers of young men are effectively being thrown on the scrapheap when they are barely old enough to shave. It’s not just that they are failing or choosing to fail within the education system: the system is failing them.
Let’s just start by looking at the facts. Barely half the pupils in this country get five or more GCSE passes at grades A-C. Of those who do, well over half are girls. The majority of boys in this country, therefore, are failing to reach the basic level of educational attainment. Every year hundreds of thousands of teenage boys leave school with virtually no chance of getting any kind of decent, well-paying job.
In fact, of all the class, race and gender groups in this country (with the sole exception of the tiny number of traveller children), working-class white boys perform the worst. A staggering 85 per cent of boys from poor white families fail to get those five good GCSEs.
The prevailing dogma in early education now demands that both lessons and sport are devoutly non-competitive. It requires children to sit still around tables in which they work together as groups, rather than alone at desks. It is, in other words, perfectly suited to sociable little girls and anathema to boisterous, competitive little boys.
Thus it is all too easy for boys to conclude early on that school is what girls are good at — and they, by extension, are not.
And yet it does not have to be this way. When my daughters went to a small village primary school, the teachers were all women. They were absolutely dedicated to their pupils, but they could not relate to the boys as naturally as to the girls. And then, for a single year, a young, male teacher took over the Year Five and Six class of ten and 11-year-olds.
Suddenly the boys in the class had someone they could talk to about football, computers and other Boy Things. There was someone who understood them, and they blossomed. Then that teacher left, and it was Girl Time again.
Seeing that convinced me I would pay for Fred’s prep school education if it meant he would be taught by male teachers and be given the chance to play competitive sport. Sure enough, he thrived in that environment.
By the time they get to secondary school, though, too many boys who don’t have that opportunity are actively hostile to education. That hostility is a defence mechanism, of course, a way of masking their own sense of alienation, but if that outlook continues until they are 16, they may well be headed for the scrap-heap.
Some will get one of the ever-decreasing number of manual jobs that remain in manufacturing and industry, others will join what’s left of the Armed Forces. But many more slip into the twilight, underclass world of unemployment, drugs, crime and the feckless spawning of children who are then effectively fathered by the State via the benefits system.
These young men have little to offer women, no lasting contribution to make to society, no hope for their own lives. They cost society a fortune, all the way from the dole queue to the prison cell. And if that’s not a major social and political issue, I don’t know what is.....
This may be a politically incorrect and sexist observation in the eyes of some delicate Guardian-reading souls, but most women still want a man who can provide for his family, and who is confident enough in his own status not to feel insecure about his partner’s.
And this leads us on to a deeper, more human issue that has nothing to do with statistics or incomes. We have, as a society, lost the ability, or the will, to acknowledge that our sons have anything at all to offer the world as men.
Our daughters, raised in the era of Girl Power, have rightly been encouraged to believe that anything a man can do, they can do, too. But they’ve also been told again and again that they have qualities men lack. They are more emotionally mature, more sensitive, better communicators, better team-workers, and so on.
In other words, they have been taught that men and women are equal — except for all the ways in which women are superior.
There is now a massive equal rights industry that is obsessed with every real or imaginary form of female inequality. But equality must work both ways, and if it is now boys who are lagging behind, then the political and educational establishment must make it a priority to help them.
Though they are rarely celebrated any more, there are solid male virtues that still exist in decent men: reliability, stamina, physical strength, the desire to provide for and protect their families, and sometimes, as unfashionable as it might be, the ability not to be too emotional. There are times when an arm round the shoulder and the offer of a drink can do more good than all the agonised empathy in the world.
All of us, men or women, are moved by pictures of soldiers coming home from war. The men reach down, their arms open to greet the children running towards them in an image that embodies the strength and courage of a warrior and the love of a father.
But who is telling our sons about that kind of positive, benevolent manliness? Who sets them a good example? Having more male teachers, especially in primary schools, would be a start.
And we should stop being afraid to say anything positive about men, or masculinity, for fear of offending women. In a culture in which so many young men do not have father figures at home or at school, too many boys take their lead from the ill-disciplined brats of Premiership football; the swaggering, misogynist materialism of rap music; or the psychotic violence of computer games.
Our boys — including my own son Fred — are full of potential, full of energy and full of ambitions. All they need is the encouragement and the attention to help them realise their dreams.
More HERE
British schoolchildren to be banned from using calculators amid fears of generation growing up with poor maths skills
Pupils are set to be banned from using calculators in primary schools amid fears a ‘sat-nav’ generation of children are growing up with poor maths skills. Schools minister Nick Gibb said pupils should not ‘reach for a gadget every time they need to do a simple sum.’
It is understood that in future, teachers could be told to stop allowing children aged under nine to use calculators in state schools. Maths exams taken by 11-year-olds are also likely to be reformed – scrapping an existing section that allows pupils to use calculators.
The move comes after a recent survey revealed that Britain was falling behind its international rivals in league tables rating children’s mathematics skills.
British teenagers are now ranked 28th among peers in developed nations after slumping dramatically in the last decade, while Singapore, which has virtually no calculator use for 10-year-olds, was second.
Almost half of all adults have basic maths skills that are no better than those of children aged nine to 11, Government-commissioned research has shown. More than five million people were also found to be struggling with simple reading and writing.
The latest Skills for Life survey questioned more than 7,000 16- to 65-year-olds in England to examine literacy and numeracy levels. The findings reveal that many adults still have maths and English skills similar to those expected of primary school children.
Campaigners warned that there are 'far too many' people with poor basic skills, and more needs to be done for them. In total 16.8million adults - or 49.1 per cent - have numeracy skills at Entry Level 3 or below. This level is equivalent to the achievement expected of a child aged nine to 11.
In literacy, 5.1 million adults, or 14.9 per cent, were at Entry Level 3 or below. Adults with numeracy skills below this level would struggle to pay household bills, or understand price labels on pre-packaged food.
The survey showed that millions of adults are no better at maths and English than five to seven-year-olds.
In total, 2.3 million people in England were found to be at Entry Level 1 or below - the level of attainment for five to seven-year-olds in numeracy, while five per cent were at this stage for literacy. Adults below this level may not be able to write short messages to family, or select floor numbers in lifts.
According to a previously published report, adults are considered to have 'functional' literacy skills if they are above Entry Level 3, and 'functional' numeracy skills if they are above Entry Level 2. Today's survey reveals that 8.1 million adults in England (23.7 per cent) are at Entry Level 2 or below.
Carol Taylor, director for research and development at the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (Niace), said: 'We have far too many people with very poor basic skills in this country and the system isn't working for them.
'The headline results of today's survey show a welcome increase in those adults working at Literacy Level 2 (GCSE equivalent) from 44 per cent (in 2003) to 57 per cent, which proves the powerful impact the Skills For Life strategy has had. 'However, it's alarming that 15 per cent of the adult population are performing at Entry Level 3 or below in literacy and 24 per cent in numeracy at Entry Level 2 or below.
'Put simply, around one in six of the adult population has difficulty with aspects of reading and writing which means they are seriously disadvantaged as employees, citizens and parents.
'And around one in four of the adult population struggle with the basics of numeracy, a skill which can have a greater impact on life chances than literacy. 'This is why we're calling for a specific challenge fund to help those with the lowest skills.'
SOURCE
Sex-Ed Classes and the Rape of Our Children's Innocence
As outrageous as it is to hear about the new sex-ed curriculum for New York City schools, beginning with middle schools, there are some school districts for which the program does not start early enough. And so, in June, 2010 the Provincetown, Massachusetts school board voted unanimously to begin distributing condoms to elementary school children upon the student’s request, beginning in first grade and without parental knowledge or consent. (What possible use could a 6-year-old have for a condom?)
After a public outcry, the district agreed to consider restricting condom distribution to grades five and up, meaning, to kids as young as 10. According to the official policy, “the school nurse is to give counseling and abstinence information to a student prior to handing out the condom,” although without parental knowledge or consent.
As for the question of criminality, the age of consent in Massachusetts is 16 (under certain circumstances, it is 18), and in answer to the question posed by a 16 year-old boy who was having sex with his 13 year-old girl girlfriend, the SexLaws.org website explained that, “Any sexual conduct with a child age 13 [is] a very serious matter in Massechusetts [sic] whether you are a minor or an adult” (their emphasis).
Doesn’t that mean that this school’s condom distribution is contributing to criminal behavior, not to mention to dangerous and harmful behavior? How can this be allowed?
In a recent article for American Thinker, family activist Linda Harvey notes “that America as a whole is still horrified by child sexual abuse” yet she points to books recommended by GLSEN (the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network, better named the Gay, Lesbian, Sex Education Network) that recount the sexual experiences of boys as young as 13 with men more than twice their age. How is this not criminal?
Think about it. We are rightly outraged when we hear of the alleged acts of child rape by trusted adults (such as Jerry Sandusky at Penn State), but is there not a rape of a different kind – at the least, an assault on innocence – when schools show virtually pornographic movies in sex-ed classes or conduct lessons in which girls put condoms on boys’ fingers? (For a shocking report, see this article by Laurie Higgins of the Illinois Family Policy Institute.) And in the countless cases where these kids are anything but innocent, at the least, these schools are condoning, if not actually encouraging immorality.
One mother posted this on my Facebook page: “I visited the sex-ed teacher at the high school our children were going to attend in 1992. I had heard stories about some of her techniques and was very concerned. When I asked her about modesty, she told me that is something she tries to get the kids over as quick as possible. My daughter brought home the curriculum from the class and I was appalled. There were several pages of vocabulary they would have to know, including every perversion I had ever heard of and some that I never heard of. The definition they had for virgin was someone who had never had the opportunity to have sex. The list included polygamy but not monogamy. It even said that sometimes it is beneficial for a marriage if there is an affair.” And that was back in 1992.
On November 30th, a high school teacher from New York City called into my radio show, wanting me to know that things were far worse in the schools than I could imagine, from the way the kids dress and act to the fact that many of them spend far more time playing terribly violent (and often sexually charged) video games than reading books.
He also told me that in his school, there is a table in the hallway with condoms and lubricants. The students can take them freely, as desired. (Does this surprise you?) The other day, a student put a pile of Gideon’s Bibles on the table, also for the students to take freely. As a result, there was outrage in the school – outrage over the presence of the Bibles, not the presence of the condoms.
Is it an exaggeration to say that we need a massive moral and cultural revolution?
During that same broadcast, I received another called from a man in New York City who was involved in teaching sex education to high school students. As part of the program, he tells these students which condoms work best, among other things.
When I asked him, “Then shouldn’t you also teach the kids about responsible drug use and give out clean needles to intravenous drug users?” he responded, “Yes, we also teach about them drug use as well as where they go for clean needle exchanges.”
We need a revolution.
SOURCE
I have myself seen evidence of the advantages for boys of having male teachers. I sent my son to a private High School where his mathematics teachers were all male and enthusiastic about mathematics. He now has a B.Sc. with a first in mathematics and is working on his Ph.D. in it at a university known for its excellence in mathematics -- JR
By David Thomas
Fred and his father
So now it’s official — young women are outdoing men at work. The Office for National Statistics has confirmed that female twentysomethings earn more than their male peers — 3.6 per cent more, to be precise. As the father of two daughters in their 20s, I can’t say I’m surprised.
I’m incredibly proud of my girls. Holly, 23, is working day and night to make her way in journalism, a profession that is even more competitive and insecure than when I started out 30 years ago.
Lucy, 22, is training to be a doctor, a profession which, it emerged this week, will have more women than men in just six years’ time. I’ve seen how much effort and determination both have displayed, from their first GCSEs onwards.
They went to a comprehensive, so they weren’t spoon-fed their A-grades. They had to put in the hours, keep themselves motivated and sweat for their achievements. They’ve earned their success.
I also have a 13-year-old son, Fred. He attends the same school as his sisters did. He has just as much energy and, when he puts his mind to something, just as much determination. But he is growing up in a world that seems more and more biased against boys; one in which our sons are falling behind our daughters in almost every measurable way.
A world in which politicians still obsess about every conceivable form of discrimination against women, but ignore the young men who so desperately need help.
That’s why it’s time to send out an SOS message: Save Our Sons.
Huge numbers of young men are effectively being thrown on the scrapheap when they are barely old enough to shave. It’s not just that they are failing or choosing to fail within the education system: the system is failing them.
Let’s just start by looking at the facts. Barely half the pupils in this country get five or more GCSE passes at grades A-C. Of those who do, well over half are girls. The majority of boys in this country, therefore, are failing to reach the basic level of educational attainment. Every year hundreds of thousands of teenage boys leave school with virtually no chance of getting any kind of decent, well-paying job.
In fact, of all the class, race and gender groups in this country (with the sole exception of the tiny number of traveller children), working-class white boys perform the worst. A staggering 85 per cent of boys from poor white families fail to get those five good GCSEs.
The prevailing dogma in early education now demands that both lessons and sport are devoutly non-competitive. It requires children to sit still around tables in which they work together as groups, rather than alone at desks. It is, in other words, perfectly suited to sociable little girls and anathema to boisterous, competitive little boys.
Thus it is all too easy for boys to conclude early on that school is what girls are good at — and they, by extension, are not.
And yet it does not have to be this way. When my daughters went to a small village primary school, the teachers were all women. They were absolutely dedicated to their pupils, but they could not relate to the boys as naturally as to the girls. And then, for a single year, a young, male teacher took over the Year Five and Six class of ten and 11-year-olds.
Suddenly the boys in the class had someone they could talk to about football, computers and other Boy Things. There was someone who understood them, and they blossomed. Then that teacher left, and it was Girl Time again.
Seeing that convinced me I would pay for Fred’s prep school education if it meant he would be taught by male teachers and be given the chance to play competitive sport. Sure enough, he thrived in that environment.
By the time they get to secondary school, though, too many boys who don’t have that opportunity are actively hostile to education. That hostility is a defence mechanism, of course, a way of masking their own sense of alienation, but if that outlook continues until they are 16, they may well be headed for the scrap-heap.
Some will get one of the ever-decreasing number of manual jobs that remain in manufacturing and industry, others will join what’s left of the Armed Forces. But many more slip into the twilight, underclass world of unemployment, drugs, crime and the feckless spawning of children who are then effectively fathered by the State via the benefits system.
These young men have little to offer women, no lasting contribution to make to society, no hope for their own lives. They cost society a fortune, all the way from the dole queue to the prison cell. And if that’s not a major social and political issue, I don’t know what is.....
This may be a politically incorrect and sexist observation in the eyes of some delicate Guardian-reading souls, but most women still want a man who can provide for his family, and who is confident enough in his own status not to feel insecure about his partner’s.
And this leads us on to a deeper, more human issue that has nothing to do with statistics or incomes. We have, as a society, lost the ability, or the will, to acknowledge that our sons have anything at all to offer the world as men.
Our daughters, raised in the era of Girl Power, have rightly been encouraged to believe that anything a man can do, they can do, too. But they’ve also been told again and again that they have qualities men lack. They are more emotionally mature, more sensitive, better communicators, better team-workers, and so on.
In other words, they have been taught that men and women are equal — except for all the ways in which women are superior.
There is now a massive equal rights industry that is obsessed with every real or imaginary form of female inequality. But equality must work both ways, and if it is now boys who are lagging behind, then the political and educational establishment must make it a priority to help them.
Though they are rarely celebrated any more, there are solid male virtues that still exist in decent men: reliability, stamina, physical strength, the desire to provide for and protect their families, and sometimes, as unfashionable as it might be, the ability not to be too emotional. There are times when an arm round the shoulder and the offer of a drink can do more good than all the agonised empathy in the world.
All of us, men or women, are moved by pictures of soldiers coming home from war. The men reach down, their arms open to greet the children running towards them in an image that embodies the strength and courage of a warrior and the love of a father.
But who is telling our sons about that kind of positive, benevolent manliness? Who sets them a good example? Having more male teachers, especially in primary schools, would be a start.
And we should stop being afraid to say anything positive about men, or masculinity, for fear of offending women. In a culture in which so many young men do not have father figures at home or at school, too many boys take their lead from the ill-disciplined brats of Premiership football; the swaggering, misogynist materialism of rap music; or the psychotic violence of computer games.
Our boys — including my own son Fred — are full of potential, full of energy and full of ambitions. All they need is the encouragement and the attention to help them realise their dreams.
More HERE
British schoolchildren to be banned from using calculators amid fears of generation growing up with poor maths skills
Pupils are set to be banned from using calculators in primary schools amid fears a ‘sat-nav’ generation of children are growing up with poor maths skills. Schools minister Nick Gibb said pupils should not ‘reach for a gadget every time they need to do a simple sum.’
It is understood that in future, teachers could be told to stop allowing children aged under nine to use calculators in state schools. Maths exams taken by 11-year-olds are also likely to be reformed – scrapping an existing section that allows pupils to use calculators.
The move comes after a recent survey revealed that Britain was falling behind its international rivals in league tables rating children’s mathematics skills.
British teenagers are now ranked 28th among peers in developed nations after slumping dramatically in the last decade, while Singapore, which has virtually no calculator use for 10-year-olds, was second.
Almost half of all adults have basic maths skills that are no better than those of children aged nine to 11, Government-commissioned research has shown. More than five million people were also found to be struggling with simple reading and writing.
The latest Skills for Life survey questioned more than 7,000 16- to 65-year-olds in England to examine literacy and numeracy levels. The findings reveal that many adults still have maths and English skills similar to those expected of primary school children.
Campaigners warned that there are 'far too many' people with poor basic skills, and more needs to be done for them. In total 16.8million adults - or 49.1 per cent - have numeracy skills at Entry Level 3 or below. This level is equivalent to the achievement expected of a child aged nine to 11.
In literacy, 5.1 million adults, or 14.9 per cent, were at Entry Level 3 or below. Adults with numeracy skills below this level would struggle to pay household bills, or understand price labels on pre-packaged food.
The survey showed that millions of adults are no better at maths and English than five to seven-year-olds.
In total, 2.3 million people in England were found to be at Entry Level 1 or below - the level of attainment for five to seven-year-olds in numeracy, while five per cent were at this stage for literacy. Adults below this level may not be able to write short messages to family, or select floor numbers in lifts.
According to a previously published report, adults are considered to have 'functional' literacy skills if they are above Entry Level 3, and 'functional' numeracy skills if they are above Entry Level 2. Today's survey reveals that 8.1 million adults in England (23.7 per cent) are at Entry Level 2 or below.
Carol Taylor, director for research and development at the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (Niace), said: 'We have far too many people with very poor basic skills in this country and the system isn't working for them.
'The headline results of today's survey show a welcome increase in those adults working at Literacy Level 2 (GCSE equivalent) from 44 per cent (in 2003) to 57 per cent, which proves the powerful impact the Skills For Life strategy has had. 'However, it's alarming that 15 per cent of the adult population are performing at Entry Level 3 or below in literacy and 24 per cent in numeracy at Entry Level 2 or below.
'Put simply, around one in six of the adult population has difficulty with aspects of reading and writing which means they are seriously disadvantaged as employees, citizens and parents.
'And around one in four of the adult population struggle with the basics of numeracy, a skill which can have a greater impact on life chances than literacy. 'This is why we're calling for a specific challenge fund to help those with the lowest skills.'
SOURCE
Sex-Ed Classes and the Rape of Our Children's Innocence
As outrageous as it is to hear about the new sex-ed curriculum for New York City schools, beginning with middle schools, there are some school districts for which the program does not start early enough. And so, in June, 2010 the Provincetown, Massachusetts school board voted unanimously to begin distributing condoms to elementary school children upon the student’s request, beginning in first grade and without parental knowledge or consent. (What possible use could a 6-year-old have for a condom?)
After a public outcry, the district agreed to consider restricting condom distribution to grades five and up, meaning, to kids as young as 10. According to the official policy, “the school nurse is to give counseling and abstinence information to a student prior to handing out the condom,” although without parental knowledge or consent.
As for the question of criminality, the age of consent in Massachusetts is 16 (under certain circumstances, it is 18), and in answer to the question posed by a 16 year-old boy who was having sex with his 13 year-old girl girlfriend, the SexLaws.org website explained that, “Any sexual conduct with a child age 13 [is] a very serious matter in Massechusetts [sic] whether you are a minor or an adult” (their emphasis).
Doesn’t that mean that this school’s condom distribution is contributing to criminal behavior, not to mention to dangerous and harmful behavior? How can this be allowed?
In a recent article for American Thinker, family activist Linda Harvey notes “that America as a whole is still horrified by child sexual abuse” yet she points to books recommended by GLSEN (the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network, better named the Gay, Lesbian, Sex Education Network) that recount the sexual experiences of boys as young as 13 with men more than twice their age. How is this not criminal?
Think about it. We are rightly outraged when we hear of the alleged acts of child rape by trusted adults (such as Jerry Sandusky at Penn State), but is there not a rape of a different kind – at the least, an assault on innocence – when schools show virtually pornographic movies in sex-ed classes or conduct lessons in which girls put condoms on boys’ fingers? (For a shocking report, see this article by Laurie Higgins of the Illinois Family Policy Institute.) And in the countless cases where these kids are anything but innocent, at the least, these schools are condoning, if not actually encouraging immorality.
One mother posted this on my Facebook page: “I visited the sex-ed teacher at the high school our children were going to attend in 1992. I had heard stories about some of her techniques and was very concerned. When I asked her about modesty, she told me that is something she tries to get the kids over as quick as possible. My daughter brought home the curriculum from the class and I was appalled. There were several pages of vocabulary they would have to know, including every perversion I had ever heard of and some that I never heard of. The definition they had for virgin was someone who had never had the opportunity to have sex. The list included polygamy but not monogamy. It even said that sometimes it is beneficial for a marriage if there is an affair.” And that was back in 1992.
On November 30th, a high school teacher from New York City called into my radio show, wanting me to know that things were far worse in the schools than I could imagine, from the way the kids dress and act to the fact that many of them spend far more time playing terribly violent (and often sexually charged) video games than reading books.
He also told me that in his school, there is a table in the hallway with condoms and lubricants. The students can take them freely, as desired. (Does this surprise you?) The other day, a student put a pile of Gideon’s Bibles on the table, also for the students to take freely. As a result, there was outrage in the school – outrage over the presence of the Bibles, not the presence of the condoms.
Is it an exaggeration to say that we need a massive moral and cultural revolution?
During that same broadcast, I received another called from a man in New York City who was involved in teaching sex education to high school students. As part of the program, he tells these students which condoms work best, among other things.
When I asked him, “Then shouldn’t you also teach the kids about responsible drug use and give out clean needles to intravenous drug users?” he responded, “Yes, we also teach about them drug use as well as where they go for clean needle exchanges.”
We need a revolution.
SOURCE
Friday, December 02, 2011
Outpouring of hate from a British "progressive" school
It is shameful but Leftists are hate-driven so it is no surprise. When accused of bullying, they proved the accusation true by being bullies. Amazing. Leftists just can't help themselves. The bile just pours out of them
Amanda Craig
What is it that makes people want to send vitriolic abuse, including death threats, to a total stranger? I can’t begin to imagine. But this year, thanks to Twitter and Facebook, I do know what it is like to be on the receiving end of such embittered hatefulness.
Why? Because I’d dared to write a piece in this newspaper about my teenage years spent at Bedales, the progressive public school that was embroiled in a scandal earlier this year concerning shoplifting and under-age sex.
As a pupil at the school in the 1970s, I had experienced a level of bullying and abuse that I still find disturbing to think about to this day and which inspired my second novel, written 20 years ago, A Private Place.
Yet when I set down my painful memories of my formative years on paper, I never imagined I’d be setting myself up as a sitting target for a new breed of modern-day bullies, who choose not the school playground, but the internet to target their victims.
‘Cyberbullying’ isn’t confined to children — it is a contemporary menace in which people can be targeted anywhere, at any time. When my email inbox began to fill up with awful messages, my first reaction was one of exasperation, quickly followed by cold contempt.
I was totally unprepared for the slew of virulent messages that, for the next month, pinged into my inbox via both my Twitter account and my public Facebook page. Many of these messages are unpublishable in a national newspaper, but they included threats to my personal safety, disgusting sexual abuse, venomous comments about my looks and personality, a flurry of one-star Amazon reviews of my novels — and several attempts to hack into my Wikipedia entry.
Astonishingly, those behind them were girls and boys of between 15 and 21 years old, many of whom declared themselves to be current or former pupils of Bedales. They defended the school by calling me bitter, greedy, bitchy and, what’s more, claimed that I ‘deserved to be bullied’. Then they said that the school was wonderful, and that bullying didn’t exist there, and that ‘every single one of (the abusive comments that had been posted about me) was understandable and acceptable’.
The poisonous mob mentality these messages displayed actually did far more to show any current or prospective parent the ugly side of a ‘liberal’ education than what I had written. I was told that ‘we know where you live, so watch out’, ‘your [sic] dead, bitch’, ‘die, you ugly c***’ and so on.
‘You are insulting an establishment you show no understanding of, in a way in which you can only expect a [sic] outraged reaction. You have not only insulted our way of life, our home but us as individuals. I feel personally attacked,’ wrote one boy.
A couple of current pupils were moved to express sympathy and to assure me that things had changed, but these, like the nicer kind of Bedalian student of my own time, seemed far and few between.
One posted a more moderate, thoughtful comment about my article — and his peers turned on him: ‘Stop s***ing her d**k Toby, and stick up for the f*****g school. Your [sic] the minority here!’ wrote one who called himself George Zealington Vaughan-Barratt.
The abuse was so remarkable that two national newspapers picked it up, and one even wrote a leader page column. Yet when the Head of Bedales, Keith Budge, was approached for comment, his response, as quoted in the Daily Telegraph, was to say his pupils were simply defending their school.
The Old Bedalian magazine, edited by a former member of staff, decided to publish a sneering piece, which included a photograph of me printed upside-down and — a lovely touch — an encomium of the school’s creativity by Kirstie Allsopp.
Nobody in authority has attempted to contact me to apologise, and no pupil, as far as I know, has been reprimanded. Now, I don’t take the ravings of over-excited teenagers seriously. But neither do I think anyone should be allowed to get away with this kind of behaviour — least of all the privileged pupils of a £30,000-a-year school.
For such mindless venom to come from privileged children living in conditions which the majority can only dream of, and attending an institution that prides itself on its liberal outlook would be especially offensive.
Every contemporary school is aware of the life-long emotional and psychological damage that bullying can cause, and the responsible ones, both in the state and private sectors, have strong protocols about dealing with such issues, especially online.
Cyberbullying is worse and more cowardly than playground bullying. Even as an adult, I found the abuse deeply offensive. It was extraordinary that I was being addressed as if I were still the vulnerable, innocent 12-year-old I had been all those years ago. What I had described was so painful that I thought nobody in their right mind could feel anything but shame and compassion — and, more importantly, concern about whether the ills I described were still happening.
Instead, it seemed to provoke the opposite reaction. It was extraordinary — and ludicrous. But that’s the thing about the internet. While it has transformed the way people can communicate, it has also allowed some to say the most unkind things to someone they don’t know, have never met, and wouldn’t dare to confront face-to-face.
These so-called ‘trolls’, inspired by envy, rage and spite, appear to live in a parallel universe in which they believe they can threaten, stalk, intimidate and libel anyone with impunity.
You don’t have to do something as provocative as write about your unhappy schooldays to set them off. Just being pretty, happy, or good at what you do is enough. Whole families can be affected by the fall-out, if my experience is anything to go by.
‘Why do people keep saying horrible things about you on Facebook just because you were bullied at school?’ my 15-year-old son asked me, bemused. ‘Because they’re total losers,’ replied my 18-year-old daughter. Having been forewarned by their schools about how to handle online abuse, they were far better placed to deal with it than me.
My husband was the most shocked — and angered — at the hate-filled messages I showed him. He was the one who then had sleepless nights — and who became the most worried about our physical safety.
I am not easily intimidated, but I was admittedly depressed by this evidence of how little had changed about the mentality of bullies. On the flipside, however, the attempts to undermine me caused something rather wonderful to happen.
A number of distinguished authors, journalists and lawyers — many of whom had, ironically, become friends of mine through Facebook — saw what was being posted on my page and sprang into action, unasked, to defend me with both eloquence and wit.
To see the likes of Philip Hensher, Nicholas Lezard, Louisa Young, Chris Priestly and Katy Guest all pouring scorn on these abusive bloggers was rather like the scene at the end of C.S. Lewis’s Narnia novel, The Silver Chair, when the bullies who have been terrorising the children at the progressive Experiment House are punished.
Alarmed by this unexpected challenge, the trolls began, one by one, to delete their messages. Today, they are all gone — though I, and several others, took copies of them, in case they feel tempted to strike again.
People who do not have Twitter and Facebook accounts may be rather mystified by all of this. Meanwhile, those who do may wonder why I have dared to risk further online abuse by describing my experience here.
The answer is two-fold. One is that I believe bullying will never stop unless there is a concerted effort from the top to confront it, and that while any school continues to appear to condone its own smug cult that will not happen. Second, if you haven’t experienced bullying, you have no idea what a scar it leaves on the soul. Just because I learnt how to use my rage in creative, positive ways, writing novels, doesn’t mean that it’s not there.
Connecting with readers and writers through the web can be one of the greatest delights of 21st-century life, as Twitter and Facebook host a vast virtual conversation, in which people share views and exchange ideas about everything, from trivial thoughts to breaking news. But more and more bloggers and writers are complaining about the intimidating attacks made on them.
Caroline Farrow, a vicar’s wife and mother-of-three who blogs for the Catholic Voices website, recently revealed she receives at least five sexually threatening emails a day.
One of the least offensive read: ‘You’re gonna scream when you get yours. F*****g slag. Butter wouldn’t f*****g melt, and you’ll cry rape when you get what you’ve asked for. Bitch.’ That anybody can get away with writing in such a horrific manner to another human being beggars belief — but, thankfully, the law is slowly catching up.
The Police Central e-Crime Unit is responsible for investigating malicious communications. For example, a man of 60 has been charged with sending threatening Twitter messages to MP Louise Mensch.
Perhaps the threat of arrest, a criminal record and punishment will help the bullies think twice. For the victim, an abusive Twitter message or email is no different from receiving verbal abuse, or getting a poison-pen letter.
For the bully, though, there is one key difference: although they think the internet affords them anonymity, every message can be traced back to a location and a specific computer. Cyberbullies would do well to remember that before they click the send button.
SOURCE
Why my school will stay open during the strike
Striking British teachers are part of a culture that is quick to whine and slow to find solutions
Striking teachers will today subject children and parents across Britain to serious inconvenience. I think they’re wrong to do so. For the past 10 years, I have been head teacher at Woodberry Down primary school in Hackney, and I am executive head of four schools in total. Woodberry Down will stay open today. The other three schools in the group will not, because of union action. That is a shame. Striking should be the last resort for teachers, and we should think carefully before returning to the days of downing tools at the slightest pretext.
This strike demonstrates a lack of realism among teaching unions. Someone has to pay for public sector pensions – we’re all living longer, the economy is stagnating, and teachers ought to understand these facts.
I worry, too, about the example being set to children. I remember the teachers’ strikes in the Eighties. It was fun to be out of school for a day, but we had no respect for those who went on strike. We felt that the proper teachers were the ones who were still there, teaching. We were annoyed, actually. I remember that distinctly. I recall thinking: if it’s that easy to remove yourself, by going on strike, do they actually need all the people in the building? I wouldn’t want to make myself disposable in that way.
Other aspects of the strike disturb me. I’ve heard some staff saying they’re not marching, but are going out “for a jolly” today. I hope that’s not the case. We get 13 weeks off a year and, while lots of us work long hours, taking a free day to go Christmas shopping is an insult to parents. What happens if a mother, forced to take a day off work, bumps into a teacher out lunching today? What message does that send?
The unions have their own agendas. For example, I appeared on breakfast television with Christine Blower, the leader of the NUT, and she criticised synthetic phonics, a proven system for improving literacy. It was only afterwards that she said she had never seen synthetic phonics being taught in a school. Here was the head of the country’s largest teaching union passing judgment on something she had not seen. This suggested that the ideology was more important than the reality. You have to use the teaching methods that work. Synthetic phonics is one, but Christine Blower hadn’t bothered to see how it worked.
It’s the same with Sats. They’re not perfect, but if you don’t have tests, you cannot tell which schools need help. And yet, when I sat in on Lord Bew’s review of Key Stage 2 tests, I heard union after union demanding an end to Sats without offering any credible alternative. They seemed prepared to jeopardise the educational wellbeing of children – since external assessment such as Sats is essential if you are to have a system of accountability that lifts standards in schools.
This is the paradox about the unions: on the one hand, they’re very Left-wing and want money poured into deprived areas, but, on the other, they reject the measures that do some good for children in poor communities. Sadly, some unionised teachers have lost sight of why they came into teaching. Trying to improve failing schools, I have faced obstruction from militant teachers who have become so bound up in ideology that they have forgotten the children. Very often, the unions won’t tolerate anything that threatens their beloved “work-life balance”.
What makes the schools I run successful is that we have teachers who realise that, especially with pupils who start from a low base, you need to go the extra mile. That’s where vocation comes in. The drive and energy that you need to inspire children will never fit into the NUT’s rigid work-life policy. To make education work you need dynamism, not people who sigh, shrug their shoulders and moan.
Compare teaching with the medical profession and you’ll see that there’s a different ethic there. There’s an ethos of service. We have lost that in teaching, and that is a shame. Either what we do matters, or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t matter, and the children can genuinely afford not to be at school for two or three days a year, then why don’t we just increase the holidays?
It all comes down to this: a school exists for one thing, to educate children. Whatever fight you have with the system, engage in the fight in a way that doesn’t undermine you and let down the pupils.
Today’s strike is a symptom of a culture in parts of the educational establishment that is quick to complain and slow to find solutions. I can understand why people are concerned about pensions. Clearly what issues there are need to be resolved. But I think a lot of that concern has been whipped up by unions determined to criticise whatever the Government does. And these unions are determined to live in a world where reality, including financial reality, does not exist.
I didn’t come into the profession for the money. I trained as a teacher because I wanted to improve people’s lives. This is what we try to do in our federation of schools. I love teaching. In fact, I’m looking forward to going into work today. By coming to school I will have helped to make a positive impact on children’s lives, and on their chances of finding fulfilment and reaching their potential – something I would not be able to do standing on Victoria Embankment waving banners.
SOURCE
Chancellor Miller Tear Down This Wall
Mike Adams
Dear Dr. Miller:
Let me first express my great satisfaction over your selection as our new chancellor at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. I am delighted to have a former Mississippi State Bulldog in charge of our university. I am also impressed by your qualifications. Unlike your predecessor, you were not selected on the basis of your gender or any other irrelevant demographic characteristics. You were selected on the basis of your qualifications. You deserved the position you were awarded. And you’ve been doing an outstanding job so far.
Unfortunately, some of the actions of your predecessor have damaged the climate for free expression at UNC-Wilmington. Among those actions was a decision to post our Seahawk Respect Compact on the wall of every classroom at the university. My purpose in raising this issue is fourfold. I want to 1) highlight (by underlining) a portion of the respect compact that I believe to be problematic, 2) explain how I think it could be misinterpreted, 3) relate a recent classroom incident that shows how it is, in fact, being abused, and 4) propose a solution to the problem.
The Seahawk Respect Compact is indented below. Note that the bold portions are not my emphasis. I have underlined only one small portion for emphasis:
As you can see, Chancellor Miller, I have a problem with the suggestion that there is some sort of “right” that extends to “every person” and which entitles him to be the recipient of “respect.” Let me explain why this is wrongheaded by sharing a few examples:
* Several years ago, an N.C. State visiting professor expressed the view that all white people needed to be “exterminated” from the face of the earth. He was invited to debate me on Fox News and he declined. When I went on Fox to denounce him, I was not concerned about “civility.” He was not entitled to it. He’s a violent racist. Nor was he entitled to “respect” for his violent racist views. In fact, given his advocacy of violence and fear of debate he was not even entitled to respect as a human being. He just needed a good public shaming.
* Around that time, a professor here in North Carolina wrote to me saying that the Holocaust was the greatest “hoax” perpetrated in modern history. I went on national television to rebuke her. She was also invited to debate me on Fox News. Like the other racist at N.C. State, she declined. I did not - nor do I now - respect her views. I do not even respect her as a person. Put simply, nothing can make me respect an anti-Semitic Holocaust denier.
* Finally, there is a professor here at UNCW who has reportedly articulated the view – in class, mind you – that 911 was the result of a planned conspiracy between Bush and “the Jews.” Because she has tenure, UNCW is stuck with the 911 conspiracy theorist as well as her anti-Semitic views. But what about the occasional Jewish student in her classroom? Should she be required to “respect” her professor’s anti-Semitic views?
I hope you see the danger in granting a “right” to be respected. Once students begin to believe that respect is an entitlement they are granted - and not a privilege they must earn - the academic work product suffers. Bad ideas are placed on equal footing with good ideas and eventually the pursuit of truth suffers as a whole. But the pursuit of truth is already suffering here at UNCW. Earlier this semester, there was a vigorous discussion in one of our social science classes. Ideas were exchanged and disagreement was articulated. But, following the conversation, something unfortunate happened. The professor sent an email to all of his students reminding them that they were required by the Seahawk Respect Compact to maintain a climate of mutual respect and civility. An important question follows: Is there any chance that the professor’s email will not adversely affect future discussions by creating a chilling effect on free speech?
You know as well as I do that student discussions are not bound by the Seahawk Respect Compact. At this public university, they are bound by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Therefore, I ask that you order the Seahawk Respect Compact to be removed from every classroom at UNCW. I furthermore ask you to replace it with a copy of the First Amendment so students will be reminded daily that the right to be unoffended is to be found nowhere in our constitution.
This action will also remind our students that the UNCW handbook is not the law of the land. The U.S. Constitution is the law of the law. It has not been preserved by the blood and sacrifice of the easily offended.
With all due respect and civility,
Mike S. Adams
SOURCE
It is shameful but Leftists are hate-driven so it is no surprise. When accused of bullying, they proved the accusation true by being bullies. Amazing. Leftists just can't help themselves. The bile just pours out of them
Amanda Craig
What is it that makes people want to send vitriolic abuse, including death threats, to a total stranger? I can’t begin to imagine. But this year, thanks to Twitter and Facebook, I do know what it is like to be on the receiving end of such embittered hatefulness.
Why? Because I’d dared to write a piece in this newspaper about my teenage years spent at Bedales, the progressive public school that was embroiled in a scandal earlier this year concerning shoplifting and under-age sex.
As a pupil at the school in the 1970s, I had experienced a level of bullying and abuse that I still find disturbing to think about to this day and which inspired my second novel, written 20 years ago, A Private Place.
Yet when I set down my painful memories of my formative years on paper, I never imagined I’d be setting myself up as a sitting target for a new breed of modern-day bullies, who choose not the school playground, but the internet to target their victims.
‘Cyberbullying’ isn’t confined to children — it is a contemporary menace in which people can be targeted anywhere, at any time. When my email inbox began to fill up with awful messages, my first reaction was one of exasperation, quickly followed by cold contempt.
I was totally unprepared for the slew of virulent messages that, for the next month, pinged into my inbox via both my Twitter account and my public Facebook page. Many of these messages are unpublishable in a national newspaper, but they included threats to my personal safety, disgusting sexual abuse, venomous comments about my looks and personality, a flurry of one-star Amazon reviews of my novels — and several attempts to hack into my Wikipedia entry.
Astonishingly, those behind them were girls and boys of between 15 and 21 years old, many of whom declared themselves to be current or former pupils of Bedales. They defended the school by calling me bitter, greedy, bitchy and, what’s more, claimed that I ‘deserved to be bullied’. Then they said that the school was wonderful, and that bullying didn’t exist there, and that ‘every single one of (the abusive comments that had been posted about me) was understandable and acceptable’.
The poisonous mob mentality these messages displayed actually did far more to show any current or prospective parent the ugly side of a ‘liberal’ education than what I had written. I was told that ‘we know where you live, so watch out’, ‘your [sic] dead, bitch’, ‘die, you ugly c***’ and so on.
‘You are insulting an establishment you show no understanding of, in a way in which you can only expect a [sic] outraged reaction. You have not only insulted our way of life, our home but us as individuals. I feel personally attacked,’ wrote one boy.
A couple of current pupils were moved to express sympathy and to assure me that things had changed, but these, like the nicer kind of Bedalian student of my own time, seemed far and few between.
One posted a more moderate, thoughtful comment about my article — and his peers turned on him: ‘Stop s***ing her d**k Toby, and stick up for the f*****g school. Your [sic] the minority here!’ wrote one who called himself George Zealington Vaughan-Barratt.
The abuse was so remarkable that two national newspapers picked it up, and one even wrote a leader page column. Yet when the Head of Bedales, Keith Budge, was approached for comment, his response, as quoted in the Daily Telegraph, was to say his pupils were simply defending their school.
The Old Bedalian magazine, edited by a former member of staff, decided to publish a sneering piece, which included a photograph of me printed upside-down and — a lovely touch — an encomium of the school’s creativity by Kirstie Allsopp.
Nobody in authority has attempted to contact me to apologise, and no pupil, as far as I know, has been reprimanded. Now, I don’t take the ravings of over-excited teenagers seriously. But neither do I think anyone should be allowed to get away with this kind of behaviour — least of all the privileged pupils of a £30,000-a-year school.
For such mindless venom to come from privileged children living in conditions which the majority can only dream of, and attending an institution that prides itself on its liberal outlook would be especially offensive.
Every contemporary school is aware of the life-long emotional and psychological damage that bullying can cause, and the responsible ones, both in the state and private sectors, have strong protocols about dealing with such issues, especially online.
Cyberbullying is worse and more cowardly than playground bullying. Even as an adult, I found the abuse deeply offensive. It was extraordinary that I was being addressed as if I were still the vulnerable, innocent 12-year-old I had been all those years ago. What I had described was so painful that I thought nobody in their right mind could feel anything but shame and compassion — and, more importantly, concern about whether the ills I described were still happening.
Instead, it seemed to provoke the opposite reaction. It was extraordinary — and ludicrous. But that’s the thing about the internet. While it has transformed the way people can communicate, it has also allowed some to say the most unkind things to someone they don’t know, have never met, and wouldn’t dare to confront face-to-face.
These so-called ‘trolls’, inspired by envy, rage and spite, appear to live in a parallel universe in which they believe they can threaten, stalk, intimidate and libel anyone with impunity.
You don’t have to do something as provocative as write about your unhappy schooldays to set them off. Just being pretty, happy, or good at what you do is enough. Whole families can be affected by the fall-out, if my experience is anything to go by.
‘Why do people keep saying horrible things about you on Facebook just because you were bullied at school?’ my 15-year-old son asked me, bemused. ‘Because they’re total losers,’ replied my 18-year-old daughter. Having been forewarned by their schools about how to handle online abuse, they were far better placed to deal with it than me.
My husband was the most shocked — and angered — at the hate-filled messages I showed him. He was the one who then had sleepless nights — and who became the most worried about our physical safety.
I am not easily intimidated, but I was admittedly depressed by this evidence of how little had changed about the mentality of bullies. On the flipside, however, the attempts to undermine me caused something rather wonderful to happen.
A number of distinguished authors, journalists and lawyers — many of whom had, ironically, become friends of mine through Facebook — saw what was being posted on my page and sprang into action, unasked, to defend me with both eloquence and wit.
To see the likes of Philip Hensher, Nicholas Lezard, Louisa Young, Chris Priestly and Katy Guest all pouring scorn on these abusive bloggers was rather like the scene at the end of C.S. Lewis’s Narnia novel, The Silver Chair, when the bullies who have been terrorising the children at the progressive Experiment House are punished.
Alarmed by this unexpected challenge, the trolls began, one by one, to delete their messages. Today, they are all gone — though I, and several others, took copies of them, in case they feel tempted to strike again.
People who do not have Twitter and Facebook accounts may be rather mystified by all of this. Meanwhile, those who do may wonder why I have dared to risk further online abuse by describing my experience here.
The answer is two-fold. One is that I believe bullying will never stop unless there is a concerted effort from the top to confront it, and that while any school continues to appear to condone its own smug cult that will not happen. Second, if you haven’t experienced bullying, you have no idea what a scar it leaves on the soul. Just because I learnt how to use my rage in creative, positive ways, writing novels, doesn’t mean that it’s not there.
Connecting with readers and writers through the web can be one of the greatest delights of 21st-century life, as Twitter and Facebook host a vast virtual conversation, in which people share views and exchange ideas about everything, from trivial thoughts to breaking news. But more and more bloggers and writers are complaining about the intimidating attacks made on them.
Caroline Farrow, a vicar’s wife and mother-of-three who blogs for the Catholic Voices website, recently revealed she receives at least five sexually threatening emails a day.
One of the least offensive read: ‘You’re gonna scream when you get yours. F*****g slag. Butter wouldn’t f*****g melt, and you’ll cry rape when you get what you’ve asked for. Bitch.’ That anybody can get away with writing in such a horrific manner to another human being beggars belief — but, thankfully, the law is slowly catching up.
The Police Central e-Crime Unit is responsible for investigating malicious communications. For example, a man of 60 has been charged with sending threatening Twitter messages to MP Louise Mensch.
Perhaps the threat of arrest, a criminal record and punishment will help the bullies think twice. For the victim, an abusive Twitter message or email is no different from receiving verbal abuse, or getting a poison-pen letter.
For the bully, though, there is one key difference: although they think the internet affords them anonymity, every message can be traced back to a location and a specific computer. Cyberbullies would do well to remember that before they click the send button.
SOURCE
Why my school will stay open during the strike
Striking British teachers are part of a culture that is quick to whine and slow to find solutions
Striking teachers will today subject children and parents across Britain to serious inconvenience. I think they’re wrong to do so. For the past 10 years, I have been head teacher at Woodberry Down primary school in Hackney, and I am executive head of four schools in total. Woodberry Down will stay open today. The other three schools in the group will not, because of union action. That is a shame. Striking should be the last resort for teachers, and we should think carefully before returning to the days of downing tools at the slightest pretext.
This strike demonstrates a lack of realism among teaching unions. Someone has to pay for public sector pensions – we’re all living longer, the economy is stagnating, and teachers ought to understand these facts.
I worry, too, about the example being set to children. I remember the teachers’ strikes in the Eighties. It was fun to be out of school for a day, but we had no respect for those who went on strike. We felt that the proper teachers were the ones who were still there, teaching. We were annoyed, actually. I remember that distinctly. I recall thinking: if it’s that easy to remove yourself, by going on strike, do they actually need all the people in the building? I wouldn’t want to make myself disposable in that way.
Other aspects of the strike disturb me. I’ve heard some staff saying they’re not marching, but are going out “for a jolly” today. I hope that’s not the case. We get 13 weeks off a year and, while lots of us work long hours, taking a free day to go Christmas shopping is an insult to parents. What happens if a mother, forced to take a day off work, bumps into a teacher out lunching today? What message does that send?
The unions have their own agendas. For example, I appeared on breakfast television with Christine Blower, the leader of the NUT, and she criticised synthetic phonics, a proven system for improving literacy. It was only afterwards that she said she had never seen synthetic phonics being taught in a school. Here was the head of the country’s largest teaching union passing judgment on something she had not seen. This suggested that the ideology was more important than the reality. You have to use the teaching methods that work. Synthetic phonics is one, but Christine Blower hadn’t bothered to see how it worked.
It’s the same with Sats. They’re not perfect, but if you don’t have tests, you cannot tell which schools need help. And yet, when I sat in on Lord Bew’s review of Key Stage 2 tests, I heard union after union demanding an end to Sats without offering any credible alternative. They seemed prepared to jeopardise the educational wellbeing of children – since external assessment such as Sats is essential if you are to have a system of accountability that lifts standards in schools.
This is the paradox about the unions: on the one hand, they’re very Left-wing and want money poured into deprived areas, but, on the other, they reject the measures that do some good for children in poor communities. Sadly, some unionised teachers have lost sight of why they came into teaching. Trying to improve failing schools, I have faced obstruction from militant teachers who have become so bound up in ideology that they have forgotten the children. Very often, the unions won’t tolerate anything that threatens their beloved “work-life balance”.
What makes the schools I run successful is that we have teachers who realise that, especially with pupils who start from a low base, you need to go the extra mile. That’s where vocation comes in. The drive and energy that you need to inspire children will never fit into the NUT’s rigid work-life policy. To make education work you need dynamism, not people who sigh, shrug their shoulders and moan.
Compare teaching with the medical profession and you’ll see that there’s a different ethic there. There’s an ethos of service. We have lost that in teaching, and that is a shame. Either what we do matters, or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t matter, and the children can genuinely afford not to be at school for two or three days a year, then why don’t we just increase the holidays?
It all comes down to this: a school exists for one thing, to educate children. Whatever fight you have with the system, engage in the fight in a way that doesn’t undermine you and let down the pupils.
Today’s strike is a symptom of a culture in parts of the educational establishment that is quick to complain and slow to find solutions. I can understand why people are concerned about pensions. Clearly what issues there are need to be resolved. But I think a lot of that concern has been whipped up by unions determined to criticise whatever the Government does. And these unions are determined to live in a world where reality, including financial reality, does not exist.
I didn’t come into the profession for the money. I trained as a teacher because I wanted to improve people’s lives. This is what we try to do in our federation of schools. I love teaching. In fact, I’m looking forward to going into work today. By coming to school I will have helped to make a positive impact on children’s lives, and on their chances of finding fulfilment and reaching their potential – something I would not be able to do standing on Victoria Embankment waving banners.
SOURCE
Chancellor Miller Tear Down This Wall
Mike Adams
Dear Dr. Miller:
Let me first express my great satisfaction over your selection as our new chancellor at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. I am delighted to have a former Mississippi State Bulldog in charge of our university. I am also impressed by your qualifications. Unlike your predecessor, you were not selected on the basis of your gender or any other irrelevant demographic characteristics. You were selected on the basis of your qualifications. You deserved the position you were awarded. And you’ve been doing an outstanding job so far.
Unfortunately, some of the actions of your predecessor have damaged the climate for free expression at UNC-Wilmington. Among those actions was a decision to post our Seahawk Respect Compact on the wall of every classroom at the university. My purpose in raising this issue is fourfold. I want to 1) highlight (by underlining) a portion of the respect compact that I believe to be problematic, 2) explain how I think it could be misinterpreted, 3) relate a recent classroom incident that shows how it is, in fact, being abused, and 4) propose a solution to the problem.
The Seahawk Respect Compact is indented below. Note that the bold portions are not my emphasis. I have underlined only one small portion for emphasis:
In the pursuit of excellence, UNC Wilmington actively fosters, encourages, and promotes inclusiveness, mutual respect, acceptance, and open-mindedness among students, faculty, staff and the broader community.
~ We affirm the dignity of all persons.
~ We promote the right of every person to participate in the free exchange of thoughts and opinions within a climate of civility and mutual respect.
~ We strive for openness and mutual understanding to learn from differences in people, ideas and opinions.
~ We foster an environment of respect for each individual, even where differences exist, by eliminating prejudice and discrimination through education and interaction with others.
Therefore, we expect members of the campus community to honor these principles as fundamental to our ongoing efforts to increase access to and inclusion in a community that nurtures learning and growth for all.
As you can see, Chancellor Miller, I have a problem with the suggestion that there is some sort of “right” that extends to “every person” and which entitles him to be the recipient of “respect.” Let me explain why this is wrongheaded by sharing a few examples:
* Several years ago, an N.C. State visiting professor expressed the view that all white people needed to be “exterminated” from the face of the earth. He was invited to debate me on Fox News and he declined. When I went on Fox to denounce him, I was not concerned about “civility.” He was not entitled to it. He’s a violent racist. Nor was he entitled to “respect” for his violent racist views. In fact, given his advocacy of violence and fear of debate he was not even entitled to respect as a human being. He just needed a good public shaming.
* Around that time, a professor here in North Carolina wrote to me saying that the Holocaust was the greatest “hoax” perpetrated in modern history. I went on national television to rebuke her. She was also invited to debate me on Fox News. Like the other racist at N.C. State, she declined. I did not - nor do I now - respect her views. I do not even respect her as a person. Put simply, nothing can make me respect an anti-Semitic Holocaust denier.
* Finally, there is a professor here at UNCW who has reportedly articulated the view – in class, mind you – that 911 was the result of a planned conspiracy between Bush and “the Jews.” Because she has tenure, UNCW is stuck with the 911 conspiracy theorist as well as her anti-Semitic views. But what about the occasional Jewish student in her classroom? Should she be required to “respect” her professor’s anti-Semitic views?
I hope you see the danger in granting a “right” to be respected. Once students begin to believe that respect is an entitlement they are granted - and not a privilege they must earn - the academic work product suffers. Bad ideas are placed on equal footing with good ideas and eventually the pursuit of truth suffers as a whole. But the pursuit of truth is already suffering here at UNCW. Earlier this semester, there was a vigorous discussion in one of our social science classes. Ideas were exchanged and disagreement was articulated. But, following the conversation, something unfortunate happened. The professor sent an email to all of his students reminding them that they were required by the Seahawk Respect Compact to maintain a climate of mutual respect and civility. An important question follows: Is there any chance that the professor’s email will not adversely affect future discussions by creating a chilling effect on free speech?
You know as well as I do that student discussions are not bound by the Seahawk Respect Compact. At this public university, they are bound by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Therefore, I ask that you order the Seahawk Respect Compact to be removed from every classroom at UNCW. I furthermore ask you to replace it with a copy of the First Amendment so students will be reminded daily that the right to be unoffended is to be found nowhere in our constitution.
This action will also remind our students that the UNCW handbook is not the law of the land. The U.S. Constitution is the law of the law. It has not been preserved by the blood and sacrifice of the easily offended.
With all due respect and civility,
Mike S. Adams
SOURCE
Thursday, December 01, 2011
Is this the future of American education?
The Look Like America bill, originally H.R. 1533, seemed a perfectly ordinary piece of feel-good legislation when proposed by Barack Osama Obama. “Our diversity is our strength,” he said. “We must increase the representation of minorites in our institutions to reflect our diverse population and ensure the fairness for which America stands.” Congress passed the bill without reading it. It was the sort of thing one passed. Besides, there was no money involved, and the bill was not obviously anti-Semitic.
Not obviously. But then one of the obscure policy shops that abound in Washington, the Committee for Ethnic Piety, filed suit against Harvard for noncompiance. The proximate cause was an article in the Harvard Crimson, the school newspaper, about a course called Math 55, the hardest math course at the univrsity and thus, Harvard liked to think, in America. The students in Math 55, reported the Crimson, were 45 percent Jewish, 18 percent Asian, and 100 prcent male. The class didn't, said the Committee for Ethnic Piety, look like America.
It certainly didn't.
Harvard, ever sensitive to questions of justice, which it conflated with federal funding, agreed to make the class Look Like America. The administration asserted that only through inadvertence had it failed to notice the clear racism, sexism, and continent-ism occurring under its nose. It established a committee of reform, which set to work.
The first and most ticklish hurdle was The Jewish Question. Jews were two percent of the American population. At 45 percent in Math 55, they were over-represented by a factor of over twenty. The injustice was undeniable. Two percent of a class of twenty-five meant that Math 55 should contain half a Jew. It would then look like America. The Jewish students would have to go.
As news of the proposed ethnographic hecatomb spread across the country, alarm erupted among the prejudiced. Over seven hundred departments of engineering across the country protested. They could see where Looking Like America was going. Math departments, Silicon Valley, the National Institutes of Health—all reeked of injustice, meaning Koreans, Jews, Indianss, and Chinese, and were conscious of sin. They didn't Look Like America. They Looked Like Math 55. In the Bay area, the proportion of geniuses from India in computing was alarmingly high. Some laboratories Looked Like the Punjab. These malefactors knew well that the coming of justice would gut their enterprises.
Desperate to maintain their positions of racial and patriarchal privilege, they pointed out that the Jewish kids, like all the students in Math 55, had 800 math Boards and had done things like independently develop tensor calculus by the age of three. The view from the Gulch was expressed off-the-record by Dr. Gud Soma Darjeeling, president of Santa Clara Neurocomputing, which employed seventy PhDs in solid-state physics, including three Anglos. “Look, the US is in intellectual collapse. The average American university wouldn't qualify as a high-school in Japan. It's crazy. The whole world know it's crazy. But take out the Kims, Khans, Nguyens, Wangs, and Cohens, and what's left is Albania in 1750.”
The lead attorney for CEP, Patricia Mikoyan-Gurevich, wasn't having it: “Ability doesn't exist, and occurs equally in all groups, and anyway justice is more important than patriarchal-racist abstractions. Sexism is clear at Harvard. When an entire class is male, it isn't by accident.”
With this, no one was in disagreement.
Asians were as problematic as Jews. If a Jewish pppulation of two percent required half a Jew in a class of twenty-five, then a six percent population of Aisans required an Asian-and-a-half. Various solutions were proposed. Perhaps a short, light-weight Gujarati would do, or maybe a prodigy of ten from Mumbai. Otherwise, admitting three Asians every two years might serve.
The paucity of females in Math 55 was easier to address. Harvard had already established that there was no difference in mathematical ability by firing a president who thought there might be. Since ability didn't exist and was found equally in everyone, the sxual balance was quickly rendered equitable by eliminating entrance requirements.
Harvard then set about the intricate matter of making the class thirteen percent black, sixteen percent Hispanic, a tenth of a percent Iroquois, and so on.
Meanwhile, CEP turned its attention to the lush pastures of music. The New York Philharmonic, being in New York, was discovered to consist disportionately of Italians, Jews, Hungarians, and so on. It Looked Like New York, which wouldn't do. The American Association of the Musically Hopeless, consisting of the deaf, tone-deaf, mutes, and amputees, filed suit on grounds that their membership was not represented at all. (They carefully overlooked the fact that they were over-represented among rock bands.) This brought up an important juridical question: Since most Americans could not play an instrument, should not the orchestra reflect this?
Thirteen years after the passage of the Look Like America bill, the United States ranked in international measures of mathematics just behind the Central African Republic, the New York Phil couldn't play Happy Birthday, and racial and sexual justice flourished. Yet the vexed problem of Math 55 had not been entirely solved. Progress had been made, yes. The class looked almost like America, counting on its fingers and showing no trace of patriarchalism, which in any event it couldn't spell. However, CEP's Committee on Oppressed and Marginalized Indigenous Peoples of Color noted that the class contained no student from oppressed peoples of the Amazon rain forest. CEP regarded national boundaries as essentially phallic, since they were longer than they were wide, and thus beneath notice.
Harvard, distraught at finding yet another instance of its institutional racism, cast about for a suitable indigene.
After a laborious search the university discovered Wunxputl, a member of the Tloxyproctyl tribe of the Amazon Basin, consisting of twelve people who lived on yams and the flesh of the Three-Toed Sloth. Wunxputl was at Wellesley, where he served in a minor administrative position that had no responsibilities. He had been brought there seven years earlier by the anthropology department, so it could atone for White Guilt. It didn't matter that Wellesley was guilty of nothing. The atonement was a pleasant form of narcissism, allowing the faculty to congratulate themselves on their moral purity.
Harvard arranged with Wellesley to borrow Wunxputl for three minutes every seven years, which it had calculated would satisfy the demands of ethnic proportionality. Justice, at last, had been achieved.
SOURCE
Zero Tolerance Insanity
Desperation is slowly setting in with the educational overseers of our prepubescent and adolescent inmates at America’s public schools. Zero tolerance for innocence is now the rule. Normal affection between human beings has become grounds for opprobrium and punishment at school.
In Palm Bay Florida, for example, a middle school student was suspended for hugging a friend in the hallway between classes.
There’s a zero-tolerance for hugging policy at this school. There’s no difference between an unwanted hug, or sexual harassment, and a hug between friends according to Southwest Middle School's student handbook and strict zero-tolerance for affection policy.
The kid gave a quick hug to his best female friend. The principal saw it. The hug was innocent. He knew that. But both kids were brought to the dean’s office. Both were suspended for violating the zero-tolerance for hugging policy.
“[W]e cannot discriminate or make an opinion on what is an appropriate hug, what's not an appropriate hug," a school district spokesperson explained. "What you may think is appropriate, another person may view as inappropriate."
Elsewhere in Florida, a hysterical Orange River Elementary School administrator called the cops when a 12-year-old girl was spotted planting a kiss on a boy during recess.
On the playground one day two little 12-year-old girls were apparently discussing the matter as to which of them liked a 12-year-old boy more when one of them just walked over and kissed the lucky lad.
Lee County Sheriff’s deputies were immediately dispatched to the playground scene of the “crime” by a call from the schools assistant principal to deal with the situation between two consenting school children who shared an innocent little kiss.
"They called us and said they caught two children kissing on the playground," Sgt. Stephanie Eller told Fox News & Commentary. The deputies took a report and documented the incident, but determined no crime had been committed. No one was arrested, she added.
"If it had been a crime at all it would have been a simple battery,” said Eller. “The battery consists of the unwanted touching of one person to another."
So now I suppose that innocent games of tag on playgrounds all across America will give rise to “crimes” of unwanted touching – battery in the schoolyard – for which the little ones involved will be arrested, handcuffed, and taken to the police station for booking and punishment.
Zero tolerance for touching. Zero tolerance for discretion. Zero tolerance for common sense. Will a pat on the back or the shaking of innocent hands be next?
SOURCE
Bright British children to be sent to 'maths schools'
A rather strange idea -- but it may be a reasonable response to a shortage of good math teachers
A new generation of maths schools will be created as part of a Government plan to boost Britain’s economic competitiveness, it emerged today.
Around 12 specialist institutions for 16- to 18-year-olds will be opened to give pupils expert tuition under the guidance of university mathematics departments
Unveiling the plans in his Autumn Statement, George Osborne said the colleges would help produce graduates in academic disciplines seen as vital to the country’s economic recovery.
On Tuesday, the Chancellor announced that a total of £600m would be earmarked for 100 new “free schools” – establishments opened and run by parents' groups, charities and private companies free of local council interference – between 2013/14 and 2014/2015.
Of those, around a dozen will specialise in maths for teenagers, he said. “This will give our most talented young mathematicians the chance to flourish,” Mr Osborne told the Commons. “These ‘Maths Free Schools’ are exactly what Britain needs to match our competitors – and produce more of the engineering and science graduates so important for our longer term economic success.”
But teachers condemned the move. Brian Lightman, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “At a time of unprecedented economic pressure it is incomprehensible that the Government is committing that sum of funding to creating 100 new free schools when so many existing schools are in desperate need of investment.”
Chris Keates, general secretary of the NASUWT, said: “In naked pursuit of the Coalition's elitist vision of education, 100 free schools and a handful of pupils get £600m while children in 22,000 other schools fight over a few hundred pounds.”
In a further announcement, it was revealed that another £600m would be spent creating additional school places in areas with the greatest “demographic pressures”. It is already feared that many infants are being forced to travel miles to primary school because of an acute shortage of places caused by a baby boom and influx of migrants in some areas. Many schools have been forced to turn hundreds of children away while others have created extra space by educating pupils in mobile classrooms or local church halls.
The biggest pressures have been reported in parts of London and cities such as Bristol and Birmingham.
On Tuesday, Mr Osborne said money would be allocated to places with the greatest need to deliver an additional 40,000 school places between 2012/13 and 2014/15. This comes on top of £800m a year already allocated each year – and an extra £500m for 2011/12.
SOURCE
The Look Like America bill, originally H.R. 1533, seemed a perfectly ordinary piece of feel-good legislation when proposed by Barack Osama Obama. “Our diversity is our strength,” he said. “We must increase the representation of minorites in our institutions to reflect our diverse population and ensure the fairness for which America stands.” Congress passed the bill without reading it. It was the sort of thing one passed. Besides, there was no money involved, and the bill was not obviously anti-Semitic.
Not obviously. But then one of the obscure policy shops that abound in Washington, the Committee for Ethnic Piety, filed suit against Harvard for noncompiance. The proximate cause was an article in the Harvard Crimson, the school newspaper, about a course called Math 55, the hardest math course at the univrsity and thus, Harvard liked to think, in America. The students in Math 55, reported the Crimson, were 45 percent Jewish, 18 percent Asian, and 100 prcent male. The class didn't, said the Committee for Ethnic Piety, look like America.
It certainly didn't.
Harvard, ever sensitive to questions of justice, which it conflated with federal funding, agreed to make the class Look Like America. The administration asserted that only through inadvertence had it failed to notice the clear racism, sexism, and continent-ism occurring under its nose. It established a committee of reform, which set to work.
The first and most ticklish hurdle was The Jewish Question. Jews were two percent of the American population. At 45 percent in Math 55, they were over-represented by a factor of over twenty. The injustice was undeniable. Two percent of a class of twenty-five meant that Math 55 should contain half a Jew. It would then look like America. The Jewish students would have to go.
As news of the proposed ethnographic hecatomb spread across the country, alarm erupted among the prejudiced. Over seven hundred departments of engineering across the country protested. They could see where Looking Like America was going. Math departments, Silicon Valley, the National Institutes of Health—all reeked of injustice, meaning Koreans, Jews, Indianss, and Chinese, and were conscious of sin. They didn't Look Like America. They Looked Like Math 55. In the Bay area, the proportion of geniuses from India in computing was alarmingly high. Some laboratories Looked Like the Punjab. These malefactors knew well that the coming of justice would gut their enterprises.
Desperate to maintain their positions of racial and patriarchal privilege, they pointed out that the Jewish kids, like all the students in Math 55, had 800 math Boards and had done things like independently develop tensor calculus by the age of three. The view from the Gulch was expressed off-the-record by Dr. Gud Soma Darjeeling, president of Santa Clara Neurocomputing, which employed seventy PhDs in solid-state physics, including three Anglos. “Look, the US is in intellectual collapse. The average American university wouldn't qualify as a high-school in Japan. It's crazy. The whole world know it's crazy. But take out the Kims, Khans, Nguyens, Wangs, and Cohens, and what's left is Albania in 1750.”
The lead attorney for CEP, Patricia Mikoyan-Gurevich, wasn't having it: “Ability doesn't exist, and occurs equally in all groups, and anyway justice is more important than patriarchal-racist abstractions. Sexism is clear at Harvard. When an entire class is male, it isn't by accident.”
With this, no one was in disagreement.
Asians were as problematic as Jews. If a Jewish pppulation of two percent required half a Jew in a class of twenty-five, then a six percent population of Aisans required an Asian-and-a-half. Various solutions were proposed. Perhaps a short, light-weight Gujarati would do, or maybe a prodigy of ten from Mumbai. Otherwise, admitting three Asians every two years might serve.
The paucity of females in Math 55 was easier to address. Harvard had already established that there was no difference in mathematical ability by firing a president who thought there might be. Since ability didn't exist and was found equally in everyone, the sxual balance was quickly rendered equitable by eliminating entrance requirements.
Harvard then set about the intricate matter of making the class thirteen percent black, sixteen percent Hispanic, a tenth of a percent Iroquois, and so on.
Meanwhile, CEP turned its attention to the lush pastures of music. The New York Philharmonic, being in New York, was discovered to consist disportionately of Italians, Jews, Hungarians, and so on. It Looked Like New York, which wouldn't do. The American Association of the Musically Hopeless, consisting of the deaf, tone-deaf, mutes, and amputees, filed suit on grounds that their membership was not represented at all. (They carefully overlooked the fact that they were over-represented among rock bands.) This brought up an important juridical question: Since most Americans could not play an instrument, should not the orchestra reflect this?
Thirteen years after the passage of the Look Like America bill, the United States ranked in international measures of mathematics just behind the Central African Republic, the New York Phil couldn't play Happy Birthday, and racial and sexual justice flourished. Yet the vexed problem of Math 55 had not been entirely solved. Progress had been made, yes. The class looked almost like America, counting on its fingers and showing no trace of patriarchalism, which in any event it couldn't spell. However, CEP's Committee on Oppressed and Marginalized Indigenous Peoples of Color noted that the class contained no student from oppressed peoples of the Amazon rain forest. CEP regarded national boundaries as essentially phallic, since they were longer than they were wide, and thus beneath notice.
Harvard, distraught at finding yet another instance of its institutional racism, cast about for a suitable indigene.
After a laborious search the university discovered Wunxputl, a member of the Tloxyproctyl tribe of the Amazon Basin, consisting of twelve people who lived on yams and the flesh of the Three-Toed Sloth. Wunxputl was at Wellesley, where he served in a minor administrative position that had no responsibilities. He had been brought there seven years earlier by the anthropology department, so it could atone for White Guilt. It didn't matter that Wellesley was guilty of nothing. The atonement was a pleasant form of narcissism, allowing the faculty to congratulate themselves on their moral purity.
Harvard arranged with Wellesley to borrow Wunxputl for three minutes every seven years, which it had calculated would satisfy the demands of ethnic proportionality. Justice, at last, had been achieved.
SOURCE
Zero Tolerance Insanity
Desperation is slowly setting in with the educational overseers of our prepubescent and adolescent inmates at America’s public schools. Zero tolerance for innocence is now the rule. Normal affection between human beings has become grounds for opprobrium and punishment at school.
In Palm Bay Florida, for example, a middle school student was suspended for hugging a friend in the hallway between classes.
There’s a zero-tolerance for hugging policy at this school. There’s no difference between an unwanted hug, or sexual harassment, and a hug between friends according to Southwest Middle School's student handbook and strict zero-tolerance for affection policy.
The kid gave a quick hug to his best female friend. The principal saw it. The hug was innocent. He knew that. But both kids were brought to the dean’s office. Both were suspended for violating the zero-tolerance for hugging policy.
“[W]e cannot discriminate or make an opinion on what is an appropriate hug, what's not an appropriate hug," a school district spokesperson explained. "What you may think is appropriate, another person may view as inappropriate."
Elsewhere in Florida, a hysterical Orange River Elementary School administrator called the cops when a 12-year-old girl was spotted planting a kiss on a boy during recess.
On the playground one day two little 12-year-old girls were apparently discussing the matter as to which of them liked a 12-year-old boy more when one of them just walked over and kissed the lucky lad.
Lee County Sheriff’s deputies were immediately dispatched to the playground scene of the “crime” by a call from the schools assistant principal to deal with the situation between two consenting school children who shared an innocent little kiss.
"They called us and said they caught two children kissing on the playground," Sgt. Stephanie Eller told Fox News & Commentary. The deputies took a report and documented the incident, but determined no crime had been committed. No one was arrested, she added.
"If it had been a crime at all it would have been a simple battery,” said Eller. “The battery consists of the unwanted touching of one person to another."
So now I suppose that innocent games of tag on playgrounds all across America will give rise to “crimes” of unwanted touching – battery in the schoolyard – for which the little ones involved will be arrested, handcuffed, and taken to the police station for booking and punishment.
Zero tolerance for touching. Zero tolerance for discretion. Zero tolerance for common sense. Will a pat on the back or the shaking of innocent hands be next?
SOURCE
Bright British children to be sent to 'maths schools'
A rather strange idea -- but it may be a reasonable response to a shortage of good math teachers
A new generation of maths schools will be created as part of a Government plan to boost Britain’s economic competitiveness, it emerged today.
Around 12 specialist institutions for 16- to 18-year-olds will be opened to give pupils expert tuition under the guidance of university mathematics departments
Unveiling the plans in his Autumn Statement, George Osborne said the colleges would help produce graduates in academic disciplines seen as vital to the country’s economic recovery.
On Tuesday, the Chancellor announced that a total of £600m would be earmarked for 100 new “free schools” – establishments opened and run by parents' groups, charities and private companies free of local council interference – between 2013/14 and 2014/2015.
Of those, around a dozen will specialise in maths for teenagers, he said. “This will give our most talented young mathematicians the chance to flourish,” Mr Osborne told the Commons. “These ‘Maths Free Schools’ are exactly what Britain needs to match our competitors – and produce more of the engineering and science graduates so important for our longer term economic success.”
But teachers condemned the move. Brian Lightman, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “At a time of unprecedented economic pressure it is incomprehensible that the Government is committing that sum of funding to creating 100 new free schools when so many existing schools are in desperate need of investment.”
Chris Keates, general secretary of the NASUWT, said: “In naked pursuit of the Coalition's elitist vision of education, 100 free schools and a handful of pupils get £600m while children in 22,000 other schools fight over a few hundred pounds.”
In a further announcement, it was revealed that another £600m would be spent creating additional school places in areas with the greatest “demographic pressures”. It is already feared that many infants are being forced to travel miles to primary school because of an acute shortage of places caused by a baby boom and influx of migrants in some areas. Many schools have been forced to turn hundreds of children away while others have created extra space by educating pupils in mobile classrooms or local church halls.
The biggest pressures have been reported in parts of London and cities such as Bristol and Birmingham.
On Tuesday, Mr Osborne said money would be allocated to places with the greatest need to deliver an additional 40,000 school places between 2012/13 and 2014/15. This comes on top of £800m a year already allocated each year – and an extra £500m for 2011/12.
SOURCE
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