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30 April, 2007

Homosexual Propaganda Fed to Elementary School Children

In a press release this morning, Stephen Bennett, a man who once lived the "gay" lifestyle and has since founded a ministry to assist people to leave the destructive lifestyle, alerted the media to a video clip demonstrating what he calls first-hand homosexual activist "brainwashing" of elementary school children. The video available on the Internet on Youtube.com follows a Massachusetts school's fourth annual gay and lesbian pride day activities.

The video contains actual classroom footage showing teachers imposing pro-homosexual propaganda on children as young as six. Beyond that the video captures a pre-gay pride day staff meeting where one teacher, an African American, asks if teachers are to tell children whose parents oppose homosexuality that they should nonetheless accept it as a good, to which an affirmative answer is given.

A transcript of that portion of the video follows:

Unidentified African American female teacher: "I don't know what to do about this but, as a school are we saying that kids have to support this? I guess that's what it sounds like to me that we're saying. If a child comes from a background that says homosexuality is not correct, are we telling that child that they're supposed to, this is what you are supposed to do?"

Unidentified Caucasian female teacher, "I think that we are asking kids to believe this is right. Not as a matter of moral principal, but as a matter of, we're educating them and this is part of what we consider to be a healthy education."

Stephen Bennett told LifeSiteNews.com in an interview that he was "horrified" and "had tears in my eyes" after seeing the video. "It's so heartbreaking to see little kids brainwashed," he said.

Stressing that the video must been seen by all concerned parents, Bennett said, "this is what is happening to America's children -- without many parents even knowing a thing. This is a crime against our children. Let the children be children!"

Amazingly, the video, while newly posted on the internet, is a clip from a 1996 pro-homosexual film called "It's elementary". While the first segment of the YouTube clip of the film covers Cambridge Friends School (CFS) in Massachusetts, a second clip covers New York City Public School 87 where similar propagandising occurs. In the 1996 video, then CFS Principal Thomas Price notes that it is the school's fourth annual celebration of gay pride day.

Homosexual activists have reacted quickly to the publicity of their agenda and have discussed demanding YouTube to remove the videos. The video's seem to have been posted to the internet by a racist and Bennett in his release stressed that the tag on the video reading "faggots" is something he opposes and should be removed.

Homosexual activists have themselves acknowleged however the veracity of the video clips as segments of the film 'It's elementary'.

Source




Ignorant teachers

It's ironic that the teachers to whom we entrust our childrens' education have been noticeably lax about overseeing the costs and administration of so many of their retirement plans, even as their unions profit from them. Those same teachers unions have used their dues-fattened war chests and presumed expertise to lead lobbying efforts to make other Americans subject to the inevitable leveling and rationing of government-run "universal health care," often while themselves enjoying among the most generous and expensive medical benefits.

The irony is further compounded by the fact union lobbying war chests are further swollen by revenues received for recommending excessive-cost 403(b) retirement plans to members. Teachers' ignorance of their own fleecing in their 403(b) retirement programs does not inspire confidence in their judgment about our health care. The 403(b) retirement plan is the nonprofit sector's tax-deferred savings counterpart to the 401(k) plans found in the private sector. The 403(b) plans have been in the tax code 20 years longer than 401(k) plans and grew up around insurance company annuities, which were prevalent at the time. By contrast, 401(k) plans use mutual fund offerings, which typically have half or less of the costs of 403(b) plans that affect their returns. A 1 percent or 2 percent difference in costs over time and with compounding will result in a substantially lower retirement fund. For a worker contributing for 25 years, the difference can be 16 percent more in his retirement account with average cost mutual funds, or 37 percent more with even cheaper index funds.

As Forbes business magazine noted: "Teachers unions are complicit partners in this dubious pursuit. Insurers cut murky deals with labor unions to buy exclusive access to their members, sometimes paying the unions millions of dollars in fees in exchange for the unions' endorsement of their annuity plans. Inevitably this foists on teachers some of the most expensive annuity products around."

The Los Angeles Times came to a similar conclusion, reporting, "some of the nation's largest teachers unions have joined forces with investment companies to steer their members into retirement plans with high expenses that eat away at returns. . [T]he unions endorse investment providers, even specific products, and the companies reciprocate with financial support." For example, the National Education Association received almost $50 million from such an arrangement in 2004. Lower-cost 403(b) providers exist but are unlikely to be selected because they don't pay as much to the unions.

Another difference is that 403(b)s imposed fewer regulatory requirements on plan sponsors than 401(k)s. Changes in tax laws in the 1990s allowed nonprofits to also use 401(k) plans instead of 403(b)s, but few did so, thanks to lethargy, avoidance of higher standards of selection and management, and the profits going to plan sponsors from 403(b) providers.

More changes are coming, as current and proposed regulatory rule changes require 403(b) sponsors to demonstrate many of the same fiduciary responsibilities required of 401(k)s such as maintaining reasonable administrative costs. As The Chronicle of Philanthropy observes, "The aim of the changes by the Internal Revenue Service is to bring more accountability and professionalism to the 403(b) world." Even so, 401(k) providers and sponsors are currently under pressure from class action suits, the Department of Labor, and Congress for allegedly excessive costs due to fund providers paying to be included in bundled offerings, and passing those costs on to savers. A leading class action lawyer says those pressures "may serve as the first in a wave of cases," as he awaits whether such cases will result in huge settlements. The outcome remains to be seen, but inevitably the result will be greater disclosure and justification for any benefit of such arrangements.

The United Teachers Member Benefits Trust settled a suit by agreeing to a $30 million payback to New York teachers and a group of Indiana teachers recently filed suit against the insurer of their union's 403(b) plan. Keller Rohrbach, a leading class action law firm, is reportedly considering a similar suit against the NEA.

Defenders of 403(b) plans' claim their higher costs are worth the additional annuity protections- a minimum interest rate, for example - compared with the mutual funds used by 401(k)s. Defenders also claim higher 403(b) costs encourages more personal attention for plan participants. Even if those claims are true, there is no justification for teacher union profiteering from their members retirement plans. That they have looked the other way for so long reflects poorly on teachers who now want nationalized health care for the rest of us.

Source

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

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

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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29 April, 2007

Brown University Outrage:

Anti-Israel Academics Organize Conference To Attack Pro-Israel Critics, Shut Out Pro-Israel Speakers and Students

We long ago resigned ourselves to institutional academics getting together in their sandboxes, building their little castles, and defending themselves from the evil Israel Lobby that's trying to "exclude their voices". The irony, of course, is that it's actually pro-Israel advocates who routinely get excluded from academic discussions. But what's happening at Brown reaches new lows of brazen hypocrisy. Middle East scholars have organized a workshop to attack the Israel Lobby, national security specialists, and people like Daniel Pipes and Martin Kramer - except they didn't invite defenders of the Israel Lobby, national security specialists, or Dr. Pipes and Dr. Kramer. The punch line? The workshop is about "open discourse and academic freedom". This tip got dropped into our inbox late last night:

Today, at a meeting of [pro-Israel] groups on [Brown's] campus, we found out that... Brown's Middle East Studies Department (which currently offers no courses...) and what is essentially the IR department, with the support of the Muslim Students Association, organized an "academic" conference called "The Study of the Middle East and Islam: Challenges after 9-11," featuring (among others) Juan Cole and Stephen Walt. There are no pro-Israel speakers, and neither Hillel nor Brown Students for Israel were even asked for input on a conference about the future of Middle East Studies. Needless to say, this is not the kind of thing we want on our campus.... We're determined not to let this conference go by without making it clear to the University that this disregard of academic standards/norms and disrespect for Brown's Jewish community is not acceptable.

The conference was organized by Marsha Pripstein Posusney and Elliott Colla. The goal is to "foster a greater understanding in this country of the Middle East and Muslim world." And wouldn't you know it, the people who are preventing greater understanding are security specialists and pro-Israel academics: "new national security regulations", "pressures from concerned citizen groups", "Congressional oversight of college courses pertaining to the Middle East and Islam", "independent efforts to monitor such courses and publicly vilify instructors deemed to be promoting 'dangerous' views in the classroom". You can get the full agenda off our server here.

Here's the thing though: this conference is bait. No one is actually coming here to learn anything. Walt is the most conservative academic on the monitoring panel, and he's published that Campus Watch is a neoconservative extension of the Israel Lobby. They're trying to be so absurd that people like Pipes and Kramer will protest their rank academic bias. If there's a student-led outcry about how they deliberately insulted pro-Israel undergrads, all the better. One way or another, Cole, Walt, and their ilk will be screaming about how they're being monitored and publicly vilified. Clever, clever.

Except none of these scary sounding "challenges" have been strong enough to stop the workshop participants - which is so brave of them, since criticizing Israel and the Bush administration in academia is so risky. And except this workshop actually is a hypocritical outrage. Just because they're going to use legitimate public outcry to scream about "censorship" is no reason not to call their "open discourse" bluff and put their hypocrisy on public display. This is how children behave - throwing fits to get attention and then complaining about how they're always being disciplined. The problem with this conference isn't that it's dangerous, it's that it's mendacious.

Contact information for Brown University officials is below. Get in touch with us if you want to coordinate with some of the pro-Israel Brown student leaders. We're not going to publicly out them, lest the Brown IR professors are as vindictive as the UC Irvine ones. Usual warnings about being productively circumspect apply: their fantasies of persecution notwithstanding, the goal is not to silence Cole, Walt, et al. What we'd like to see is genuine public discourse - to see the American academy restored to the status it once had as a genuine site of reasoned deliberation and careful scholarship. In addition to being a perfectly reasonable position, this also has the benefit of making their inevitable screams of "censorship" sound really stupid.

At a minimum, the University should be made to understand that this nudge-nudge wink-wink of unbalanced "balance" is unacceptable in any institution that has pretensions toward higher learning. We know that some of our readers are reasonably distinguished Brown alumni, and one or two of you are not insignificant donors. You should feel free to express your opinion about the one-sidedness of this workshop - a workshop that is, in turn, being used to set the future direction for classes, scholarship, and ideology at your alma mater. But this travesty isn't limited to Brown students - this echo chamber of a workshop will hurt everybody. Universities of Brown's caliber help set the tone for the rest of the academia and the rest of the country, and "open discourse and academic freedom" can't be allowed to mean "America and Israel bashers getting together to tell each other how smart they are".

Source




Do-gooder MIT bigshot found to be a liar

She downgraded the importance of academic qualifications -- what one might expect considering her own concealed deficiencies in that departmenmt

Marilee Jones was an inspiration to students, using her position as the dean of admissions at one of America's most prestigious universities to reform its bruising application process and telling high schools and parents across the country not to place unrealistic pressures on their children. But there was one thing she didn't mention: that she lied to get ahead.

Ms Jones, known for her red hair and admired for her blunt, refreshing views, resigned yesterday from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, three days after the university discovered that her own CV, submitted with a job application 28 years ago, had "misrepresented her academic degrees". According to The Tech, MIT's campus newspaper, Ms Jones was confronted in a meeting on Monday after an anonymous caller had contacted the university about her false credentials. In her CV and subsequent biographies, Ms Jones had claimed to have received degrees from Union College, the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and Albany Medical College. None of which turned out to be true.

"This is a sad and unfortunate event," wrote Daniel E. Hastings, MIT's dean for undergraduate education in an e-mail to the university. "But the integrity of the Institute is our highest priority, and we cannot tolerate this kind of behaviour." In her own statement, Ms Jones, the co-author of Less Stress, More Success: A New Approach to Guiding Your Teen Through College Admissions and Beyond, said that she had resigned "because very regrettably, I misled the Institute about my academic credentials". "I misrepresented my academic degrees when I first applied to MIT 28 years ago and did not have the courage to correct my resume when I applied for my current job or at any time since. I am deeply sorry for this and for disappointing so many in the MIT community and beyond who supported me, believed in me, and who have given me extraordinary opportunities."

Ms Jones joined MIT's admissions office in a junior, administrative role in 1979. The university said yesterday that her job did not require a master's and a bachelor's degree, as she claimed to have, but those qualifications helped her rise to the position of dean, overseeing an admissions process that attracts more than 11,000 undergraduate applications each year, of which around 13 per cent are successful.

From the moment she became dean, in 1997, Ms Jones set about reforming MIT's application process, rewriting the form to place more emphasis on students' personalities and passions rather than their academic data and the relentless lists of extra-curricular activities that American high school students are encouraged to amass to impress prospective colleges. In her book, she and Kenneth Ginsburg wrote: "As we prepare these paper-perfect students for higher education, are we undermining their ability to succeed in life? The most worrisome thing about this generation of driven students may be the fear of imperfection that's being instilled in their psyches.''

And in an address to other college admissions staff in Boston last year, Ms Jones said the quest for perfection in adolescent students was "making our children sick", and described the increase in suicides, ulcers and anxiety disorders among high-achieving teenage students. "Kids aren't supposed to be finished," she said. "They're partial. They're raw. That's why we're in the business." ....

The resignation of Ms Jones comes as students in their penultimate year of high school will be considering whether to apply to MIT in the autumn and less than a year after another Massachusetts' institution lost its a director for a similar reason. John J. Schulz, the dean of Boston University's College of Communication, resigned after admitting that he embellished his academic record at Oxford University.....

Source




Australia: Brave words, but the Labor Party's policy offers no improvement to corrupted State education

A conservative facade hides destructive Leftism

THE exact moment it happened is hard to pinpoint, but the reality is that the Australian Labor Party, at both federal and state levels, has captured the education territory that was once the preserve of conservative governments and it now controls the debate. By scrapping former Opposition leader Mark Latham's hit list of so-called elite, private schools, endorsing parents' right to choose non-government schools, arguing for a collaborative approach to a national curriculum and, this week, placing subjects such as history and geography back on the school timetable, Kevin Rudd and the ALP have moved to the centre of the political spectrum.

As with British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his mantra of education, education, education, Rudd knows that to win the support of aspirational voters in marginal seats the party has to eradicate the vestiges of its socialist past and adopt education policies based on conservative values, such as strong academic standards, parental choice and holding schools accountable for performance.

As always, though, the devil is in the detail and no amount of rhetoric can disguise the fact the ALP is beholden to key players such as the Australian Education Union, which regularly supports Labor by donating thousands of dollars during elections and organising campaigns in marginal seats in opposition to Liberal governments. If a Rudd government is elected this year, there is a danger that Australian education will continue to suffer from a dumbed down, politically correct curriculum and provider capture, where the education system, instead of meeting the needs of parents and students, is run for the benefit of the teachers unions and bureaucrats.

Take Labor's plan to develop a national curriculum. Arguing for higher standards and placing academic disciplines centre stage are beyond reproach. On reading Labor's policy paper more closely, though, it is clear the party intends to give the job of developing a national curriculum to the Curriculum Corporation and the Australian Council for Educational Research, two organisations responsible for Australia's adoption of outcomes-based education and the present parlous state of the school curriculum.

Based on Rudd's performance as a key bureaucrat during the years of the Goss government in Queensland and his first speech to parliament as Opposition Leader, it is clear that while he mouths platitudes about the importance of choice and accountability in education, he is still Comrade Rudd. Under Wayne Goss, Queensland earned a reputation for being a bastion of a new-age, cultural-left approach to curriculum. Indeed, as publicly stated by academic Ken Wiltshire, under the Goss-Rudd partnership education in the state was dumbed down, with a curriculum characterised as "weak and insipid".

In his first parliamentary speech as Opposition Leader, Rudd entered the "battle of ideas for Australia's future" by outlining his vision for the nation and the role of government and society. Once again, although the rhetoric is soothing - nobody can disagree with values such as equity, sustainability and compassion - a close reading shows that Rudd is an unreconstructed statist of the old order. Recognising the importance of a strong economy and of families as a social institution, Rudd argues that education is a public good - the same expression used by Pat Byrne, president of the Australian Education Union - and that families must be protected from the market, but commits himself to the present centralised, bureaucratic approach to education.

There is an alternative. If Labor is serious about raising standards, supporting parental choice in education and ensuring that schools are accountable, then why not embrace, as Blair has done in Britain and George W. Bush has done in the US, what are termed charter schools and vouchers? As argued by Blair, when opening schools to increased competition, there is a need "to escape the straitjacket of the traditional comprehensive school and embrace the idea of genuinely independent non-fee paying state schools. It (the British white paper's goal) is to break down the barriers to new providers, to schools associating with outside sponsors, to the ability to start and expand schools; and to give parental choice its proper place." Instead of being centrally controlled and managed, charter schools, within broad guidelines, have the freedom to hire, fire and reward better performing teachers. Control rests at the local level, in the hands of the school community or the principal, and charter schools are free to enact their own curriculum.

Vouchers represent a second way to open schools to market forces by giving more parents the financial means to choose between government and non-government schools. Unlike the present situation, where state schools are funded by government via a top-down centralised system, with vouchers, parents receive the money directly and they are free to spend it where they will.

Vouchers, especially those directed at students from under-performing schools or students who are educationally at risk because of their socio-economic background, have existed for years in countries such as the US and Chile, and the benefits are many. Research suggests that increased parental choice and competition between schools leads to higher standards, as there are strong incentives for schools to succeed in what they do. Put simply, the money follows the child and failing schools lose market share while successful schools attract more students. As parents are best placed to make decisions about their children's education, giving more parents the ability to choose between government and non-government schools is an inherent social good, and overseas research shows that vouchers and charter schools lead to increased social stability and cohesion.

On the level of rhetoric, Rudd and Opposition education spokesman Stephen Smith argue that teachers should be made more accountable, that parental choice must be supported and that the days of the Australian Education Union controlling what happens in schools are long gone. If they are true to their word, the ALP would also embrace innovations such as vouchers and charter schools. Now that would, indeed, represent an education revolution.

Source

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

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

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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28 April, 2007

Colorado university obfuscation

Sheer deception. Post lifted from Discriminations --which see for links

In writing about the new Colorado Civil Rights Initiative, I quoted (or quoted an article that quoted) Christine Yoshinaga-Itano, vice provost and associate vice chancellor for diversity and equity at Colorado University, who said it has "no race- based admissions, no race- based employment and no race-based financial aid or scholarship."

It turns out, however, that Ms. Yoshinago-Itano's assertion was based on a misunderstanding (or perhaps purposeful misrepresentation) of the CCRI, and thus is of no value in understanding its relevance to CU policies. In attempting to explain to the Colorado Daily why CCRI would have no impact at CU she revealed the extent of either her misunderstanding or distortion:

According to Christine Wyoshimaga-Itamo [sic; the correct spelling is Yoshinago-Itano, and I have used it in subsequent quotes], vice provost and associate vice chancellor for diversity and equity, there are no race-based programs or race-based quotas at CU. "And we have not had those for many years here at the university and I don't know if we ever did," said the 22-year CU employee. "The reason for [an affirmative action ban] is to prevent universities from using race-based quotas, and that simply does not happen [here], so [a ban] would have no impact," said Yoshinago-Itano. For that reason, said Yoshinago-Itano, an affirmative action ban in Colorado would have no affect on CU's current admission policies.

Ms. Yoshinago-Itano believes, or at least asserts to the public, that a ban on "discriminating against or granting preferences to" any individual based on race would bar only programs with fixed racial quotas. It would be interesting to see her response when (if?) some enterprising Colorado reporter asks her about her fundamental misreading of what, after all, is commendably clear text. In the letter to the Denver Post I posted here, I suggested that one Colorado higher education official should enroll immediately in a remedial reading class because he claimed the ban on racial preferences would bar preferences to athletes. Perhaps Ms. Yoshinago-Itano should join him. Even though she believes CU would not be affected by the passage of CCRI, Ms. Yoshinago-Itano is still bothered by it.

"The thing that bothers me about this issue is that it is based on an assumption that students and employees of color on this campus are not as well-qualified as everyone else, and that's just completely untrue," said Yoshinago-Itano. "It is a sad thing that their abilities, their right to be on this campus, are being questioned in any way."

Now, why would anyone suspect that "students and employees of color ... are not as well-qualified as everyone else"? Could it be because the students do not have to meet the same standards as everyone else? Ms. Yoshinago-Itano either denies the existence of racial preferences (or denies that a ban on racial preferences would have any effect at CU), but other administrators freely acknowledge that they take race into account.

Kevin MacLennan, director of admissions at CU, said race can be a factor in the admissions process, but cannot be a primary or sole factor in which a student is offered admission. "We currently consider between 11 and 13 different primary factors in the admission process, and race can be an additional consideration, but not a primary one," said MacLennan....

That's CU's familiar story, and I assume they're sticking to it. There is, however, a good deal of evidence that MacLennan's gloss is as misleading as Yoshinago-Itano's. For that evidence, as is frequently the case, we have the Center for Equal Opportunity to thank. It has published a thorough and detailed analysis of admissions preferences at the University of Colorado at Boulder and other Colorado colleges for the classes entering in Fall 1995, and the story that data tells about preferences, at Boulder especially, is considerably at variance with the university's official line. Among the findings of the CEO study:

* At the University of Colorado at Boulder ... the average white student scored 205 points higher on the SAT (out of a possible 1600), and 4 points higher on the ACT (out of a possible 36), and nearly half a point higher on grades (on a 4-point scale) than the average black student.... "In other words, 50 percent of whites enrolled at the University of Colorado at Boulder score at least 205 points higher than 50 percent of blacks enrollees."

* [At Boulder the] median SAT scores of white and Asian rejectees (940 and 920, respectively) are higher than the black admittee median (895) and 25th percentile Hispanic admittee score (880). This means that more than half of all white and Asian rejectees had higher SAT scores than half of all blacks and more than a quarter of all Hispanics who were offered admission.

* [At Boulder the] Asian and the white GPAs at the 25th percentile are greater than the black median.... [T]his means that 75 percent of all Asians and whites have higher GPAs than half of all blacks. The median GPAs of white and Asian rejectees (2.8 and 2.7, respectively) is roughly equal to the 25th percentile black admittee GPA (2.7). This means that about half of all white and Asians who were denied admission had higher GPAs than about a quarter of blacks who were accepted.

* [At Boulder an] average of 72 percent of whites finish after six years, compared to an average of 39 percent of blacks, 50 percent of Hispanics, and 64 percent of Asians. These findings on graduation rates parallel those on enrollee qualifications.

Diversity Dean Yoshinago-Itano is so busy asserting that CCRI would affect nothing at CU Boulder because it has no "racial quotas" and Admissions Dean MacLennan sticks so closely to the mantra that race is only "one factor among many" that neither mentioned, much less refuted, these dramatic CEO findings.

Linda Chavez, the chairman of the Center for Equal Opportunity and a long-time Colorado resident who taught at Boulder, is the honorary-co-chairman of the Colorado Civil Rights Initiative. If the preferentialist establishment of higher education in Colorado believes CEO's findings and similar data can be kept from citizens during the upcoming debate on preferences, they are sadly (or happily, for opponents of racial preference) mistaken. If they dispute the CEO's findings, they should promptly release their evidence.




Did The Seattle School System Misuse Federal Funds?

Sheer politically correct arrogance. Post lifted from Discriminations --which see for links

Sometimes the Seattle school system seems to make an effort to present itself as a parody of politically correct multiculturalism. Recall, for example, my mention (here) of several items discussed in Hans Bader's excellent amicus brief for the plaintiffs in the Seattle school assignment case. Bader wrote:

On its Equity and Race Relations web site, the Seattle School District, until June 2006, declared that "cultural racism" includes the following:

"emphasizing individualism as opposed to a more collective ideology"; "having a future time orientation" (planning ahead); and
"defining one form of English as standard."

In addition, the web site declared that only whites can be racists, and that minorities cannot be racist towards each other. And it derided the concept of "equality" as an outmoded aspect of assimilation. (Assimilation in turn was disparaged as the "giving up" of one's culture).

After these definitions became the subject of extensive media attention, the School District withdrew the page that contained them from its web site on June 1, alleging a need to "provide more context to readers" about "institutional racism." In its place, the School District inserted a web page that criticizes the very idea of a "melting pot" and being "colorblind," emphasizing that the district's "intention is not . . . to continue unsuccessful concepts such as a melting pot or colorblind mentality."

You'd think they'd be on good behavior with their racial assignment case still before the Supreme Court ... but you'd be wrong. Now, according to this article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, they're being investigated for possible misuse of federal funds for sending students to a conference in Colorado on "white privilege."

Two district staff members and 20 students from Hale, Franklin, Roosevelt and West Seattle high schools attended the three-day diversity conference, advertised as a way to examine "the challenging concepts of privilege and oppression and offer solutions and team-building strategies to work toward a more equitable future."

The conference also included workshops and discussions on multicultural education and leadership, social justice, racism, sexual orientation and "gender relations," and encouraged participants "to dismantle systems of power, prejudice, privilege and oppression." ....

The district spent roughly $10,000, including money from a federal Small Learning Communities grant and the district's Office of Equity and Race Relations, Seattle Public Schools spokesman David Tucker said. Reimbursement requests for meals are still being processed, so the total amount spent could increase, he said.....

Officials with the Seattle branch of the Department of Education plan to hold a conference call with district officials to investigate. "Any time there are allegations of mismanagement of federal taxpayer money we are concerned, and we take appropriate actions to correct the problems," according to a statement Department of Education spokesman Eric Earling released Thursday. "We are requesting information from the district about this expense, including whether it was charged to the SLC grant."

The competitive federal grants are awarded to large high schools to study and create smaller learning environments, such as "schools within a school" or career academies. The grants are intended to help defray costs of activities, such as teacher training or extended school days, to help create the smaller learning environments.

Actually, it's conceivable that sending students to this conference could result in "smaller learning environments" in the Seattle schools ... if some parents withdrew their children from the schools in disgust.

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

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

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

***************************



27 April, 2007

Louisiana over-reaction

A kid who is upset is threatened with prison over it

A 16-year-old Logansport High student was charged Tuesday with terrorism for threatening to kill faculty and staff at the high school, authorities said. The female, whom investigators did not identify because of her age, was arrested at her home. She was taken to the DeSoto Detention Center for booking and transported to Ware Youth Center in Coushatta, where she will be held pending a hearing.

The teen made the threat Friday afternoon during a confrontation with school staff, DeSoto sheriff's Lt. Toni Morris said. DeSoto schools Superintendent Walter Lee was unaware Tuesday afternoon that the student had been arrested but was aware of the incident Friday. "She was emotionally upset Friday afternoon and she did make a comment that I guess could be classified as a threat. But she did not have a weapon," Lee said. "She made that threat or comment in an emotional state. It was my understanding she said 'If I had a gun I would kill myself,' then she changed that to "No, I'd kill the rest of them.'" A sheriff's deputy who serves as the school resource officer was on campus and got to the office within three minutes, Lee said.

Monday morning, unknown to school officials, Lee said, the teenager was back on campus to catch a bus to the alternative school, which is where she has been attending classes since February. Three uniformed sheriff's deputies were at the school that morning to ensure no incidents took place. "She rode the bus Monday morning without our knowledge," Lee said. Preparations were being made, however, for the student to return to the alternative school once she completed an evaluation at a medical facility.

The delay in the arrest is, in part, Morris said, because of the student's "mental issues." "We wanted to be thorough. We didn't want to exhibit a knee-jerk reaction to the Virginia Tech shootings of last week," Morris said. If convicted, the teenager could face imprisonment to age 21.

Source




The misleading attack on boys in Britain

The apparent underachievement by boys in school tests is a distortion caused by a feminised examination system and a higher number of boys suffering behavioural problems, according to research. Academics from Durham University have found that the real average difference in ability between girls and boys from 11 years old to A level is less than half a grade.

Alarm over the academic performance of boys has been mounting. Last year almost 57 per cent of boys failed to get good GCSE grades in English and maths. At A level, 25.3 per cent of girls achieved at least one grade A, compared with 22.7 per cent of boys. Last year 43 per cent of first-degree graduates were men, while 59 per cent of 2:1 degrees and firsts were awarded to women. However, Peter Tymms, the director of the Curriculum, Evaluation and Management Centre at Durham University, and Dr Christine Merrell say that in academic terms boys are not falling further behind.

Professor Tymms said: “The real difference is that boys have a far wider spread — in maths, there are more gifted and talented boys, but also more with special needs.” He added: “If you want boys to do well, you give them a speedy multiple choice. If you want girls to do better, get them to write an essay.” The information was presented at a Royal Society of Medicine conference Boys: Their Nurture and Education.

Source




Foolish British education frenzies

What have been the defining moments of Tony Blair's prime ministership? Last Sunday, the Observer assessed Blair's impact on British society over the past 10 years (1). While the ill-fated farrago of the Iraq war in 2003, the unprecedented `emotional' outburst at the death of Princess Diana in 1997 and the ban on foxhunting were correctly identified as `key moments' of his reign, Blair's insistence - before he was elected to government - that New Labour would be primarily about `education, education, education' was oddly absent from the list.

As the Blair years have rolled on, it seems education really has become a laboratory for trying out `big ideas' that will magically provide internal coherence for the government and outward cohesion in society at large. Indeed, over the past week there has been a veritable `scramble for education', wherein union leaders, policymakers and cabinet ministers have shown that they can only relate to society through the prism of the classroom.

One consequence of today's blinkered obsession with schooling is that it encourages a rather myopic dissection of its every facet. Last year, it was the fat content of Turkey Twizzlers that was of prime concern. Now it's whether schools will become `pressure cookers' as a consequence of `climate change'. Teachers have been demanding this week `the right to walk out of hot classrooms during soaring temperatures' (2). It seems the National Union of Teachers (NUT) can predict future weather conditions with an accuracy that would shame the Met Office. Apparently, in future summers there will be frequent heatwaves and thus `schools should close during the summer'. In the past, the old left mistakenly argued that `education is a right'. Now NUT leaders believe that at the first sight of sunshine, there should be a `right' to forget about education altogether. As one teacher put it, `if temperatures soar then it may be necessary to disrupt children's schooling' (3).

Still, this made a brief respite from stories about children disrupting schooling. Normal service was resumed on Wednesday when the education secretary Alan Johnson said that website providers had a `moral obligation' to stop pupils posting offensive school videos that demean their teachers or other children. He said: `The online harassment of teachers is causing some to consider leaving the profession because of the defamation and humiliation they are forced to suffer.' (4) Now, unwittingly appearing on some jokey YouTube clip would hardly be the highlight of anyone's teaching career. But surely this is simply a more hi-tech version of `defamatory' graffiti or cartoon caricatures of teachers that schoolchildren have long enjoyed executing. The difference today is that New Labour launches a campaign against kids acting like, well, kids - with website providers, rather than teachers or government, forced to be the moral guardians.

The seeming inability of ministers to use words and values to socialise children was also in evidence with Johnson's latest initiative: to reward school pupils financially if they don't play truant or misbehave at school. Incredibly, this was accurately satirised in the inaugural episode of the BBC drama, Party Animals, wherein a junior Home Office minister proposed giving delinquents a `good behaviour bond' (ie, a bribe) to entice them to behave (5). Now life is imitating art.

Improving classroom behaviour, we are told, is vital if we're to tackle anti-social behaviour in wider society. The spate of tragic and needless killings of black teenagers in London this year has inevitably been connected with poor educational attainment. And once again, if only poorly disciplined students (and their parents) learned to love their homework assignments, they'd be less open to the nefarious temptations of `street culture'. Steve Sinnott of the NUT called `for a national investigation into the impact of street culture, amid rising concerns over murders and stabbings'. `There should also be better monitoring of black boys' performance', he said (6).

In a roundabout way, Tony Blair (and Trevor Phillips of the Commission for Racial Equality before him) echoed this view, citing an anti-learning subculture as being responsible for black boys' underachievement and, by implication, for stabbings and murders. It seems neither the government nor the teaching unions bother to read the latest Ofsted statistics. While it is true that black pupils obtain fewer GCSE passes than pupils from other ethnic backgrounds, their attainment rate has increased rather than decreased over the past 10 years (a reflection, perhaps, of the fact that black adults are more integrated into the economy than would have been the case previously) (7). If sections of the British student body are under-performing, those responsible for promoting an `anti-learning culture' are the government and the education authorities themselves.

Increasingly, the UK education system resembles a smorgasbord of anti-aspiration propaganda. If black and other schoolchildren come through the education system believing that the society they live in is both destructive and inherently oppressive, it's little wonder that some students may become fatalistic about their life chances. Bombarded with similar messages in the wider world, too, this will have a more powerfully negative influence on a black student's outlook than the collected works of rappers like the late Tupac Shakur, who are frequently blamed for violence. In fact, many black students I've taught either laugh off the ludicrous excesses of gangsta rap or feel uncomfortable with its decidedly low-rent connotations. The high-profile (but still extremely rare) incidences of teen murders in the capital are born out of social factors rather than songs. Have sociologists and commentators ever blamed Glasgow's gangs-and-knife incidents on the influence of bagpipes or the city's jangly indie bands?

Today, blaming everything on cultural influences means that banal suppositions on gangsta rap somehow influencing teenagers can be taken as good coin. Nevertheless, it's precisely this official belief in cultural determinism that means the education system becomes loaded with ever more demands for `responsibility' (and grounds for meddling) than ever before.

All of these developments have little to do with providing a decent, liberal education system for all. As we've seen over the past week, the classroom becomes both the cause of problems (teacher stress, bullying, even heatstroke) and the solution (namely, getting everyone to behave). For all the current digressions on Blair's 10 years in power, it seems mediating governmental decisions through `education, education, education' has stood the test of time and still largely goes unquestioned. Who needs 10 more years of that?

Source

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

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

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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26 April, 2007

Indianapolis: Too many empty seats in classrooms

Thousands of students are chronically absent from county schools. Ten-year-old Wesley, a student in Decatur Township's Lynwood Elementary, is the personification of an educational crisis. His brown hair is closely cropped and he's wearing a hooded jacket as he stands before a Marion County Superior Court commissioner. Wesley is in family truancy court because he's racked up nine unexcused absences so far this school year. (The Star generally does not fully identify defendants in the juvenile justice system.) If he skips school one more day, he'll join thousands of other Marion County students listed as chronic absentees.

Wesley is in court with his mother and four siblings. Sisters Kelsey and Jennifer have each missed 14 days this school year without a valid excuse. Older brother John recently completed probation for truancy and battery charges. Their mother, Joyce, says she's struggled to force her children to attend school. She says she even quit her job last year to focus on getting John and his sisters to school. When it comes to Wesley, however, she admits that, "I don't have an excuse for him (not attending school). I really don't."

It's a story frequently repeated in Marion County schools. A Star Editorial Board analysis found that about 13 percent of students in the county's public schools -- roughly 16,000 children -- recorded 10 or more days of unexcused absences in the 2005-06 school year. The high absentee rate is occurring amid an environment of intense accountability for teachers and administrators. Teachers can lose their jobs and even entire schools can be shut down if standards aren't met. But the frequency with which students miss school begs a couple of questions: Can children learn if they aren't in the classroom? And should educators be held responsible for ensuring that students are in school, a job that primarily is parents' responsibility? "Truancy is a symptom of a problem, not the problem itself," says Gaylon Nettles, the state Department of Education's chief attendance officer. "There is some reason why this kid didn't go to school."

As was the case until recently with Indiana's high dropout rate, official numbers released by the state Department of Education mask the extent of chronic absenteeism. According to the state, the attendance rate in Indianapolis Public Schools, the county's largest district, is 94 percent. Marion County's other 10 school districts report attendance rates of 90 percent or higher. The Department of Education touts a statewide attendance rate of 96 percent.

The reality is dismal. In Wayne Township, about one in three students qualify as chronic absentees. In IPS, about 18 percent of students recorded 10 or more unexcused absences last school year. And while chronic truancy is most often associated with high schools, it's occurring at every grade. Fourteen of the county's 31 middle schools had truancy rates of 10 percent or higher last school year. At 26 of IPS' 51 elementary schools, up to 18 percent of students were chronically absent.

Students who frequently skip school are at high risk of dropping out, tumbling into poverty, or worse, prison. A sixth-grader attending school less than 80 percent of the time has only a 1-in-10 chance of graduating from high school, according to a study by Johns Hopkins researcher Robert Balfanz and Lisa Herzog of the Philadelphia Education Fund. Balfanz found similar results among IPS middle school students in a study he's conducting for Achieve Inc. and the state Department of Education.

There is a strong correlation between truancy and the path toward crime. Chronic truants are 12 times more likely to commit a serious assault as students who regularly attend school and 21 times more likely to engage in larceny, burglary or vehicle theft, according to University of Colorado researchers David Huizinga and Kimberly Henry. Marion County Superior Court Commissioner Kelly Rota-Autry, who oversees the truancy court, notes that, in most cases, families that come into her court already have one child who has gone through the juvenile justice system, either for truancy or other charges.

Solving the attendance problem is a key part of improving the state's trend of low educational achievement. Yet, despite the emphasis put upon attendance by the federal government's No Child Left Behind Act, attendance data in Indiana -- and nationally -- is slipshod. The state formula for calculating attendance rates can mask what's really happening in classrooms. A school can appear to be doing well even if it has a significant problem with truancy. Until recently, teachers tracked student attendance on paper. As Wayne Township Superintendent Terry Thompson points out, that meant that schools were operating "a day behind," thus losing track of absent students.

The lack of statewide policies on attendance outside of what is considered "habitually truant" means that districts have wide leeway on what is considered an excused absence. In some districts, absenteeism may be undercounted as students call themselves in sick or skip school, with their parents' permission, for a vacation.

All of this has consequences in students' lives. During a series of focus groups involving high school dropouts, conducted last year by the state Commission for Higher Education, participants said they missed on average 30 days of school the year they dropped out. "They don't say one morning, 'I'm just dropping out.' They've been sending this message," says Higher Education Commissioner Stan Jones. "It's something we're not paying enough attention to."

Source




Britain's Anti-education education

In recent years, there has been concern over the underachievement of black boys in UK schools. Compared to a national average of 59 per cent, only 34 per cent of African-Caribbean boys attain five or more GCSE passes. Trevor Phillips, chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE), seems to think that black boys' cultural outlook is partly to blame. `There is an anti-learning culture whereby learning isn't seen to be cool.' (1) For Phillips, black kids just don't want to learn.

Phillips is right to blame `an anti-learning culture'. But this has little to do with hip-hop `playas' and everything to do with the government and the cultural elites. Blaming the gormless bravado of street culture for hostility to education suggests that Phillips is more in awe of 50 Cent and Eminem than the black kids I teach. Urban entertainers may loom large in the popular imagination, but they're hardly able to dictate the agenda on education, learning and culture. After all, it wasn't Jay-Z who grabbed headlines by declaring that `learning history is a bit dodgy'. That was the former education secretary, Charles Clarke.

Yet this wasn't just a rash comment by Clarke. Instead, hostility to learning for learning's sake currently informs every aspect of the education system. For example, the government has long attempted to put vocational learning `on a parity of esteem' with academic subjects. The drive to vocationalise education won't necessarily bolster the status of NVQ's in Hair & Beauty, but it has cast academic courses in a negative light. When Clarke suggests that academic subjects are dodgy, he really means that they are not `accessible' enough. Middle managers in further education colleges are following suit. At one inner London college at which I have taught, the Sixth Form Centre was constantly threatened with closure by the management, which deemed teaching A-levels as elitist.

Such an anti-learning culture is also prevalent in today's classrooms. Teachers are discouraged from extended their students' vocabulary in case it `alienates' them. And if students are having trouble participating in classroom discussion, teachers are recommended to introduce kindergarten-style games to pass the time. In the past, educationalists would seek to overcome the barriers to learning. Today learning is seen as a barrier to developing that all-important self-esteem. Indeed, the current teaching adverts suggest that learning is an alien concept for most schools. Classrooms are represented as similar to `crazy' youth centres where teachers simply turn up, arrange the chairs and distribute soft drinks. The apparent upside is that adults `get to hang out with Raj' and, in a spectacular reversal of roles, get to learn a `new language'.

This isn't merely the outcome of a daft advertising agency. In PGCE courses, student teachers are encouraged to incorporate as many hip-hop tracks and videos into lessons as possible. But such tricks are more likely to irritate students than bring them onside. Nothing is more grating for clued-up students than teachers getting down with `the kids'. My authority would be seriously undermined if I scribbled `blood, this is the shiznit!' on their work, or delivered sociology in a series of raps. Compared to Trevor Phillips, most of the black students I teach don't take hip-hop's ludicrous postures seriously.

The underachievement of black boys is a concern for educationalists and wider society. But the causes of the problem are varied and complex, and can't just be reduced to students' listening habits. Because there is an obsession with interpreting social groups purely in cultural terms, it is rarely acknowledged that African-Caribbean students are predominately from poorer working-class backgrounds. This isn't to suggest that social class is the only factor in determining their educational performance. But it is an important explanation for why a significant proportion of white and Bangladeshi boys also fall behind the national average.

Nevertheless, softening the education system can't compensate for the negative effects of social and racial inequalities. In fact, the government's measures are likely to make them worse. If learning appears alien and `uncool' to some African-Caribbean students, Trevor Phillips should look less at `the street' and a lot closer to home.

Source




Must not expose the chaos of Britain's schools

A whistleblower who should get a medal is being prosecuted by a rotten system

A supply teacher who covertly filmed her pupils swearing, fighting and attempting to access pornography on the internet was misusing her professional position, a tribunal was told yesterday. Angela Mason recorded footage in late 2004 and early 2005 at 18 schools in London and the North of England for Classroom Chaos, a documentary shown on channel Five. She arrived at classrooms with a miniature camera disguised as a button that allowed her to record pupils smashing furniture and making false accusations that teachers had touched them.

Mrs Mason, from London, was accused of unacceptable professional conduct yesterday at a hearing in Birmingham of the General Teaching Council, the professional body that regulates teachers. She faces a second charge of failing to promote the education and welfare of the children by failing to manage their behaviour properly. Five concealed the identity of all the pupils and schools caught on film before the programme was broadcast.

Bradley Albuery, the presenting officer outlining the case against Mrs Mason, said that by filming teachers and pupils without their knowledge or consent she created a conflict of interest. “She was there not as a broadcaster but as a teacher,” he said. “All of her attention should have been directed at the education of the children. That she took a camera into the classroom shows that her agenda was not . . . focused wholly on the needs of the children.” Mr Albuery said that teachers and students had reacted with anger to the programme. Pupils from one school were “angry and upset”, he said. Another student, who said he could be identified from the footage, felt “embarrassed and humiliated”, the tribunal heard.

During the documentary, which was shown to the tribunal, one boy tells Mrs Mason to “take a nap” when she attempts to restore order to the class. Another is shown using a school computer to look for “anal sex” on an internet search engine.

Mrs Mason admits the secret filming, but denies that it amounted to unacceptable professional conduct, claiming that she acted in the public interest. Mrs Mason, who is married with two children, originally left teaching in the 1970s to work in educational broadcasting but enrolled with two supply teaching companies — Brent Supply Service and Teaching Personnel — to take part in the documentary. If the case against Mrs Mason is proved, she could be banned from teaching.

Clive Rawlings, appearing for Mrs Mason, said that she had embarked upon a “responsible and reasonable” piece of journalism, and that her actions had contributed to the public debate on classroom behaviour. “Angela Mason’s actions were in the public interest in its broadest sense,” he said. “She is merely the messenger, and we submit that you should not shoot the messenger.”

Outside the hearing Mrs Mason said: “It’s not my profession — I left it 30 years ago — but I still feel strongly about it. I believe there is a major public policy issue to do with pupils in classrooms and poor behaviour. I’m standing up for the supply teachers and other teachers who have to endure this every day.”

Source

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

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

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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25 April, 2007

Florida educators nearly as unbalanced as the murderous Cho

Post below lifted from Taranto -- which see for links

Well, this was predictable. The South Florida Sun-Sentinel reports that the nation has been "shaken to the core by a gunman at Virginia Tech who took the lives of 32 people and then himself." Not only that, but last Friday was "Hitler's birthday[*] and the anniversary of the Columbine High School killings."

So naturally, when a student in Boca Raton behaved unusually, folks were on edge:

"Spanish River High School phones were clogged on Thursday with calls from parents concerned about security. . . .

The 18-year-old student was removed from school Wednesday and will not return, said principal Constance Tuman-Rugg. . . .

School police searched the home of the student, who is a senior, with the cooperation of this mother. Police found no evidence of danger at the home, the principal said. "Nothing was found, no letters, no lists, nothing," Tuman-Rugg said.

Parent Crystal Palmquist of Boca Raton said her two sons begged her not to attend school on [Thursday] because they fear for their safety. She said Allan, 16, and Harrison, 15, both ninth-graders, believe a threat against students is real. . .

"You can't take these things lightly," said Palmquist, who decided to keep her children home. She wants more assurances from the school that there is no danger to the students.

Extra school police are on duty at Spanish River [Thursday and Friday], the principal said.

So what did the student do to set off all this fuss? He "pointed out people in the yearbook he liked and didn't like."




Germany's modern-day Nazis defeated by their own law

German homeschooler Melissa Busekros finally returned home early this morning on her 16th birthday after having been forcibly separated from her family by the government 3 months ago. Back in February, Melissa was seized from her family home in a dramatic police raid for the crime of home schooling - illegal since 1937 by edict of Nazi Chancellor Adolf Hitler - and placed with a foster home in a location unknown to her family.

The International Human Rights Group (IHRG), which has doggedly championed the rights of Busekros and other German home schooling families, reports Melissa penned a note to her foster family and left in the dead of night, arriving on her doorstep in Erlangen at 3AM to the astonishment of her family. IHRG President Joel Thornon told LifeSiteNews.com that German law entitles Melissa Busekros to far more rights after turning 16, "giving her virtual control where she lives."

So as soon as she turned 16, Melissa Busekros - the same girl a state official of the Jugendamt (Youth Welfare Office) falsely described as happy in state custody - headed out the door for home. There is a danger the Jugendamt may order police forces to seize Melissa again. However, confident of her new legal rights, Melissa is prepared to refuse to leave home on the advice of her attorney, Dr. Hildebrandt.

Richard Guenther, IHRG's director of European Operations, contacted the Busekros family this morning urging them to inform Dr. Hildebrandt immediately so that he can be fully prepared to respond to any visit from state police. Joel Thornton, President of IHRG, said he spoke with Gudrun, Melissa's mother, who is "relieved to have her entire family back together." Tonight, the dinner table will have its one empty spot filled for the first time in 3 months for a birthday celebration.

"A lot of those home school families are at the Busekros house celebrating her coming home, and there's a bit of a bonding that's going on right now," said Thornton. "For the first time, they're able to get together and kind of celebrate and have a party for a victory."

Thornton expressed hope that Melissa's return home would cause the government to slow down and reconsider its harsh line toward German homeschooling families. Thornton says Melissa now wants to finish her education by an accredited correspondence school, which is permitted by law at 16, and he urged supporters to contact the Mayor of Erlangen to put a stop to any further action by the Jugendamt. "The bigger battle is to continue to pray for and support this family so the government does not come back in and take her back" said Thornton. "We don't want this to become a half-time moment, where everyone takes a breath and we start all over again."

A state psychology evaluation last week also showed that Melissa Busekros is a "stable person" and does not suffer from "school phobia." A professor of psychology who directs the institution that oversaw Melissa's care while she was held in state custody performed the evaluation in the presence of a second psychologist at the request of the Jugendamt in Erlangen.

Both the positive evaluation and Melissa's new legal rights considerably weaken the government's case, and Dr. Hildebrandt has already asked a higher German court to recognize the findings of this new evaluation and order Melissa's custody returned to her family immediately. "Hopefully, the fact that this case drew so much attention to the way Germany treats home schoolers will cause the authorities to pause before they in the future do something so draconian as the Busekros case," said Michael Donnelly of the Home School Legal Defense Association. "There is still a long way to go for home schoolers in Germany, and there are still families that are being treated like this in Germany."

Source




Basic subjects return to Australian schools

The catch-all subject Studies of Society and Environment will be dropped in the nation's high schools and replaced by the traditional disciplines of history, geography and economics under a schools action plan to be released by the states and territories today. A report on the future of schooling prepared for the Council for the Australian Federation, comprising the Labor state and territory governments, outlines a 12-point plan for the implementation of a national framework for school education.

The plan, agreed to by all state and territory governments, commits them to refocus SOSE in response to criticism that the subject has become too crowded by areas such as environmental and legal studies at the expense of history and geography. "Studies of Society and Environment has been criticised by a number of commentators, partly because its focus is not clear from the label," the report says. "It has become increasingly clear that what should be studied under this label, are the disciplines of history, geography and economics." The report explicitly outlines those disciplines under the umbrella of humanities and social science as part of the plan to develop a national curriculum.

Victorian Premier Steve Bracks, who will release the report today, said the report advocated a return to traditional disciplines to ensure a well-rounded education. "It reflects our belief that there are key disciplines that are best taught within the school curriculum," Mr Bracks said. The governments will also introduce three benchmark levels for reporting students' literacy and numeracy results in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9, under a new national test to start next year. The present system under which students are reported only as passing very low, minimum standards - giving no indication of the breadth of student performance - will be replaced by three levels of minimum, medium and high achievement.

The plan also commits the states and territories to developing a plan for reporting school performance, with a focus on how much it has improved its students' results, and processes for reviewing teachers' performance based on "improved student, classroom and/or school performance".

The release of the plan follows a meeting of the nation's education ministers in Darwin last week, where the states and territories rejected the federal Government's blueprint for national curriculums, performance-based pay for teachers and the reporting of national test results. School curriculums are designed by the states and territories, hampering the federal Government's efforts to impose its will in this area.

Mr Bracks said education heads from around the nation would meet this week to start the implementation of the plan, which invites the federal Government to participate as part of a "collaborative federalism".

The COAF report, The Future of Schooling in Australia, reaffirms the primacy of literacy and numeracy in primary schools and the "fundamentally important" disciplines of English, maths, science and languages other than English for high school students. It also notes the importance of physical education, the arts and technology and identifies two areas to be added to school curriculums - civics and citizenship, and business. "The study of business and the development of commercial and financial literacy skills can assist students in their middle and later years at school to prepare for work in the 21st century," it says.

Source

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

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

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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24 April, 2007

Conservative Students Join in Nationwide Demonstration Against Islamic Fascism

In one of the most extensive demonstrations ever staged by American college conservatives, close to one hundred university and college campuses across the country yesterday held an "Islamo Fascism Awareness Day." Thousands of students were involved in the event, which was coordinated by the Terrorism Awareness Project, a program of the David Horowitz Freedom Center whose objective is to counter college students' lack of awareness about the War on Terror and the disinformation about it propagated by radical faculty and student groups.

A total of 96 colleges and universities, including Pace University, Columbia, Duke, Notre Dame, North Carolina, Purdue, Ohio State, Alabama, Colorado and other prominent schools, together with three high schools and two military bases, marked the event by showing Obsession, a documentary film using materials from Arab TV rarely seen in the West and interviews with authorities on Middle East politics, former jihadists, and experts on terrorism to take the viewer inside the worldview radical Islam and its plans for world domination.

Freedom Center President David Horowitz said that the event represented a clear challenge to faculty and administrators who, in the name of political correctness, have sought to shut down debate about Islamic extremism: "The simultaneous showing of a film exposing the Islamist threat at nearly 100 universities is a tremendous victory for the forces of freedom and for intellectual diversity, which are now under attack."

Reports from many of the participating schools gave a sense of the success of the event. Ryan McCool, Chairman of the College Republicans at Temple University commented after the showing that "the student who participated left with a better understanding of the evil that exists in the world." And Harrison Sontag, a student at Dartmouth who coordinated the event there, said, "Everyone was completely blown away by the film. Many had no idea exactly how large and credible a threat our enemy is."

But on some campuses, students attempting to present this program about the nature of radical Islam complained about being pressured, and in some cases openly harassed, to cancel the eventintimidation, they said, that proved exactly how necessary the Terrorism Awareness Project is. Josiah Lanning, a student at Ohio's Columbus State Community College, recounted how, when he was filling out the paperwork for the event, the school's activities center required him to "tone down" his proposed flyer for the showing of Obsession because it referred to Hezbollah and similar groups as terrorist organizations, Lanning was next told to suspend the film until further notice because of the tragedy at Virginia Tech. Only after he appealed to the dean of students at the college was Lanning finally permitted to proceed with the showing.

Carl Soderberg, chair of the University of New Haven's College Republicans chapter, encountered similar resistance: "There were some faculty members who pressured me to postpone the film until they could find someone who could properly frame the issue,'" he says. But he went forward, and the film was shown to some 50 students and faculty. For Soderberg the outcome was worth the difficulty: "The point of the film was to raise awareness about a problem that many have stopped thinking about in the last five and a half years, and the best place to do that is on a college campus."

Ruth Malhotra, a student at Georgia Tech and a member of the school's College Republicans chapter, had perhaps the most difficult time. Among the hurdles erected by the school, Malhotra faced interference by opposed faculty and school administrators, boycotts and counter-demonstrations from left-wing student groups -- and even death threats designed to prevent the screening. Given day long police protection as she presented Obsession on the Tech campus, Malhotra observed: "It's important for students to know that violent Islamic extremism does pose a threat to our way of life, and to challenge that threat we have to understand what it is we're up against."

Stephen Miller, a senior at Duke University and national coordinator of the Terrorism Awareness Project, summed up the meaning of the historic, day-long experience: "Islamo Fascism Awareness Day is necessary because of the denial and ignorance about terrorism on the part of many students," says "These factors, combined with the unholy alliance between anti American and pro jihad groups on many campuses has made for a lethal combination. We're in a fight for survival and many students are on the sidelines."

Press release




Systematic corruption of British High-school examinations

Examination bodies are making thousands of pounds selling tips to schools on how to beat the A-level and GCSE systems. Senior examiners offer advice on a freelance basis and at least two boards provide courses to help teachers to improve pupils' grades.

A government adviser condemned the practice as disgraceful, saying that it preyed on schools' fears about their position in the league tables. Head teachers gave warning that there would be a "major moral issue" if boards were giving unfair advantage to some pupils over others.

Many pupils spend the Easter holidays doing intensive tuition courses. Parents often hire former teachers to help them to prepare for exams.

Teachers, too, are under growing pressure to succeed. Senior examiners allegedly give seminars for up to 200 pounds a time, offering tips on what pupils should write in coursework. Now examining bodies are also cashing in. This year, the OCR board is offering teachers hundreds of courses at up to 120 each. It offers a full-day course in GCSE English literature titled "Get ahead - improving candidate performance". The board says that the course offers "guidance and practical support" for teachers preparing pupils for this summer's exams, to "exemplify standards for the externally assessed components" and "suggest teaching and learning approaches for each component" of the GCSE.

The Assessment and Qualifications Alliance also offers courses, most of them free. A spokeswoman said that they were about raising standards and intended to "support teachers in developing qualifications". Senior markers also earn thousands privately by advising staff on how to "control" what pupils write for coursework and script foreign language oral exams so that pupils know in advance what will turn up.

Warwick Mansell describes two seminars in his book Education by Numbers, published next month. In one, French teachers were told to be "realistically generous" when marking coursework and that teaching less able pupils grammar was not worth the effort because it was allocated few marks. History teachers were advised against aiming for top-quality work because pupils could gain an A* GCSE without it. Instead, they should concentrate on areas where little historical knowledge was required - such as using historical sources. Examining bodies already brief schools on syllabus changes, give feedback on exams and make the previous year's papers available.

Yesterday heads gave warning that expensive advice sessions risked giving some pupils an unfair advantage. Malcolm Trobe, president of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: "There is a dividing line between giving appropriate information to teachers to prepare children adequately for exams and giving or selling tips which would directly influence their grades. If it gives some students an advantage, there would be a major moral issue there."

Since 1997 the Government has focused increasingly on league tables and targets in education. If results are not up to scratch schools can be closed, heads can lose their jobs and, from September, teachers face losing out on pay awards.

Alan Smithers, a government adviser and director of education and employment research at the University of Buckingham, said that this approach was key in creating the "disgraceful" new market. He said: "Finding ways of helping students to do their best has always been part of teaching, but the big difference here is that the people on the inside are giving hints on coursework and areas where students are more likely to get A* grades. "Education has become distorted by the over-emphasis on scores. But schools are playing the game to maximise the scores and, as businesses, the exam boards are jumping on the bandwagon. "What follows is that the scores are further removed from the children's ability and what they can achieve." Professor Smithers said that the boards should stop offering such sessions and that examiners should not be allowed to enter into a private enterprise.

A spokesman for the Joint Council for Qualifications, the umbrella body for the examination boards, said that it took "complaints or evidence" which raise questions about the probity of the assessment process seriously. He said that the code of practice set out the roles and responsibilities of examiners and that the regulators would pursue cases where conduct related to malpractice.

Source




Is the USA now enforcing Sharia law?

Ham is certainly "haram" under Sharia law but who knew it was "haram" under US law? They seem to think it is in the Maine school mentioned below

One student has been suspended and more disciplinary action could follow a possible hate crime at Lewiston Middle School, Superintendent Leon Levesque said Wednesday. On April 11, a white student placed a ham steak in a bag on a lunch table where Somali students were eating. Muslims consider pork unclean and offensive. The act reminded students of a man who threw a pig's head into a Lewiston mosque last summer.

The school incident is being treated seriously as "a hate incident," Levesque said. Lewiston police are investigating, and the Center for the Prevention of Hate Violence is working with the school to create a response plan. "We've got some work to do to turn this around and bring the school community back together again," Levesque said.

Placing ham where Muslim students were eating was "an awful thing," said Stephen Wessler, executive director of the Center for Prevention of Hate Violence. "It's extraordinarily hurtful and degrading" to Muslims, whose religion prohibits them from being around ham. It's important to respond swiftly, Wessler said. "Incidents like this that involve degrading language or conduct are often said by the perpetrator as a joke. I know that conduct is never static," he said. "It's part of a process of escalation." If people think insulting Muslims with ham is OK, "More degrading acts will follow, until at some point we'll end up having violence," Wessler said.

The incident does not reflect the moral values of the school staff and students, Levesque said. "We need to take a look at this and review how a careless act is degrading and causes hurt to other people. All our students should feel welcome and safe in our schools." He said a letter would be sent home to parents explaining what happened and outlining the school's response. Wessler will meet with students to address the school's climate, and staff will talk about how to respond to and prevent future hate incidents

A 14-year-old Somali boy, whose mother asked that his name not be published, said he was eating lunch with four other Somali students on April 11. He noticed many others in the cafeteria "standing up, looking at us." One boy came near, began laughing and threw a bag on the table while other students laughed and said, 'Good job.'" "We didn't know what was in this bag," the boy said. "One of my friends reached inside it. It was a big ham steak. There were five of us at the table, all Somali. It was intended for us."

The boy said he looked up at students he thought were his friends. "I felt angered, offended." He suddenly felt like he was alone. "At the school the next day, I didn't feel safe. I felt like everybody was against me. Before I felt like I fit in, and everything was normal." He began to think white students didn't like him, and the act was their way of letting him know.

On Thursday, several students came up to him and said, "Those guys who did it were jerks. I apologize for them, and I hope you feel better." The boy said they did make him feel better. "But for the rest of my life when I remember middle school, this will pop up right away." He spoke out because he wants the community to know what happened, "that there is something like this going on in our schools."

Source

A comment from GM's Corner:

"I'm sorry, while what the kids did was indeed deliberately offensive, and the kids knew it, but it was not a hate crime and does not rise to the point where the police needed to be involved. What ever happened to the school taking care of the misbehavior with a little consequence such as staying late after school, cleaning blackboards, or even opening a can of WhoopAss on the kids? On the other hand, the only reason this prank worked at all is because of the heightened sensitivity of the Somali kids and the belief that their feelings are more important than the feelings of others."

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

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

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

***************************



23 April, 2007

College Republicans rejected at Univ. of Rhode Island

A campus watchdog group is calling on the president of the University of Rhode Island to reverse a decision by the URI Student Senate to ban the school's College Republicans organization. The Student Senate recently voted unanimously to deny recognition to the College Republicans over its refusal to apologize for advertising a satirical $100 WHAM scholarship for white, heterosexual, American males.

The College Republicans viewed the fake WHAM scholarships as a way to protest discriminatory scholarships awarded to female minority students, and thus ignored the Student Senate's demand to make a public apology. However, the student governing body argued that the fake scholarship violated URI's non-discrimination policy and proceeded to ban the College Republicans.

Robert Shibley is vice president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), which was contacted by the College Republicans following the Student Senate's decision. He says the Student Senate has no authority to coerce the campus group into an apology. "President Carothers, the president of the university, has already ordered the Student Senate not to make this unconstitutional ruling, and yet the Student Senate has gone ahead and done it," Shibley says. "So, not only are they ignoring the Constitution," he asserts, but "they're actually ignoring their own university president's advice on what the Constitution says." The student governing body's action sets "a terrible precedent," the FIRE spokesman contends. "It really makes the Student Senate a rogue organization on campus," he says.

FIRE has written a letter to President Carothers, asking him to override leaders of the Student Senate and "instill in them an understanding of the full repercussions for repeatedly and recklessly defying the Constitution." Shibley says all too often, student governments are seen "determining what kind of speech they like and don't like and determining recognition or funding according to that." However, the individual rights advocate notes, "There's actually Supreme Court precedent that says they can't do that." That is why it is important, he contends, "to try to make sure that every student senate in America, or student government, realizes that they have constitutional responsibilities just like the college administrations do."

Source




RACIST CALIFORNIA SCHOOL ACCUSES OTHERS OF RACISM

A year-long feud between a talk radio personality and an L.A. charter school is ending up in an unusual court case. School administrators filed a lawsuit this week against KABC-AM (790) and Doug McIntyre, alleging the host of "McIntyre in the Morning" targeted the school in a slanderous, racially motivated campaign last summer that resulted in a bomb threat to the school and ongoing security risks.

Academia Semillas del Pueblo and Marcos Aguilar, the El Sereno school's co-director, claim McIntyre "targeted the school for destruction because the children were Latino, the teachers were Latino, the principal director was Latino," according to the suit. About 92% of the school's 327 students are Latino. The school was founded in 2002 with the mission of "providing urban children of immigrant families an excellent education founded upon native and maternal languages, cultural values and global realities," with teaching primarily in Spanish.

It became a focus of controversy last year when McIntyre accused the school of pursuing a racist, separatist and dangerously revolutionary agenda. The allegations were looked into by Los Angeles Unified School District officials. They found nothing politically worrisome, but they did have serious concerns about the school's low test scores, which were a secondary focus for McIntyre.

The conflict between KABC and the school first made headlines last year. Last June, a man tried to run down a KABC radio reporter who was outside the campus interviewing parents. The suspect was arrested on assault charges. School backers insist the incident had nothing to do with them.

KABC spokesman Steve Sheldon said the station would not comment on the lawsuit. McIntyre has worked for KABC for about five years. His morning talk show, which is from 5 a.m. to 9 a.m., has been on the air for roughly two years and is advertised as offering a "balanced look at the day's hot topics with a healthy dose of humor that keeps listeners coming back for more."

Talk radio hosts have long taken advantage of 1st Amendment free speech protections that give them broad latitude. The suit alleges, however, that McIntyre is guilty of civil rights violations for inciting others to harm the school and its students, as well as slander. According to the court filing, McIntyre made a number of false statements, including: "His [Aguilar's] job is to keep his school, his madrasa school, open so they can train the next generation of Aztec revolutionaries. Again, I want to make sure that we emphasize this: This school should close." The lawsuit also quotes McIntyre as allegedly saying: "Aztecs butchered and ate Spanish invaders. I wonder if they're teaching that at ASDP." KABC would neither confirm nor deny whether McIntyre made those statements.

As a result of McIntyre's comments, the school has had to hire security guards, adding tens of thousands of dollars to its operating costs, Aguilar said.

The lawsuit follows the firing of radio host Don Imus last week over a racist and sexist remark, which set off a large-scale debate over whether some talk-show hosts go too far. "Shock jocks" are not new, said Marty Kaplan of USC's Annenberg School for Communication. "The more they could make your jaw drop . the more their ratings went up - it has since become a standard genre."

Source. Michelle Malkin also has some comments and background.




Australia: Philistines of relativism at the gates

Universities should provide access to the best art and literature, write John Hookham and Gary MacLennan

A TIME comes when you have to say: "Enough!", when you can no longer put up with the misanthropic and amoral trash produced under the rubric of postmodernist, post-structuralist thought. The last straw, the defining moment, came for us when we attended a recent PhD confirmation at the Queensland University of Technology, where we teach. Candidate Michael Noonan's thesis title was Laughing at the Disabled: Creating comedy that Confronts, Offends and Entertains. The thesis abstract explained that "Laughing at the Disabled is an exploration of authorship and exploitation in disability comedy, the culmination of which will be the creation and production (for sale) of a six-part comedy series featuring two intellectually disabled personalities.

"The show, entitled (Craig and William): Downunder Mystery Tour, will be aimed squarely at the mainstream masses; its aim to confront, offend and entertain." (Editor's note: the subjects' names have been changed to protect their privacy.) Noonan went on to affirm that his thesis was guided by post-structuralist theory, which in our view entails moral relativism. He then showed video clips in which he had set up scenarios placing the intellectually disabled subjects in situations they did not devise and in which they could appear only as inept. Thus, the disabled Craig and William were sent to a pub out west to ask the locals about the mystery of the min-min lights.

In the tradition of reality television, the locals were not informed that Craig and William were disabled. But the candidate assured us some did "get it", it being the joke that these two men could not possibly understand the content of the interviews they were conducting. This, the candidate seemed to think, was incredibly funny.

Presumably he also thought it was amusing to give them an oversized and comically shaped pencil that made it difficult for them to write down answers to the questions they were meant to ask. The young men were also instructed to ask the locals about whether there were any girls in the town as they were looking for romance. This produced a scene wherein a drunk Aboriginal woman amorously mauled William.

Capping off this reality show format, the candidate asked Craig and William on camera what they would do if a girl fancied both of them. When William, a sufferer of Asperger's syndrome, twitched and was unable to answer, the university audience broke into laughter. Then Craig replied: "We would share her." This, it seems, was also funny for the university audience. They had clearly "got it".

It's worth noting that William's condition may make it difficult for him to understand the subtexts of social interaction. AS sufferers struggle to read facial expressions and body language and are often unable to predict what to expect of others or what others may expect of them. This leads to social awkwardness and inappropriate behaviour. Hilarious, huh?

Much was made at the seminar of the potential for all humour to offend and of the ancient nature of the tradition of mocking the disabled. But the purpose of humour is not just cruelty. The butt of a joke usually has some undeserved claim to dignity and the funny incident takes him or her down a peg.

Humour undermines the rich and powerful, and it can be politically subversive. But we don't think it's funny to mock and ridicule two intellectually disabled boys. We think we, and the university, have a duty of care to those who are less fortunate than us.

At the seminar we were told there was a thin line between laughing at and laughing with. There is no such thin line. There is an absolute difference that anyone who has been laughed at knows. We must admit with great reluctance that at the seminar we were alone in our criticism of the project. For us, it was a moment of great shame and a burning testimony to the power of post-structuralist thought to corrupt.

It is not our intention here to demolish the work of Noonan, an aspiring young academic and filmmaker. After all, ultimate responsibility for this research rests with the candidate's supervisory team, which included associate professor Alan McKee, the faculty ethics committee, which apparently gave his project total approval, and the expert panel, which confirmed his candidacy.

To understand how we have got into this dreadful situation, one need go no further than reading the series of interviews with some of the great figures of popular culture published in the journal Americana. These interviews are remarkable in that they all follow a similar narrative: the young professors who burn with a passion for popular culture take up a position at a university where they come up against the dragon of high culture. They risk life and career to slay the dragon by publishing articles on popular cultural phenomena such as TV soap operas. This, then, is the story of the heroic age of cultural studies, when teachers of cultural studies forced the academy and the schools to broaden their horizons.

As academics who have published articles on The Simpsons and Deadwood, we warm to these tales of derring-do. However, it is vital that one recognise that the heroic age of cultural studies is long past. The dragon of high-culture elitism has been well and truly slain.

What holds centre stage is not a critique of how popular culture provides - in the words of scholar George Lipsitz - the "links that connect the nation, the citizen subject, sexuality, desire and consumption". What we have instead is the reality that cultural studies is in the grip of a powerful movement that we call the radical philistine push. It is this same movement that has seen the collapse of English studies and the consequent production of graduates who have only the scantiest acquaintance with our literary heritage. It is also undermining the moral fabric of the university.

Let us be clear: we are not blaming students. In our line of fire are the academics who have led the assault against notions of aesthetic and moral quality in cultural studies. This has taken the form of a direct attack on those who do not celebrate every offering that comes out of the maw of corporate culture. We are all supposed to wave our rear ends and become cheerleaders for rubbish such as Big Brother and Wife Swap. Lest the reader think we exaggerate, let us turn to the views of McKee, the enfant terrible of the post-structuralist radical philistines within the creative industries faculty at QUT.

In the university newspaper, Inside QUT, he was reported as saying: "Teaching school students that Shakespeare is more worthy than reality television is actively evil" (italics added) and in his "ideal world programs such as Big Brother would be at the centre of thecurriculum". In a similar vein, John Hartley, Federation fellow and the founding dean of the faculty, has claimed there are similarities between Big Brother and Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew in that both explore issues of marriageability. Of course there are similarities; almost all stories deal with the quest to find a mate. But, in any comparison between Shakespeare and Big Brother, what counts are the differences, not the similarities. In Shakespeare we can point to, at the very least, the complex and sophisticated way in which the text is shaped, formed and structured. Every aspect has been deliberately crafted so that no feature is superfluous.

But by elevating Big Brother to the level of Shakespeare, the radical philistines have taken the high culture v low culture distinction and inverted it. Low culture is the tops and anyone who so much as refers to high culture becomes the enemy and is subjected to the politics of abuse and exclusion. This is what has led us to Craig and William: Downunder Mystery Tour.

And now, when we say that in civilised society it is repugnant to mock the disabled, most academics in our field appear to disagree with us. When we say it is morally wrong to laugh at the afflicted, our colleagues seem indifferent to the truth of this statement. Presumably for them it is just our "narrative". They can take this position because in the postmodern world there are no theories, no knowledge and no truth; there are only narratives, fictional stories, all told with bias.

Yet we and almost everyone outside of the cultural studies ghetto reject this moral and epistemological relativism. If we are to take meaningful political action, if we are to act morally, if we are to teach our students how to live, how to act in an ethical fashion and how to make progressive and powerful art, then we need to be able to determine what is right and what is wrong, what is true and what is false.

Is there an alternative to the moral relativism, the schlock aesthetics and the dumbing down of the postmodernists? Yes, but to transcend the position staked out by the new philistines would require a commitment to aesthetic and moral education. The aesthetic component would once again undertake the task of cultivating and improving aesthetic taste and judgment. That means providing access to the best that has been written, painted, said and filmed. This aspect of the curriculum would necessarily be anti-relativist.

There are dangers and difficulties here, but the present situation is one where educational institutions are beset with wilful ignorance and culturally the ruling slogan appears to be "the grosser the better". This is nothing less than an offence to the human spirit.

Source

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

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

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

***************************



22 April, 2007

Michigan student suspended for wearing 'I'm straight' sticker

A Christian student has been punished by his Michigan high school for demonstrating opposition to a school event celebrating the homosexual lifestyle. The boy's father, a pastor, says he's frustrated the rights of Christian students are being constantly trampled on campus.

Oakridge High School in Muskegon, Michigan, is one of many schools across the U.S. that took part in Wednesday's "National Day of Silence" -- an event promoted heavily by homosexual activist groups, which view it as a day to protest alleged discrimination faced by students who identify as "gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender (GLBT)." At Oakridge High, duct tape was passed out for students to wear over their lips as a way to show solidarity with homosexual students who are purportedly suffering in silence.

John Gardner is pastor of Holton Family Life Worship Center in Holton, a community of approximately 2,500 about 17 miles northeast of Muskegon. Pastor Gardner says his 15-year-old son David, a student at Oakridge High, was suspended for a day by the school because he wrote with a black marker "I'm straight" on a piece of duct tape and attached it to his shirt. He explains that David donned the message to voice his objection to the school's participation in the Day of Silence. "They asked him, at that point, to take it off," Gardner says, "and David [asked] why do the rest of the kids in the class get to wear theirs and I can't wear something about what I believe?" According to the pastor, the teacher then instructed David to remove the message or he would be "kicked out" of class. "And he said, 'Well then, you'll have to kick me out' -- and that's what they did," says David's father.

Pastor Gardner says every week he preaches that the day is coming when opposition to homosexuality will be banned, but he never imagined it would happen in his small Michigan town. He says a "liberal mentality" is being pushed in public schools to the extent many children are being indoctrinated with it. It is time, says the Michigan pastor, for Christians to step to the forefront. "I tell you, I fear what's coming in the next ten years for the Church and the schools -- and children, in general -- if the Christians don't come out of their closet," he says. "The gays and lesbians want to come out of their closet; I think the Church needs to come out of their closet and stand up and be the Body of Christ that God has told it to be." Gardner states he has not decided whether to take legal action against Oakridge High School.

Source




"Urban": The new race preference loophole

Post recycled from La Shawn Barber's blog -- which see for links

Some schools are taking pre-emptive action against Department of Justice (DOJ) investigations and private citizen lawsuits by removing blatantly illegal, racially exclusive language from scholarships and replacing it with the new descriptor, "urban." Urban, of course, is code for "black." Northeastern University has opened its Ujima Scholars program to all students, but with a catch. The program will target students from an "urban background."

Questions like, "If Northeastern is already predominately a White university, why should the Ujima programs be used for White students?" uttered by Lula Petty-Edwards, director of the school's African American Institute, are totally irrelevant to the illegality of racially exclusive scholarships. Northeastern, a private research university, receives federal (taxpayer-funded) grants. That brings it within the purview of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. ("No person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.") In that regard, the school also may want to remove racially exclusive language from other scholarships and fellowships.

I have outlined reasons why I'm against government-mandated race preferences of any kind ad nauseam. If private organizations supported by something or someone other than taxpayers wish to treat people differently based on skin color, that's their business. But the government has no business in the skin color game. Just ask people who lived through Jim Crow, not the pampered fools of my generation whose only example of "racist" treatment is some white sales clerk looking at them "funny." New readers, check out the Race Preferences archive and some of my columns.

Finally, after decades of institutionalized, government-mandated, racially exclusive programs and race-based policies, in violation of the U.S. Constitution, fairness, and decency, citizens are rising up. No matter how much liberals crow on and on about the value of "diversity" - though none has shown or proved or quantified the value of it - such practices cannot be justified, not even on the basis of historical grievances, let alone federal and state laws.

What's happening at Northeastern is a sign of things to come. In February, the Urban Journalism Workshop opened its program to all students after being sued. The powers that be accepted a white student for a summer workshop but rescinded the acceptance after finding out she was white. The workshop had been open only to "minorities." By the way, "minorities" also is code for black, with hispanic thrown in for good measure. Although Asians are a minority in the U.S., they are not "preferred" racial minorities in most cases. And whites are minorities in some cities and states, but you'll never, in your wildest dreams, hear any liberal advocating for skin color preferences on their behalf. (Example: Whites are a minority in the nation's capital. If being a minority simply means you're a member of an "underrepresented" racial group, based on the city's population, whites ought to be receiving all sorts of government goodies like set-aside contracts because they're white. That's obviously discriminatory, right? Well, so is the situation in reverse.)

Last year, DOJ threatened Southern Illinois University with a discrimination lawsuit for offering racially exclusive fellowships. The school settled with DOJ by opening up the fellowships to all students. As long as government programs and policies designed to benefit blacks aren't racially exclusive - barring other races from participating or benefiting - I don't have too many issues with them. The designation "urban" is a compromise of sorts. Having said that, I deeply resent any person, program, or policy that implies blacks should be judged by lowered standards for any reason - poverty, fatherlessness, ignorance, legacy of slavery, hormones, the weather, whatever.




MUSLIM DEMANDS

Last week, I wrote about Minneapolis Community and Technical College's proposal to install ritual washing facilities to facilitate Muslim prayer. Is this a tempest in a teapot, as some have suggested? Canada, our neighbor to the north, is farther down the "accommodations" road. A glance north can shed light on whether prayer spaces and ritual washing facilities are likely to satisfy activists for long.

Last month, the Canadian Federation of Students issued a report, titled "Final Report of the Task Force on Needs of Muslim Students," that calls for sweeping changes at the country's institutions of higher education. The federation represents more than 500,000 students across Canada, about half of the nation's total. While the report focuses on Ontario, its conclusions are applicable across the country and internationally, said Jesse Greener, the Federation's Ontario chairperson.

Some recommended changes could affect all students. For example, the report criticizes Canada's loan-based system of financing higher education and calls for outright grants to students. "Education related government loans should not accumulate interest," it says, since Islam "opposes usury and involvement with interest-bearing loans." Other changes would be more focused. The report endorses "women-only" time at athletic facilities, and urges colleges to "provide curtains or screens over the observation windows" when women are using the pool.

The report calls not just for Muslim-only prayer space but for "multiple prayer spaces" with "easy access" from all over campus. All new building plans should include prayer space and ritual washing facilities if necessary, it adds. Food service workers must learn to prepare halal food, which is ritually slaughtered and otherwise permissible under Sharia law. After preparing non-halal food, staff must "change sanitary gloves and wash cutlery and surfaces" to avoid contaminating halal food.

What if a campus fails to make these changes, and others like them? It is guilty, says the report, of "Islamophobia" -- an "emerging form of racism," according to the Ontario Human Rights Commission. Islamophobia includes more than clearly inappropriate behavior such as violence against Muslims or unreasonable suspicion of them. It can be as "subtle" as a remark that includes a "stereotype" or betrays the speaker's "lack of understanding" of Islam (such as the notion that Sharia law treats women as second class citizens). Just "one comment" of this kind can create a "poisoned" learning environment for Muslim students, the report says.

"Islamophobic" comments will soon land Canadians in serious trouble, if the federation has its way. The report outlines a comprehensive system "to encourage and facilitate a culture of reporting Islamophobia on campus. Anti-discrimination officers should be notified whenever such a comment is made, it says.

But the report makes clear that systems like this will not eradicate Islamophobia from Canadian campuses. To remove stereotypes, faculty, staff, students and administrators must all learn "the tenets of Islam," it said. "Education modules" for professors should incorporate a focus on "Islam and Islamophobia," while student activities could range from more courses on themes of the Qur'an and the Islamic world today to "socials, programs and other initiatives" to teach about Islam. Everyone on campus should learn to recognize his or her "collective responsibility to identify and stop Islamophobia."

Throughout this process, however, Islam must not be taught from a "Western perspective." This qualifies as Islamophobia, because it "misrepresents Islam." At the same time, the report says, some Muslim students have called for integrating "Islamic perspectives" in disciplines such as marketing, nursing and finance," since Islam's view of these differs from those of the West.

The Muslim Students Association of the U.S. and Canada is heavily involved in the Canadian Federation of Students' new report and lobbying. Its president is a member of the task force, and has been a spokesman for its recommendations. The association is the organization that Minneapolis Community and Technical College has looked to for guidance on the ritual washing issue.

Source

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

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

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

***************************



21 April, 2007

"Reading First" Paying Off, Education Dept. Says

Much to the annoyance of the Democrats

Students in the Bush administration's embattled $1 billion-a-year reading program have improved an average of about 15 percent on tests measuring fluency over the past five years, according to an analysis of data by the Education Department. The Reading First program, a central part of the No Child Left Behind law, has been criticized by congressional Democrats who say it has been riddled with conflicts of interests and mismanagement. The House education committee is holding an oversight hearing on the matter Friday.

The data, scheduled to be released today, indicate that students have benefited from the program, which provides grants to improve reading in kindergarten through third grade. "That's the irony," said John F. Jennings, president of the Center on Education Policy. "The program was poorly -- even unethically -- administered at the federal level, yet it seems to be having a positive effect in schools."

A department official said the data show that the number of students in Reading First programs who were proficient on fluency tests increased on average over the past five years by 16 percent for first-graders, 14 percent for second-graders and 15 percent for third-graders. On comprehension tests, it increased 15 percent for first-graders, 6 percent for second-graders and 12 percent for third-graders. The official said the analysis is based on results from 16 states that have the most complete data. "The results show that Reading First is an extremely effective program that is helping our nation's neediest students get the skills they need to read," said Amanda Farris, a deputy assistant education secretary who oversees the program.

Critics said the results were not so impressive, considering how much money has been spent on the program. They said the test scores are meaningless because they are not compared with the performance of other students, who nationwide are doing better in reading. [And why would that be? Because of similar reforms elsewhere too?]

Source




Education vouchers, all power to parents

Progress is painfully slow on much-needed reforms to break a culture of mediocrity in Australian public schools

PARENTS of school-aged children can be forgiven for feeling punch-drunk after a week of big talk but little action towards making Australia's education system the best it can be. Parents really need only understand the following: first, they are no closer to getting a clear idea of how individual schools perform to enable an informed choice; second, education unions remain obsessed with class-war politics; third, the Labor state governments, held hostage by the education unions, refuse to even entertain federal Education Minister Julie Bishop's plan that teachers be paid for performance rather than length of service; and finally, the best that state governments could come up with on a national curriculum was yet another bureaucracy and a promise that it would not involve a "one size fits all" approach, which seems to defeat the point.

The least subtle illustration of the three-way campaign being waged in education between the federal and state governments and respective unions can be found in television advertisements launched this week by the Australian Education Union as part of a $1.3 million campaign ahead of the federal election. Ostensibly a campaign for greater funding for public schools, which are a state responsibility using commonwealth grants, the advertisement shows a class of children at a public school being ignored by a passing John Howard. The advertisements ignore the fact that, overall, government schools receive a higher level of government funding than private schools, with the 65 per cent of students in government schools receiving 75 per cent of total taxpayer funding. But most of all, it ignores the fact that a private school student can receive only up to 70 per cent of the funding given to a student in a public school, and possibly as low as 13.7 per cent. This leaves parents who send their children to private schools effectively paying twice -- once in taxes for the public system and then again in school fees.

The teachers union campaign perpetuates the great lie that Catholic and independent schools are populated only by the children of wealthy parents. At least Labor has had the good sense to ditch former leader Mark Latham's crazy scheme to punish a hit list of private schools. Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd has articulated a forward-thinking agenda on education, favouring a national curriculum running from kindergarten through to Year 12 and setting literacy and numeracy benchmarks. Mr Rudd also has a track record of standing up to the teachers union in Queensland and speaking out against fashionable but less rigorous education trends such as Queensland's Studies of Society and Environment system.

At a federal level, the consensus has shifted on education towards a concern for outcomes and away from the politics of envy. The common ground for everyone except the left-wing unions is that a mix of public and private education is desirable both for parents and the state. The continued mischief by teacher unions that complain about standards, but encourage mediocrity by refusing to accept merit-based policies, is unhelpful. It is doubly disappointing that they continue to find support in state governments that have direct responsibility for funding public schools.

The Australian supports public education but also supports the right of parents to choose a private school if they wish. We acknowledge that many parents make a great financial sacrifice to provide a private school education for their children. We support merit-based pay to promote excellence in teaching and we support the provision of quality information that allows the ranking of one school against another, both public and private, to enable parents to make an informed decision. The present system encourages mediocrity and creates an effective black market where only privileged insiders know what is really going on. Parents deserve to be properly armed with knowledge and the power to make their decisions. As we have previously argued, the most equitable, transparent system for education is the allocation of vouchers that enable parents to spend their public education dollar at any institution they like. Such a system would encourage schools, whether private or independent, to perform in order to attract students. There would be an added incentive to reward good teachers properly and for schools to provide the sort of information parents need to make a decision. The Government and Labor should consider introducing a voucher system as policy for the next election. We believe it would be very attractive for parents.

Source

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

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

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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20 April, 2007

Judge Upholds Illinois School's Ban on 'Be Happy, Not Gay' Shirt

Two Neuqua Valley High School students won't be able to wear T-shirts saying "Be Happy, Not Gay," to school on Thursday following a judge's ruling. U.S. District Judge William T. Hart ruled in favor of the high school Tuesday in a preliminary injunction that would have allowed the students to wear the shirts the day after Wednesday's National Day of Silence. On the Day of Silence, students can refrain from speaking as an effort to protest discrimination against homosexuals.

The Arizona-based Alliance Defense Fund is representing Heidi Zamecnik of Naperville and Alexander Nuxoll of Bolingbrook in a lawsuit that claims Zamecnik's rights were violated last year when she wasn't allowed to wear the shirt in school. The Alliance Defense Fund, a conservative Christian litigation group, will appeal the judge's decision on the preliminary injunction to the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, attorney Jonathan Scruggs said. The lawsuit is still pending. Scruggs said the school is violating the students' rights to free speech by banning the shirt. "The school cannot silence speech merely because some people find it offensive," Scruggs said. "We believe that's the core of what the First Amendment protects."

Jack Canna, an attorney for Indian Prairie Unit School District 204, said banning the shirt is part of a policy "to preserve the notion that kids shouldn't make negative or derogatory comments about other students." Messages left by The Associated Press with the Indian Prairie Unit School District 204 and Neuqua Valley High School were not immediately returned Wednesday morning.

Source




Rod Paige Warns of a 'Death Grip' by Unions

President Bush's first-term education secretary, Rod Paige, is sitting in his office on the 75th floor of the Empire State Building, the leather of his black cowboy boots creaking beneath the cuffs of his pinstriped suit, and talking about the "death grip," the "stranglehold," that teachers' unions have on public education in America. His new book is titled "The War Against Hope: How Teachers' Unions Hurt Children, Hinder Teachers, and Endanger Public Education." The unions, he writes, are "arrogant" and "destructive." They defend incompetent teachers and oppose merit pay for teachers who excel. "No special interest is more destructive than the teachers' unions, as they oppose nearly every meaningful reform," he writes.

Lest New York City teachers get all riled up at him, there's a catch: The book actually praises the president of New York City's United Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten. It says she is among those union leaders who "have exhibited the unique ability to achieve, or at least to strive to achieve, the proper balance between the interests of the public education system and the well-being of the union's members." "Sure, she gives Joel Klein, New York City's commissioner of education, headaches. But I'll bet that even Klein has no doubt that she understands the need for, and is committed to, school improvement for kids," Mr. Paige writes. It's a bet that Mr. Paige may have lost: He tells me that when he last saw Mr. Klein, "He said, `I think you gave her too much credit.'"

Mr. Paige splits his time between Houston, where he was superintendent of schools before joining the Bush administration, and Washington, D.C. He was in New York for a meeting of the board of News Corp., the press and entertainment company led by Rupert Murdoch that owns, among other things, the New York Post and the Fox television networks. Mr. Paige is a director of News Corp., but his main work is as chairman of Chartwell Education Group, a less-than-two-year-old company with about two dozen employees that consults on education reform. It is in Chartwell's office in New York - decorated with photos of Mr. Paige with Mr. Bush and the first lady - that my interview with Mr. Paige takes place.

What does he think of Mr. Klein, I ask. "I think he has made a great difference and he's on the right track," says Mr. Paige, who acknowledges that New York City's size makes it a "very complicated system to operate." He says that Mr. Klein has the advantage of a supportive mayor in Michael Bloomberg and a governance system in which the mayor has a lot of control over the schools. Mr. Paige cites "student performance gains" in New York, as well as the system's being named repeatedly as a finalist for the $1 million Broad Prize for Urban Education. As a member of the board of governors of the Broad Foundation, Mr. Paige says he is familiar with the "pretty excruciating" selection process for that award.

I ask him if he thinks his outspoken criticism of teachers' unions will hurt Chartwell's consulting business. He pauses. "Well, there's been a lot of discussion on that," he says. "You can't improve the system by not addressing the real issues." "The system is not performing," he says. The people who suffer most, he says, are minorities and disadvantaged students. "The union is sitting on both sides of the negotiating table," he says, referring to the power of the unions in electing the politicians they are negotiating with in collective bargaining. The result, he says, are "systems whose main purpose is the employment well-being of the adults in the system."

"This book is about raising the issue for public discussion, because I believe the American public is a wise public," he says. "As Americans, we know better than this." "It's the truth," he says. "All you've got to do is look at a union contract.It speaks for itself."

Are vouchers allowing public school students to escape to private schools part of the solution? As education secretary, Mr. Paige spearheaded a successful effort by the Bush administration to win congressional approval for a school voucher program in the District of Columbia, whose well-funded public schools have a dismal record when it comes to student performance on standardized tests. "I'm very proud of that program," Mr. Paige says. "We've got parents lining up."

What of the latest scandal to hit the New York City schools, the high school teacher on the Upper West Side who led a group of students on a trip to Cuba in apparent violation of the federal sanctions on the Communist government led by Fidel Castro? While declining to get into specifics since he hadn't personally investigated the details, Mr. Paige did say that he felt the "appropriate response has to be aggressive and quick."

Aggressive is one thing Mr. Paige certainly is; his book recounts the fury he kicked up when, as education secretary, he likened the National Education Association to a "terrorist organization," a choice of words for which he quickly apologized. He makes no apology, though, for calling attention to the power of the unions. "The people need to understand," he says. "The power needs to be rolled back so we can have a more proper balance between the interests of the employees and the interests of the parents, students, and taxpayers."

Source




Huge waste in Detroit

The educators seem about as bright as their students

About five years after Detroit Public Schools sold its headquarters and committed $57 million to buying and leasing swanky offices in the New Center area, the cash-strapped district has decided it can't afford all the space. And now taxpayers could face a big hit as a result.

The district is hoping to rent out some of the space. But the rent for much of the 70,000-plus square feet of space DPS leases in the Fisher, New Center One, Albert Kahn and Lothrop Landing buildings are on the high end of what the current market will bear, leading real estate experts to say DPS would either have to eat a portion of the rent to sublease the space or pay $9 million over the next seven years for offices that it cannot afford.

In either event, the leases -- signed when the district paid more for five floors of the Fisher Building than the Farbman Group, a developer, paid for the entire building the previous year -- would be an added expense for the district that has shuttered dozens of schools in recent years to help balance its budget. "We did not make those decisions, but we have to undo some of them because they're not serving the district," said Joyce Hayes-Giles, the Detroit school board's vice president and finance committee chairwoman. The last of the leases runs out in 2014.

Detroit school board members, all of whom took office last year and were not involved in the purchase or leases, said the district needs to move offices into one or more of the schools that are closing. In a memo obtained by the Free Press, board member Marie Thornton listed the prices for the leases -- all with the Farbman Group -- and wrote that she was "appalled." The district pays between $4,120 and $63,784 per month to lease the office spaces -- or about $12 to $19 per square foot -- Mark Schrupp, deputy chief of facilities maintenance and auxiliary services for DPS, confirmed last week.

There's no word on what will happen with the space that the district bought in 2002 in the Fisher Building. DPS spent about $39 million to buy and improve floors nine, 10, 11, 12 and 14 -- about 130,000 square feet -- using money from the $1.5-billion bond voters approved in 1994, Schrupp said. That was more than the $30 million the Farbman Group paid to buy both the 26-story Fisher Building and the Albert Kahn buildings in 2001. The DPS administration offices moved during the 2002-03 school year into the New Center area spaces after the administration of former Chief Executive Officer Kenneth Burnley sold the former Schools Center Building and four other properties to Wayne State University for $9 million. Burnley and the district were criticized after local news media reported on the pricey furnishings in the new offices.

The big-spending Dr Burnley above

Schrupp said the plan to move offices is still developing, but if approved, some administrators could be moved to the all-girls International Academy building on Woodward or the facility that houses Barsamian alternative school after those students move into other buildings this fall. But that's if anyone wants to sublease the space. The asking price for office leases in the greater downtown Detroit area is $17.78 per square foot. And there is a 26.5% vacancy rate, the highest in a decade, according to an online report by CB Richard Ellis Inc., a multinational commercial real estate firm with offices in Detroit.

The $18.70 per square foot to lease the 18th floor in the Fisher Building was probably more than should've been paid, considering DPS leased major space, said Steve Morris, managing partner of Newmark Knight Frank, a firm with offices in Farmington Hills. He said DPS may only get $12 per square foot on subleases because landlords typically make standard improvements to lure tenants to office space.

Parent Joseph Williams said as children are uprooted from 34 schools this year to try to save money, it is only fair that the administrators move out of their nice offices. "Would anybody in this city give their house away and go rent? That's just showing how everybody is taking advantage of our children," said Williams, who is president of the Local School Community Organization at Redford High, which will close this year. As for the move from rented offices and into schools, he said, "I'll believe it when it happens."

Source

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

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

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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19 April, 2007

The Most Ludicrous, Preposterous Item of the Day

A recent article in the Miami Herald caught my attention. Apparently there is a proposal that would cut funds for gifted education. There is reportedly a bill going through the House and Senate to change the definition of " exceptional student". The fallacious thinking is that AP and IB (Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate) classes ARE gifted education.

I concur with Terry Wilson, President of the Florida Gifted Network that this is a very serious attack on gifted children, gifted adolescents and gifted education. Gifted education is different than just difficult classes (although these classes could be an integral part of a gifted student's plan of study. Even more dastardly and heinous is the plan to include gifted students in grades K through 8. In some instances, gifted students may not even be identified until grades 7 or 8 or even later. We should not stop our endeavors to assist gifted children after 8th grade.

I would urge parents of gifted adolescents in Florida to write or call Sen. Stephen Wise of Jacksonville and urge him to re-consider or re-think what he is doing. I would be happy to speak with him personally and clarify what constitutes "gifted education" , specifically at the high school level.He apparently is Head of the Committee on Education Pre-K-12.I will send him a copy of this commentary. We shall see if he responds.

Gifted children and adolescent need an education that is appropriate for their needs, talents, and desires. Gifted children and adolescents need an education that focuses on higher order thinking skills and critical thinking skills as well as enrichment. Gifted students need enhancement of their convergent as well as their divergent thinking. They also need their emotional and mental health needs addressed. Throwing standardized AP and IB classes at gifted students is not necessarily the answer. Gifted children and adolescent need a curriculum suited to their needs. There are differences between gifted children. One student with an I.Q. of 135 is certainly different than another gifted student with an I.Q. of 155. Each student has their own interests and their own background knowledge and their own preferences and their own learning styles. Don't shortchange our gifted children and adolescents. I would like to use the phrase from the United Negro College Fund- "A mind is a terrible thing to waste". Even more disastrous is the wasting of the talent and potential of a gifted child or adolescent.

Source




Klocek case hopeful

Klocek was fired for challenging Muslim slanders against Israel and DePaul has been lying about it ever since

The case of Thomas Klocek is now poised to go to trial. On April 10, Hon. Daniel J. Kelley, a judge in the Circuit Court of Cook County, upheld six of the eight legal counts leveled against DePaul and others. This came as a result of DePaul's motion to reconsider Judge Nudleman's order from May 2006, which upheld four of the counts against DePaul and others.

In his 17-page order, Judge Kelley points to DePaul's "reckless disregard for the truth" in statements made following Klocek's suspension. This breaks a long silence in the case as DePaul University previously secured a temporary gag order to prevent the release of significant facts in the case.

"Now two judges have independently upheld the validity of Prof. Klocek's complaint against DePaul," says John Mauck of Mauck & Baker, whose firm represents Klocek. "We applaud Judge Kelley's excellent decision. We also look forward to a public trial where DePaul students and the public can judge for themselves whether certain administrators silenced Tom Klocek because a few Muslim activists wanted his political and religious opinions repressed."

Source




Brainless "educators"

A fifteen-year old boy in America was incarcerated for twelve days, wrongly accused of making a hoax bomb threat - because his school had forgotten that the clocks had gone forward. Cody Webb was arrested last month, after Hempfield Area High School received a bomb threat on their student hotline - which provides a range of information to students about the school - at 3.17am on March 11th. They believed they'd found the culprit when they traced the phone number they thought was responsible to Webb.

Unfortunately, they forgot that the clocks had switched to Daylight Saving Time that morning. Webb, who's never even had a detention in his life, had actually made his call an hour earlier. Despite the fact that the recording of the call featured a voice that sounded nothing like Webb's, the police arrested Webb and he spent 12 days in a juvenile detention facility before the school eventually realised their mistake.

Webb gave an insight into the school's impressive investigative techniques, saying that he was ushered in to see the principal, Kathy Charlton. She asked him what his phone number was, and , according to Webb, when he replied 'she started waving her hands in the air and saying "we got him, we got him."' 'They just started flipping out, saying I made a bomb threat to the school,' he told local television station KDKA. After he protested his innocence, Webb says that the principal said: 'Well, why should we believe you? You're a criminal. Criminals lie all the time.' All charges against Webb have now been dropped.

Source

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

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

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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18 April, 2007

Private colleges in more demand than ever

California's private colleges are printing more rejection letters and limiting admissions to students with higher test scores, making it tougher to get accepted, according to a Bee analysis of federal data. As a result, applicants who once would have slipped into schools ranging in size from Westmont College in Santa Barbara, which has a student body of about 1,400, to the University of Southern California, which has around 33,000 students, are getting turned away.

Referring to applicants with similar grades, Tom Rajala, associate provost for enrollment at University of the Pacific, said, "Families are coming back and saying, 'Her brother got in five years ago, and she didn't. You've got to tell them, 'It's a very different profile now.' "

At California's private, four-year colleges that require the SAT test and have more than 1,000 students, almost 60 percent of fall 2006 applications were denied. That's up from 55 percent in fall 2001, The Bee's analysis of data from the National Center for Education Statistics found.

Some of the trend is due to a rise in applications from students who never had much of a chance of admittance in the first place. But a lot of it is due to higher standards that reflect more competitive applicants. The Bee determined what combined math and verbal SAT score was needed to be among the top 25 percent of each college's newly enrolled students. (A new writing section was added to the SAT in 2005. In order to compare scores for 2001 and 2006, The Bee did not include data for that section.)

At 17 of the 33 private colleges in the newspaper's analysis, the SAT score needed to be in the top 25 percent rose by at least 20 points from 2001 to 2006. Only three of the colleges saw SAT scores drop at least 20 points. The trend also showed up in California's public colleges, but was not as pronounced.

High school guidance counselors and college admissions officers see a few factors at work. When a school gets more applicants, it can be choosier, admitting only the best and expecting more of them to show up. It's like an auction -- the more bids, the higher the price. "There are a very large number of applicants for a very limited number of openings," said Ralph Robles, head counselor at the Elk Grove Unified School District.

At the same time, as a group, today's applicants look better than their peers did five years ago, Robles said. Parents and students are aware that acceptance rates are down, so youths are studying harder and taking more honors classes. "ACTs, SATs, GPAs are higher," Robles said. "More students are qualified to apply."

All the while, the general availability of financial aid has emboldened some smart students from poorer backgrounds to go for the expensive, private college...

Another factor in colleges' pickiness: Students and parents are not as willing to settle for any school. In other words, it's not just about going; it's about where you go, counselors said. A student with a 1200 combined SAT math and verbal score five years ago might have settled for the state school near home but now wants to land in the best college possible, which raises the bar for everyone else.

"It used to be, 'Just get a college degree,' " said Jerry Lucido, vice provost for enrollment at the University of Southern California. "But the public is starting to view where you go as clearly tied to what will happen to them or their children later in life."

Source



Don't count on osmosis to impart written language skills

A leading Australian legal academic laments that his A-grade university students are deficient in basic literacy and English grammar

ANY disinterested observer would say that the world is better today, on average, than it has ever been. People are living longer, much longer. They have more to eat. They can travel more. They have more leisure. They have more interesting jobs. A far, far smaller percentage of them are stuck as subsistence farmers. And however much things have improved for men in the past century or two, they are three or four times better again for women, at least in the Western world. If anyone seriously wanted to debate that basic claim with a straight face, I'd be happy to do so, preferably for lots of money. I mention it simply because normally it is just out and out false to paint former times - 30, 40 or 50 years ago even - as some sort of golden age when things were so much better than today.

Most jeremiads, or doleful laments about the failings of the here and now, are fairly implausible, to put it as kindly as possible. Rarely do these mournful denunciations of the present stand up to comparative testing. And yet there is one area of life I am intimately aware of where the falling standards grievance appears to be clearly correct. I am talking about university students and their basic grasp of literacy and grammar.

And let me be abundantly clear that I am talking about some of the best university students in the country. These are not just any students. They are what can properly be described as elite students, the very top high school students in all of Queensland who have managed to pass through a winnowing process that the vast preponderance of their fellow high school students fails to get through. It is extremely difficult to get into the law school at my university and the students who manage to do so have some of the best marks, and minds, in Australia.

Yet lots and lots of these highly intelligent tertiary students lack basic grammar knowledge. Forget gerunds or the subjunctive. They cannot cope with basic sentence construction. They use semicolons and colons without the faintest idea of how they should be used, and on a seemingly random basis. The possessive apostrophe is either wholly absent, is regularly confused with the abbreviating apostrophe, is sprinkled around in the hope of getting it correct once in a while (giving the reader such treats as the possessive its'), or all of the above. Definite and indefinite articles are regularly omitted. Run-on sentences are commonplace. And it's not even an exaggeration to say that a few of them don't seem to realise that you need a verb to make a sentence, that "Being the prime minister" doesn't quite cut it.

Quite simply, my elite law students, or a good many of them at any rate, have been provided with almost no technical writing and English grammar skills. One must assume that the same is true of virtually all Australian school leavers. Nor are these particularly challenging skills to acquire. All of my students have the intelligence to learn them in two or three weeks, in my view. They have quite literally, or so I hear on occasion, never been taught these things. Why not? It could be, I suppose, that these skills are no longer considered important. More crucial, on this view, is the fostering of children's (or should we now say childrens?) creativity and self-esteem. But if that, or some similar notion, is one of the reasons so many tertiary students seem to have atrocious writing skills, let me give you the other side of the story.

No one can think at all without language and its labels, categories and generalisations. It follows that no one can think clearly unless they can use language clearly. To make a subtle point or introduce a fine distinction, one needs the tools that a complex and sophisticated language offers. Nor does a knowledge of these complexities and sophistications curtail creativity. Jane Austen was a master of English grammar. And what would Winston Churchill's speeches have been had he not had a superb grasp of the language?

Of course, one might think clarity, precision, irony, humour and even a fully developed capacity for self-expression must bow down before the need to foster students' self-esteem or creative urges. Personally, though, I've never come across any very creative writers - be they political commentators, authors of fiction, historians, what have you - whose grasp of basics was deficient.

Worse, or at least ironically, the absence of sound writing skills may well, in adult life, serve to lessen one's self-esteem. It may make it harder to get a job or a promotion, or may make one feel inarticulate and dumb. Take law, my profession. Lawyers spend their working lives manipulating language. They draft contracts, wills, articles of incorporation and myriad sorts of letters. They argue in court. They interpret statutes. They pick over the words of judges in past cases. Their job revolves around the expert use of language. Of course a solid grounding in basic English skills is a huge advantage to them, and to many, many others.

Alas, a more depressing possibility in getting basic grammar skills taught today may be that a sizeable chunk of our recently graduated teachers may not know these skills themselves. Years of the osmosis school of learning to write, where you just cross your fingers and pray that by reading enough some ineffable and mysterious process will kick in and people will magically pick it up, may be coming home to roost. That wouldn't be much of a surprise, would it? Merely to state the osmosis approach shows how ridiculous it is.

(The author above, James Allan is a professor of law at the University of Queensland, has taught at universities in New Zealand, Canada and Hong Kong)

Source

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

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

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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17 April, 2007

Scotland: Don't stare at Muslims

PUPILS and teachers have been told by an official body not to stare at Muslims for fear of causing offence. A document intended to educate against religious intolerance and sectarianism urges teachers to "make pupils aware of the various forms of Islamophobia, ie stares, verbal abuse, physical abuse". But Learning Teaching Scotland (LTS), which issued the advice to schools north of the border, has been criticised by politicians and Muslim leaders for going "over the top".

The document states: "Some Muslims may choose to wear clothing or display their faith in a way that makes them visible. For example, women may be wearing a headscarf, and men might be wearing a skullcap. Staring or looking is a form of discrimination as it makes the other person feel uncomfortable, or as though they are not normal."

Osama Saeed, a spokesman for the Muslim Association of Britain, accused officials of going too far. "There are far more serious elements of Islamophobia. People look at all sorts of things - that can just be a glance. A glance and a stare are two different things - glances happen naturally when all sorts of things catch your eye whereas a stare is probably gawking at something. "Personally I have not encountered much of a problem with people staring. I don't know how you legislate for that."

Murdo Fraser, deputy leader of the Scottish Conservatives, said: "In a multicultural society like ours there are people with all different forms of dress and I don't think it's unreasonable to expect children in particular to look at those who are differently dressed from them. To describe this as a form of discrimination seems to go completely over the top."

Source




Non-teachers teach in Britain

Unqualified school helpers are being used as cheap labour to teach A-level and GCSE classes in subjects about which they know nothing when specialist subject teachers are on leave, a union claims. In the very worst cases, an untrained assistant was required to teach A-level English for an entire term, while another was put in charge of a GCSE maths group. Other instances include former dinner ladies and prison officers replacing qualified supply teachers.

The practice was condemned as an "absolute scandal" yesterday by members of the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT), who likened it to putting an enthusiastic member of the ground staff in charge of flying a plane because the pilot and co-pilot had not turned up. The likely result was a reduction in quality of education, a decline in classroom discipline and a danger that work will dry up for fully qualified supply teachers, the union's annual conference in Belfast heard.

Government reforms to teachers' working conditions in 2003, supported by the NASUWT, brought about a reduction in teachers' hours and specified that teachers would not have to cover each others' classes for longer than 38 hours a year - or an hour a week. Instead, classroom assistants and cover supervisors, who are not teachers and who are paid about 13,000 pounds a year, would be given a far greater role.

But Peter Wathan, a delegate from Bedfordshire, told the conference that unscrupulous head teachers were exploiting them as "cheap labour" by assigning them their own lessons. He cited the case of a popular school in his area that was using an unqualified cover supervisor to teach a GCSE maths group. "It happens to be a lower stream group - perhaps they don't deserve a qualified teacher in the head's opinion," he said.

Austin Murphy, a supply teacher from Leeds, said that the scale of the problem was far greater than people realised. "I do know of a school in south Leeds where a cover supervisor was asked to take on this role for maternity leave," he said. "They did GCSE and A-level classes. This person has no experience whatsoever in that subject. "Clearly this is an absolute scandal. It should be known that this is happening," he said.

Pat Lerew, the union's former president, who is now a supply teacher, said that putting cover supervisors or teaching assistants in charge of children while they complete worksheets prepared by an absent teacher could lead to a breakdown in discipline. "Pupils churning out reams of work with no feedback will rightly lose motivation and ask what is the point of this," she said.

John McCarthy, a fully qualified supply teacher from the union's Cannock and mid-Staffordshire branch, said that he was being deprived of work because lessons are covered by assistants, including, at one school, a former dinner lady and a former prison officer. Delegates backed a motion that replacing qualified teachers with cover supervisors will "lower the quality of children's education".

A spokesman for the Department for Education and Skills said that official guidance made it absolutely clear that cover supervisors do not teach. "We have record numbers of teachers in our schools with over 35,000 more than in 1997. We have also removed many administrative tasks from teachers and overseen a doubling in the number of support staff to help free up teachers' time to do what they do best - teach," he said.

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

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

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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16 April, 2007

Education Tax Credits to the Rescue

Philadephia's troubled education system could benefit from tax credits

Spiraling violence in the Philadelphia school district may be making most of the headlines, but the district faces another, less well-known crisis: a runaway budget that threatens to sink an already floundering school system.

The School Reform Commission recently adopted a "lump sum" budget statement last week projecting that the Philadelphia school district will be $82.5 million over budget next year. And as the Inquirer reports, Public Financial Management of Philadelphia, a financial consulting firm specializing in government clients, produced an independent assessment projecting "a shortfall of nearly $1 billion in five years." This was after the district came up $73 million short in fall 2006 and now projects it will end the fiscal year with a $37 million deficit.

Paul Vallas, the Chief Executive Officer for the School District of Philadelphia, suggested recently that the problem could be solved by borrowing money and increasing the district's share of property-tax millage. But going back to taxpayers' wallets won't solve a systemic problem. Philadelphia can save the millions it needs through education tax credits, which are already saving costs and improving education in Pennsylvania.

These programs allow businesses to receive tax credits for donations to scholarship granting organizations, which help low-income children choose good private schools. And since it costs around $5,300 for the average private school to educate a child - as opposed to around $10,500 for the average public school - the credits cut costs a lot.

In Pennsylvania, businesses can get a 90 percent income tax credit on every dollar they donate. That means if a business owes the state $5,000 in taxes and donates $5,000 to a scholarship organization, it only has to pay $500 in taxes. Programs in other states offer 100 percent tax credits, so that business would owe nothing in taxes after donating. Tax credits can also apply to individual income taxes. This helps parents pay for education expenses like tuition and textbooks for their own children.

Education tax credit programs allow businesses and individuals to spend more of their own money on good schools that cost less. Pennsylvania's business tax credit program is already saving the state a lot of money, even as it helps low-income children escape expensive and failing schools. Pennsylvania now provides tax credits to corporations for a total of up to almost $36 million in scholarship donations per year, up from $27 million in 2005.

A $27 million tax credit program amounts to about one third of one percent of Pennsylvania's education expenditures, but because the amount spent on each scholarship is so much less than the amount spent per pupil in the public system, these credits are estimated by a Cato Institute study to save between $150 and $200 million annually.

A 2003 study by the Commonwealth Foundation, a Pennsylvania think tank, found that the state business tax credit program was already saving $136,000 a year by supporting 23 children in the Philadelphia school district. That's pocket change to a bureaucrat, but it could be a lifeline to better education for thousands of students. By covering just what parents need to send their child to a better, less expensive school, a program that supported just over 8 percent of Philadelphia students with about $24 million in tax credits would save enough to cover the $82.5 million budget shortfall the School Reform Commission predicts.

Much of this savings goes to the state government, which pays for the biggest chunk of education. But if the state devoted the equivalent of only 3.2% of the Philadelphia school budget - that's $65 million out of over $2 billion - to education tax credits supporting about 20 percent of students in the city, the local district would save $82.5 million, eliminating its budget shortfall altogether.

The City of Philadelphia could even start an education tax credit program of its own, giving individuals or businesses credits for donations against any of the many taxes it levies, like the net profits tax, the real estate tax, the school income tax, or the wage and earnings tax.

And after all, the time has come to stop the fiscal madness and put parents and communities in charge of education decisions. The District overspends year after year, and even with over $2 billion to play with, it's clear Philadelphia is not getting its money's worth. We should enable taxpayers to spend their own money on education and allow parents to choose the best schools for their children. Taxpayers spend their money more wisely than boards of bureaucrats, and parents know what's best for their children. It's past time to give them back the power to make those decisions.

Source




Tennessee: Legal challenge to school attire policy may be difficult

Organizations opposed to Metro School Board's approval of standard school attire may be disappointed to learn that fighting the policy with legal action may prove difficult, according to a Nashville First Amendment scholar. Following Tuesday's 7-2 vote by the board to implement the standard student dress policy, both a parents' group and the Tennessee branch of the American Civil Liberties Union said they would monitor the policy for potential student civil liberties issues - neither saying they would pursue legal action.

However, if any individual parent or group were to bring such action against the board or Metro Schools it would be difficult to win because most uniform policies do hold up in court, says David Hudson, a scholar at the First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University. Hudson, who specializes in the student expression issues involving uniforms and dress codes, said a solid "opt-out" provision is crucial to any standard school attire policy in avoiding legal challenges. "You need to have that opt-out," Hudson said. "If you don't have that opt-out then you're going to have like what happened in North Carolina when a student successfully challenged a uniform policy saying it conflicted with his family's religious beliefs. I think that's actually a positive thing that they have the religious opt-out."

That challenge, a 1999 case involving the Halifax County Board of Education in North Carolina in which a guardian sued the board claiming the school uniform policy violated her right to free exercise of religion and her right to direct the upbringing of her great-grandson, is the exception to the rule, he said. The school district lost because they failed to have an opt-out policy for religious or medical reasons, according to Hudson.

Ashley Crownover, who formed the standard school attire opposition group Metro Parents Against Standard School Attire said she would like to see a change in the draft policy's opt-out provision. With that change in place, Crownover said she likely would not pursue a legal challenge. "We feel hopeful that a policy containing a reasonable opt-out for parents who have conscientious objections to school uniforms will be included in that new policy," Crownover said. "We feel it's essential."

Currently, Metro Schools' draft policy contains a provision stating that if the "bona-fide religious beliefs, medical or special education needs of a student conflict with the Standard School Attire policy, the school will provide reasonable accommodations." Students would not be required to wear khaki pants (or skirts) and collared shirts - the required attire under the approved draft policy - if they could prove to their individual school principals that they had a legitimate religious objection.

The parent's group would like to add a clause allowing parents to opt-out on the basis of moral or conscientious objections. Director of Schools Pedro Garcia said the policy was open to modification at the school board's meeting, but the approval of SSA districtwide was final.

Tennessee ACLU representatives issued a statement Tuesday saying they remained concerned about the policy's implementation and would be monitoring the implementation of the entire SSA policy in Metro Schools to ensure fairness to parents and students.

Garcia, according to district officials, will be looking at the policy in the coming days with administrators and members of the SSA study committee in hopes of finalizing it. They were unclear as to whether or not the current opt-out provision would be revised.

Crownover said even though changing the provision would make some parents more comfortable with the policy, she herself would not force her children to comply. She said her 12-year-old has decided not to comply and although they are expecting some repercussions, she hopes a new opt-out provision will be in place by that time. "I think they will be gentle at first," Crownover said. "I'm hoping to get an opt-out. I hope that a reasonable opt-out will be written into the policy so that people like me who feel so strongly about school uniforms will have the option to opt-out."

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

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

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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15 April, 2007

HYPOCRITICAL MINNESOTA COLLEGE PRIVILEGES MUSLIMS

Cultural clashes involving Islam have recently made headlines in Minnesota. At the airport, some Muslim taxi drivers refuse to transport passengers carrying alcohol; at Target stores, some Muslim cashiers won't scan pork products. Now there's a new point of friction: Minneapolis Community and Technical College. Its officials say the college, a public institution, has a strict policy of not promoting religion or favoring one religion over another. "The Constitution prevents us from doing this in any form," says Dianna Cusick, director of legal affairs. But that seems to depend on your religion.

Where Christianity is concerned, the college goes to great lengths to avoid any hint of what the courts call "entanglement" or support of the church. Yet the college is planning to install facilities for Muslims to use in preparing for daily prayers, an apparent first at a public institution in Minnesota.

Separation of church and state is clearest at the college during the Christmas season. A memo from Cusick and President Phil Davis, dated Nov. 28, 2006, exhorted supervisors to banish any public display of holiday cheer: "As we head into the holiday season ... "all public offices and areas should refrain from displays that may represent to our students, employees or the public that the college is promoting any particular religion." Departments considering sending out holiday cards, the memo added, should avoid cards "that appear to promote any particular religious holiday."

Last year, college authorities caught one rule-breaker red-handed. A coffee cart that sells drinks and snacks played holiday music "tied to Christmas," and "complaints and concerns" were raised, according to a faculty e-mail. College authorities quickly quashed the practice. They appear to take a very different attitude toward Islam. Welcome and accommodation are the order of the day for the college's more than 500 Muslim students. The college has worked with local Muslim leaders to ensure that these students' prayer needs and concerns are adequately addressed, Davis told me.

Muslim prayer is an increasingly controversial issue. Many Muslim students use restroom sinks to wash their feet before prayer. Other students have complained, and one Muslim student fell and injured herself while lifting her foot out of a sink. Some local Muslim leaders have advised the college staff that washing is not a required practice for students under the circumstances, according to Davis. Nevertheless, he says, he wants to facilitate it for interested students. "It's like when someone comes to your home, you want to be hospitable," Davis told me. "We have new members in our community coming here; we want to be hospitable."

So the college is making plans to use taxpayer funds to install facilities for ritual foot-washing. Staff members are researching options, and a school official will visit a community college in Illinois to view such facilities while attending a conference nearby. College facilities staff members are expected to present a proposal this spring. In Davis' view, the foot-washing plan does not constitute promotion or support of religion. "The foot-washing facilities are not about religion, they are about customer service and public safety," he says. He sees no significant difference between using public funds to construct prayer-related facilities for Muslim students and the cafeteria's provision of a fish option for Christian students during Lent.

College officials claim that the restrictions on Christmas displays apply to employees who are state agents, and so are subject to more restrictions, while students are free to express their religious beliefs. But where the Muslim prayer facilities are concerned, college authorities themselves are consulting with religious leaders, researching other schools, and using taxpayer money to make improvements to facilitate one group's prayer.

Issues surrounding the intersection of church and state and religious accommodation are complex. But the college's treatment of Christianity and Islam seems to reflect a double standard. It's hard to imagine the college researching and paying for special modifications to the college to facilitate Christian rituals. And the "safety" justification? Imagine if a particularly strict group of Christian students found it necessary to sometimes baptize others in the restroom sinks. Would the school build them a baptism basin because a student hit his head on a sink?

Source




Australia: Employers have to be devious to get the sort of employees they want

Not a great way to encourage job-creation -- something the do-gooder airhead excerpted below seems not to realize. The solution to the problem she identifies is for schools to offer less permissive and more prescriptive education -- but we will wait a long time to see that. Schools DID once teach children to speak in a way that would gain maximum social acceptability but now anything goes

Jobseekers are being warned about "social" discrimination in the job market. Executive recruiter Slade Group says social discrimination - which can be based on the way you speak, where you live or where you were educated - is particularly prevalent in entry-level and mid-level roles. Slade managing director Anita Ziemer says social discrimination is often disguised as businesses attempting to find the "right cultural fit". She says examples include employers seeking candidates of specific socio-economic status by targetting people from certain residential areas.

"In one case a client eliminated a high performing financial adviser as a candidate because he dropped the 'youse' word," she says. "In NSW it's illegal to discriminate on the basis of social origin, but ... it is difficult to prove during the job application process."

Recruitment & Consulting Services Association CEO Julie Mills says a good recruiter will refuse to search for a candidate based on socially discriminatory criteria. "This industry would come down on anybody like a tonne of bricks if we found out they were using those sorts of things as their benchmark - clients will try it on ... as long as recruiters don't act on it," she says.

Ziemer says social discrimination relates to perception psychology - a snap judgment based on pre-conceived ideas. "There is a lot of evidence that defines the attributes of top performers in any work setting, yet nowhere does it talk about your suburb, the school you went to, or whether you speak the Queen's English," she says. "Unfortunately there is an unspoken barrier erected by potential employers which is still present ... particularly in law, finance and consulting. "Ironically, social discrimination becomes less prevalent in (senior appointments) because by that time, employers are hiring on proven capabilities."

More here




Education Union deceit

Truth never has mattered to Leftists

THE Australian Education Union has proved once again it is better at political spin than mathematics. In an inflammatory television advertisement designed to shame John Howard over his Government's funding for private schools, the AEU has reignited a black-hearted campaign kicked off by former Opposition leader Mark Latham for the 2004 election. The campaign is as wrong-headed today as it was then. But this should not surprise, coming as it does from AEU federal president Pat Byrne, who has a history when it comes to political intervention. In a speech prepared for a Queensland Teachers Union conference following the last election, Ms Byrne lambasted voters for putting economic issues ahead of compassion in their decision to vote for the Coalition.

For the upcoming election, the union will spend $1.3 million on a television and letter-box campaign in marginal seats accusing the Government of neglecting public education by directing the bulk of commonwealth funding to private schools. The television advertisement shows a class of children at a public school excitedly preparing for a visit by the Prime Minister, only for him to drive straight past without stopping. The voice-over tells viewers that since the Government was elected, the share of funding for public education has decreased to 35 per cent, despite the fact that 70 per cent of Australian children attend public schools.

The campaign mirrors a $1 million advertising blitz by the AEU against the Government at the last election, urging a boost in funding for public schools. But what both union campaigns failed to mention is that public school funding is a state responsibility. The federal government does provide the majority of taxpayer funding for non-government schools, as the state governments do not fund the private sector. But overall, government schools receive a higher level of government funding than private schools. Sixty-seven per cent of students are in government schools that receive 75 per cent of total taxpayer funding. And under the Howard Government's funding formula, which is based on income demographics for the school catchment, the poorest non-government schools can receive a maximum of 70 per cent of the taxpayer funding provided per government school student, with a sliding scale down to a minimum of 13.7 per cent. The AEU campaign conveniently leaves out the fact that commonwealth education funding to government schools has increased by 120 per cent since 1996, while enrolments have risen by 1.1 per cent over that period. And it must be remembered that the state funding for public schools comes largely from commonwealth grants.

That parents are voting with their feet and taking their children away from public schools and putting them into the private sector underscores the danger in anti-government campaigns based on demonising private education as elitist. The reality is that parents who send their children to private schools effectively pay twice: once in taxes for a public system they don't use and again in private school fees. Labor has rightly dumped Mr Latham's failed policies of trying to widen the public-private divide. Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd should not thank the AEU for reminding voters about it. All levels of government certainly have their failings on education, but this does not excuse the AEU's shameless political campaign based on a false premise. The Australian strongly supports the public school sector and believes it should be properly funded and offer a rewarding career path for teachers. But a union campaign that attacks the federal Government when its track record on education funding is better than that of the Labor states, which escape criticism, is a bit rich and must be marked a failure.

Source

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

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

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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14 April, 2007

FREE SPEECH AT BROWN U BY PERMISSION OF MUSLIMS ONLY

A controversy over free-speech restrictions on college campuses continues to grow after Jewish student leaders at Brown University canceled an appearance by a pro-Israel speaker because a Muslim chaplain called her controversial. Jewish students had asked the student board of Brown's chapter of Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life to co-sponsor a Nov. 30 speech by Nonie Darwish, an Arab who had become pro-Israel and author of "Now They Call Me Infidel: Why I Renounced Jihad for America, Israel, and the War on Terror." Earlier this month, however, after tentatively agreeing to sponsor the event, the board nixed the event after Brown's Muslim chaplain, Rumee Ahmed, raised objections.

Born in Cairo and raised in Gaza, Darwish is the daughter of an Egyptian intelligence officer killed by Israeli soldiers. She says she was indoctrinated from childhood to hate Israel but changed her views after befriending Jews who yearned for peace and after her brother's life was saved by Jewish doctors at Jerusalem's Hadassah Hospital. She since has converted to Christianity and attends an evangelical church. The California-based Darwish now speaks around the United States on the difficulties women face under Islam and on the Muslim jihad against Israel.

According to Serena Eisenberg, director of Brown's Hillel, Jewish students wanted to bring Darwish to speak about rights in the Middle East, and by default in Israel. They enlisted Hillel and Brown's Sarah Doyle Women's Center as sponsors. But Ahmed reportedly said Darwish's views were offensive to Muslims, who Ahmed claims live in fear at the university. Then "the Muslim Students Association and the Muslim chaplain and the Chaplain's Office expressed concern about bringing Nonie to campus, so the women's group withdrew their sponsorship," Eisenberg told JTA on Monday. Neither Ahmed nor Gail Cohee, director of the Women's Center, would return phone calls from JTA.

Once the Women's Center withdrew its sponsorship, the Hillel students considered whether they wanted to be the lone sponsors of an event that could prove controversial, Eisenberg said. According to Yael Richardson, the Hillel chapter's student president, the board was lobbied by Ahmed and via e-mail by Brown's head chaplain, the Rev. Janet Cooper Nelson. Cooper Nelson "told us to think about the implications of what this would do with our religious communities on campus," Richardson said. "She encouraged us to think carefully about whether we wanted to fund the event."

After researching Darwish's writings and past statements, the five members of the board decided against bringing her to campus so as not to jeopardize their "lovely" relationship with Muslim counterparts, Richardson said. Eisenberg said there also were scheduling issues. Richardson said she's proud of the decision, which earned Hillel a scathing rebuke from the New York Post and led to the resignation of one student Hillel official.

In an e-mail message to Jewish student leaders obtained by JTA, Eisenberg urged students to consider whether the event was "of such benefit as to outweigh the rifts we are certain to cause in the Muslim community and perhaps among Jewish students and others on campus who question whether Hillel should be bring [sic] Arab speakers to campus who speak poorly of Islam." But she says she wanted the decision to come directly from the students.

"Did the Muslim Students Association and the administration exert some influence? Yes," Eisenberg said. "Did our board cave? No. They made a thoughtful decision about constructive dialogue and about moving forward." However, the cancellation comes after Brown's Office of the Chaplains and Religious Life supported Palestinian Solidarity Week earlier this month "over my objections," Eisenberg said.

That event was sponsored by the parents of Rachel Corrie, an American student and pro-Palestinian volunteer who was run over and killed as she tried to stop an Israeli bulldozer from searching for arms-smuggling tunnels in the Gaza Strip. Since her death in 2003, Corrie has become an icon for pro-Palestinian groups on college campuses such as the International Solidarity Movement. Cooper Nelson, the head chaplain, did not return repeated calls from JTA.

Brown officials did offer a response, and suggested that Darwish may speak at the university at some point. "The Brown University community values the contributions of affiliated student religious groups and supports open discussion among people of all faiths and religious beliefs. Administrative officials at Brown are working with student groups to discuss alternative ideas for sponsoring a Nonie Darwish presentation on campus," Brown's vice president for public affairs and university relations, Michael Chapman, said in a release.

The decision to cancel the Darwish event angered several pro-Israel students involved in planning it and prompted Yoni Bedine, a Brown student and Hillel staff member responsible for Israel programming, to resign. "I think the failure here was a failure of Jewish leadership," he told JTA. "I think it sends a really bad message to potential future Jewish leaders. I think it was a catastrophic decision in terms of the precedents that it sets."

Darwish is the latest in a series of controversial speakers on the Middle East who have had their appearances canceled amid complaints from opposition groups. Recently Columbia University's chaplain's office revoked as many as 115 invitations hours before a speech by Walid Shoebat, a former PLO terrorist turned evangelical Christian and author of the book, "Why I Left Jihad."

Last month, Tony Judt, a New York University academic who advocates replacing Israel with a binational state of Arabs and Jews, had an appearance canceled at the Polish Consulate in New York following phone calls from two prominent Jewish leaders. The following week, a French Embassy office in New York scrapped a party in honor of author Carmen Callil after complaints that she equated Jewish suffering under France's Vichy government with Israel's treatment of the Palestinians. In those cases, questions raised by Jewish opponents led the hosts to cancel the events. But at Brown, the decision was taken by Jewish students themselves, apparently out of concern that the speaker could harm Muslim-Jewish dialogue.

Darwish denied that she was controversial, and her Brown supporters say they carefully vetted her writings to ensure there was nothing inflammatory. "I never speak against the Koran, I speak against terrorism," Darwish said. "Books don't commit terrorism, people do." She has had only one other speaking engagement canceled because of fears of controversy, said Darwish, who claims there's a concerted campaign of intimidation aimed at Muslims who speak out about their own culture. "Any Arab who speaks differently from the status quo is immediately just branded as traitor, and they want to shut us up," she told JTA. "We left the Middle East thinking we're coming to America, our freedom of speech is protected. And then the radicals follow us here and shut us up."

Bedine insists he wanted Darwish's talk to be constructive. But others say the sensitivity argument is being carried too far - and often is applied in only one direction. Bedine says he wouldn't have dreamed of asking Muslim students to cancel speakers at Palestinian Solidarity Week, though Jewish students found some of them controversial. "We're here to be challenged and hear the full spectrum of views," Bedine said. "In free speech, toes get stepped on."

Source




Wikipedia references a needless source of anxiety

By Eric Rauchway, a professor of history at the University of California. The good prof puts a lot of faith in the Marxist Juergen Habermas and misplaced faith in the Green/Left magazine "Nature" as well (See here about that) but he is right in highlighting a big change in knowledge management

The history department at Middlebury College in Vermont, the US, has banned students' citation of Wikipedia, saying the free online encyclopedia that anyone can edit "suffers inevitably from inaccuracies deriving in large measure from its unique manner of compilation". What's at stake here isn't error. It's how we in the professional knowledge business greet our new overlords: the plain people of the internet. Right now, we're lobbing fibs at them of just the kind the internet is good at puncturing and, indeed, of just the kind the losing side used the last time our civilisation endured a revolution in the ownership of knowledge.

Wikipedia's founder Jimmy "Jimbo" Wales agrees with the Middlebury historians. "Basically, they are recommending exactly what we suggested: students shouldn't be citing encyclopedias. I would hope they wouldn't be citing Encyclopaedia Britannica, either." All encyclopedias stand several degrees of separation away from the events on which they report.

But by "barring Wikipedia citations without mentioning other encyclopedias", as Middlebury American studies professor Jason Mittell says, "it would seem that their problem is with the Wiki, not the pedia".

Yet in pitting Wikipedia against the Britannica, British journal Nature found: "The exercise revealed numerous errors in both encyclopedias, but among 42 entries tested the difference in accuracy was not particularly great. The average science entry in Wikipedia contained around four inaccuracies; Britannica, about three."

Wikipedia lets anyone write or edit it, which makes it vulnerable to vandalism. But Wikipedia relies on this openness to defend itself. Its (mostly) upstanding citizens don't take kindly to rotten kids ruining their encyclopedia and they quickly stop it.

In contrast to this reliance on openness, consider Britannica. Nature critiqued Britannica by conducting a peer-reviewed comparison of the reference works, acting as academics are supposed to: by getting expert opinion, then getting other experts to go over the conclusions. Britannica's response was to buy ad space in The New York Times lambasting Nature.

People with money, reputation and control over public information have historically used their power to retain control over the means of producing knowledge, as philosopher Jurgen Habermas noted. During the Middle Ages, the only public things were the symbols of authority, displayed to the people by kings and the church, who told them what to think and do. As market towns arose, so did a new public culture. Now information didn't just move down from above; it moved horizontally and, by the 17th century, vigorously, in print journals, coffee houses and taverns where political and literary discourse flourished. As Habermas noted, the rise of public opinion annoyed the experts: "The conflict about lay judgment, about the public as a critical authority, was most severe . where hitherto a circle of connoisseurs had combined social privileges with a specialised competence."

But, once public, knowledge became so cheap to make and spread that it demanded attention. Everyone who was anyone was reading and listening. And, throughout the period of liberalisation in the West, the great and good, the ambitious and the worthy, learned to reckon with "the sense of the people".

The rise of the modern state and the expensive apparatus of modern media undid this revolution in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As Al Gore noted, borrowing from Habermas, it meant a refeudalisation of the public sphere.

Now the internet is de-feudalising it again. There's no point romanticising what's going on, de-feudalisation doesn't mean democratisation. Like the coffee-house culture, the internet's public sphere is noticeably male, crude and given to the concerns of the rich middle class. But it's not subject to the control of press barons, either.

Professors can no more undo the public sphere of the internet than the embattled experts of the early modern era could undo the coffee houses. That doesn't mean our days are numbered (although Britannica's may be). As Habermas noted, deft politicians learned to use "the knowledge of the millions".

And scholars still have a role to play in the world of Wikipedia. It needs us: Wikipedia articles need to cite reliable sources that use "process and approval between document creation and publication". In other words, academic work: Wikipedia is on our side.

Source




NASTY BRITISH SCHOOL

Run by a tinpot Hitler with all the flexibility of a brick

A school has banned a grade A pupil from its end-of-year prom because her parents would not force her to attend extra revision classes. Kayleigh Baker, 16, a prefect at Hurworth School, in the Prime Minister's Sedgefield constituency, is a model student with a 100 per cent attendance record and a series of outstanding annual reports. Last year, she achieved A grades in two GCSE examinations that she had sat a year early and is expected to achieve top marks in nine subjects this summer.

Her invitation to next month's prom has been withrawn after a dispute between her parents and the school's senior management about its demand that Year 11 pupils should attend compulsory after-school revision sessions. The annual event, which will be held in an 18th century country manor house, is the highlight of the school's social calendar and for many pupils represents the climax of their school career.

Dean Judson, the head teacher, has also barred Kayleigh from the netball team and from going on any school trips. He allowed her to attend a recent achievement ceremony, at which she collected five awards.

Kay and Ellis Baker say that their daughter is a talented and diligent student who does not need the extra burden of two weekly, hour-long revision lessons at the end of the school day. They believe that they have the backing of the Department for Education and Skills, which told them in a letter: "All study support (out of school hours) activities are entirely voluntary and there should be no compulsion on young people to attend."

One of Hurworth's governors has resigned in protest at its "severe and extremely punitive" treatment of Kayleigh, who hopes to become a lawyer, but yesterday the school, near Darlington, Co Durham, showed no sign of backing down. Eamonn Farrar, its chief executive, said: "We know what's best for the children and that is why we make them go to these lessons." If one pupil were allowed to miss the sessions, others would soon follow suit, he said. "In life, if you don't do something you are asked to, then you can't expect anything in return. Children who don't conform to the school rules cannot expect to go to the school prom."

The 636-pupil school, for children aged 11-16, has won praise from Ofsted inspectors for its "very good leadership and teaching", which has led to a significant recent improvement in its GCSE results. The proportion of pupils achieving five or more A*-C grades rose from 39 per cent in 1998 to 93 per cent last year. Mr Farrar denied that the introduction of compulsory after-school lessons was prompted by an unhealthy obsession with school performance tables. "If I said I run these classes because of the league tables, that would be immoral. We don't play the league table game - we just celebrate when we top them."

Kayleigh, described in a recent school report as "an inspiration to others with impeccable behaviour and a totally focused attitude", said that she was deeply disappointed by the school's decision. Her dress, handmade for her in China last year, was inspired by the gown worn by Kate Hudson in the Hollywood film How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days. Kayleigh had a companion to go with and said that she had been "looking forward to the prom all year". Boys wear black tie and the girls full-length gowns, and many will be travelling to the Hardwick Hall Hotel, near Sedgefield, by limousine. "Everybody has been talking about it, getting excited. My friends are talking about their dresses and asking each other where they got their shoes from, and I can't join in," she said. "I've been excluded from everything fun at school, everything that I enjoy. It's cruel and I feel like I'm being punished when I haven't done anything wrong."

Kayleigh said that, by passing her religious studies GCSE a year early, she already had five free periods in her timeta-ble that were allocated for revision. As a result, she did not need the after-school sessions. Her father, a health and safety consultant, said: "All children that age need balance. Kayleigh is studious and conscientious. We made a decision about her welfare and the school has punished her for it." Mrs Baker said that her daughter had been so upset that she had lost a stone in weight.

Source

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

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

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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13 April, 2007

DEMOCRATS HATE CHOICE

In case parents choose a Christian alternative rather than the prevailing school religion of amoral Leftism. I am an atheist but I sent my son to a Catholic school because I thought that an exposure to Christian traditions would be beneficial

The new Democratic Governor of Ohio, Ted Strickland, has the Republican-dominated statehouse in an uproar over his proposal to eliminate funding for private “charter schools” in the state budget. The Ohio budget has previously allowed children in poor performing public school districts to apply for state funds to be directed to a private charter school on their behalf. Even Christian schools have been able to compete with public schools for state funds to educate children.

The argument for charter schools is convincing: many charter schools have a proven superiority over public schools intellectually and financially. In short, you get a higher quality education for less state money. Introducing competition into public education can only be good for the children and for the taxpayers. The argument against charter schools is as follows: granting state funds for private Christian schools is a violation of the separation of church and state. It also takes desperately needed funds away from the public school systems where the funds are needed the most: in poor-performing districts.

In short, the introduction of private charter schools into the public education field of competition is good for the taxpayers and the students, whereas maintaining the monopoly of government-controlled public education over the state treasury is good for the teacher’s unions. We know where Ted Strickland’s loyalties lie.

The problem with the deterioration of public education is not a financial problem. Our nation spends more per child for public education than any other civilized society and we are ranking dead last among industrialized nations in science and math. I live in Zanesville, Ohio, and the cost of Zanesville’s public education system is twice the average cost of a private school in Ohio ($9200 annually per child in Zanesville versus $4500 annually per child in an Ohio private school). Even public school superintendents wouldn’t freely give their own money for a Zanesville public school for their own children if they had the choice. The problem with public education is not a lack of funds; it is who is doing the spending of it.

Parents love their children more than child development experts and state bureaucrats and have the God-given responsibility for the education of their own children. Parents would never have taken prayer, the Ten Commandments, and phonics out of school. Parents would never have brought condoms, atheism, acceptance of homosexuality, and “outcome-based education” into school - only bureaucrats could be so impervious to common sense. The cost, efficiency, and quality of the education of future generations will drastically improve if parents are at the helm. If we want to do what is best for the education of Ohio’s children and the rights of their over-taxed parents, we must break the state’s monopoly over public funds for public education. Parents must be free to educate their own children as they wish, without state interference and without state coercion of their wealth for a public education system to which they would not give willingly if they had the choice.

There are two million home-educated children and 5.9 million children educated in private school. Many of them have been dissuaded from the public education system because of the deteriorating intellectual quality. Others fear that evil company will corrupt the good morals of their children, as the Bible warns in I Corinthians 15:33. Others have withdrawn their children from the government-controlled education system because of moral objections to the curriculum and the prevailing moral standards in public schools.

Most parents, I have discovered, are woefully ignorant of the deteriorating moral conditions of public education. Government schools have become more and more captive to the leftist agenda of the socialists, homosexuals, feminists, earth-worshipers, and atheists. Public schools have become pulpits of humanism and liberal dogma. Science classes continue to propagate the myth of atheistic macroevolution in spite of the plethora of damning evidence against it. The federal courts have consistently upheld the government’s right to teach children, without parental permission or oversight, to accept homosexuality and practice “safe sex” like “mutual masturbation” and anal sex with a condom.

It was not always this way. Before 1962, prayers were prayed and the Bible regularly read in public schools. Congress approved the first publishing of Bibles in the U.S. in 1782, “a neat edition of the Holy Scriptures for the use of schools.” McGuffey’s Reader, the mainstay of public education from 1836 to 1920, primarily consisted of prayers to God, Scriptural references, and religious instruction to abstain from sin. One of our first educational bureaucrats, Noah Webster, said, “Education is useless without God and the Bible.” This sentiment is almost universal in the first generation of public schools in the United States. The anti-Christian sway of public education has been recent – only in the last thirty years has our nation abandoned the Bible as the basis of morality and adopted a counterfeit standard of atheistic humanism.

It is frequently repeated that teaching religion in schools violates the constitutional wall of separation between church and state. When Thomas Jefferson penned those infamous words “separation of church and state”, he did so in a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association in response to their concern that the Federal government would sponsor a particular denomination as the English government had done with the Anglican church and as the states had done with their preferred Christian denomination. Jefferson assured them that the federal government would not hinder the free practice of their religion. The same time that Jefferson wrote those words, however, he was superintendent of the school district of Columbia, and can you guess what the only required textbook was for all classes? The Holy Bible!

Thomas Jefferson said, “Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.” In his endorsement of a separation of church and state, he never intended to imply that the public schools should not endorse and teach Christianity, but that the state would not hinder the free practice of religion. The separation of church and state, as it commonly taught, is a myth that has been fostered to preserve the government’s monopoly over the corrupt public education establishment, at the expense of our children’s minds and souls, and at the expense of the taxpayers’ wealth.

Source




APPALLING BRITISH IDIOCY

Schools should not “over discipline” persistently unruly pupils for fear of alienating them and should instead hand out praise five times more often than punishments, the Government has said. New guidance on school discipline published yesterday cautions teachers against repeatedly praising only “the same good pupils”, suggesting that rewards also be given to persistent miscreants who show an improvement in behaviour, however small. It cites research recommending a “rewards/sanctions ratio of at least 5:1”. Rewards might include “good news” postcards sent home, “special privileges” or “prizes”. “Striking the right balance between rewarding pupils with consistently good behaviour and those achieving substantial improvement in their behaviour is important. This can help improve relations with parents who have become tired of receiving letters and phone calls when things go wrong,” the guidance states.

It also advises teachers to take account of pupils’ race and culture when telling them off, suggesting that they go easy on those insubordinate youngsters for whom being “loud” or “overfamiliar” may be a cultural norm or “social style”. Teachers should understand the importance of showing respect to children from racial or religious backgrounds for whom public humiliation is seen as particularly shameful. In these cases, staff should not use language that might humiliate youngsters in front of their friends.

In other areas the guidance advocates a tougher approach, encouraging teachers to give Saturday and after-school detention and to punish pupils who make false allegations against teachers. It has been published to accompany new legal powers enabling teachers to use “reasonable force” to restrain violent children, confiscate mobile phones and punish pupils for poor behaviour on their way to and from school.

But critics described the guidance as “soft”, stating that most teachers already knew how to use positive reinforcement techniques. The document coincided yesterday with a threat of strikes by the National Union of Teachers unless schools speed up the process for expelling violent or abusive pupils.

David Willetts, the Shadow Education Secretary, said that the new guidance could be resented by pupils if it implied that bad behaviour brought rewards. He said that if school children could see badly behaved pupils being praised “then the school’s policy would lose all credibility”.

Alan Smithers, Professor of Education at the University of Buckingham, said the move could encourage perverse behaviour. “Children and parents will be quick to pick up on false praise. That simply devalues the use of encouraging words. The key thing is that it has to be honest feedback. As a soft approach it won’t work because children and their parents will soon pick up that it’s false. “If you reward the children who have been poorly behaved for behaving well you might actually be getting children who have been perfectly happy behaving well to behave badly in order to pick up the rewards.”

Robert Whelan, deputy director of the thinktank Civitas, said: “The idea that teachers have to take account of a child’s ethnicity when disciplining them is racist. It’s telling teachers they have to treat children differently according to their skin colour.”

Source

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

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

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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12 April, 2007

Grounds For Optimism: Sandra Day O'Connor Is Pessimistic!

Post below lifted from Discriminations -- which see for links

Peter Schmidt reports on the Chronicle of Higher Education news blog that former Justice O'Connor acknowledged in a recent speech that "she is not confident the court had preserved affirmative action in higher education for much longer." The former Justice would obviously prefer "the people" (my quotes, not hers) to leave constitutions to the courts, and not take matters into their own hands by amending their state constitutions in an attempt to clean up messes made by the Supreme Court.

Speaking at Washington's National Press Club at a symposium on diversity at colleges, Justice O'Connor said, "The future of affirmative action in higher education today is certainly muddy." As the basis for her observation, she cited Michigan voters' adoption last fall of an amendment to that state's Constitution banning affirmative-action preferences, as well as the passage of similar measures in California in 1996 and Washington State in 1998, and current efforts to place preference bans on several states' ballots in 2008.

Several of her other comments were equally interesting. For example, she stated that in Grutter she and the court's majority "had tried to be careful in stressing that affirmative action should be a temporary bandage rather than a permanent cure." Should be? Was that friendly advice, wishful thinking, or a constitutional command? Alas, her opinion wasn't careful enough to answer that question. She was also quoted as saying:

"It probably would be better if we could remedy the racial gap in academic achievement long before application for college admission," by finding ways to improve elementary and secondary schools enough that race-conscious admissions policies will no longer be necessary.

Probably? No matter. The good news, which is what worries Justice O'Connor, is that substantial majorities of the pesky people believe that racial discrimination (politely if euphemistically known as "race-conscious admissions") is not necessary now.

UPDATE

John Fund has an excellent, longer piece on Justice O'Connor's speech in today's Wall Street Journal. You should read the whole thing, but here are some excerpts:

Justice O'Connor continued to defend her original position. She lamented statistics that showed that as a result of California's Proposition 209 (passed in 1996) only 2.2% of UCLA freshmen were black, and a fifth of those were on athletic scholarships. (California's overall population is 6.1% black.)

She seemed strangely unaware, however, of the growing evidence that racial preferences might have actually decreased the likelihood that blacks and Hispanics will graduate from college. Put differently, if the body of evidence is correct, the whole affirmative action enterprise has been deeply and tragically flawed from the beginning, failing to achieve its most basic aim: increasing the number of minority college graduates, doctors, lawyers and other professionals. ....

Moreover, Justice O'Connor's comments about UCLA obscured an important and promising real story. While it's true that black and Hispanic enrollment at UCLA and Berkeley went down after Prop 209, these students simply didn't just vanish. The vast majority were admitted on the basis of their academic record to somewhat less highly ranked campuses of the prestigious 10-campus UC system, which caters only to the top one-eighth of California's high school graduates. In the immediate wake of Proposition 209, the number of minority students at some of the nonflagship campuses went up, not down.

This "cascading" effect has had real benefits in matching students with the campus where they are most likely to do well. Despite what affirmative action supporters often imply, academic ability matters. Although some students will outperform their entering credentials and some students will underperform theirs, most students will succeed in the range that their high school grades and SAT scores predict. Leapfrogging minority candidates into elite colleges where they often become frustrated and fail hurts them even more than the institutions. It creates the illusion that we are closing racial disparities in education when in fact we are not. While blacks and Hispanics now attend college at nearly the same rate as whites, only about 1 in 6 graduates.

Affirmative action often creates the illusion that black or other minority students cannot excel. At the University of California at San Diego, in the year before race-based preferences were abolished in 1997, only one black student had a freshman-year GPA of 3.5 or better. In other words, there was a single black honor student in a freshman class of 3,268. In contrast, 20% of the white students on campus had a 3.5 or better GPA.

There were lots of black students capable of doing honors work at UCSD. But such students were probably admitted to Harvard, Yale or Berkeley, where often they were not receiving an honor GPA. The end to racial preferences changed that. In 1999, 20% of black freshmen at UCSD boasted a GPA of 3.5 or better after their first year, almost equaling the 22% rate for whites after their first year. Similarly, failure rates for black students declined dramatically at UCSD immediately after the implementation of Proposition 209. Isn't that better for everyone in the long run?

These are more examples that the recent study by two Princeton professors, discussed here, can't explain.



School Renames Easter Bunny 'Peter Rabbit'

Since the Easter Bunny was originally a pagan fertility symbol, this ban has its amusing side -- but the anti-Christian intention is clear nonetheless

A Rhode Island public school has decided the Easter bunny is too Christian and renamed him Peter Rabbit, and a state legislator is so hopping mad he has introduced an "Easter Bunny Act" to save the bunny's good name.

"Like many Rhode Islanders I'm quite frustrated . by people trying to change traditions that we've held in this country for 150 years, like the Easter bunny," Rhode Island State Rep. Richard Singleton told "Good Morning America Weekend Edition."

The Easter bunny was scheduled to make an appearance at a craft fair on Saturday at Tiverton Middle School in Tiverton, R.I. But the district's schools Superintendent William Rearick told event organizers to change the bunny's name to Peter Rabbit in "an attempt to be conscious of other people's backgrounds and traditions."

Singleton struck back this week by proposing a bill, nicknamed the "Easter Bunny Act," to stop all local municipalities from changing the name of popular religious and secular symbols like the Easter bunny. "The underlying theme here is serious," he said. "I don't think a superintendent of schools should have the authority to change something we've held so deeply for 150 years."

Not everyone in Rhode Island, however, believes the Easter bunny is worth fighting for. "As a Christian symbol, I would say [the Easter bunny] is not one of those that I would go to the barricades to defend," Rev. Bernard Healy, the Catholic Diocese of Providence, R.I., said in a statement.

Singleton, however, said the perceived religious symbolism versus its actual religious significance is why it shouldn't be banned. "The Easter bunny is not a religious symbol," he said. "Why it's being banned doesn't make sense."

The American Civil Liberties Union has also spoken out the issue. "Public schools should not be promoting Easter celebrations, and to the extent that the school districts try to avoid that problem they are to be commended," Steve Brown, the executive director of the ACLU Rhode Island affiliate, said in a statement.

Singleton, however, dismissed the ACLU's comments. "I don't pay a lot of attention to what the ACLU says quite frankly," he said. This is "political correctness gone wild. 'It's crazy." Singleton said the bill is meant to protect all traditional and religious symbols for example, if someone wanted to change "the name of the menorah to the candelabra." The politician isn't positive that Peter Rabbit would have been the right replacement anyway. "By the way, Peter Rabbit stole cabbages and that's not a good role model for our kids," he joked.

Source



Britain: Discipline crumbles in large schools

A marked increase in the number of supersize secondary schools has led to an erosion of discipline, as teachers try to keep control of children they cannot identify even by year group, let alone by name, research suggests. Expulsions from the largest secondaries, with 1,500 or more pupils, have risen by 28 per cent since Labour came to power in 1997, leaving 730 pupils a year permanently excluded from school. Temporary exclusions are now running at nearly 10 per cent of pupils in schools with more than 1,000 children, compared with 3 per cent in schools with 1,000 or fewer pupils.

David Willetts, the Shadow Education Secretary, obtained the figures as the result of a parliamentary question. He said the problem was not to do with class size, but with the creation of giant, anonymous institutions. "Maintaining discipline is now becoming very difficult in the biggest schools. This is partly because the pupils and teachers in a large establishment are anonymous to each other, making it difficult for staff to tell pupils off and follow up with the appropriate action. If head teachers don't know who all their pupils are, it becomes difficult for them to identify the ones who may cause problems and to intervene early to stop these from escalating," he said.

His comments come after a report last year from the schools watchdog, Ofsted, which found that schools with the most discipline problems were the ones that were unable to detect and deal with potential troublemakers early. Ofsted also noted that schools where teachers did not get to know their individual pupils well, because of high staff turnover, tended to have the biggest problems tackling poor behaviour.

Mr Willetts said the emergence of a new breed of giant comprehensive had been achieved by stealth. Since 1997 the number of secondaries with more than 1,500 pupils has more than doubled to 315. The number of secondaries with 1,000 or fewer pupils has dropped by a fifth to 2,119. "Partly by accident and partly by design, we have created powerful incentives for schools to get bigger and bigger. Students now do a wider range of subjects and schools need to be bigger, with bigger staffs, if they are to offer the full range now expected of them. Also, the way capital is allocated to schools means that it often makes more sense for local authorities to sell off one school site and rebuild others," he said. The doctrine of parental choice had also led to the expansion of the most popular schools. A more considered approach towards school size was needed, Mr Willetts said, before discipline problems spiralled out of control.

Chris Keats, the general secretary of the National Association of Schoolmasters and Union of Women Teachers, said it was simplistic to equate large schools with poor discipline, but accepted that the biggest schools did face particular issues with behaviour. "If you have a large school, you have to put in smaller units, such as year groups, or upper and lower schools, to make sure that the teachers know the pupils they are dealing with."

A spokesman for the Department for Education said: "Large schools can of course face additional challenges, but with strong leadership and good staff they can also use their size to benefit their pupils and the wider community by offering out-of-hours clubs and community facilities." He added that the expansion of the most successful and popular schools was part of the Government's commitment to increasing choice and diversity.

Source

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

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

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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11 April, 2007

Unions obstruct better education for blacks -- but a failing racist school is OK

On March 29, the Los Angeles school board voted to oppose expansion of a diverse and improving charter-school consortium, and to extend the life of a low-performing racially centered Hispanic charter. A good day's work - if the goal is to sabotage the charter school movement.

The first vote involved Green Dot Public Schools, which operates several charter high schools, and wants to open new schools in the low-income Watts neighborhood. Green Dot's philosophy is that all students can learn if held to high expectations and taught by quality, empowered teachers. Students at Green Dot schools take college-prep courses and the schools stay open late to maximize learning. There are about 3,000 mostly black and Hispanic students in Green Dot charter schools in Los Angeles, with waiting lists in the hundreds. While not all student performance indicators are improving at all the Green Dot schools, overall the schools are showing encouraging early results.

At Animo South Los Angeles Charter, one of the Green Dot schools, the achievement of African Americans rose from less than 10 percent performing at or above the proficient level in mathematics to about 40 percent in just one year. The Green Dot high schools that have graduated students have a graduation rate of nearly 80 percent, compared an estimated rate of just over 30 percent at Locke High, a regular public school in the Watts area. Green Dot officials say that most of their graduates go on to college.

Despite Green Dot's promising results, the school board decided to side with the United Teachers of Los Angeles, a vociferous critic of charter schools, which claimed that Green Dot's higher scores were due to handpicking students and overworking teachers - claims the Los Angeles Times declared "unsubstantiated." The union had contributed a total of $1 million to two anti-Green Dot board members in their recent re-election bids, virtually the entirety of their campaign war chests.

According to the Times, "Parents and students from the impoverished, gang-ridden [Watts] community also implored the board to approve the charters, saying they were desperate for an alternative to the low-performing, often unsafe district middle and high schools in the area." These pleas fell on deaf union-bought ears. Board member and Green Dot supporter Mike Lansing, who represents the Watts area, said, "It's really disappointing that we keep talking about wanting to do what's best for children first, when without a doubt that vote was about a teachers union and three board members not having the backbone to stand up and do the right thing for kids over their ties to the union."

The school board, however, was more receptive to a nearly all-Hispanic charter school, Academia Semillas de Pueblo, when it renewed its charter. Since charters trade freedom from ordinary rules and regulations in exchange for higher student achievement, those charters that perform poorly are supposed to be put out of business. Semillas is one of the city's worst schools but that didn't matter to the board, especially with liberals like former Assembly education chair Jackie Goldberg and City Councilman Richard Alatorre plus a variety of extremist Mexican separatist groups backing the Hispano-centric anti-assimilationist school.

Marcos Aguilar, the founder and principal of Semillas, prefers race separation saying "We don't want to drink from a white water fountain," and that the "white way, the American way, the neo-liberal, capitalist way of life will eventually lead to our own destruction."

The school teaches students the Aztec language Nahuatl. Aguilar has said: "The importance of Nahuatl is also academic because Nahuatl is based on a Math system, which we are also practicing. We teach our children how to operate a base 20 mathematical system and how to understand the relationship between the founders and their bodies, what the effects of astronomical forces and natural forces on the human body and the human psyche, our way of thinking and our way of expressing ourselves."

Such multicultural gibberish has resulted in 93 percent of fifth graders at Semillas testing below the proficient level in math. Yet the board renews their charter and rejects the successful Green Dot schools. These actions confirm that what matters in California is not the achievement of children but raw self-interested political power and blinding ideology. As Arnold Schwarzenegger used to say, this is box that needs to blown up.

Source




Help families educate their children

There is no family responsibility more important than educating the next generation. You may be wealthy or poor. You may be healthy or sick. No matter your conditions, you can be sure: If your children are not educated well, they will end up poor and sick.

As Libertarians, we believe that competitive private and market solutions will generally provide superior answers to challenging questions. Private and home schooling should offer children a richness of individually-designed education programs that other arrangements will find difficult to match. However, sensible Libertarians also recognize that public schools enjoy two huge advantages, namely large tax subsidies and a huge market and production base already in place.

How can Libertarians change America from where we are, to where we want to go, on a path each of whose steps is positive? Any proposed change must add to what is already there, not take away options from parents anxious for their children.

Federal intervention is not the answer. If your Congressman proposes that the Federal government should run your child's school, ask him about Washington, D.C. That's the school district for which Congress is responsible. It's one of the most expensive in the country. It's one of the worst, too. Congress didn't bring quality to D.C. schools. Congress will do no better when it tries to `bring quality' to your child's education.

I propose a much more direct approach to expanding educational opportunity, so that the market can choose between private, public, and home schooling. We should give each child a tax credit. As a reasonable round number, $5000 per year is about appropriate. When someone pays for part of your child's education, that payment comes dollar-for-dollar off the payer's income tax. For children in private schools, that's money for tuition. For home-schooled children, that's money for educational materials. Most important, for children in public schools, that's enrichment: computers, books around the house, a subscription to a daily newspaper, all the modest factors that make an enormous difference in how well children do at school.

What about poor children whose parents pay no taxes? I remembered them. They are the children most at risk. They are the reason I said `when someone pays' not `when their parents pay'. We have about 50 million children in this country, and about 50 million parents. We have another two hundred million Americans who don't have children, or who already have grandchildren, and who love their country and their fellow Americans. My tax credit plan lets every American support the education of someone's child, and to take their support as a tax credit.

I said `tax credit' not `tax deduction'. Tax credits come dollar for dollar from your tax bill. Every time you earn a dollar tax credit, you will pay one dollar less in Federal tax. That means you can give money to support a child's education, yet end up no poorer as a result.

I would give businesses the same opportunity to support education. If you are a small businessman, you can reward your employees by picking up education costs for their children. If you employ high-schoolers or college students, under my plan you can contribute to their education, too.

My proposed program is extremely expensive. If everyone took full advantage of it, as much as a quarter-trillion dollars a year would be pulled out from the Treasury and into the hands of educators and educational materials. As a realistic matter, this program will need to be phased in over five or ten years.

Source

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

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

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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10 April, 2007

Technology no bandaid for stupid educational theories

Educational software, a $2 billion-a-year industry that has become the darling of school systems across the country, has no significant impact on student performance, according to a study by the U.S. Department of Education. The long-awaited report amounts to a rebuke of educational technology, a business whose growth has been spurred by schools desperate for ways to meet the testing mandates of President Bush's No Child Left Behind law.

The technology -- ranging from snazzy video-game-like programs played on Sony PlayStations to more rigorous drilling exercises used on computers -- has been embraced by low-performing schools as an easy way to boost student test scores. But the industry has also been plagued by doubts over the technology's effectiveness as well as high-profile bribery scandals, including one that led to the resignation of the Prince George's County schools chief in 2005.

The study, released last night, is expected to further inflame the debate about education technology on Capitol Hill as lawmakers consider whether to renew No Child Left Behind this year. "We are concerned that the technology that we have today isn't being utilized as effectively as it can be to raise student achievement," said Katherine McLane, spokeswoman for the Department of Education.

Industry officials played down the study and attributed most of the problems to poor training and execution of the programs in classrooms. Mark Schneiderman, director of education policy at the Software and Information Industry Association, said that other research trials have proven that the technology works, although he said that those trials were not as large or rigorous as the federal government's. "This may sound flip or like we're making excuses, but the fact is that technology is only one part of it, and the implementation of the technology is critical to success," said Schneiderman, whose group represents 150 companies that produce educational software. "We need to take every study with a grain of a salt and look at the overall body of work."

The study, mandated by Congress when it passed No Child Left Behind in 2002, evaluated 15 reading and math products used by 9,424 students in 132 schools across the country during the 2004-05 school year. It is the largest study that has compared students who received the technology with those who did not, as measured by their scores on standardized tests. There were no statistically significant differences between students who used software and those who did not.

In classrooms, the programs -- such as "iLearn Math" and "Achieve Now" -- are used in different ways, depending on teachers. Some educators use the software as a supplemental tool to drill students in particular lessons; others use it instead of textbooks to teach entire lessons. Backers say the technology better engages students by giving them individualized instruction and prepares them for a technology-filled world. Schools use the software to teach almost every subject, although the federal study looked only at math and reading programs.

In the Washington region, the debate over educational software raged most prominently in Prince George's, where Superintendent Andre J. Hornsby resigned and was indicted on suspicion of arranging for the school system to buy $1 million worth of software from LeapFrog SchoolHouse, where his then-girlfriend was a saleswoman. The indictment says that he demanded and received kickbacks. The schools have not made any major software program purchases since.

Source




SCOTTISH GREENS: WE'LL AXE CATHOLIC SCHOOLS

No respect for freedom of choice there: Green Fascism

THE Greens have called for the abolition of Catholic schools in Scotland. The party, who hope to win at least 10 seats at Holyrood, have included moves for Catholic schools to be integrated into a secular state system in their manifesto. Green leader Robin Harper claimed that having separate schools "tends to divide communities". He said: "Catholic children, for most of their time in primary and secondary, do not mix with other children. "And children who are non-Catholics do not, because the Catholics are educated separately, tend to mix so much with them. "Why have this totally artificial divide, that one group of children, simply because of their religion, should be brought up in different schools to everybody else? "They will get their religious upbringing at home, reinforced by their parents. They will get their religious upbringing in their churches, reinforced by the churches. "State education should be secular."

A spokesman for the Catholic Church said: "It is unfortunate that the Greens want to trample on the rights of Catholic parents and the thousands of other parents who aren't Catholics but choose a Catholic education for their kids. "This is an outrageous proposal."

Source




Another kid who has never been taught about personal responsibility

A high school senior acknowledges he went too far when he mooned a teacher. But he thinks the decision of school officials to send him to a new school for the rest of the year was too harsh, so his family is suing. Tyler Tillung, 18, mooned a teacher "suddenly and without thinking about the consequences" in February, according to the lawsuit filed Tuesday. The teacher had declined to let him into a Feb. 21 school lip sync show that was full. He was suspended for six days and reassigned to a new school.

But the teen wants to graduate with his Palm Harbor University High class in six weeks and complete his final season on the varsity baseball team, the lawsuit said. "We're talking about his graduation," said Tillung's lawyer, B. Edwin Johnson. "That's an important event in a guy's life. ... This kid deserves a break."

School Board Attorney Jim Robinson said administrators stand by their decision. "Without knowing the allegations, we're confident in the administration's position on this case," Robinson said. Palm Harbor principal Herman "Doc" Allen described the mooning as "disgusting" and the teacher as "traumatized."

Source

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

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

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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9 April, 2007

NY: Another kid-hating Principal

13-Year-Old Arrested In School For Writing On Desk

In this day and age where young students are frequently charged for serious school offenses such as possessing weapons, dealing drugs, or assaulting other students on school property, one Brooklyn teen's arrest may come as a surprise. A 13-year-old girl was handcuffed and placed under arrest in front of her classmates in Dyker Heights after she wrote "Okay" on her desk. The "suspect," Chelsea Fraser, says she's sorry for scribbling the word on her desk, but both she and her mother are shocked at the punishment.

"I'm appalled, because here we have rapists, murderers, and you're taking a 13-year-old kid? Wasting valuable manpower to arrest a child who wrote on a desk?" Fraser's mother Diana Silva told CBS 2.

Police confirm that that's exactly what's written on her arrest record and for the crime, she's been charged with criminal mischief and the making of graffiti. Fraser says the day she marked her desk, she was wrongly grouped together with troublemakers who had plastered stickers all over the classroom.

Fraser was arrested at the Dyker Heights Intermediate School on March 30 along with three other male students. She says she was made to empty her pockets and take off her belt. Then she was handcuffed and led out of the school in front of her classmates and placed in the back of a police car. "It was really embarrassing because some of the kids, they talk, and they're going to label me as a bad kid. But I'm really not," Fraser said. "I didn't know writing 'Okay' would get me arrested." "All the kids were ... watching these three boys and my daughter being marched out with four -- they had four police officers -- walking them out, handcuffed," Silva said. "She goes to me, 'Mommy, these hurt!'"

The students were taken to the 68th Precinct station house where Silva says they were separated for three hours. "MY child is 13-years-old -- doesn't it stand that I'm supposed to be present for any questioning?" Silva said. "I'm watching my daughter, she's handcuffed to the pole. I ask the officer has she been there the entire time? She says, 'Yes.'" On her report card, under conduct, Fraser has earned all "satisfactory" marks and one "excellent" mark.

"My daughter just wrote something on a desk. I would have her scrub it with Soft Scrub on a Saturday morning when she should be out playing, and maybe a day of in-house and a formal apology to the principal," Silva said. CBS 2 contacted both the NYPD and the Board of Education for a response. The police say the arrests followed a request by the school's principal. The Board of Education said the matter is under investigation, adding that graffiti was found on several desks.

Source



Australian 6-year-old expelled from school for "sexual harassment"



A SIX-YEAR-OLD Perth boy has been kicked out of his Year 1 class for allegedly sexually harassing a girl he sat next to. Jonathan Townsend is believed to be the youngest person in WA ever accused of sexual harassment. Despite denying everything, he has been removed from his class at Bramfield Park Primary School in Maddington after the girl's parents complained to the school principal.

Jonathan's mother, Veronica, is outraged. She says her son doesn't even know what sex is. The girl alleged Jonathan touched her inappropriately in class and made inappropriate sexual suggestions. She also said he threatened her with a large pair of scissors.

Ms Townsend said her son, who has not attended school for three weeks, would not know how to sexually harass a girl. "I'm strict with what he watches on telly, I only get the Walt Disney movies _ he doesn't watch any adult programs,'' she said.

"He has been found guilty, he's not in school any more and there's been no evidence. "Jonathan feels he's been punished, but he doesn't know what he's done. My son has been run out of class. "It's an absolute nightmare. It's bizarre - these are six-year-olds.'' Ms Townsend's lawyers have written to the Education Department, saying Jonathan is ``deeply hurt and confused'' and asking that he be allowed back into the class.

The Education Department refused to answer any questions from The Sunday Times about Jonathan's situation. Canning Education District director Greg Thorne said it was not appropriate to discuss the details of individual cases. "`There are behaviour management and child-protection policies for schools to follow where disputes between students arise,'' he said in a statement. "Depending on the nature of the incident, the support of psychologists and other professionals may be sought. Such issues may also be referred to other agencies.''

WA Equal Opportunity Commissioner Yvonne Henderson said the case was extremely rare. "In my time as commissioner, I've never seen any complaints of sexual harassment by anyone of that age,'' she said.

Ms Townsend said it was alarming children could fall victim to unsubstantiated claims. "Anyone can go in with a statement and destroy another child's life,'' she said. ``No one is concerned about Jonathan. I am beside myself and I don't know what to do. "He was happy in class, he was starting to read and write. "He sits at home now and tries to learn things. He wants to go back and learn.''

Ms Townsend said the school principal at first told her he regarded the accusations as baseless and said Jonathan could continue in the same class. But the decision was reversed, she said.

Source



Australia: Dubious Leftist approach to the proposed national curriculum

Developing a national curriculum has become the Lasseter's Reef of education, says Kevin Donnelly. Lasseter's Reef is a legendary "lost" Australian gold mine that many have tried to find -- but none have. Donnelly fears that a national syllabus may be a dumbed-down one

Next week's meeting of Australian education ministers, under the auspices of the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs, has much to consider. Issues include performance pay for teachers, national benchmark testing and implementing a national curriculum. The proposal to introduce a national curriculum is especially contentious and politically sensitive.

The ALP has taken the lead on the issue with the publication of a document outlining its plan to establish a national curriculum and to improve our children's educational outcomes. Apart from suggesting that the states may be forced to implement a national curriculum by linking it to federal funding, the Coalition has yet to detail its plans.

Superficially, the idea of a national curriculum, as with a unified railway system or a common approach to Australia's environmental problems, seems worthwhile. But, judging from past experience, mandating what all Australian schools should teach and how it is measured and assessed - what in the US are called content and performance standards - is fraught with problems.

The idea of developing a national curriculum has become the Lasseter's Reef of Australian education. Beginning in 1980 with the publication of Core Curriculum for Australian Schools, continuing with the Keating government's national statements and profiles and, most recently, embodied in what are termed "statements of learning", millions of dollars and thousands of hours have been wasted in the search for a curriculum that can be used by all schools.

Although the 1980 core curriculum document had little, if any, effect on schools and it is too early to judge the effectiveness of the statements of learning, the substandard state of Australian education can be traced to the influence of the outcomes-based education-inspired national statements and profiles developed during the early 1990s.

Failed experiments such as Tasmania's Essential Learnings, Western Australia's attempt to introduce outcomes-based education into years 11 and 12, and fads such as whole language, fuzzy maths and a feel-good assessment system where everyone wins, are all children of the Keating government's national curriculum plan. Imagine the consequences if next week's MCEETYA meeting agrees to impose an outcomes-based education-inspired, politically correct curriculum on Australian schools, government and non-government, and all teachers, as a requirement for promotion, have to acquiesce to a second-rate, government-mandated curriculum.

Such an outcome is more than likely if the Kevin Rudd-Stephen Smith model is adopted because the federal ALP, if elected, has promised to give the Curriculum Corporation and the Australian Council for Educational Research key roles in developing a national curriculum; two organisations responsible for the present mess.

There is an alternative to a centrally imposed curriculum. The first step is for the federal Government to establish a body to evaluate and rank state and territory curriculum documents against one another and international best practice. This is the case in the US, where groups such as the American Federation of Teachers and the Thomas B. Fordham Institute evaluate state-based curriculum documents on an annual basis.

In contrast to Australia's approach, with its politically correct orientation and promotion of progressive shibboleths such as constructivism and developmentalism, the US approach is premised on the conviction that curriculums must be concise and teacher-friendly, related to year levels, internationally benchmarked and based on the academic disciplines. For too long curriculums in Australia have been the preserve of an educational cabal more concerned with promoting its own remedies, however misguided, and excluding the public, and the media, from debate. The second step is for the federal Government to develop syllabuses in key subjects across all year levels, including years 11 and 12.

Such intended curriculum documents would be unashamedly elitist - based on the assumption that not everyone is suited to a university education - and academic, given the consensus that generic skills and competencies are best taught within the context of the established disciplines. Instead of being centrally developed, far from the realities of the classroom, such a national curriculum would be primarily developed by practising teachers and discipline specialists within university departments, not schools of education, and offered to schools on a voluntary basis and in competition to state-developed alternatives.

Source

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

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

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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8 April, 2007

Surprise! "Holistic" Review Helps Blacks & Hispanics, Hurts Whites & Asians

Anything to circumvent an anti-racist law. Post below lifted from Discriminations

UCLA has just announced, with great pride and relief, that its new, "holistic" admissions procedures have resulted in an increase in the percentage of formerly preferred minorities admitted to the next freshman class.

Prior to the university's adoption of the new admissions policy last year, two application readers reviewed each prospective student's academic records while a third took into account the applicant's outside achievements and any challenges he or she might have overcome. Under the "holistic" approach, every application is read and considered in its entirety by two readers, and the readers give more consideration to the opportunities that had - or had not - been available to applicants.

Whether or not increasing the number of blacks and Hispanics was the purpose underlying the new policy, it was the effect.

The new admissions policy appears to have increased black and Hispanic students' chances of being accepted, while making it more likely that white and Asian-American applicants would be turned away.

The percentage of whites (33% of those admitted) who were admitted fell from 26.2% last year to 24.6%, but, as usually happens when factors others than academic qualifications are given more emphasis, the biggest losers were Asians. Last year Asians made up 45.6% of the admitted students; this year they are 43.1%, "with almost all of the decline taking place among two subsets whose numbers had been growing most rapidly on the campus: Chinese-Americans and Vietnamese-Americans."

Although the applicant pools from both populations grew only slightly, the share of Chinese-American applicants who were admitted declined from 35.8 percent to 31.6 percent, while the share of Vietnamese-American applicants who were admitted declined from 28.6 percent to 21.2 percent.

ADDENDUM

As the above numbers indicate, the percentage of Chinese-Americans who were admitted fell by over 11% from last year, and the percentage of Vietnamese who were admitted fell by over 25%.

It seems to me that the UCLA admissions reviewers have made a dramatic, even breathtaking, discovery that they should publish and share with the world: the nature of the heretofore unknown "opportunities" enjoyed by Vietnamese-Americans, opportunities that have obviously expanded exponentially in the space of one generation and that equally obviously served as a burden and handicap on their applications to UCLA.




Britain: Teacher dangers

The dangers resulting from indiscipline are played down below but the last paragraph lets the cat out of the bag

Teachers were awarded up to 25 million pounds in compensation last year for stress, accidents and violent attacks by parents and pupils. The highest award, of 330,000, was paid to a teacher in Birmingham who was assaulted by an intruder on school premises after hours. A female teacher in her thirties who was raped by a 12-year-old boy with severe learning difficulties received just 11,000. She was attacked in November 2004 while giving a one-to-one tutorial in English and IT at a special needs centre. The boy, who was sexually abused and is one of Britain's youngest convicted rapists, stole her car and crashed it 40 miles away.

The National Association of Schoolmasters and Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT) secured nearly 6.9 million in compensation. The Association of Teachers and Lecturers won nearly 6 million for its members. The National Union of Teachers estimated its overall compensation figure last year at up to 12 million. In 2005, NUT members were awarded 7 million, but these only involved cases pursued by the union's lawyers. Steve Sinnott, general secretary of the NUT, said: "The injuries and injustices suffered by teachers can destroy their careers. It is imperative that employers recognise the positions that they can put teachers into. Teachers have a right to be treated fairly and to be protected from the dangers that can be inherent in the job."

Most of the personal injury cases involved teachers slipping up on wet surfaces, tripping over furniture or suffering other accidents on school property. Several listed involved road accidents. A teacher who was beaten up by two parents at her school received compensation for criminal injuries. Some of the payouts were more controversial. A lesbian teacher in East London, who was dismissed by a Roman Catholic school after asking for paternity leave to assist at the birth of her partner's baby, won 20,000 in compensation. Another teacher in London received 3,000 for unfair dismissal and race discrimination, although the discrimination claim was "extremely weak", according to the NUT. Graham Clayton, the NUT's senior solicitor, said that the compensation it sought was always fair. However, when he was questioned over the award to the rape victim he said that the union was often unhappy with the awards by the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority. "The criminal justice tariff scheme doesn't always produce justice that it should," he said.

At the National Association of Schoolmasters and Union of Women Teachers, lawyers secured 6,877,197 in compensation for members, which included 330,000 for the assault on the teacher in Birmingham. Chris Keates, general secretary of the NASUWT, said that there had been a steady increase in the number of claims. Stress was a major factor, but she admitted that the cases were often difficult to prove. "My greatest concern is the large amounts of public money being wasted, which could be avoided if schools had proper management issues in place," she said.

Last November the Education and Inspections Act gave schools a statutory right to impose discipline on pupils, ending decades of confusion about teachers' powers. Teachers can use physical restraint, confiscate mobile phones and march an unruly child out of a classroom. An amendment to the Violent Crime Reductions Act also enables them to search children for weapons.

Source




Australia: Hire, fire power for principals coming

PUBLIC school principals will be given the right to hire and fire staff and determine how much to pay teachers based on merit under a new push to improve performance. At the annual meeting of education ministers next week in Darwin, Education Minister Julie Bishop will recommend a shift in the pay structure for teachers to align salary with the quality of their teaching rather than length of service.

Ms Bishop will also outline a plan to extend an agreement by the states to ensure school principals are granted more power over teacher appointments to expressly include recruitment and dismissal of staff and control of school budgets. Under the proposal, a new legal indemnity will be provided for principals to veto the transfer to their school of a new staff member and to sack staff for inadequate performance.

Ms Bishop will also recommend that the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs empower principals to pay teachers according to performance, based on criteria including the relative improvement in their students' academic achievement. Other measures suggested by Ms Bishop are feedback from parents and students, the contribution of the teacher to broader school life, and the attainment by the teacher of relevant academic and professional standards, including continuing professional development. Under Ms Bishop's plan, the states will run pilot programs of performance pay schemes next year, and while state governments will pay the salaries and cost of implementing any schemes, the federal Government will pay up to half of the administrative costs of conducting the pilots.

At present, teachers' pay is largely based on an incremental scale linked to years in the job, with about eight or 10 salary bands with little requirement to meet professional standards. Ms Bishop's proposal calls on the states and territories to recognise that quality teaching is the "single most important school-based factor in improving student learning" and that teacher salaries should reflect performance measures. "Yet current salary arrangements could be considered to undervalue quality teaching in the classroom," the proposal says.

School principals yesterday welcomed the proposals after years of warnings that bureaucratic red tape forced them to accept the hiring of sub-standard teachers. "There's nothing more important for a principal than having the people he or she chooses in front of students in the classroom," Australian Secondary Principals Association president Andrew Blair said. "You can't be accountable for school performance when you haven't got control over the teachers who are hired or the budget that determines how school funds are spent. If it's applied across the country, that's fantastic."

Primary control of school budgets would be devolved to principals at individual schools under Ms Bishop's plan, to ensure state bureaucrats do not continue to control the funds. Under the proposal, the states and territories would provide the commonwealth with advice on the introduction and implementation of the scheme within weeks, with the legislation to be introduced no later than next year.

"It is recommended that council agree that principals should be provided with a statutory right to veto the transfer to their school of a new staff member, appoint any registered teacher to the staff of their school, and terminate a staff member from their school on prescribed grounds, including for a lack of performance," the discussion paper states. "Primary control of school budgets should be devolved to principals at individual schools."

Primary Principals Association vice-president Colin Pettitt said research showed that where principals could select teachers they could get a better team together than those who were simply appointed.

But the Victorian Government dismissed the Bishop proposal, saying it has in place a system that rewards high-performing teachers and takes into account student achievement. "Ms Bishop is simply trying to pass the cost of education on to the states after her ideas were rejected by Peter Costello," a government spokesman said yesterday....

Kevin Rudd and Labor education spokesman Stephen Smith have embraced merit-based pay for teachers and greater autonomy for schools and principals. The ALP wants to offer top teachers up to $100,000 a year to work in the toughest schools and offer all teachers a pay rise of up to $10,000 a year if they meet rigorous standards. But performance pay advocates have criticised Labor's plan because it would not link teachers' pay to student success in exams or the views of parents and principals, but to accreditation by a bureaucratic body.

Source

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

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

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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7 April, 2007

California High School "diversity" nonsense good for Asians

In 1969, when nearly every student at Beverly Hills High School was white, school officials went looking for some help diversifying the campus. They found it in the polyglot Los Angeles school system that surrounds the tony, iconic city. Under a system of "diversity permits," the high school began enrolling scores of minority students from Los Angeles each year. For decades, the permit program aimed to bring in a deliberate mix of black, Latino and Asian students from outside the city limits.

Today, however, the vast majority of the students enrolled with diversity permits at Beverly Hills High are high-performing Asian students. The dramatic shift stems from California's stringent anti-affirmative action law, approved by voters in 1996. Concerned with running afoul of the sweeping ban, Beverly Hills school officials have followed what amounts to a "don't ask, don't tell" policy on the diversity permits. Students who apply are not allowed to identify their race or ethnicity.

The program has become as competitive as the Ivy League, with about 8% of the students who applied last year being accepted. Critics say the program has shifted by default from a program aimed at increasing racial and ethnic diversity to one that simply brings smart, well-rounded students into the district. "We were looking to expand diversity but didn't have any racial information," said Dan Stepenosky, the former principal at Beverly Hills High. "We were operating blind, to be honest."

Not only does the high number of Asian students raise questions about the purpose of the program, but it also illustrates the inability of the Los Angeles Unified School District to keep its high-performing students in its schools. The permit program offers another option, along with private schools or even moving outside the district, for parents dissatisfied with the academics and concerned about safety on L.A. Unified campuses.

"Why wouldn't I take advantage of this opportunity?" said Teresa Roth, whose two sons are half Asian and attend Beverly Hills High on diversity permits. "In LAUSD, they don't care if your kid is gifted, if he plays sports, if he is well-rounded. They couldn't have cared less. I felt quite let down." Roth, who lives in Westwood, said she started looking for a way out of the L.A. school system after applying unsuccessfully to enroll her older son, David, in one of the district's selective magnet high schools. Sending her sons to a large, traditional Los Angeles Unified high school, she said, was not an option she was willing to consider.

The Beverly Hills High diversity permits, Roth said, offered a free, quality education on a safe campus. Several Asian students who attend Beverly Hills High on the permits gave similar reasons. In California, students cannot enroll in schools outside their districts without special permits.

Of the 159 Los Angeles Unified students who attend Beverly Hills High on diversity permits, 108 - more than two out of three - are Asian, according to L.A. Unified statistics. Only 16 of the students are Latino and 19 are black. Those numbers do nothing to balance diversity at Beverly Hills High, where - excluding those with permits - minority students are also mostly Asian. About 17% of the 2,362 students at the school are of Asian extraction, about 4% are Latino and about 5% are African American. Nearly 70% of the students are white, a category that includes 450 students of Persian descent.

The disproportionate number of Asians who receive the permits also stands in stark contrast to the racial breakdown of the 12 L.A. Unified middle schools that participate in the permit program. More than half of the students at those schools are Latino, one-quarter are African American and fewer than 8% are Asian. Beverly Hills Unified School District Supt. Kari McVeigh acknowledged that the numbers are skewed, but she defended the permits. The Los Angeles students, she said, bring an element of diversity to the sheltered, upscale world of Beverly Hills regardless of their race. "This is very much a small town surrounded by a large city, and kids here experience life very much through the lens of a small town," she said. "Any time you can . have different kids who come together from different experiences, it's a good idea. The permit program allows us to do that."

She also conceded that money is one of the motivating factors for keeping the program alive. Because the amount of public funds a school receives is based on the number of students enrolled, Beverly Hills High uses the diversity permits - and other types of permits - to fill empty seats and maximize funding. This year, the district will receive nearly $1 million for enrolling the diversity-permit students.

Source




Choosing education

America’s system of public education has earned an extraordinary distinction in comparison to the public schools of our international competitors. Only in America do we commit such egregious malpractice against our children that they actually get dumber every year they remain trapped in the public school monopoly. Public schools suffer the same defense as members of Congress: “They’re all terrible except for mine.” As I am a candidate for Congress and a product of American public schools, I feel I have an obligation to speak truth to power. Your public school and your Congressional representative are - statistically speaking - probably both dismal failures, and for the same reason: neither is truly accountable to constituents. The similarities are striking, if not terrifying:

· Political forces largely outside the control of citizens and voters establish districts that rarely have anything to do with serving the public, but frequently have everything to do with maintaining monopoly power.

· In Congress, members gerrymander their districts to insulate themselves from competitive elections.

· In public schools, bureaucrats set neighborhood school boundaries that prevent competition among schools.

· We measure inputs rather than results.

· In Congress, increasing budgets are the most important measure of a program’s power and success, regardless of whether the program accomplishes anything, whether it’s necessary, or even if the program is counterproductive.

· In public schools, supporters equate greater quality with increased funding, despite the absence of any statistical correlation between increased budgets and improved outcomes.

· Failure results in more funding.

· In Congress, failed programs are never the result of bad ideas, implementation, or employees. They are always the result of too little funding.

· In public schools, illiteracy, dropouts, declining test scores, and the inability to match wits with our international peers are never the result of bad curricula, bad teachers, or bad instruction methods. They are always the result of bad parents, unreasonable expectations, and too little funding.

· The leaders follow fads without any evidence that their path will take them where they want to go.

· In Congress, legislators and committees use the rule of magpies - they find something bright and then they land on it. This is why Congress holds endless hearings about issues that belong on “Entertainment Tonight” and “Dateline” rather than about issues that really matter to citizens.

· In public schools, the curriculum is so dedicated to political correctness, new math, and whole language learning that it has escaped the attention of professional educators that our children do not know whether the phrase, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need,” comes from Thomas Jefferson or Karl Marx; how to read a food label, make change, or balance a checkbook; and, how to read, spell, and write.

· Our best and brightest flee with alarming speed and regularity.

· In Congress, voters commonly complain that they rarely have the opportunity to choose among candidates that excite or enthuse them.

· In public schools, teachers with the highest ratings for generating positive educational outcomes among their students rarely work more than five years before leaving the field entirely.

· When we are unsatisfied with the outcomes, we have few alternatives and very little recourse.

· In Congress, because of gerrymandered voting districts, earmarking, and the financial and promotional advantages of incumbency, lawmakers are virtually guaranteed re-election.

· In public schools, our only option is to move our children to private schools, at our own expense, because parents have virtually no influence over institutions that serve bureaucrats, politicians, and unions rather than students. To add insult to injury, even if we can afford private school tuition, we still have to pay property taxes for a service we found so dissatisfying that we abandoned it.

I believe that universal public education is essential. Universal public education is essential for developing engaged citizens, critical thinkers, and an advanced economy. It’s an investment in our children, our country, and our future. But, like any investment, we can make wise or poor decisions about where to allocate our resources. Today, and for a generation or more, we make very poor decisions.

This is not unusual in a socialized system - a system in which public servants allocate investments on behalf of a public they supposedly represent. In reality, the central planners who control education investments respond to politics rather than the needs of our children. The reason is simple and understandable: the public education system survives on the largesse of a political system, rather than on the dollars and needs of its customers.

The bureaucrats in the federal and state departments of education are as hopelessly out of touch as the bureaucrats who tried to centrally plan the economies of the failed communist countries. Without any information about which outcomes are actually relevant, they rely on the only information they have - how much money they spend. The Federal government made an effort at remedying this bizarre situation with mandatory testing in the tragic “No Child Left Behind” law. Unfortunately, NCLB allows each state to decide how to conduct that testing. The result is entirely predictable: state political and education leaders manipulate the tests and their definition of “passing grades” to comply with the Federal mandates and secure the Federal funding. So, rather than finding out whether our children are learning anything, we find out how bureaucrats have to adjust the “passing grade” each year to make sure that it reflects “adequate yearly progress.”

The solution to this Kafkaesque comedy of manners is simple, radical, and painfully controversial: allow parents and children to decide which school they want to attend. Only by allowing this kind of choice - using the public funds we already allocate to universal education to permit families to choose the right school, the right teachers, the right instruction method, and the right curriculum - will we be able to convey to schools the infinite range of variables necessary to make wise investments. In the same way that entrepreneurs strive to build better mousetraps, to deliver better products at lower costs, to respond to the unique demands of 300 million Americans - entrepreneurs will respond to educational choice with a veritable mall of choices that meet the needs of the real consumers of universal public education.

Putting more money into a system that doesn’t work will not make the system work. The incentives to perform in today’s public education system are set by people who have an interest in securing more power and more money, and the people responding to those incentives are accountable to the politicians and bureaucrats who set them. Only educational choice will make schools accountable to the constituents who matter - our children.

Source

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

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

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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6 April, 2007

Victory for freedom of association at CMU

Reversal of Policy Forbidding Student Groups from 'Discriminating' on the Basis of Politics

In an important victory for free association, Central Michigan University (CMU) has revised a policy that banned ideological and political groups from “discriminating” on the basis of “political persuasion.” The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) urged CMU to change this policy after students who disagreed with the mission of the Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) student organization attempted to become members of the group in order to destroy it from the inside.

“Central Michigan University should be commended for quickly fixing its constitutionally unsound ‘anti-discrimination’ policy,” FIRE President Greg Lukianoff said. “Freedom of association means little if you cannot deny membership to people who do not share the core beliefs of the group. A conservative political student group should be allowed to ‘discriminate’ in its membership on the basis of political beliefs, just as liberal, objectivist, anarchist, or Whig party groups should be allowed to exclude members who don’t agree with their ideologies.”

YAF is a Registered Student Organization (RSO) at CMU described in its constitution as “a conservative non-partisan, non-sectarian voluntary educational organization.” Following an attempt by the CMU student government to derecognize YAF last February, YAF members report that students from various liberal student groups began attending and disrupting YAF meetings. On February 13, 2007, some students created a Facebook.com group entitled “People who believe the Young Americans for Freedom is a Hate Group,” where members posted messages suggesting ways to get YAF expelled from CMU. One post encouraged members of the Facebook group to attend YAF meetings, vote students opposing YAF’s mission into board positions, and thereby force YAF’s dissolution.

After learning of these proposed attempts to drive the group off campus, YAF President Dennis Lennox II e-mailed Assistant Director of Student Life Thomas H. Idema, Jr., on February 20 to inquire whether YAF could deny membership to individuals who publicly disagreed with YAF’s purpose. Idema responded in an e-mail by quoting from the non-discrimination clause of the RSO Manual, which states that “[a]n RSO may not discriminate in its membership criteria or leadership criteria on the basis of…political persuasion….” Idema further explained to Lennox that YAF could “not require members to be ‘like-minded’ as that opens [the group] up to discrimination based on political persuasion.”

Lennox contacted FIRE, which wrote to CMU President Michael Rao on March 16 reminding him that denying political or ideological student groups the right to associate with students who share the group’s beliefs violates the freedom of association afforded to all CMU students. FIRE explained that the U.S. Supreme Court addressed this exact situation in Boy Scouts of America v. Dale (2000), when it held that “forced inclusion of an unwanted person in a group infringes the group’s freedom of expressive association if the presence of that person affects in a significant way the group’s ability to advocate public or private viewpoints.” FIRE also pointed out that CMU allows religious student groups to choose their membership based on shared beliefs, resulting in an inconsistency regarding the policy for secular student groups.

On March 27, CMU President Michael Rao informed FIRE that CMU would implement a new policy extending the rules in place for religious student groups to all belief-based student groups. The change was announced to all presidents of registered student groups in an e-mail from the Office of Student Life on March 28. The policy will supposedly be in place by the start of the next academic year.

“Going forward, members of any belief-based student organization at CMU can rest assured that outside opponents will not be able to overtake and undermine their group,” FIRE Vice President Robert Shibley said. “FIRE is deeply heartened that CMU has recognized its legal and moral duty to uphold the full extent of students’ right to freedom of association.”

Source




UK JEWISH LEADERS CONCERNED OVER UNIVERSITY APPOINTMENT

British Jewish leaders have spoken of their concern after a Haifa University lecturer who has called for a boycott of Israeli academics, was made Chair of History at Exeter University in the south of England. Ilan Pappe has published numerous books and essays accusing Israel of "ethnically cleansing" the Palestinians. "Zionism is far more dangerous to the safety of the Middle East than Islam," Pappe said in one interview recently and two years ago he was a major supporter of the Association of University Teachers' proposals for an academic boycott of Israel.

The Union of Jewish Students is one of a number of organisations who have said they are concerned about the appointment. Mitch Simmons of UJS told The Jewish Telegraph: We're concerned that his anti-Zionist views will spread to other British universities. If an Israel academic has been appointed with more balanced opinions, then that would be fine."

Jon Benjamin, Chief Executive of the Board of Deputies, said he was concerned that impressionable students may be "exposed to his biased views." Benjamin told TotallyJewish.com: "After taking full advantage of all the freedoms accorded to him in Israel, a country he has so shamelessly attacked, Pappe has decided to set up shop here. "Whilst this provides the opportunity for academics here to challenge him on his revisionist agenda, the uncomfortable fact is that in the lecture theatres and seminar rooms at Exeter, many impressionable young minds will be exposed to his partial and biased views."

Source

There is an amusing comment here on Pappe: "In both books Pappe in effect tells his readers: "This is what happened." This is strange, because it directly conflicts with a second major element in his historiographical outlook. Pappe is a proud postmodernist. He believes that there is no such thing as historical truth, only a collection of narratives as numerous as the participants in any given event or process; and each narrative, each perspective, is as valid and legitimate, as true, as the next. Moreover, every narrative is inherently political and, consciously or not, serves political ends. Each historian is justified in shaping his narrative to promote particular political purposes. Shlomo Aronson, an Israeli political scientist, years ago confronted Pappe with the ultimate problem regarding historical relativism: if all narratives are equally legitimate and there is no historical truth, then the narrative of Holocaust deniers is as valid as that of Holocaust affirmers. Pappe did not offer a persuasive answer, beyond asserting lamely that there exists a large body of indisputable oral testimony affirming that the Holocaust took place."




Caste quotas limited in India

India's struggles with the legacy of its ancient caste system took center stage again Thursday, with the highest court suspending a controversial government policy that reserved more seats at elite colleges for students born into "backward" classes. The policy sparked protests from students across the country when it was announced last year.

Top state-run colleges already reserve 22.5% of admissions for students from lower castes. However, last summer, the government said it wanted to create an additional quota of 27% for "other backward classes," a move that protesters charged was pandering for votes in a country that sees intense competition among millions of students each year for seats in the top-tier colleges.

On Thursday, a two-judge panel of the Supreme Court threw a wrench into the quota hike, asking the government to provide more accurate data on numbers and the educational status of lower-caste groups -called "other backward classes" - before implementing the new quotas. In a ruling that provided respite for protesting students, many of whom are from the upper castes, the bench said: "The state is empowered to enact affirmative action to help backward classes but it should not be unduly adverse to those who are left out of such action." It went on to observe: "Nowhere in the world do castes queue up to be branded as backward. Nowhere in the world is there a competition to become backward."

"We had raised doubts on the government's intentions and today the Supreme Court has given an order which serves a lesson to all opportunistic powers," Anil Sharma, a member of the voluntary group Youth for Equality, was quoted as saying. The group, which has close to 19,000 members, was started by students at medical colleges to protest the new policy. Youth for Equality and several other groups filed a public interest petition against the government policy last year.

Significantly, the court's main objection appeared to be that the policy relied on data collected in 1931. It did not seem to have an issue with the increase, per se. The government hasn't released exact figures on what percentage of the population "other backward classes" account for. Varying estimates put that number between 35% and 50%, and depending on what side of the fence they're on, interested groups choose what statistic to use. The last census in 2001 did not gather information on "other backward classes."

On its web site, Youth for Equality spotlights data from the elite Indian Institutes of Technology that shows that even the present quota of reserved seats is not fully filled. At the seven prestigious science and engineering schools, 50% of the reserved seats remain vacant, and about 25% of those who enroll under the quota system drop out. An estimated 33% of seats reserved for backward caste students in colleges reportedly go unused every year because there aren't enough students who meet basic admission criteria.

The pro-quota Communist Party of India (Marxist), which supports the ruling federal coalition, called the court ruling "unfortunate." "The judgment has ignored the fact that there are clear-cut lists of other backward classes in all the states," the party said in a statement. "It is on this basis that there is already reservation for OBCs in educational institutions in many states." And in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, which is vehemently in favor of affirmative action, the ruling coalition called a dawn-to-dusk strike for Friday to protest the move.

The Supreme Court ruling means upper-caste students applying to college this year will not have to face stiffer competition for fewer seats. But with the government determined to push the measure through, the issue is likely to come up again soon. And when it does, there will no doubt be more loud protests from students and plenty of political posturing.

Source

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

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

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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5 April, 2007

Jury awards $1.4M to teacher who was punished for refusing to change failing grades

For once the kids got feedback on how little they knew. Wicked!

A Louisiana school system must pay more than $1.4 million to an English teacher who was suspended and demoted after refusing to change the Ds and Fs she gave to 70 percent of her students, a federal jury has found. The jury of four men and five women deliberated almost four hours before finding that the school board, superintendent and the principal at West Feliciana High School had harassed Paula Payne, violated her First Amendment rights and retaliated against her.

Payne said, "I'm just so thankful the truth is known." Jurors awarded her $1.2 million for mental anguish and $200,000 in punitive damages.

The lawsuit filed two years ago said the teacher, who had worked for 16 years, was suspended and demoted because she refused to change the low grades and told her story to a television station. School system administrators said they never asked her to change any grades. Superintendent Lloyd Lindsey said she was suspended for five days in November 2004 because she refused to meet with administrators unless a Louisiana Education Association representative was there.

Until she resigned in 2005, Payne taught English at the school in St. Francisville, where students called her class the "House of Payne" because of her high expectations. In the first six weeks of the fall 2004 semester, court documents show, she gave 70 percent of the school's 180 sophomores a 'D' or an 'F' in English II. The low scores conflicted with those same students' grades in other subjects as well as English grades for freshmen, juniors and seniors.

Payne's lawsuit said principal Michael Thornhill told her that if she would not change the grades, she would be assigned to teach in the behavior modification clinic for troubled students. Louisiana law bars any principal, superintendent or school board member from influencing or altering a student's grade. In January 2005, the West Feliciana School Board suspended her for 45 days for willful neglect of duty. When she returned to the high school, she was assigned to be a library monitor and given tutoring classes with no students. She taught only two English classes.

Payne now teaches English to inmates at Dixon Correctional Center. Asked whether she would consider returning to teach in Louisiana public schools, Payne said she would not.

Source




Hostage drill at NJ school features mock 'Christian terrorists'

The head of a national, Texas-based pro-family group says a recent hostage drill at a New Jersey high school, which portrayed conservative Christians as terrorists, is reflective of a dangerous philosophy that has become prevalent in many parts of America, where it is having negative effects on education.

A local paper reports that a drill at Burlington Township High School in New Jersey involved police portraying mock gunmen, described as "members of a right-wing fundamentalist group called the 'New Crusaders' who don't believe in the separation of church and state." The fake gunmen were said to have been "seeking justice because the daughter of one [member] had been expelled for praying before class."

Historian and constitutional expert David Barton is president of WallBuilders, a national pro-family organization that distributes historical, legal, and statistical information and helps citizens become active in their local schools and communities. He says the stereotyping used in the high school's drill is an accurate indicator of what is being taught in public schools in the Northeast region of the country. "It's been interesting to see the indoctrination that goes on," Barton notes, "where we've had in the same region, even federal courts up in that same area, say it's okay to start teaching second graders about homosexuality and homosexual 'marriage.'"

Also, the author and historian observes, the common thinking prevalent in this region is "that, by the way, we do not have to notify parents that we're going to indoctrinate kids because this is such an important societal value that all citizens need it." But in fact, he asserts, such liberal indoctrination of students in religious and moral areas of thought has been shown to lead to some undesirable outcomes.

"There is now a study that has been done by the University of Connecticut that shows that kids who have gone through that type of education actually know less academically than when they enter [school], and they're calling that phenomenon 'negative learning,'" Barton points out. "So that kind of indoctrination or philosophy is having an adverse effect academically," he says.

Nevertheless, the WallBuilders founder observes, liberal attitudes like the one that informs the Burlington Township High School drill are "fairly reflective of the philosophy that has really inculcated that part of the country. He says many schools, local officials, and members of Congress from the Northeast share a strong hostility toward traditional values. The "separation of church and state" phrase invoked in the school hostage drill, Barton asserts, was rarely used by America's founding fathers and is currently construed by many liberals to mean almost exactly the opposite of what it originally meant, protecting churches from the government.

Source




TENURE FOR AN ACADEMIC INCOMPETENT?

Some faint and unexpected rumblings from the far-Left DePaul U. Scholarship is about considering ALL the relevant facts. Finkelstein goes nowhere near that. DePaul, however, can only look at style. They are too far-gone down the relativism path to think that facts matter

Norman G. Finkelstein has been more controversial off his campus than on it. On his frequent speaking tours to colleges, where he typically discusses Israel in highly critical ways, Finkelstein draws protests and debates. When the University of California Press published Finkelstein's critique of Alan Dershowitz and other defenders of Israel in 2005, a huge uproar ensued - with charges and countercharges about hypocrisy, tolerance, fairness and censorship. But at DePaul University, Finkelstein has taught political science largely without controversy, gaining a reputation as a popular teacher.

But the debate over Finkelstein is now hitting his home campus - and in a way sure to create more national controversy. Finkelstein is up for tenure. So far, his department has voted, 9-3, in favor of tenure and a collegewide faculty panel voted 5-0 to back the bid. But Finkelstein's dean has just weighed in against Finkelstein.

In a memo leaked to some supporters of Finkelstein and obtained by Inside Higher Ed, Chuck Suchar writes that he finds "the personal attacks in many of Dr. Finkelstein's published books to border on character assassination" and that Finkelstein's tone and approach threaten "some basic tenets of discourse within an academic community." Suchar says that Finkelstein's record is "inconsistent with DePaul's Vincentian values, most particularly our institutional commitment to respect the dignity of the individual and to respect the rights of others to hold and express different intellectual positions."

While the leaked memo led to some false online reports that Finkelstein had been denied tenure, his case is very much alive and no final decision will be made until June, according to a university spokeswoman, who added that the dean's memo was not meant for public consumption and that no administrators could comment.

Debates over scholars who take controversial views on the Middle East are, of course, nothing new to academe. But Finkelstein's case may be in a category all its own. He portrays himself as a courageous scholar, bringing rationality to discussions of the Holocaust and Israel - all the more bold for being Jewish and doing so. While criticizing people who invoke the Holocaust to justify political positions, he constantly identifies his parents as Holocaust survivors.

His supporters tend to characterize Finkelstein as the victim of right-wing, pro-Israel forces - and there are plenty of conservative supporters of Israel who despise Finkelstein. But among the groups he's currently sparring with is Progressive magazine, a decidedly left-of-center publication that regularly publishes pieces that are highly critical of Israel's government. Finkelstein and his supporters also say that criticisms of his tone are an excuse for attacks on his political views - and that issue appears to be key to the DePaul dean's review.

Much of the criticism from the dean focuses on Finkelstein's book The Holocaust Industry. The book argues that supporters of Israel use the Holocaust unreasonably to justify Israel's policies. While the book does not deny that the Holocaust took place, it labels leading Holocaust scholars "hoaxters and huxters." A review of the book in The New York Times called it full of contradictions (at one point he rejects the idea that the United States abandoned Europe's Jews and then he later praises a book for which that idea was the central thesis) and full of "seething hatred" as he implies that Jews needed the Holocaust to justify Israel. The reviewer, Brown University's Omer Bartov, a leading scholar of the Holocaust, described the book as "a novel variation on the anti-Semitic forgery, `The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.' "

Finkelstein said he could not comment on his tenure case in detail until later in the week, although he confirmed via e-mail that he had been approved at the departmental level and college levels, and that the dean was opposing his tenure. He also questioned the fairness of being judged by whether he adheres to Vincentian values. He said that the issue was never mentioned in his annual reviews and that he had always been told that his research would be judged by "the conventional academic requirements for scholarship." It is wrong for DePaul to raise these issues now, he said. "You can't spring new criteria at the second stage of the last year of a tenure-track position," he said.

In Dean Suchar's letter, he starts by noting that there has been no dispute at DePaul over the quality of Finkelstein's teaching. He has received "consistently high" course evaluations, Suchar writes, and many students report that they have had "transformative" experiences in his classes.

The dispute over the tenure review focuses on research. The College Personnel Committee, a faculty-elected body that reviewed Finkelstein's candidacy and unanimously endorsed it, raised concerns about the "tone" and "frequent personal attacks" in Finkelstein's work, Suchar writes. That committee, however, concluded that "the scholarship was, on balance, sufficiently noteworthy and praiseworthy to merit their support for the application for promotion and tenure."

Suchar disagrees. "I find this very characteristic aspect of his scholarship to compromise its value and find it to be reflective of an ideologue and polemicist who has a rather hurtful and mean-spirited sub-text to his critical scholarship - not only to prove his point and others wrong but, also in my opinion, in the process, to impugn their veracity, honor, motives, reputations and/or their dignity," Suchar writes. "I see this as a very damaging threat to civil discourse in a university and in society in general."

Finkelstein has also threatened to sue DePaul if he is denied tenure, Suchar writes, adding that this fits into the pattern. "Disagreements over the value of his work seem to prompt immediate threats and personal attacks. This does not augur well for a college and university that has a long-standing culture where respect for the dignity of all members of the community and where values of collegiality are paramount." Suchar's memo was sent to a universitywide committee that will now review the case, which will then work its way to the president.

Supporters of Finkelstein take issue with the dean's letter. "This is all because of Dershowitz wanting him to be fired. These people play rough," said Peter N. Kirstein, a professor of history at Saint Xavier University who has blogged about the case and who is on the board of the Illinois conference of the American Association of University Professors. (Via e-mail, Dershowitz - who has previously battled with Finkelstein - said he had no information about the case.)

Kirstein questioned why the dean would mention Finkelstein's threat of a lawsuit. "Doesn't this country allow people to do things like suing?" he asked. It would be appropriate for a dean to question the accuracy or significance of a professor's work, but not to focus on its tone, Kirstein said. On the question of the tone of one's writing, Kirstein said he had plenty of experience. In 2002 he was suspended from his job after he sent an e-mail to a cadet at the U.S. Air Force Academy, calling the cadet "a disgrace to this country" and criticizing the "aggressive baby-killing tactics" of the military. Kirstein was reviled by many conservative groups and defended by many civil liberties groups. "Tonality is usually a red herring to destroy controversial speech that elites don't like," Kirstein said.

Anne Clark Bartlett, a professor of English and president of the Faculty Council at DePaul, said that it is "not common" for deans to write letters disagreeing with the views of a department and collegewide panel reviewing a tenure candidate. But she also said that the faculty handbook did give deans that right. Bartlett, who said she does not know Finkelstein, said that she has not taken a stand on his case and wants to see how the process plays out. She said that it was important that administrators respect that the university's regulations "give the faculty primary responsibility over promotion and personnel matters" for professors.

Robert Kreiser, associate secretary of the American Association of University Professors, said that the national office of the group had recently received the dean's memo and was paying close attention to the case, but had not been asked to play a formal role. He said that the dean's involvement and raising the issue of tone were not - in and of themselves - cause for concern with regard to academic freedom. He said that any questions about academic freedom would focus on the fairness of the dean's comments, the due process afforded to Finkelstein, and how those comments were viewed in the totality of the evidence about Finkelstein's tenure bid.

However, Kreiser said that the AAUP believes that "ordinarily a dean would defer to the judgment of a faculty member's peers." AAUP policy calls for administrators to have "compelling reasons" that they can present before they overrule a faculty recommendation on tenure. "The dean would have to provide compelling reasons," Kreiser said. The question going forward will be: "Were the dean's reasons compelling?"

Source

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

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

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

***************************



4 April, 2007

Educators Run Wild; Parents Co-conspirators

Post lifted from Democracy Project -- which see for links

Any industry in which costly resource inputs increase at a faster rate than the economic and social value of outputs is considered inefficient. While academics and politicians, not to mention ordinary citizens, impacted by the rising cost of health care rile about the strain on resources and alternative spending objectives, calling in various guises for greater efficiency of delivery, the value of outputs is not seriously disputed by either statistics or common experience - number served, treatment improvements, cures. Yet, the "higher education" industry is not near similarly critically examined.

Census data shows that the number of undergraduate students enrolled in universities, colleges and community colleges increased 75% from 8.1 million in 1975 to 14.2 million in 2005, graduate students increased by 50% from 1.6 million to 2.4 million, while the number of faculty increased 93% from 622-thousand to 1.2 million in 2003. Accompanying this disproportionate increase in faculty has been a decrease in tenure granted and slowing salary increases.

The American Association of University Professors properly points out that institutions of higher learning are spending a higher proportion of their budgets on facilities, as the proportion spent on faculty declines. Most campuses and dormitories are far more lavish than a generation or two previously. I don't recall where I saw the statistic, but the California state colleges and universities spend about 75% of their budgets on fixed assets. That means that expense constraints must fall upon faculty salaries and student tuition. The AAUP, however, does not focus on the vastly increased supply of graduate students and PhD's, whose only employment is within higher ed, as a downward pressure of staff salaries.

Still, higher education costs are, nevertheless, increasing at a faster rate than the rest of the states' budgets. In California, for example, its legislative analyst notes that General Fund spending is slated to increase about 1% but University of California and California State University spending is slated to increase about 6%.

Like any union, faculty demand higher salaries, but conveniently omit certain elements of compensation, like short work schedules, or few classes taught, or generous fringe benefits. The California legislative analyst, for example, says:

The CPEC's [California Postsecondary Education Commission] faculty salary reports only measure base salaries. Faculty typically receive various other forms of compensation as well, including retirement and health benefits, sabbaticals, housing allowances, and bonuses. Several studies commissioned by the segments have found that the nonsalary benefits provided to UC and CSU faculty are worth considerably more than the average of their comparison institutions. In fact, when all forms of compensation are considered, UC and CSU appear to be at or above their comparison averages.

The U.S. Department of Education provides average fringe benefits of full-time instructional faculty at Title IV degree-granting institutions for the 2005-6 academic year: (figures rounded)

Retirement Plan $6-thousand
Social Security contribution by employer $4.3-thousand
Medical/Dental Plans $6.5-thousand
Life, Disability & Other Insurance $1.6-thousand
Tuition for dependents $4.3-thousand
Housing plan $5.6-thousand
Unemployment & Workers Compensation $0.7-thousand
Other benefits in kind with cash options $1.5-thousand

Total = $30.5-thousand of average fringe benefits, above salaries.

Certainly not all higher education educators are garnering this average, but for it to be an average many are. One can argue all day long about how a college degree is today's high school diploma, but I don't notice much improvement in restaurant waiters' and waitress' service as college grads fill non-educated roles. Careers are bright for those with technical and professional skills, but many other majors are economically worthless.

But, it's among the faculty, overwhelmingly liberal or radical in their politics, that this gross inefficiency of higher education inputs is most felt. Their economic security is declining compared to yesteryear, and the value to anyone but themselves of (politely speaking) esoteric humanities curriculums is negligible. Among many, their resulting alienation, although self-created by their own life choices, results in resentments against a relatively rich society, against business and free enterprise accomplishment, against America and Western civilization.

The accomplices, even from conservative homes, are the parents who agree to shell out up to tens of thousands of dollars a year for their cuddled children to take such basket-weaving courses and enjoy country club campuses. The cure for higher education lays in elimination and avoidance of useless majors and academics, the revolt of taxpayers and parents, and continuation of present trends which place a compensation worth on academics that will decline more compared to other occupations. It will also do much to help cure America of its naysayers, negativists, and internal enemies of cultural and national security survival.




Racial integration and diversity unpopular in black Seattle school

A school so pathetic that it can only handle dumb blacks. Whites not welcome. One gets the strong impression that the white school Principal actively dislikes having whites on her patch -- perhaps because they are less liklely to bow down before her

A large photo of smiling children hangs at the entrance of Madrona K-8. Superimposed across their faces is the caption: "This is who we are." Most of the children in the photograph are African American.

A block away, a different portrait emerges - that of a gentrified neighborhood where residents meet to chat at the corner bakery and young mothers push strollers along a main street of small shops and restaurants. On any given day, most of them are white.

In recent years, the school at the center of this neighborhood in Seattle's Central Area has undergone its own gentrification of sorts, as small numbers of middle-class white families began enrolling their children in a school that remains largely black and persistently poor. The resulting conflict spotlights a challenge the Seattle School District faces as it tries to attract and keep middle- and upper-middle-class families, while intensifying efforts to help disadvantaged students achieve.

Some parents, even before their own children were old enough for Madrona, had tried to improve the school. That left some parents with children already at the school bristling at the suggestion that somehow it wasn't good enough. The newer parents helped revive the Parent Teacher Student Association (PTSA), started after-school programs and volunteered in classrooms. But in the end, some gave up, saying they didn't feel welcome, and last fall, several withdrew their children.

Madrona's principal, Kaaren Andrews, believes some left because, ultimately, they were uncomfortable with the school's racial balance. And she believes some of their expectations were unreasonable in a school whose most pressing priority is to help disadvantaged students succeed. Some supporters of the principal agree, saying some who left expected private-school extras at an inner-city public school. The result is a clash that speaks to race and class and achievement - where everyone seems to want what's best for the children yet is divided over how to get it.

In this school of 442 students, about 75 percent are black, 11 percent are white, and the others are of other races.

The hurt feelings are so widespread that the head of the PTSA asked Mayor Greg Nickels for help and the school district agreed to pay for a facilitator to bring the sides together. The result was a meeting Tuesday night that drew about 175 past, present and future Madrona parents who, in often emotional comments, tackled the issue of race at the school. They spoke of Madrona K-8's role in meeting the wide-ranging needs of all their children. Some white parents talked of wanting to feel that a school only blocks from their homes could be a place where their children could get a well-rounded education and where they could feel welcome donating their time. Some black parents pointed out that their ethnicity is appreciated at a school like Madrona and expressed concerns over white families changing the school in the same way they've changed the neighborhood.

Ed Taylor, University of Washington dean of undergraduate academic affairs, helped establish a partnership between the school and the university. In an earlier conversation, Taylor said, "Here, you have an interesting confluence where kids living in Section 8 [low-income] housing are brought together with what might be the children of Microsoft millionaires. There are fundamental questions for that neighborhood: Can you thoughtfully have a multiracial school in which the needs of all kids are being met?" ....

Orser, who is white, has lived in the neighborhood 12 years. He had gone to school in Baltimore with children of all races and income levels, knew the racial mix at Madrona and wanted that for his kids, too. He became active in the school three years before his eldest was enrolled. He was among those who helped revive the PTSA, serving as its treasurer for four years and volunteering in classrooms.

But in the end, he said, he never felt welcomed. Orser said the principal seemed to dismiss suggestions for reducing class sizes or incorporating art and music programs into the curriculum - something he felt would benefit all children. "We had financial resources and people with all kinds of skills willing to help," Orser said. "It was clear she didn't want our money and was reluctant to give us direction."

Disillusioned, Orser transferred his son at the start of this school year to Lowell Elementary School, where he tested into the gifted program. "The saddest day of my last 10 years was the day I realized my son would no longer be at Madrona - despite everything I'd put into it."

In the fall, two years after Andrews came to Madrona, nine families with those or other concerns followed him out of the school, withdrawing 11 students in all. They were allowed to transfer under a federal law that requires the district to offer them a choice of other Seattle schools because so few of Madrona's fourth-graders passed the Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL) last year.

They were among 21 families - professionals and stay-at-home moms, double-income spouses and single parents, black families and white - who wrote letters to the district expressing a variety of concerns. Some live a block or two from the school, others live on the neighborhood fringe. They wrote of crowded classrooms, harried teachers and other problems not necessarily unique to Madrona. Some said that as the school focuses on the basics of math, reading and writing to ensure students pass the WASL, it denies others a richer educational experience.

But several of the white parents expressed less-tangible unease - that the administration seemed intent on keeping the school predominantly black. A few have all but accused the school's white principal of being racist against them. The sense of rejection some were feeling was confirmed by an e-mail sent to a parent that appeared to come from vice principal Brad Brown. It admitted that the school intentionally misassessed a white student's reading skills to rid the school of his family and others critical of the administration, then bade them a "wonderful educational experience aboard the Mayflower."

More here

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

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

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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3 April, 2007

Britain: Class bias a reality

SOME of Britain's leading universities are secretly operating selection schemes that can discriminate against applicants from good state or independent schools. Internal documents show that six of the 20 elite Russell Group universities are identifying applicants from schools with poor exam results or from deprived areas based on their postcode. Admissions tutors are then advised to favour them over equally well-qualified candidates from better schools or backgrounds. The schemes, revealed under the Freedom of Information Act, will fuel criticism that universities are attempting to socially engineer their intakes. It follows government pressure to increase the number of students from poorer backgrounds.

There have been previous controversies over ad hoc schemes introduced by universities or departments such as at Bristol University. However, the documents show some universities are now routinely filtering applicants. The trend is expected to accelerate under plans by the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (Ucas). It has already decided universities should be told if applicants' parents went to university, and a working group is currently devising national schemes to identify applicants from weak schools.

The documents show Nottingham University tells all its admissions tutors that they should treat applicants from a socioeconomically deprived postcode or from a poorly performing school more favourably. They are told to drop a grade in their offer to applicants whose predicted A-level scores would mean they would normally be rejected.

Newcastle University has introduced a traffic-light system in which forms have symbols added by the administration office to rate applicants' socioeconomic or educational background. Tutors are told they should make lower offers to students whose predicted grades would normally rule them out. Where tutors want to reject such applicants, the advice states: "Applicants whose forms indicate two or more `contextual factors' should be routinely reconsidered within the faculty to confirm (or otherwise) the reject decision."

Newcastle also runs a scheme for applicants from certain postcodes or schools with poor results that allows tutors to make lower A-level offers. Such applicants have to attend a two-week summer school. In addition, administrators write on Ucas forms the percentage of students at the applicant's school that have gained five or more GCSEs at grades A* to C grades. The advice to tutors says: "The lower the average performance of the school, the more weight may be given to the candidate whose past examination performance significantly exceeds their school's average performance."

At Warwick, applicants from "low participation backgrounds" are asked to submit extra information that will be considered alongside Ucas forms. Liverpool, Southampton and Bristol all suggest admissions tutors take account of "contextual factors" such as educational opportunities or personal circumstances.

John Marincowitz, headmaster of Queen Elizabeth's grammar school in Barnet, London, said: "Selection should be based on academic results and the extracurricular achievements. You can't assign values to factors such as school exam results."

Nottingham University said it had introduced a "flexible" admissions policy, but that had meant applicants being asked for grades of AAB rather than AAA at A-level. The policy did not appear in the prospectus, but applicants were informed.

Newcastle University insisted its policy was fair. A spokesman said: "Admissions tutors have always taken into account available contextual information when assessing the academic potential of applicants to the university."

Source




British schools drop Holocaust lessons to avoid "offence"

A sad day when the truth has become offensive

Teachers are dropping controversial subjects such as the Holocaust and the Crusades from history lessons because they do not want to cause offence to children from certain races or religions, a report claims. A lack of factual knowledge among some teachers, particularly in primary schools, is also leading to "shallow" lessons on emotive and difficult subjects, according to the study by the Historical Association.

The report, produced with funding from the Department for Education, said that where teachers and staff avoided emotive and controversial history, their motives were generally well intentioned. "Staff may wish to avoid causing offence or appearing insensitive to individuals or groups in their classes. In particular settings, teachers of history are unwilling to challenge highly contentious or charged versions of history in which pupils are steeped at home, in their community or in a place of worship," it concluded. However, it was concerned that this could lead to divisions within school, and that it might also put pupils off history.

Source

Update:

Subsequent reports indicate that the above applies only to ONE school.




Decayed Australian mathematics teaching

It's been figured out: our numeracy is not what it should be, writes Kevin Donnelly

In March 2004, 26 Australian academics wrote an open letter to then federal education minister Brendan Nelson about the parlous state of primary school literacy teaching as a result of Australia's adoption of outcomes-based education fads. Among the concepts was whole language, whereby students are made to look and guess instead of learning the relationship between letters and sounds. The rest, they say, is history.

Nelson set up a national inquiry into literacy. The subsequent report concluded that state and territory curriculum documents, teacher training and professional development had been captured by the whole-language approach and a greater emphasis on teaching the traditional phonics and phonemic awareness was necessary.

Not to be outdone, Australia's mathematicians have organised an open letter to the Prime Minister, to be delivered next week. It has been signed by more than 440 local and international academics concerned about the parlous state of mathematical sciences in Australia. Signatories include Terry Tao, the recent winner of the internationally acclaimed Fields Medal; John Ball, president of the International Mathematical Union; and many of Australia's most qualified mathematicians and statisticians.

The open letter cites the fact that many universities are closing or reducing departments of mathematical sciences, that the shortage of graduates is so acute that "it inhibits the work of business and industry", and that the quality and rigour of mathematics teaching in schools and universities have been severely undermined.

The letter argues that there has been little, if any, action at the commonwealth [Federal] level - notwithstanding the release three months ago of Mathematics and Statistics: Critical Skills for Australia's Future, a report summarising the findings of the national strategic review of mathematical sciences - and that the time for action has long since passed.

In short, the report of the national inquiry concludes that the supply of trained mathematicians and statisticians is inadequate and decreasing, that Australian academics are becoming increasingly isolated and under-resourced, that not enough Year 12 students undertake more difficult courses (participation in higher-order mathematics fell from 41 per cent in 1995 to 34 per cent in 2004), and that high school mathematics is taught by teachers with inadequate mathematical training.

The report does not only concentrate on the negatives: it also offers a number of recommendations for improving the situation. They range from strengthening Australia's research base to guaranteeing funding for organisations such as the Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute and the International Centre of Excellence for Education in Mathematics (funded at present by the Department of Education, Science and Training) and rebuilding mathematical science departments.

Given the concerns aired in these pages over the past two years about the quality and rigour of Australia's school curriculum and doubts about teacher effectiveness, it's hardly surprising that the report on mathematics and statistics also highlights the need to strengthen secondary school mathematics courses and to ensure teachers have a thorough grounding in the discipline.

Reading between the lines - and as noted in a submission to the inquiry from Tony Guttmann of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Mathematics and Statistics of Complex Systems - it is obvious, in the same way that subjects such as history and English have been dumbed down, school mathematics has also suffered.

Guttmann argues that the type of feel-good approach to education associated with Australia's adoption of outcomes-based education, where the word "failure" is banned and promoting self-esteem is considered paramount, has led to students being unable, or unwilling, to master so-called hard subjects. Guttmann says: "An attitude is being bred in schools that it does not matter whether a student succeeds in mastering a concept, so long as an effort is made and that effort is rewarded. The concept of failure is considered to be potentially damaging to the self-esteem of students, and so must be avoided. This attitude is particularly problematic for subjects in which a substantial body of knowledge is assumed and built upon."

In order to strengthen mathematics teaching, the report suggests teacher training must be improved. Although it does not go as far as to argue that all teachers should complete an undergraduate degree in their specialist discipline, followed by a diploma of education, thus ensuring that graduates have a firm foundation in their subject, the report suggests that mathematical science departments should have a greater involvement in teacher preparation.

Research shows that one of the key determinants of successful learning is a teacher's mastery of a subject. There is increasing concern that the type of general bachelor of education degree designed and taught by schools of education fails to provide such grounding. As Guttmann points out: "The training of teachers can be improved by making sure that mathematics teachers have a mathematics degree, followed by a diploma of education or equivalent. Their mathematical education should not be provided by education faculties, but by discipline experts."

In an election year, it is obvious the two main political parties see education as a significant issue and that Kevin Rudd and Stephen Smith have successfully repositioned the ALP by staking the territory once the preserve of the conservatives. It is also obvious that Australia's continued high standard of living and international competitiveness depend on the quality, rigour and effectiveness of our education system, especially in the areas of mathematics and related fields such as engineering, science and physics. In the same way that Nelson, when education minister, acted quickly to address falling standards in literacy and concerns about the quality of teacher training, one hopes that the federal Government will also move quickly to address concerns about mathematics.

Source

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

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

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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2 April, 2007

Government education: Road to hell?

Good intentions will surely be the downfall of individual liberty and personal freedom. The greatest motivation that mankind has to abandon the principles of freedom is simply being afraid. And, fear plays right into the hands of legislators that use good intentions, whether quite sincere or merely conjured, to usurp individual freedoms and parley them into collective power. The consequences of this exchange is a bloated beast called Bureaucracy controlled by a tyrant, or group of tyrants, that seek to enslave the masses for their own good. In other words, Freedom dies. Remember my personal credo, “More government ALWAYS translates into Less freedom.” In no area is this more evident than the realm of government education.

Education is only one of the areas where good intentions have proven less than sufficient to cure the ills of society. It was with the very best of intentions that legislators decided to take upon themselves the responsibility of providing a free education to every child in America. Has a nobler thought ever been conceived in human mind than the desire to see America’s offspring properly prepared to face an ever-changing world? However, the consequence of such feel-good philosophy is a false sense of security, born in the supposition that the State can do something, anything, better than the individual. Freedom is relinquished willingly for nothing more than a promise that government can provide something to individuals that the individuals themselves cannot procure on their own. And the children suffer the most.

The worst consequence of passing responsibility of educating young minds from personal to collective is the task is botched so horribly. Some children are educated quite well in a state-supported system but most barely receive an average level of education. And, far too many fall through the expansive cracks of society that are the floorboards of a bloated bureaucracy grown so large it has become impossible to keep track of everyone. The result of all the good intentions of providing adequate education to children is a twelve-year factory system that produces more than its fair share of functional illiterates. Why do you think the majority of congressmen/women have their children in private institutions? These children are not trained to take charge of governing themselves; but rather, they are almost programmed to be willing taxpayers that obey a ruling elite. Seems we have been there before and it required armed revolution to free an oppressed people. Sound familiar?

So, which is better? Giving your precious children to the State and expecting something you are not likely to receive; or, taking back the responsibility of educating your own young, making sure YOU are satisfied that your loved ones are properly equipped to face the cold, cruel world? Nothing as important as educating a child should be left to government agencies that only have a mandate to provide minimal education to the children whose minds they are charged with filling. The State has no incentive to educate children other than to ensure the perpetuation of governmental power. Willing subjects are much easier to rule, after all. By giving into the good intentions of supposedly well-meaning elected representatives we allow the State to churn out generation after generation of willing slaves that will worship at the altar of the false-deity Security, and believe the lie that the State can provide them their necessities. The consequences again are just too great to ignore. Slavery is unacceptable even if it is of the subtle sort!

When we allow the responsibility of educating our beautiful children to be assumed by the State, we contribute to the agonizingly slow death of Freedom by allowing the government to control the path of each new generation. Good intentions have created a system that takes in free individuals and renders dependent servants of them. Good intentions that have allowed our children to be poorly educated.

There are no easy answers to all of life’s problems, but we should not allow that to become sufficient reason for believing the lie that the State can handle any problem better than individuals. There is simple no evidence to support the claim. We must stop allowing good intentions to be used to justify every great debacle while ignoring the cost in taxpayer’s dollars and human lives. We must learn from our mistakes and start thinking more about the consequences before we allow ourselves to be swept away by the tsunami caused by the sudden social shifts born in good intentions. Perhaps there is no truer adage than the one that cautions: “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

Source



Ancient history dropped in Britain

The teaching of Ancient History in schools is to become, well, ancient history. The only examination board offering an A level in the subject is to drop it in favour of a new Classical Civilisation qualification. Boris Johnson, the Tory higher education spokesman and president of the Joint Association of Classical Teachers (JACT), criticised the OCR exam board for its “demented” decision to replace “a tough, rewarding, crunchy” subject with a softer option. “You can’t just subsume the study of Ancient History into the study of Classical Civilisation. You might as well say that you can learn English history through the study of English language and literature. If we lose Ancient History A level, we lose yet another battle in the general dumbing-down of Britain,” he said.

David Tristram, head of The Kingswood School in Corby, Northamptonshire and chair of the JACT council, described the move as “disgraceful”. “Cicero once said that not to know what took place before you were born is to remain forever a child. The cradle of democracy was Greece, and Western civilisation developed out of the Roman and Greek civilisations — their study is crucial to our own culture and civilisation,” he said.

Graham Able, head of Dulwich College, said that the move reinforced his own decision to opt out of the entire A-level system in favour of the new PreU examination. “Ancient History is a bona fide academic subject in its own right whereas Classical Civilisation tends to be a watered-down version with less historical rigour.”

The Ancient History syllabus covers 21 different aspects and eras of ancient Greek and Roman history, such as the conflict of Greece and Persia in 499BC to 479BC and the reign of Nero. Under the Classical Civilisation A level, history will be dealt with in units, such as “Romano-British society and history as depicted in the literary and archaeological record”.

The move by the OCR exam board follows a revival of interest in ancient history, the result of movie blockbusters such as 300,about the battle of Thermo-pylae , as well as books and TV programmes including the BBC’s Rome.Peter Jones, of the National Coordinating Committee for Classics, said that it made no sense to axe the subject when numbers studying it at AS and A2 level since 2000 had risen by 300 per cent.

Tony Little, Head Master of Eton College, cautioned against a more general trend to “whittle away” valuable periods from the study of history in secondary school: “The notion that history has to be mid-20th century and exclusively focused on the Nazis seems to undervalue history as a subject.”

An OCR spokesman denied watering down the subject. “Similar content to that in Ancient History is covered. In addition, there is a new ethos, which requires candidates to study sources in their historical and cultural context,” he said. New specifications for Classics are published as part of broader changes to A levels, designed to make them more testing for the brightest teenagers from next year.

Source

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

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

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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1 April, 2007

Class war -- in British university education

We live in a society which believes that any form of discrimination is an evil akin to slavery or fascism. Yet - rub your eyes - in the sacred cause of `diversity', our universities are now being told to practise discrimination when deciding to whom they should award a place.

As part of a drive to admit more students from disadvantaged backgrounds, the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) says applicants will now be asked to declare whether their parents have degrees or other higher education qualifications. It has also decided to give admissions tutors information about parents' ethnicity and jobs.

The ostensible reason is to widen participation at university by compensating for disadvantage and thus creating a level playing field. However, this Orwellian formulation conceals the fact that, on the contrary, this proposal is designed to narrow participation by certain groups on an educational playing field where, in the name of `equality', fresh obstacles are to be raised against them.

In effect, it means that if you are unfortunate enough to have white parents who have degrees and good jobs, the university admissions process will be rigged against you. However well-qualified you may be, however hard you have worked and however good your exam grades, you stand to lose your chance of a university place to someone who can tick all the right boxes about their parents' circumstances.

This, we are told, is necessary to create a fairer society. Well, in that case why stop there? Clearly, there are many other unfair parental advantages that must now be ruthlessly excised from the system. We know, for example, that children do best educationally if their parents are married. So that's an unfair advantage over those from broken homes. We know that children who live in comfortable houses with lots of books and stimulation do better than those who don't enjoy such benefits. So we should discriminate against them too. And what about parents who have a particular talent - those who play the French horn, take part in chess tournaments or teach themselves Mandarin in their summer holidays? Or those who do not suffer from any physical or mental disability, or who are not in prison or are not alcoholics or drug addicts or child abusers? Surely their children have an unfair head-start too?

And why stop at parents? Why not also discriminate against those applicants whose grandparents went to university? Isn't such third generation advantage even worse? Clearly, in the interests of diversity and widening participation, the only people who should go to university are the black children of lone alcoholic mothers and fathers who are doing time for drug offences, and who were brought up by illiterate foster parents who sexually abused them in a mobile home up an isolated dirt track in Cumbria.

You think this is a joke? It is simply the logical outcome of this utterly indefensible process which would institutionalise rank injustice and prejudice. Universities should judge candidates on one thing alone - their academic potential. Instead, UCAS is telling them to judge their parents. The Higher Education Minister Bill Rammell said the information on candidates' backgrounds would ensure that all applications were `genuinely dealt with on their merits', and that it would help universities assess who had the potential to succeed.

But the one thing this proposal is designed to do is to ensure candidates are not dealt with on their merits, but on the basis of their parents' background. And the more that background is likely to help such candidates succeed at university, the less likely it is that they will be offered a place.

It was once axiomatic that it was fundamentally unjust to hold someone's background against them - for such factors are totally beyond their control and irrelevant to their personal merit and achievements. Who would ever have thought that this argument would come full circle? Such oppressive behaviour is the signature of totalitarian or fundamentally unjust societies such as Communist Eastern Europe or apartheid-era South Africa, where those deemed to be enemies of the ruling class were disbarred from higher education.

Not only is it monumentally unfair, but it is also self-defeating. The whole point is supposedly to help people escape from disadvantage in order to succeed in life. But discriminating in this way against those who have succeeded is obviously a powerful disincentive to succeeding in the first place. Why, after all, would anyone want to get a university degree if the consequence is that their own children will find it much harder to get a university place? `Widening participation' in this bone-headed manner is actually the surest way of halting social mobility dead in its tracks.

The central fallacy is the claim that the reason for the persistently low take-up of university places by people from disadvantaged backgrounds is that the system is somehow loaded against them. In fact, this is the least likely cause.

In many cases, such people are merely making perfectly reasonable choices about what is in their own best interests. They don't want to go to university because, for a variety of reasons, they don't think it is right for them. But the Government believes that, since it sees a university education as an advantage, not having one can't possibly be a matter of free choice. It is a view which at root assumes that people from disadvantaged backgrounds are either powerless or too stupid to think for themselves - and also that there is only one way to think.

The result is social engineering and an outright abuse of education which has been going on for years. The truth is that the Government has progressively turned education inside out, in order to pack the universities with students who have been chosen not because they are suitable for such an education but to force 'socially excluded' young people in and advantaged young people out.

Instead of candidates meeting the requirements of the universities, admissions tutors have dropped their requirements to accommodate the poor levels of attainment of more and more candidates - with a knock-on effect of lowering standards throughout the examination and school systems. They are doing so, moreover, under the threat of losing funding unless they attract more students from working-class homes or state schools.

The results have been catastrophic. Between 2002 and 2005, the proportion of university entrants from state schools and the lowest social classes fell. Social mobility has actually gone backwards as a result of the collapse of educational standards across the board.

Once, education was the means of lifting young people out of disadvantaged backgrounds. Then it became a means of trapping them within those backgrounds. And now, those backgrounds are to be used to provide such young people with the illusion of academic 'success' by being turned into a weapon against the middle class which - along with an inverted racism - is being used as a scapegoat for the manifold failures of education policy. Clause Four socialism may have been consigned to history, but the old desire to reshape society through a vicious class war is still very much alive.

Source




MATH AND MARXISM

NYC'S WACK-JOB TEACHERS

THERE'S a fifth column in New York City's public schools - radical teachers who openly undermine Schools Chancellor Joel Klein's curriculum mandates and use their classrooms to indoctrinate students in left-wing, anti-American ideology. One center for this movement is El Puente Academy for Peace and Justice in Brooklyn, the city's first "social justice" high school. The school's lead math teacher, Jonathan Osler, is using El Puente as a base from which to organize a three-day conference in April on "Math Education and Social Justice."

Osler offers this urgent reason for the conference: "The systemic and structural oppression of low income and people of color continues to worsen. The number of people in prison continues to grow, as does our unemployment rate . . . However, in math classes around the country, perhaps the best places to study many of these issues, we continue to use curricula and models that lack any real-world - let alone socially relevant - contexts."

Among the speakers slated for the conference is Eric Gutstein, a mathematics-education professor at the University of Illinois and a former Chicago public-school math teacher. Gutstein's book, "Reading and Writing the World with Mathematics: Toward a Pedagogy for Social Justice," combines Marxist pedagogy with real live math lessons. In it, Gutstein recounts how, on the first anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, he was able to convince his 7th-grade mathematics class that the United States was wrong to go to war against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. "I told students that none of the hijackers were thought to be Afghan," Gutstein writes. He also announced to the students that he would not "fight against Iraq or Afghanistan . . . because I did not believe in going to war for oil, power and control."

Another of the math conference's "experts" is Cathy Wilkerson, an adjunct professor at the Bank Street College of Education. Her only other credential mentioned in the program is that she was a "member of the Weather Underground of the 60s." Some credential, indeed. On March 6, 1970, she was in a Manhattan townhouse helping to construct a powerful bomb to be planted at a dance attended by civilians on the Fort Dix, N.J., army base. The bomb went off prematurely, destroying the townhouse and instantly killing three of the bomb makers. Wilkerson escaped unharmed. After resurfacing years later and serving a year in prison, she became a high-school math teacher and, presumably, developed expertise on how to bring the revolution into the classroom.

The math conference is backed by another "social justice" teachers' group, the New York Collective of Radical Educators (NYCoRE). I attended an NYCoRE public meeting last October. About 80 public-school teachers gathered on the NYU campus to discuss approaches to social-justice teaching. The meeting was chaired by Edwin Mayorga, a fourth-grade teacher at PS 87 on Manhattan's Upper West Side, and NYU education professor Bree Pickower. Mayorga urged his fellow teachers to "be political inside the classroom, just as we are outside the classroom. The issues we are up against as we teach for social justice are the mandates of [Mayor] Bloomberg, Klein and No Child Left Behind."

Pickower reminded the teachers of the group's Katrina curriculum, which teachers could use to convince elementary-school students that the hurricane was not really a natural disaster, but an example of endemic American racism. Mayorga described how he had piloted the Katrina curriculum with his fourth graders at PS 87 and pronounced it a big success.

Leaving nothing to chance, the Katrina curriculum provides teachers with classroom prompts designed to illustrate the evils of American capitalism and imperialism. For example, one section of the curriculum is titled, "Two Gulf Wars," and suggests posing the following question to students: "Was the government unable to respond quickly to the crisis on the Gulf Coast because the money and personnel were all being used in Iraq?"

You might think that boasting in public about indoctrinating fourth graders with canned lessons in Marxist agitprop isn't the best way for a public-school teacher to advance either his career or the radical cause. Nor would a former domestic terrorist make the best poster girl for selling the idea of social-justice teaching. Surely, someone with responsibility for safeguarding public education in New York City should have stepped forward by now to say this goes too far, this violates every commonly accepted standard of ethical and professional responsibility for public school teachers. But the city's Department of Education has so far turned a blind eye. Indeed, the radical teachers are even funded by members of the capitalist class. El Puente was founded with help from uber-capitalist Bill Gates via his education foundation. And the conference on social-justice math has received a grant from an organization called Math for America, headed by billionaire hedge-fund entrepreneur James Simons.

Chancellor Klein has been eloquent about wanting to banish bad teachers from the schools. He could begin building a dossier by attending the radical math conference at El Puente Academy next month.

Source




Germany steadily reverting to Nazism

And like all tyrannies, they rely on lies and censorship

A youth services social worker apparently has lied to a German television station about a 15-year-old homeschool student ordered into a psychiatric ward because of her "school phobia," and another employee of the same state division shut down a scheduled 1-hour weekly visit with her family when her father showed her the statement. According to the International Human Rights Group, who has a representative working with the family of Melissa Busekros in Germany, the incident yesterday was reported by Melissa's parents to Richard Guenther, director of European operations for IHRG, and his wife Ingrid.

Nearly two months ago the 15-year-old was taken by police away from her parents to a psychiatric ward after a social worker and judge determined she had a "school phobia" and was being homeschooled, which is illegal in Germany. She later was moved to foster care, and although her parents still are not allowed to know where she is staying, they have been allowed "semi-private" 1-hour weekly visits.

Yesterday, the Busekros family arrived to see Melissa, thinking they were going to have a "normal" visit, "normal within the confines of the nightmare they find themselves facing," according to the IHRG. "Unfortunately, the social worker who is charged by the youth welfare office with facilitating these visits refused to leave the room during the family's time together."

So, working within the confines of a now-supervised visit, the family continued its meeting. And since Melissa is cut off from the outside world much of the time, her family tries to keep her updated. "Hubert [Melissa's father] was using his laptop computer to show Melissa a video report on her situation aired by a German television station. On this video tape, a representative of the youth welfare office told the reporter that Melissa has never asked to be allowed to go home!" Joel Thornton, the IHRG president, told WND. "That's right, the youth welfare office is claiming that Melissa wants to stay in state custody rather than be with her family."

"They say this in spite of [as WND has reported] Melissa having told everyone she ever talked to that she wants to go home," Thornton said. "This includes the youth welfare workers, the judge, the psychiatrist at the mental ward where she was taken, her parents, attorneys, government officials who have visited her, and her foster family. She even sent a letter to the IHRG pleading for us to help bring her home; you can see the letter for yourself by going to this web link."

As the video report was playing, the government worker "forcefully closed Hubert's laptop," Thornton said. "She then called the police and ended the visit, even though their time was not up. She had Hubert removed from the property, declaring that he would no longer be permitted to come into the facility - even to visit Melissa." Thornton said the social worker indicated that any visits with Melissa now will be under supervision at all times and they will take place at another location.

"We also learned that the Busekros are now exercising their legal rights by bringing a civil action against the government officials who illegally removed Melissa from their home. This action will not be to seek money, but to have the government declare that local officials violated the family's guaranteed fundamental rights by raiding their home and taking their daughter," Thornton said. "Please pray for Melissa and her family. Her siblings are having trouble sleeping at night out of worry for Melissa and fear that they will be taken next," he said.

As WND recently reported, the attacks by the German government on homeschoolers now have begun expanding. A recent order in Saxony gave custody of five "well-educated" children to the state, fulfilling the direst predictions from human rights activists that the government's success in Melissa's case would encourage officials to act against others. Thornton had warned when Melissa first was removed from her home that, "There is an increased fear among homeschoolers about whether their children are next."

The court decision in the Saxony case, involving the Brause family, according to the IHRG, said the well-being of the children "can only be achieved by their attendance in the public schools." The judge had concluded that the children were well-educated, but accused the parents of failing to provide their children with an education in a public school. The court noted that one of the daughters expressed the same opinions as her father, showing the siblings have not had the chance to develop "independent" personalities.

But the IHRG vowed a battle. "No parent should have to watch their children being forcibly removed from their home because of their religious beliefs," the organization's statement said.

The newest developments came even as the United Nations issued a critique of the Germany education system. ".it should be noted that education may not be reduced to mere school attendance and that educational processes should be strengthened to ensure that they always and primarily serve the best interests of the child," the UN report said. "Distance learning methods and homeschooling represent valid options which could be developed in certain circumstances, bearing in mind that parents have the right to choose the appropriate type of education for their children, as stipulated in article 13 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights," it continued.....

Wolfgang Drautz, consul general for the Federal Republican of Germany, has commented on the issue on a blog, noting the government "has a legitimate interest in countering the rise of parallel societies that are based on religion or motivated by different world views and in integrating minorities into the population as a whole."

Melissa had fallen behind in math and Latin, and was being tutored at home. When school officials in Germany, where homeschooling was banned during Adolf Hitler's reign of power, found out, she was expelled. School officials then took her to court, obtaining a court order requiring she be committed to a psychiatric ward because of her "school phobia."

Drautz said homeschool students' test results may be as good as for those in school, but "school teaches not only knowledge but also social conduct, encourages dialogue among people of different beliefs and cultures, and helps students to become responsible citizens." ....

The Home School Legal Defense Association, the largest homeschool organization in the U.S. with more than 80,000 member families, said the case is an "outrage." Practical Homeschool Magazine noted one of the first acts by Hitler when he moved into power was to create the governmental Ministry of Education and give it control of all schools, and school-related issues. In 1937, the dictator said, "This Reich stands, and it is building itself up for the future, upon its youth. And this new Reich will give its youth to no one, but will itself take youth and give to youth its own education and its own upbringing."

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

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

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