Texas Board of Education Says Thomas Jefferson Didn’t Contribute Much to America’s Intellectual Origins
The Texas Board of Education is seeking to rewrite certain portions of their state’s history books with their version of conservatism.
Among the proposed changes are reducing the scope of Latino history and culture, removing hip hop music from a list of important cultural movements, portraying Joseph McCarthy in a more positive light, and downplaying Thomas Jefferson’s influence in the intellectual origins of America.
Yes, Thomas Jefferson.
In his place, they want to highlight St. Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin, and William Blackstone.
Read more about it on Yahoo News.
Sizing Up Sperm: The Most Extreme Race on Earth (Video)
Wow, I had no idea that sperm have to fight Morlocks along the way! National Geographic presents Sizing Up Sperm:
Each of us was the grand prize in an ultimate reality competition, the amazing race a sperm makes on the road to fertilization.
Millions of sperm compete while overcoming armies of antibodies, treacherous terrain and impossible odds to reach their single-minded goal.
To illustrate the full weight of the challenge, Sizing Up Sperm uses real people to represent 250 million sperm on their marathon quest to be first to reach a single egg.
NYC Schools Prohibit Sale of Home-Made Food and Allow Junk for Fundraising?!?
From NYC Green Schools:
Regulation A-812 prohibits home-baked foods from being sold at school fundraisers, while permitting Doritos and Pop-Tarts instead! Yes, this regulation mandates that if we want to raise money for our schools, we have to buy and sell junk food to our children!
VOICE YOUR OPPOSITION TO REGULATION A-812!
— Our schools cannot become venues for big food corporations, like Pepsi Cola and Kellogg’s to advertise and sell their processed foods to our children!
— Our children must not receive the message that junk food is healthier for them than foods cooked at home!
— We, as parents, must be allowed to participate in the discussion about our children’s health and nutrition!
Mississippi School Prom Off After Lesbian’s Date Request
From Yahoo News:
Constance McMillen didn’t believe her Mississippi school district would really call off her senior prom rather than allow her to show up with her girlfriend and wear a tuxedo. On Thursday, a day after the Itawamba County school board did just that, the 18-year-old lesbian high school senior reluctantly returned to campus to some unfriendly looks, she said.
“Somebody said, ‘Thanks for ruining my senior year.’” McMillen said.
The district announced Wednesday it wouldn’t host the April 2 prom. The decision came after the American Civil Liberties Union demanded that officials change a policy banning same-sex prom dates because it violated students’ rights. And the ACLU said the district not letting McMillen wear a tuxedo violated her free expression rights.
The ACLU filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Oxford…
John Taylor Gatto – The Underground History of American Education
In this clip the former New York State and New York City Teacher of the Year reviews the epigraphs from the chapters of his book, The Underground History of American Education. I’ve been reading the book (a heavy 388 pg. textbook), and find his writing much more exciting than his speaking.
In Australia, Creationism Could Slip into Science Classes
From the Sydney Morning Herald:
The draft national curriculum does not prohibit the teaching of creationism in schools, raising questions about whether this will open the door to its promotion as a science in classrooms.
The NSW Board of Studies has explicitly ruled out the teaching of creation theory from the Bible as a science, however it allows the teaching of spiritual perspectives on creation in science classes, as long as they are not dressed up as scientific or used to substitute any curriculum content, such as the teaching of evolution.
Greens MP John Kaye said he did not oppose discussion of Aboriginal Dreamtime or Christian explanations of the world’s origins in science classrooms, as long as they were presented as non-scientific beliefs.
However, while the NSW curriculum explicitly required schools to present and…
‘Baby Einstein’ DVDs Do More Harm Than Good
Fiona Macrae writes in the Daily Mail:
Parents who buy educational DVDs to give their toddlers a head start may be doing more harm than good. A study of almost 100 boys and girls aged between one and two found that regularly watching a DVD from the Baby Einstein range did nothing to boost their vocabulary.
In fact, the younger the children were when they began to watch the programmes, the worse their word power. Researchers tested the children over six weeks. Half were given a Baby Wordsworth DVD, which their parents were told to play 15 times over six weeks.
The 35-minute disc, costing around £18, is part of the Baby Einstein range – popular with parents keen to boost toddlers’ IQs before starting school. It uses puppets and people to introduce…
School Administrator Boasts to PBS About His Laptop Spying
From Cory Doctorow at BoingBoing:
Scott sez,
A few weeks ago, Frontline premiered a documentary called “Digital Nation”. In one segment, the vice-principle of Intermediate School 339, Bronx, NY, Dan Ackerman, demonstrates how he “remotely monitors” the students’ laptops for “inappropriate use”. (his demonstration begins at 4:36)
He says “They don’t even realize we are watching,” “I always like to mess with them and take a picture,” and “9 times out of 10, THEY DUCK OUT OF THE WAY.”
He says the students “use it like it’s a mirror” and he watches. He says 6th and 7th graders have their cameras activated. It looks like the same software used by the Pennsylvania school that is being investigated for covertly spying on students through their webcams.
The shocking thing about this is that the privacy concerns were not even mentioned in the Frontline documentary!
The Philosophy of Punk Rock Mathematics
Tom Henderson, a/k/a Mathpunk
Tom Henderson explains his philosophy of punk rock mathematics. Via Technoccult:
1) People use the average Joe’s poor mathematics as a way to control, exploit, and numerically fuck him over.
2) Mathematics is the subject in which, regardless of what the authorities tell you is true, you can verify every last iota of truth, with a minimum of equipment.
Therefore, if you are concerned with the empowerment of everyday people, and you believe that it’s probably a good idea to be skeptical of authority you could do worse than to develop your skills at being able to talk math in such a way that anyone can ask questions, can express curiosity, can imagine applying it in the most weird-ass off-the-wall ways possible.
Kentucky Approves Bible Classes For Public Schools
LEX18.com via the AP reports:
FRANKFORT (AP) — Kentucky may follow the lead of Texas and a handful of other states in allowing Bible classes to be taught in public schools.
The Senate Education Committee on Thursday unanimously approved legislation that would effectively return the Bible to classrooms across Kentucky.
“The purpose is to allow the Bible to be used for its literature content as well as its art and cultural and social studies content,” said state Sen. David Boswell, D-Owensboro, chief sponsor of the bill that is modeled after a Texas measure.
Under the Kentucky proposal, Bible courses would be offered as electives, meaning schools could choose whether to offer them to students as a social studies credit and that students could decide whether to take them.
Boswell said he believes the legislation is constitutional…
FBI Probes US School Webcam ‘Spy’ Case
An update to this story. From MSN:
The FBI is investigating a Pennsylvania school district officials accused of secretly activating webcams inside students’ homes, a law enforcement official with knowledge of the case told The Associated Press.
The FBI will explore whether Lower Merion School District officials broke any federal wiretap or computer-intrusion laws, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Days after a student filed a suit over the practice, Lower Merion officials acknowledged on Friday that they remotely activated webcams 42 times in the past 14 months, but only to find missing student laptops. They insist they never did so to spy on students, as the student’s family claimed in the federal lawsuit.
Families were not informed of the possibility the webcams might be activated in their homes without their…
High School Spied On Students At Home Via Their Laptops
Wow, can this be true? Truly a situation in which “Big Brother” comparisons are no exaggeration. It’s being reported that the Lower Merion School District, in a wealthy suburb of Philadelphia, is being sued for spying on its students at home, after issuing the students laptops with webcams that could be covertly activated by school administrators for surveillance, writes Boing Boing:
The issue came to light when the Robbins’s child was disciplined for “improper behavior in his home” and the Vice Principal used a photo taken by the webcam as evidence. The suit is a class action, brought on behalf of all students issued with these machines.
Update: The school district admits that student laptops were shipped with software for covertly activating their webcams, but denies wrongdoing.
Detroit Schools Offer Class in How to Work at Wal-Mart
Muriel Kane writes on RAW Story:
Wal-Mart has been widely condemned for offering its employees only low-paying, dead end jobs. Even President Obama criticized Hillary Clinton during the 2008 presidential campaign for having served on Wal-Mart’s board and stated that the firm ought to pay “a living wage.”
In inner-city Detroit, however, where the unemployment rate is estimated at an astonishing 50%, the prospect of a Wal-Mart job may appear far more attractive.
Four inner-city Detroit high schools have decided that employment with Wal-Mart is an opportunity worth training their students to pursue. The schools have teamed up with the giant merchandiser to offer a for-credit class in job-readiness training that also includes entry-level after-school jobs.
Read More: RAW Story
Little Girl Who Had Eight Limbs and Was Worshiped As a Deity, Starts School
Via the Daily Mail:
She was born with a unique body — eight limbs and two torsos fused at the hips. Now Lakshmi Tatma, the Indian toddler whose plight touched the world, has grown up and started school.
Two years after a ground-breaking operation to separate her from a parasitic twin, Lakshmi is a lively and bubbly four-year-old.
She loves playing cricket with her older brother, has a tendency to boss around her newfound friends and remains firmly a daddy’s girl.
‘When I think of the way she was, never in a million years would Lakshmi have been able to go to school or have the life she does today,’ said her mother Poonam, 26. ‘All the things she’s capable of now were impossible two years ago.
Texas Social Studies Curriculum: Out With Civil Rights Leaders, In With Phyllis Schlafly And Joseph McCarthy
From Think Progress:
For months, the Texas State Board of Education has been hearing from “experts” about the direction of the state’s social studies curriculum and textbook standards. The advice to the 15-member board — which is composed of 10 Republicans — has included more references to Christianity, fewer mentions of civil rights leaders, George Wasington, and Abraham Lincoln.On Thursday and Friday last week, the State Board of Education took up these recommendations in a lengthy, heated debate. Some highlights of what the Republican-leaning board ended up deciding, and the debates that went on:
— On a 7-6 vote, the board decided to add “causes and key organizations and individuals of the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s, including Phyllis Schafly, the Contract with America, the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority, and…
Texas Rewrites The Nation’s Textbooks
Washington Monthly reveals how a small group of ultraconservative Texas residents has managed to rewrite the public school textbooks used across the entire nation:
“Evolution is hooey…the way I evaluate history textbooks is first I see how they cover Christianity and Israel. Then I see how they treat Ronald Reagan.”
Views like these are relatively common in East Texas. But McLeroy is no ordinary citizen…[he] sits on the Texas State Board of Education, [and leads] an activist bloc that holds enormous sway over the body’s decisions.
As the state goes through the once-in-a-decade process of rewriting the standards for its textbooks, the faction is using its clout to infuse them with ultraconservative ideals. They aim to rehabilitate Joseph McCarthy, bring global-warming denial into science class, and downplay the contributions of the civil rights movement.
…
Cannabis College Now Enrolling Students
Tamar Lewin reports for the New York Times on the spread of cannabis culture to higher education in Michigan:
SOUTHFIELD, Mich. — At most colleges, marijuana is very much an extracurricular matter. But at Med Grow Cannabis College, marijuana is the curriculum: the history, the horticulture and the legal how-to’s of Michigan’s new medical marijuana program.
“This state needs jobs, and we think medical marijuana can stimulate the state economy with hundreds of jobs and millions of dollars,” said Nick Tennant, the 24-year-old founder of the college, which is actually a burgeoning business (no baccalaureates here) operating from a few bare-bones rooms in a Detroit suburb.
The six-week, $485 primer on medical marijuana is a cross between an agricultural extension class covering the growing cycle, nutrients and light requirements (“It’s harvest time when half…
Teacher Claims Fingerprinting Is ‘Mark of the Beast’
From Wired:
A 22-year veteran kindergarten teacher in the Texas Bible Belt could lose her job for refusing, on religious grounds, to give fingerprints under a state law requiring them.The evangelical Christian, Pam McLaurin, is fighting a looming suspension, claiming that fingerprinting amounts to the “Mark of the Beast,” and hence is a violation of her First Amendment right to practice her religion. Her case is similar to a lawsuit by a group of Michigan farmers, some of them Amish, challenging rules requiring the tagging of livestock with RFID chips, saying the devices are also the devil’s mark.
The latest case is the first in which a teacher is refusing fingerprinting on religious grounds, the woman’s lawyer said. The U.S. Supreme Court has yet to decide whether the First Amendment is implicated in fingerprinting, especially…
The Uneducated American
PAUL KRUGMAN writes in the NY Times:
If you had to explain America’s economic success with one word, that word would be “education.” In the 19th century, America led the way in universal basic education. Then, as other nations followed suit, the “high school revolution” of the early 20th century took us to a whole new level. And in the years after World War II, America established a commanding position in higher education.
But that was then. The rise of American education was, overwhelmingly, the rise of public education — and for the past 30 years our political scene has been dominated by the view that any and all government spending is a waste of taxpayer dollars. Education, as one of the largest components of public spending, has inevitably suffered.
Until now, the results of educational neglect have been gradual — a slow-motion erosion of America’s relative position. But things are about to get much worse, as the economic crisis — its effects exacerbated by the penny-wise, pound-foolish behavior that passes for “fiscal responsibility” in Washington — deals a severe blow to education across the board.
