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.

“We’ve lost, unfortunately, our entertainment industry,” the candidate explained. “We’ve lost our higher education. That was the first to go a long time ago. It’s no wonder President Obama wants every kid to go to college. The indoctrination that occurs at American universities is one of the keys to the left holding and maintaining power in America — and it is indoctrination.”

“If they taught Judeo-Christian ideology, they would be stripped of every dollar. If they teach radical secular ideology, they get all the government support that they can possibly get…

[continues at RawStory via Current]

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 don’t like me,” said Sarah, who has been diagnosed with attention-deficit and bipolar disorders and who is conscious of being overweight. “They were picking on me. So I sprayed myself with perfume. Then the teacher called the police.”

The policeman didn’t have far to come. He patrols the corridors of Sarah’s school, Fulmore Middle in Austin, Texas. Like hundreds of schools in the state, and across large parts of the rest of the US, Fulmore Middle has its own police force with officers in uniform who carry guns to keep order in the canteens, playgrounds and lessons. Sarah was taken from class, charged with a criminal misdemeanour and ordered to appear in court.

Each day, hundreds of schoolchildren appear before courts in Texas charged with offences such as swearing, misbehaving on the school bus or getting in to a punch-up in the playground. Children have been arrested for possessing cigarettes, wearing “inappropriate” clothes and being late for school.

In 2010, the police gave close to 300,000 “Class C misdemeanour” tickets to children as young as six in Texas for offences in and out of school, which result in fines, community service and even prison time. What was once handled with a telling-off by the teacher or a call to parents can now result in arrest and a record that may cost a young person a place in college or a job years later.

“We’ve taken childhood behaviour and made it criminal,” said Kady Simpkins, a lawyer who represented Sarah Bustamantes. “They’re kids. Disruption of class? Every time I look at this law I think: good lord, I never would have made it in school in the US. I grew up in Australia and it’s just rowdy there. I don’t know how these kids do it, how they go to school every day without breaking these laws.”

The emphasis on law and order in the classroom parallels more than two decades of rapid expansion of all areas of policing in Texas in response to misplaced fears across the US in the 1980s of a looming crime wave stoked by the crack epidemic, alarmist academic studies and the media.

“Zero tolerance started out as a term that was used in combating drug trafficking and it became a term that is now used widely when you’re referring to some very punitive school discipline measures. Those two policy worlds became conflated with each other,” said Fowler.

The very young are not spared. According to Appleseed, Texas records show more than 1,000 tickets were issued to primary schoolchildren over the past six years (although these have no legal force at that age). Appleseed said that “several districts ticketed a six-year-old at least once in the last five years”.

Fines run up to $500. For poorer parents, the cost can be crippling. Some parents and students ignore the financial penalty, but that can have consequences years down the road. Schoolchildren with outstanding fines are regularly jailed in an adult prison for non-payment once they turn 17. Stumping up the fine is not an end to the offending student’s problems either. A class-C misdemeanour is a criminal offence.

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 …

Youth is no excuse … I call the members of this generation (and their educators) who are so confused, the WikiStupid.

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 or modes.”

State Representative Jerry Bergevin, who introduced HB 1149, believes such legislation is necessary because he thinks evolution is tied to Nazis, communists, and the shooters in the 1999 Columbine massacre. According to Bergevin, the political and ideological views of Darwin and other believers and evolutionary scientists, along with their positions on atheism, must be taught to students as well. The New Hampshire Republican told the Concord Monitor:

“I want the full portrait of evolution and the people who came up with the ideas to be presented. It’s a worldview and it’s godless. Atheism has been tried in various societies, and they’ve been pretty criminal domestically and internationally. The Soviet Union, Cuba, the Nazis, China today: they don’t respect human rights.”

He added “As a general court we should be concerned with criminal ideas like this and how we are teaching it. . . . Columbine, remember that? They were believers in evolution. That’s evidence right there.”

Rep Gary Hopper, who introduced HB1457 said that “science is a creative process, not an absolute thing” and he wants creationism taught in classes “so that kids understand that science doesn’t really have all the answers. They are just guessing.”

Read the full post at Diatribe Media

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 supremacy, a campaign which they increasingly refer to as the Long War.

Read More: Truthout

UPDATE: NBC has removed this ad off the internet because Disinformation is talking about it …

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.”

Read More: Denver’s ABC affiliate

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 …

Read more: FOX 25 Boston

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 assistant principal) have all targeted her son with verbal attacks and threats of violence.

She also claims that the school’s principal tried to convince her and her son not to report their allegations against Sandusky to the police, and that as recently as this month, refused to treat threats of violence against her son by other students as credible.

Read more here.

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 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, UT-Chattanooga, Moderator.

Abstract: To most people, the image of the World Trade Center (WTC) is confined to the famous twin towers, which dominated the New York skyline until September 11th, 2001, when they collapsed after each one being hit by an airliner. However, the trade center was an assembly of seven buildings around a plaza. The youngest of these, WTC7, was a huge office building, reaching 186 meters and 47 stories into the air. The ground-plan area was little less than a soccer field.

WTC7 was not hit by an airliner. Still, it collapsed seven hours after the twin towers in a totally symmetric movement with free-fall speed. It was the most unexpected collapse in the history of modern building construction.

The talk outlines the factual circumstances around this event. These facts are held up against the official account of the event as it has been presented in a report from National Institute of Standards and Technology. According to this report, WTC7 collapsed due to fire. But never before – or since – in history has a steel-framed high-riser collapsed due to fire.

In the second part of the talk it is proposed that the collapse of WTC was due to controlled demolitions using explosives. In addition, unambiguous evidence points to the use of thermite, which is an energetic material used to cut and weld steel. The newest findings in the dust include still-reactive remains of so-called nano-thermite.

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 …

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 his Islamic Society group at school. “So if another sister comes into the room and she’s a cop, that’s not cool. I’m really scared about this.”

More on New York Magazine’s Daily Intel

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 evil that has allowed us to develop ourselves to this present state of technological sophistication — actually paving the way for what comes next.

• The creative-based economy. The key is a government subsidized social networking website linked to your bank account. The consumer will pay you a fee (fee to be determined by you, the producer) to view your page, and a separate fee to buy your content. Additionally, all content submitted to the website will be licensed as “creative commons” (or applicable term) and by buying another producer’s content, you now have permission to sample their wares for your personal projects. And it’s collaboration, collaboration, collaboration all the way down. In order to help you make the most informed purchases the website will also give you suggestions on what profiles you will like based on your: past purchases, a rating system and those stupid little personality tests everyone loves.

Since labor-based jobs, that need the ‘training’ provided by the school system, are being outsourced to foreigners and fully automated mechanical laborers — a new economy and a new school system to support it are desperately needed. We need to create a school system that incorporates speed reading and memorization techniques directly into the curriculum. We also need a curriculum that develops the ARTISTIC RIGHT HEMISPHERE of the brain alongside the rational left. There’s still a lot of details to hammer out, but we can work on it together.

Find me (R. Talmadge Lacy) on Facebook.

]]> http://www.disinfo.com/2011/10/a-plan-for-a-post-labor-america/feed/ 13 http://www.disinfo.com/2011/10/abolish-student-loan-debt/ http://www.disinfo.com/2011/10/abolish-student-loan-debt/#comments Sat, 08 Oct 2011 04:21:17 +0000 Haystack http://www.disinfo.com/?p=61171 Writing for the journal Reclamations, George Caffentzis wonders why there is no movement in the United States to abolish our increasingly oppressive system of institutionalized student loan debt:

Debt has had a crushing impact on the lives of those who must take student loans to finance their university education in the US. For tuition fees that have been so notoriously high in private universities now are rising in public universities so quickly they are far out-pacing inflation. Average loan debt per student in the US has been much higher than in Europe (with the exception of Sweden), though recent developments there would indicate that this gap may soon no longer exist (Usher).

We should also take into account the fraudulent way in which the loans have been administered by the banks and the vindictiveness with which those who have been unable to pay back have been pursued by collection agents. The most…

Writing for the journal Reclamations, George Caffentzis wonders why there is no movement in the United States to abolish our increasingly oppressive system of institutionalized student loan debt:

Debt has had a crushing impact on the lives of those who must take student loans to finance their university education in the US. For tuition fees that have been so notoriously high in private universities now are rising in public universities so quickly they are far out-pacing inflation. Average loan debt per student in the US has been much higher than in Europe (with the exception of Sweden), though recent developments there would indicate that this gap may soon no longer exist (Usher).

We should also take into account the fraudulent way in which the loans have been administered by the banks and the vindictiveness with which those who have been unable to pay back have been pursued by collection agents. The most frustrating aspect of student loan debt being the legally toothless position the debtor is in, because government policy has relentlessly vested all the bargaining power in the hands of the creditors …

[Full Article at Reclamations Journal]

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As the Occupy Wall Street protests enter their 19th day and continue to spread well beyond lower Manhattan, there’s word from the related “Occupy Colleges” movement that a “nationwide college student walk out” has been called for noon today.

Right now (8 a.m. ET) the website lists 75 colleges where walkouts are expected to happen. The reference to noon is to the local time at each school, the website indicates.

More on NPR

This incites the group to pressure the perpetrators into working harder or altering their behavior. This form of bullying is also very common in the work place and is an encouraged form of harassment. This pressure is “bullying” and it takes many forms: Beatings, hostile behavior and threats, ostracism, and many other forms of harassment. At Columbine the victims of bullies bullied back and only after that did people speak out against bullying on a nation-wide scale.

They formed organizations to prevent and stop bullying. All of their efforts are in vain until we stop the unjust practice of group punishment. Bullying will continue as unchecked as ever before unless we stop teaching people that bullying is an acceptable way to direct a group or society itself. America if you want to stop bullying: Stop Teaching and Encouraging It!

— ISN, Rev. Michael S. Margolin

Besides Finnish, math and science, first graders take music, art, sports, religion and textile handcrafts. English begins in third grade, Swedish in fourth. By fifth grade the children have added biology, geography, history, physics and chemistry.

Not until sixth grade will kids have the option to sit for a district-wide exam, and then only if the classroom teacher agrees to participate. Most do, out of curiosity. Results are not publicized. Finnish educators have a hard time understanding the United States’ fascination with standardized tests. “Americans like all these bars and graphs and colored charts,” Louhivuori teased, as he rummaged through his closet looking for past years’ results. “Looks like we did better than average two years ago,” he said after he found the reports. “It’s nonsense. We know much more about the children than these tests can tell us.”

The critical decision came in 1979, when reformers required that every teacher earn a fifth-year master’s degree in theory and practice at one of eight state universities—at state expense. From then on, teachers were effectively granted equal status with doctors and lawyers. Applicants began flooding teaching programs, not because the salaries were so high but because autonomy and respect made the job attractive. In 2010, some 6,600 applicants vied for 660 primary school training slots.

Some of the more vocal conservative reformers in America have grown weary of the “We-Love-Finland crowd” or so-called Finnish Envy. They argue that the United States has little to learn from a country of only 5.4 million people—4 percent of them foreign born. Yet the Finns seem to be onto something. Neighboring Norway, a country of similar size, embraces education policies similar to those in the United States. It employs standardized exams and teachers without master’s degrees. And like America, Norway’s PISA scores have been stalled in the middle ranges for the better part of a decade.

Read the rest at Smithsonian Magazine.

Photo: Diego Grez (CC)

Who said that massive/social cultural revolutions were a thing of the ’60s? Via the Atlantic:

For the past several months, students, teachers, and their supporters in Chile have been staging chaotic demonstrations against their government.

Their goal is to transform the country’s education system. In particular, they’re seeking a referendum to significantly increase the funding and quality of public schools. Students have engaged in multiple forms of protest, from hunger strikes and sit-ins to marches and pillow fights. Smaller groups of protesters have engaged riot police directly, hurling stones and firebombs.

Chilean authorities have responded by banning demonstrations, pushing protesters back with water cannons, and offering education proposals that have been rejected. Students in the tens of thousands — with popular backing across Chile — continue to march without official permission, and public sentiment against president Sebastian Piñera continues to grow.

Collected here are some scenes from the streets of Chile over the past few months.

There’s now a 9/11 cartoon movie courtesy of Mike Huckabee, co-founder of Learn Our History, a for-profit company whose mission is to get kids excited and educated about history. The first initiative, an animated DVD series, has flicks on subjects like the American Revolution, and, perhaps more tellingly, “The Reagan Revolution.” The September 11th cartoon really explains, according to the literature, “How the ongoing War on Terror protects Americans at home and American ideals abroad.”

The Texas Board of Education has unanimously come down on the side of evolution. In 14-0 vote, the board today approved scientifically accurate high school biology textbook supplements from established mainstream publishers–and did not approve the creationist-backed supplements from International Databases, LLC.

Dr. Eugenie Scott, NCSE’s Executive Director is celebrating the decision. “These supplements reflect the overwhelming scientific consensus that evolution is the core of modern biology, and is a central and vital concept in any biology class. That these supplements were adopted unanimously reflects a long overdue change in the board. I commend the board for its refusal to politicize science education.”

A bill to require California public schools to teach the historical accomplishments of gay men and lesbians passed the state Legislature on Tuesday in what supporters call a first for the nation.

Governor Jerry Brown, a Democrat, has not said publicly whether he supports the bill, which he has 12 days to sign or veto once it reaches his desk later this month. If he takes no action, the measure would become law automatically.

The bill gained final passage from the state Assembly on a vote of 49-25, without a single Republican supporting it. The measure cleared the state Senate in April.

California already requires public schools to teach the contributions made to society by women and by racial and ethnic groups that were historically discriminated against, such as blacks, Latinos and Native Americans.

[Continues at Reuters]

School Children at Imperial Primary School in Eastridge, Mitchell's Plain (Cape Town, South Africa).

“Don’t Know Much About History”

DURBAN, SOUTH AFRICA: I got into South Africa before I got there.

I did so through meeting a young woman whose given name was Pony, in the tradition of South Africans who call their daughters “Beautiful” or “Truth” or some other creative appellation.

She was on her way home to a small country town, after a year spent in Cuba where she was in a course teaching scientific sport. She was one of a number of scholarship students traveling on the plane with me from Madrid. Cuba had adopted the systematic training system, or Sports institutes, used in East Germany and put it to good advantage in its award winning State backed athletic program. Now they are sharing their knowledge with other Third World countries

Pony, in her late teens, was one of a large number of foreign students attracted to the idea, and was selected by the Cuban Embassy in Pretoria for the five year opportunity beginning with a immersive Spanish language course. She now speaks Spanish pretty well, and knows all the Cuban revolutionary songs and slogans like “Patria O’ Muerte, Veneceremos” (“Fatherland or Death, We Will Win”) that tens of thousands of Cubans echo at huge rallies. She laughed when I chanted one at her as we unexpectedly sat next to each other on the large Iberia jet.

As it turned out, I knew more about Cuba’s role in supporting South Africa’s liberation struggle, a gesture of solidarity that led to Fidel Castro being cheered the loudest of all foreign heads of State who attended Nelson Mandela’s inauguration as the first President of a Democratic South Africa. I covered the scene in a film, Countdown To Freedom, that I made about the historic l994 election.

Cuba’s foreign policy has put a premium of backing revolutionary movements since 1960 and was the only country in the world to openly help South Africa militarily by sending its own troops, their “internationalist volunteers,” to Angola where they defeated the apartheid army in a crucial battle that accelerated the process of political change in Southern Africa. Many Cubans died alongside Angolan soldiers and South African liberation fighters in a war that has been largely forgotten.

Cuba has, in the years since, mellowed in its revolutionary ardor and is in the process of reforming its top-down Socialist economy.

After 19 years of “freedom,” post apartheid South Africa has also cooled its commitment to “struggle politics” and has become more of a “normal” African state, albeit an advanced one economically. It is now battling corruption within the ranks of its government and the ruling African National Congress (ANC) while coping with enormous challenges to create a new society so that youngsters like Pony who are very ambitious and eager to learn will have a future.

She admitted to me she doesn’t know as much about politics or her own history as she would like, and says that’s true of many in her generation. That’s in part because the real history is not taught in any detail in the schools or shown with any regularity on South African TV stations. They are more into selling than telling by pumping out sports and popular culture.

Kids know more abut Mandela than the movement he led, an expression of the celebrity worship that dominates youth culture.  On TV here, Oprah is better known than such lionesses of the freedom fight as Albertina Sisulu, revered by many as the Mother of the Nation, who died a month ago.

When I asked a young white South African girl who the ANC leader and Mandela law partner Oliver Tambo was, she said, “you mean the airport guy?” Johannesburg’s principal airport was renamed for Tambo after years of honoring Afrikaner leaders. (This is all more anecdotal evidence for why South Africa needs its own History Channel of the kind being proposed by producer Anant Singh).

In Durban, where streets are being renamed for other liberation heroes vandals have blacked out the new street names with paint to protest the change. I was told that people are pissed off because it screws up the GPS’s in their cars. (I was thrilled to see a highway named after my old friend and London School of Economics colleague, the journalist and feminist heroine Ruth First).

As it turns out, Pony was flying home on June 16^th, the annual youth day holiday marking the anniversary of the Soweto uprising of l976 where kids Pony’s age and younger revolted against forced instruction in Afrikaans. (South Africans were scandalized when an iconic picture of a young man carrying a victim of that police massacre was mocked on Facebook. In the new one, the child who had been shot in the original was smiling and carrying a bottle of beer).

At least Youth Day is commemorated, as it was this year with concerts and hip-hop shows. In Soweto this time, there was riot when local kids felt excluded and fought their way into a stadium while private cops maced and beat them to the horror of many onlookers. The event turned into chaos when all many kids wanted to do was “krump.” the latest street dance craze.

South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma hardly made the ceremony a priority, showing up three hours late after most of the crowd left in the company of Julius Malema, the controversial head of the ANC’s Youth League. Malema claims to be a youth leader but he is more like a demagogic politician who has learned that the more outrageous his statements, the more “militant” his pose, the more publicity he gets. Sadly the media can’t get enough of his provocations.

He and his League are certainly not doing much of a practical sort to improve education or create jobs for tens of thousands of unemployed and perhaps unemployable young people who cheer his rhetoric while being stuck in lives of crime and desperation.

Here in Durban, a newspaper states, “the youth today mistake nastiness, name-calling, crass materialism and the sale of political office to the highest bidder for revolutionary thought.” Some of those demanding more youth leadership are being dismissed as “Gucci revolutionaries.”

Their demand to nationalize the mines without compensation (a demand rejected by the ANC) is seen as radical to some, but analysts think it is a ploy to shake down patronage payments out of worried business leaders, some of whom have already made them. A bigger problem would occur if this demand was ever realized because the government has a poor record of running industries in the so-called “para-statals” like ESCOM, the electricity monopoly with its frequent mishaps.

A new book, Zuma’s Own Goal, (Africa World Press) picturing the president playing soccer on the cover, details the miserable failures of the ANC’s poverty reduction strategies arguing its continuing loyalty to neo-liberal policies are responsible for a still widening gap between rich and Poor

South Africa was rebranded through last year’s World Cup that brought the country so much world attention and its people so much good cheer.

But now, the people are left with enormous debts to pay off for the construction of fancy stadiums that are barely used. The global financial crisis has now hit home with poverty up and foreign investments down.

The Rainbow Nation, the hope of so many with the fall of apartheid, faces enormous challenges from structural economic issues that are increasingly intractable, even as protests mount.

My new friend Pony may be oblivious to this swirl of contradictions but is bound to be affected by them.

News Dissector Danny  Schechter produced the South Africa Now TV series and directed several films about Nelson Mandela. Comments to dissector@mediachannel.org. “Don’t Know Much About History,” is a line from an R&B classic sung by Sam Cooke.

At the “Egalia” preschool, staff avoid using words like “him” or “her” and address the 33 kids as “friends” rather than girls and boys.

From the color and placement of toys to the choice of books, every detail has been carefully planned to make sure the children don’t fall into gender stereotypes.

Egalia doesn’t deny the biological differences between boys and girls — the dolls the children play with are anatomically correct. What matters is that children understand that their biological differences “don’t mean boys and girls have different interests and abilities.”

The taxpayer-funded preschool which opened last year in the liberal Sodermalm district of Stockholm for kids aged 1 to 6 is among the most radical examples of Sweden’s efforts to engineer equality between the sexes from childhood onward. Breaking down gender roles is a core mission in the national curriculum for preschools, underpinned by the theory that even in highly egalitarian-minded Sweden, society gives boys an unfair edge.

Egalia’s methods are controversial; some say they amount to mind control. But director Lotta Rajalin says that there’s a long waiting list for admission to Egalia, and that only one couple has pulled a child out of the school.