Category Archives: schools

Another one hits Oklahoma

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CBS news has this up.

We watched the weather channel last night as they covered the clean up live.  The path through was just absolute devastation.  Brick buildings and homes usually can make it through severe storms but not this time…it was stunning to see all these places flattened.  It was really hard to hear about the schools being hit and that children had died.  Schoolteachers covered the kids with their bodies to protect them…you know, those rotten, self-serving teachers who don’t give a crap about the kids. /snark

CSPAN was covering it this morning.  I was glad to hear from some Oklahoma residents who are blasting their own senator for voting against more aid to victims of Hurricane Sandy.  They are afraid that it is going to come back on them.

 

Angelina Jolie

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Has this at the New York Times on having a double mastectomy.  First, I want to say that I hope she is doing well and on her way to healing and recovery.  It must have been a difficult decision to make.

My grandmother died of breast cancer.  There is a lot of cancer in my family.   But I would not make the same choice as Angelina has done, even if I knew that I had the “breast cancer gene”.  There are too many unknowns about genes and their impact on disease.  As I have posted about before, there are factors about genes and the expression of their purpose that is *still* not understood by scientists.

More here on genes and the nutrition of the mother. Very interesting.  The usual focus is treating the problem after it occurs (or in Angelina’s case, before it occurs, but with drastic measures)…instead of  turning the focus to the toxic soup we’re living in that is the root cause of the disease.   Also, it does not focus on the understanding that diet of organic fruits and vegetables are key to good health and allowing the body to do what it miraculously does:  fight disease.

Why is that so hard to do?

Why can’t we be more proactive in trying to eliminate the causes instead of allowing it?

 

 

“Speak your mind…

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…even if your voice shakes.” (quote by Maggie Kuhn.) ( Oh, those uppity Presbyterian women…  :p   –I was raised Presbyterian.)

The story isn’t clear on what exactly was happening, other than the teacher handed him a packet as educational instruction.   I’ll presume, then, it is the brainless edumucation of  No Child Left A Mind that he is actually protesting….a mindless program that takes away the teacher’s creativity and ability to teach intuitively…rather, she/he must teach to the test.  If they don’t…the child doesn’t do well on the test…their school loses funding…and the teacher loses his/her job.  The child, though, is the one that loses the most–their most creative years for exploring their world are lost—all based on a false premise that the testing is a true assessment of the child’s aptitude and abilities.

ALEC fighting open records

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This up from PR Watch on ALEC’s latest: asserting that its communications with public legislators is private….

Isn’t it amazing how the folks who insist on the Patriot Act and having the right to examine your private phone conversations, emails, library records, bank records, etc., are the same ones insisting that they have a right to privacy….??  The story states that there are cases where the communications can be private–in some states they don’t have to make their communications public knowledge…but it stops there and doesn’t explore that point further.

So…I went on a quick search and found this resource to each state’s open door laws.  As with any law, though, it’s only as good as the people behind it.  That is, if you have a group of people bent on keeping things secret with financial resources to keep their secrets, while those that try to find information lacking in financial resources…well, the law isn’t worth much…

With politicians like these….

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…who needs Bozo the Clown?

Did Walworth really ask if they were growing cultures that would become human beings?  OMG….these are the people deciding educational standards?  ::holds head from spinning::

Even more alarming (if anything could be more alarming) is this passage from Louisiana Voice:

Where others within the Department of Education (DOE) have alluded privately to data suppression and manipulation of school performance scores that artificially inflated graduation rates, Bassett, a band director who said he was “highly qualified” to teach math, publicly charged White, BESE and DOE of misrepresenting test scores and then covering up the lie by removing the data from the Louisiana Believes website. “This is data suppression,” Bassett said.

He said he was asked by his principal last October to look into his school’s score so that it could be improved in the future. “My subsequent research revealed deceit, distortion, manipulation of scores and data suppression,” he said.

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Further down, it goes into specifics about VAM and how the data was missing or manipulated.  Good God, these people have no conscience nor credibility…

Unfortunately, Louisiana is not alone.

Girl Scouts and Common Core Badge

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Diane Ravitch has a blog up on the Girl Scouts getting on the “Common Core Bandwagon” by issuing badges to girls for the…um…skill of Common Core…

Gah, whatever happened to learning how to build a campfire, going on hikes, helping the elderly, playing an instrument, identifying trees by their leaves,  and so on…?  Remember when it was about learning survival skills for being out in the woods?

I mean, when I was a Girl Scout we learned some actual skills that I use even to this day! (Okay, I’ve forgotten a lot, but not everything)

We camped overnight at the campground in the woods.  We used genuine outhouses with wooden boxes over holes in the ground.  Yours truly got stung on the rear end when a wasp from a nest located in the outhouse resented the invasion into its “territory”…I have never moved so fast in all of my life. :p

I remember singing “Kookaberra” and “Amster___ (shhhh…Scouts don’t cuss)”   haha. Great times.  So, now they want to award badges for unproven educational standards that have absolutely nothing to do with the outdoors?  Pfft.

Fox guarding hen house attacks hen

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…news at 11:00.  Seriously?? 

Cue the “outrage” that such action occurred….then quietly continue with status quo….

This is more than a military issue.  This is a culture issue.

Yeah, rape is hilarious. It’s just so freaking funny to listen to a woman scream “no, no, no” over and over again.  And hey, it’s great fun to force yourself on someone who is asleep and unable to fight you off.  /snark

Elizabeth Smart and why she didn’t run away--her self esteem was so low she felt like a “chewed up piece of gum”….because the way she was raised, if one lost their virginity, one was worthless.  The ever important hymen must be intact (Gah, can someone say Al-Queda?) in order for her to be worthy….it is so sad that she felt so awful about herself instead of putting the behavior onto her captor.  It should also be noted that when feminists began working to uplift women’s self esteem, the evangelicals put a stop to it (Gloria Steinem, Revolution from Within).

And the lovely gun manufacturers’ target, “The Ex”. …they included a woman, dripped in blood, because they didn’t want to be sexist…?!  I’m surprised they didn’t also say that they wanted to include a black man because they didn’t want to appear racist….and he just *happened* to look like President Obama…just like the “devil” on the Mark Burnett / Roma Downey “Bible” series…these things just happen, dontcha know?

See my blog here on the Steubenville case and rape culture around the world.

 

Obama and Education

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Diane Ravitch has a link up to the discussion on the Washington Post.  You can’t let President Obama off the hook, as is discussed–he picked Arne Duncan and actually praised No Child Left a Mind while slobbering over Bush at the dedication to the *cough* library.

No one who cares about public education and children can endorse No Child Left a Mind.  Only someone with a narrow view and narrow mind can believe it is a success.  Those with $$ in their eyes, that is….

I just want to cry

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…at what they have done to our schools….

Little ones who are now exposed to the constant fear of some bad person coming into their school and killing them or their teacher…

Schools being locked down every day instead of just when there is a possible suspect in the area…

…and No Child left a Mind continuing to be regarded as some sort of successful program, when all arrows point in the opposite direction…

…and the ones that care, the teachers and principals who give a rat’s behind about the children and not just earning a paycheck, well…they’re the ones that are leaving the profession.

I just want to cry.