Rick Santorum Opposes Liberal Indoctrination … At College
That’s right, Rick Santorum thinks that if fewer people went to college and, instead, studied “Judeo-Christian ideology,” the U.S. would be a better place. From RawStory via Current:
Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum on Wednesday suggested that President Barack Obama wanted to every kid to go to college so they could be brainwashed into being a liberal.
Speaking to a crowd of Floridians at the First Baptist Church of Naples, Santorum said that churches and families were under “assault” by the president and liberals.
Atheist Girl In Rhode Island Faces Stream Of Death Threats
Jessica Ahlquist is a 16-year-old self-described nerd who has garnered nationwide attention after successfully suing to have a giant banner emblazoned with an official school prayer removed from the auditorium of her public high school in Cranston, Rhode Island. The response has demonstrated the limits of Christian love — she has basically become the villain of her entire city, with her state representative, Peter Palumbo, called Jessica an “evil little thing” on the radio, and a sample of the online outpouring of hatred from other Cranston residents can be seen on JesusFetusFajitaFishsticks:
The Ultimate History Lesson: A Weekend With John Taylor Gatto
“Whatever an education is, it should make you a unique individual, not a conformist; it should furnish you with an original spirit with which to tackle the big challenges; it should allow you to find values which will be your road map through life; it should make you spiritually rich, a person who loves whatever you are doing, wherever you are, whomever you are with; it should teach you what is important: how to live and how to die.” — John Taylor Gatto, Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling
The Police-ification Of Schools
The Guardian reports on the new public education model in Texas, in which police officers patrol school hallways, giving out hundreds of thousands of tickets to children each year and making arrests for criminal behavior such as leaving crumbs in the cafeteria, wearing inappropriate clothing, spraying perfume, and making sarcastic remarks in class. Poor children whose families are unable to pay the fines may be jailed for the nonpayment once they turn 17:
More and more US schools have police patrolling the corridors. Pupils are being arrested for throwing paper planes and failing to pick up crumbs from the canteen floor. Why is the state criminalising normal childhood behaviour?
The charge on the police docket was “disrupting class”. But that’s not how 12-year-old Sarah Bustamantes saw her arrest for spraying two bursts of perfume on her neck in class because other children were bullying her with taunts of “you smell”.
“I’m weird. Other kids…
Our Sun Is This Small (Animation)
For those of you who hated this proposed Earth-centric view of our Solar System, check out this video below. (VY Canis Majoris RULES for now; Giordano Bruno would be proud …):
VY Canis Majoris is a red hypergiant star located in the constellation Canis Major. At between 1800 and 2100 solar radii (8.4–9.8 astronomical units, 3.063 billion km or 1.7 billion miles in diameter), it is currently the largest known star and also one of the most luminous known …
What Just Happened? Explaining SOPA / PIPA (Video)
From the intriguing Khan Academy (CBS News report here):
Stupid People Freaking Out About the Great (Intended) Wikipedia Blackout of 2012
To be expected, and I think Gawker has found some of the best ones:
Youth is no excuse … I call the members of this generation (and their educators) who are so confused, the WikiStupid.
New Hampshire’s New Scopes Trial
Via Wikipedia
Aaron Cynic writes at Diatribe Media:
New Hampshire took an early lead this year in the effort to dumb down school students and erode the separation of church and state in the education system by introducing two anti-evolution bills to its state legislature (h/t Mother Jones). The two laws are the first of their kind in the state since the late 90’s. According to the National Center for Science Education, House Bill 1149 would:
“[r]equire evolution to be taught in the public schools of this state as a theory, including the theorists’ political and ideological viewpoints and their position on the concept of atheism.”
House Bill 1457 would:
“[r]equire science teachers to instruct pupils that proper scientific inquire [sic] results from not committing to any one theory or hypothesis, no matter how firmly it appears to be established, and that scientific and technological innovations based on new evidence can challenge accepted scientific theories…
How Private Warmongers and the U.S. Military Infiltrated American Universities
Steve Horn and Allen Ruff recently 
reported in Truthout:
A matrix of closely tied university-based strategic studies ventures, the so-called Grand Strategy Programs (GSP), have cropped up on a number of elite campuses around the country, where they function to serve the national security warfare state.
In tandem with allied institutes and think tanks across the country, these programs, centered at Yale University, Duke University, the University of Texas at Austin, Columbia University, Temple University and, until recently, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, illustrate the increasingly influential role of a new breed of warrior academics in the post-9/11 United States. The network marks the ascent and influence of what might be called the “Long War University.”
Ostensibly created to train an up-and-coming elite to see a global “big picture,” this grand strategy network has brought together scores of foreign policy wonks heavily invested — literally and figuratively — in an unending quest to maintain US global…
MSNBC Finally Has A Good Ad, About the GI Bill (Video)
EIther hell has frozen over or I have shit my pants. Comments welcome …
UPDATE: NBC has removed this ad off the internet because Disinformation is talking about it …
Going To A Public Farm School
Are schoolyard farms the best way to counteract the increasingly industrial food provided by school lunches? Via Denver’s ABC affiliate:
DENVER — Just eight months ago, a one-acre plot at the Denver Green School was an unused athletic field, but now that land has come to life with food-bearing vegetation.
“We have harvested over 3,000 pounds of produce from this ground. Lots of salad greens and root vegetables, tomatoes, eggplant, peppers,” said Megan Caley, the programs and outreach coordinator for Sprout City Farms.
Each week during harvest season, the farm produces 150 pounds of fresh, organic fruits and vegetables that end up in the school’s cafeteria.
“Kids are eating healthier,” said Frank Coyne, lead partner at the Denver Green School. “They are excited to eat the tomatoes on the salad bar, they are excited to eat the cucumbers.”
High School Teacher Comes Under Fire For Porn Career
Does the “internet” generation have differing views on porn stars teaching kids? Reports FOX 25 Boston:
BOSTON — Kevin Hogan is an English teacher and crew coach at a top-rated Massachusetts public high school, but he brings some unusual experience to the job: until recently, he was starring in pornographic movies.
Hogan has worked at the Mystic Valley Regional Charter School in Malden since September. In addition to his coaching and teaching duties, he also chairs the high school’s English department.
But he can also be found on the Internet and in adult entertainment stores under his screen name: Hytch Cawke …
Sandusky “Victim One” Pulled From School Due to Bullying and Threats From Students and Staff
Don’t tell me the kind of things that happened in Nazi Germany could never happen in the USA … Ryan D. Buell reports in the Huffington Post:
Court records refer to him simply, as Victim One. Outside of a four-and-a-half page section about him in the grand jury indictment of ex-Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, little else has been discussed about him publicly.
Last week, his mother (whom I will refer to as “Mother One”) removed him from Central Mountain High School in Mill Hall, Pa., where he was a senior and an all-star athlete. In an interview conducted last week, she explained why she pulled him from the school.
“They were not helpful,” Mother One said of the school’s administrators. “They wanted me to go home and forget about it.”
Mother One also alleges that since the Sandusky scandal erupted, fellow students and the high school’s football coach (who also serves as…
This Weekend in Portland, OR: 5th Annual EsoZone Alternative Culture and Thought Festival
The fifth annual EsoZone Portland event will be held this weekend at p:ear, Friday evening November 18th and Saturday November 19th (see the website for schedule and location information).
EsoZone is festival celebrating alternative culture and thought. It follows a hybrid unconference/conference model, meaning that in addition to pre-programmed content, participants can propose their own sessions to share their own ideas, projects and skills with the group.
This years presentations include:
- Tom Henderson, author of the forthcoming book Punk Rock Mathematics, on illusory nature of self.
- Eric Schiller of Beyond Growth on “digital hipsterism” and the rise of anti-intellectualism in social media.
- Yoga for Slackers lead by Loren mccRory.
- Grant Writing for Artists and Other Alien Beings lead by Amanda Sledz.
- Anarcho-Sewing lead by Jillian Ordes-Finley.
Plus music and performances, and whatever sessions are proposed by this year’s participants.
The ‘Science of 9/11′ Discussed in Two U.S. Universities
Amidst the break down of the Zuccotti park Occupy Wall Street encampment, other tremors to the collective psyche are reverberating around our nations’ universities. Two events are set to discuss the science of the destruction of the three WTC towers on 9/11 this week.
The first being held at the University of Chattanooga at Tennessee entitled, “The Science of 911: What is the forensic science of investigating a disaster?” The second event features Professor Niels H. Harrit of Copenhagen University and the title of his lecture is “The Collapse of the Seventh Tower: A Physical & Chemical Analysis.”
Both events feature experts from an array of related disciplines including: Niels H. Harrit Ph.D. Chemistry University of Copenhagen Jim Hall, former National Transportation Safety Board Director. David Johnson, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus of Planning, UT-Knoxville, Edwin Foster, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus of Civil Engineering, UT-Chattanooga, Tom Junod, Journalist, Esquire magazine, Felicia McGhee Hilt, Department of Communications,…
Thousands of Idiot Penn State Students Riot Over Firing of Child Rapist’s Protector
If you think going to college means you are smart, well, here you go. Via Gawker:
Penn State students have taken to the streets of State College, Penn. tonight, flipping news vans and getting maced by cops. More protests against Wall Street greed and income inequality? Nope! It’s because Penn State fired its longtime football coach Joe Paterno for covering up child rape allegedly perpetrated by assistant coach Jerry Sandusky …
Psychedelic Art From Science Textbooks
50 Watts has a jaw-dropping collection of seemingly hallucinogen-inspired illustrations culled from 1970s science textbooks, revealing striking new ways of understanding biology, psychology, and sex ed concepts. School was truly trippy back then. Most of the art come from materials published by Communications Research Machines, including their titles Life and Heath, Psychology Today, and Developmental Psychology Today.
Add Muslim College Students to the List The NYPD Has Spied On
Joe Coscarelli writes in New York Magazine’s Daily Intel:
The Associated Press’s series on NYPD spying continues today with the news that Muslim students at colleges in New York were investigated covertly by the secret NYPD and CIA program that also monitored community centers, government allies, and entire neighborhoods in the years after September 11. The new report places NYPD undercover officers at schools including Brooklyn College, Baruch, Hunter, City College, Queens College, La Guardia, and St. John’s, where they sought out student radicalization. But according to experts, their methods “may have broken a 19-year-old pact with the colleges and violated U.S. privacy laws, jeopardizing millions of dollars in federal research money and student aid.”
“The government, through the police department, is working privately to destroy the private lives of Muslim citizens,” said Moustafa Bayoumi, an English professor at Brooklyn College.
“We come to the room, we talk, we chill,” said one 20-year-old student of…
A Plan For A Post-Labor America
Because I share the concern that the Occupy Movement has no plan for change, I humbly present for consensus. . .
A PLAN FOR A POST-LABOR AMERICA
• Education reform. A popular misconception about the American ED-U-SYSTEM is that it is ‘broken.’ When in fact, it is quite good at what it was designed for; creating dependable laborers for Industry. Thanks to the schooling system, youth are trained very early in how they are expected to be useful in the “REAL WORLD.” The real purpose of public education consists of three courses: one in punctuality, one in obedience, and one in rote, repetitive work.
• Labor-based economy demands workers who show up on time, workers who will take orders from a management hierarchy without question and it demands men and women to slave away at machines or in offices. Rather than lament or ignore these facts we should look at this system as a necessary…
