I remember how it was -- JR
More testimony to the appalling state of many British government schools
A desperate couple are willing to give their daughter up if it means that she can go her first choice of secondary school. James and Stella Coils say they'll let their 10-year-old daughter Rebecca live with a relative if it means she can go to her favoured school. The Coils are considering transferring guardianship of their child to their daughter's great-aunt, Mary Holland, after being denied a place at Manor College of Technology in Hartlepool.
Holland, lives only half a mile from the Owton Manor Lane school - directly in its catchment area. She is happy to go along with plans and be Rebecca's carer, saying that she feels Hartlepool Borough Council has let her family down. The family has been left distraught after the council allocated Rebecca, a year-six Eldon Grove Primary School pupil, a place at St Hild's C of E Secondary School in Hartlepool. The school is more than five miles away from their home in Seaton Carew.
The couple filled in the selection form around two months ago listing in order of preference the town's six secondary schools. But they were stunned when not only did they miss out on their first choice but were offered a place in their fourth choice school. Mr Coil, 34, said: "We only picked St Hild's because we had to pick schools on the form, we never wanted her to go there. "The school is on the other side of town and it is five miles away. She would have to get two buses to get there."
The parents have appealed against the decision but Holland, who works for Orange, said that if she is not allocated another place he would take the drastic action. He said: "We have considered putting her in the guardianship of Stella's aunty who lives in the catchment area for Manor, or we would home-school her. "That would be worst case scenario but we would do it. Her education will shape her into the person she becomes and we are not happy with the choice of school that we have been given."
Mrs Holland, 54, who lives with her husband Brian, 49, said: "It's a big ask but her education is very important so I would do it. "I'm gobsmacked, It would be a shame that four or five days out of the week her parents would miss out on her upbringing."
A council spokesman said: "Under the allocations process, parents are asked to list a minimum of three schools in order of preference and we do our very best to meet one of those preferences based on the number of places available. "However, if there are more applications for a school than there are places as there are this year in the case of Manor, English Martyrs and High Tunstall, we make allocations for community schools and foundation schools in accordance with the published admissions arrangement. "As with every application we have tried to do our best for Mr and Mrs Coils within the terms of the published admissions arrangements, and we have also advised them of their right to appeal."
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Racial discrimination flourishing at the University of California
As we know from the Jim Crow days, it is marvellous how effective a nod and a wink can be. Post below recycled from Discriminations. See the original for links
The new University of California admissions statistic are now out, and UCLA is pleased as punch to announce that the "holistic" system it devised to admit more blacks and Hispanics (and, correspondingly, fewer Asians and whites) actually admitted more blacks and Hispanics and fewer Asians and whites.
The University of California system as a whole released a truck load of data, including the number of admits by ethnicity. Unless I missed it, however, no data was released revealing the ratio of admits to applications by race and ethnicity. That is, from this massive data dump it is still impossible to compare (unless I missed it, in which case someone will quickly set me straight) the percentage of white or Asian applicants who were offered admission to the percentage of black or Hispanic applicants who were offered admission. I wonder why?
Nevertheless, the information contained in this data is sufficient to dispel a number of myths. For example, take a look at this chart showing the freshman admits at each campus of the university system from Fall 1997 (the last class admitted under the racially preferential system barred, in theory, by Prop. 209) through the class just admitted for Fall 2008.
It reveals, contrary to what supporters of race preferences argue in each state where they are threatened with extinction by civil rights initiatives, that the number and proportion of "underrepresented minorities" is greater now than it was in 1997 at seven of the nine campuses of the university system (not counting Merced, which did not exist in 1997). At UCLA, along with Berkeley one of the two most selective, the Fall 2008 proportion of "underrepresented minorities" is 19.4%, compared with 21.2% in 1997. At un-holistic Berkeley, the Fall 2008 proportion is 17.7%, compared to 25.2% in 1997.
Now take a look at this chart showing the freshman admits by race and ethnicity for the system as a whole. It may have the most surprising data of all. Again comparing 1997, the last classes admitted under preferential admissions, with Fall 2008, we find the following:
* the proportion of white admits fell from 40.8% to 34.4%
* the proportion of Asian admits rose from 33% to 34%
* the proportion of URM admits rose from 18.6% to 25.1%.
These statistics do raise at least one question they don't answer: Since whites are now 43% of the California population but only 34.4% of the entering freshmen in the University of California system next fall, why are they not categorized as an "underrepresented minority"?
Major Australian media outlet supports Leftist thought control
SINISTER (adj) 1. Suggestive of evil; looking malignant or villainous. 2. Wicked or criminal. 3.An evil omen.
"Sinister" was the word chosen by The Sydney Morning Herald to describe the campaign launched by the Young Liberals at university campuses under the slogan "Education, not indoctrination". Remove the SMH filter and here's the story: a group of Young Liberals is concerned that students are sometimes forced to endure indoctrination by university academics. Their aim is to encourage freedom of thought and intellectual pluralism on campus. Some may say their goal is naive. Universities have always been bastions of left-wing thought. But sinister?
The problem, says the Herald, is that the campaign "is a sinister echo to one waged by conservatives on the other side of the world". Now we get to the heart of it. The other side of the world is, of course, the US. Ergo, any US export - save Al Gore propaganda - is inherently suspect. It is a shame the Herald did not provide more facts. The pursuit of academic freedom in the US over the past four years makes for riveting, not sinister, reading. And it's not a peculiarly American problem.
In the spring of 2003 David Horowitz, a prominent conservative writer, founded Students for Academic Freedom, a group committed to the simple idea that "academic freedom is most likely to thrive in an environment of intellectual diversity that protects and fosters independence of thought and speech". He proposed an academic bill of rights to promote intellectual diversity at universities. As The Wall Street Journal said, Horowitz was asking campus hierarchies to foster "something it is already supposed to believe in: academic freedom".
Hundreds of chapters of the group sprang up on campuses across the US as thousands of students began to rebel against the ideological monoculture they confronted at universities. Examples of bias poured in: course lists comprised solely of radical left texts; essay assignments asking students to explain why "President Bush is a war criminal"; a history professor at Duke University professing "I don't have a bias against anyone ... except Republicans"; another professor informing a Kuwaiti Muslim immigrant that he would need "regular psychotherapy" for writing an essay that defended America's founding fathers and the US Constitution; another student whose economics professor demanded he drop out of his introduction to micro-economics class or face harassment charges for praising Milton Friedman and free market ideals.
Horowitz blindsided the critics by also supporting Michael Weisner, a former student at a California university who complained about a conservative professor. This was no purge of left-wing academics. As Horowitz wrote in 2006, the campaign was "about intellectual diversity, about respect for students who dissent and about protecting their right to draw their own conclusions on controversial matters".
Back in Australia, on a much smaller scale, the Young Liberals and their "Education, not indoctrination" campaign is under way. And it's not hard to find examples of the latter occurring at universities and in schools. Laura (not her real name) is a 50-year-old academic who has spent 15 years teaching trainee primary school teachers at a university in Sydney. She told The Australian she worked side by side in a classroom with an academic who tried to indoctrinate first-year students. She won't name names for fear of recriminations. She says that her colleague, who teaches social science in the education faculty, is intent on changing his students' attitudes to society. He encouraged them to go on demonstrations. Each week, his office door would feature a new anti-Howard cartoon. He voiced anti-government views in the classroom, all the while ignoring the content of the syllabus.
"Some students came to me complaining about exams because they were concerned that if they didn't answer the question with this person's viewpoint, they would be penalised," Laura says. Whereas Laura was teaching her young charges to keep their political views out of the classroom, her colleague believed it was his role "to change their views and promote politics in the classroom".
Jamie, an 18-year-old student at the University of Sydney, saw teachers doing precisely that last year during her HSC. She told The Australian her legal studies teacher at her school in northern Sydney "found it very difficult to give an unbiased perspective, especially when we were studying Work Choices. And I was told if I didn't write an essay that was anti-WC, it would not do very well. One day (the teacher) walked into the classroom saying: "I love Kevin Rudd." I said to her a couple of times: "But, Miss, you shouldn't be putting so much of your opinion into this." Her teacher told her it was impossible to keep opinion out of legal studies. Says Jamie: "I don't think that's correct. Whatever (the teacher's) opinion, it should not be brought intoteaching."
The same thing happened in her HSC English class. At election time last year, when her HSC class studied George Orwell's 1984, Jamie says her teacher "would frequently compare John Howard to Big Brother and say liberal policies were aimed at mind control". Jamie (she won't reveal her surname because she maintains close ties with her former school) is now a Young Liberal. She says: "I understand the bias my teachers had for their own reasons. And it doesn't offend me. But I think education should be about giving students the skills to come to their own conclusions."
If the US is any guide, such examples of intellectual bias are not uncommon. They deserve to be aired. Unless you are a Green, in which case you kind of like the cushy status quo. Perhaps that is why John Kaye, the NSW Greens education spokesman, described the Young Liberals campaign for an academic bill of rights as akin to McCarthyism. Notice how the same fellows who are vocal supporters a wide-ranging bill of rights for the rest of the community are horrified at the notion of an academic bill of rights on campus. What are they afraid of?
By all means, let's push for an academic bill of rights. The results in the US speak for themselves. Legislative inquiries in state after state exposed the lack of intellectual pluralism on campus. But the aim should be, as it was in the US, to get university administrators to take this issue seriously. Horowitz says that legislation was never the real aim. His purpose was "to wake up" university administrators so that they would "promote respect for intellectual diversity in the same way they now promote respect for other kinds of diversity". It has happened in the US. It should be happening here. Hardly sinister stuff.
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