Category: Education,

Growing Up Jehovah’s Witness: ‘Higher Education Is Spiritually Dangerous’ 

On By peanutgallerynhIn Education,, Religion,Leave a comment

….a Jehovah’s Witness, and like many others in the faith, he was homeschooled his whole life.

…My dad told me that he knew people who were into science, and it dragged them right out of the organization, right out of the truth.”

…The view that higher education is spiritually dangerous is very common among Witnesses, and for Linderer, it meant that his parents wouldn’t support him going to college.

…Research shows that only 9 percent of Witnesses get undergraduate degrees. That’s well below the national average of 30.4 percent and the lowest of any faith group. The likely reason for this trend is the religion’s official warnings against college.

…continual association with non-believers in an academic setting can “erode thinking and convictions.”

Witness leadership also discourages higher education because they believe it’s a waste of time. Jehovah’s Witnesses have been predicting the end of the world since the religion’s founding at the end of the 19th century. 

…Pew research also shows that Jehovah’s Witnesses are among the lowest earners of any religious group.

Source: Growing Up Jehovah’s Witness: ‘Higher Education Is Spiritually Dangerous’ : NPR

Keep them dumb because stupid people are more subservient?

White House posts wrong versions of Trump’s orders on its website

On By peanutgallerynhIn Domestic Affairs,, Education,Leave a comment

WASHINGTON — The White House has posted inaccurate texts of President Trump’s own executive orders on the White House website, raising further questions about how thorough the Trump administration has been in drafting some of his most controversial actions.

A USA TODAY review of presidential documents found at least five cases where the version posted on the White House website doesn’t match the official version sent to the Federal Register. The differences include minor grammatical changes, missing words and paragraph renumbering — but also two cases where the original text referred to inaccurate or non-existent provisions of law.

White House posts wrong versions of Trump’s orders on its website

hmmmm

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos physically blocked by protesters from entering D.C. school 

On By peanutgallerynhIn Domestic Affairs,, Education,Leave a comment

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos was physically blocked by protesters from entering Jefferson Academy in SW, D.C. Friday morning. This was her first visit to a public school. The protesters created a barrier to the entrance of the school, and began shouting.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos physically blocked by protesters from entering D.C. school | WJLA

“Shame! Shame! Shame!”

Worth watching, even just for a giggle.

Rep. Massie Introduces Bill to Abolish Federal Department of Education 

On By peanutgallerynhIn Domestic Affairs,, Education,Leave a comment

Rep. Massie Introduces Bill to Abolish Federal Department of Education WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, Representative Thomas Massie introduced H.R. 899, a bill to abolish the federal Department of Education. The bill, which is one sentence long, states, “The Department of Education shall terminate on December 31, 2018.”

Rep. Massie Introduces Bill to Abolish Federal Department of Education | Congressman Thomas Massie

WTF?!

We can’t let Sen. Collins trick us anymore 

On By peanutgallerynhIn Domestic Affairs,, Education,Leave a comment

But Collins refused to break ranks with the chips on the table despite a monumental outpouring of opposition from her constituents at home, strong enough to reportedly tie up her in-district and DC office phone lines for days. She moved DeVos to the full-Senate vote, but stating less than 24 hours later on the floor of the Senate that she did not have confidence in DeVos’ capacity to lead the DoE, saying “DeVos’ lack of experience with public schools will make it difficult for her to understand, identify and assist with those challenges, particularly for our rural schools in states like Maine.”

Collins then joined Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) in publicly announcing that she would not support DeVos on the final vote, again, despite being the pivotal voice in DeVos making it to the Senate floor in the first place. Unless one more member of the GOP and the entire Democratic caucus vote against DeVos, she will be our next Secretary of Education, creating the very real prospect that institutions of public education will wither on the vine across the nation, ultimately devastating children from low income communities and students with disabilities.

In taking to the floor of the Senate, Collins has gained accolades for standing up in a crisis of her own making, trying to save Mainers from a disastrous Cabinet pick that she bears unique responsibility for allowing to occur.

Burns: We can’t let Sen. Collins trick us anymore | Beacon

Collins a twit, but then a lot of the folks wandering the halls of Congress are twits so is this actually news???

High school police officer filmed slamming young girl into North Carolina classroom floor 

On By peanutgallerynhIn American Injustice System,, Schools,Leave a comment

A school official was filmed slamming a young female student to the ground at a North Carolina school and has since been placed on administrative leave pending an investigation. A school resource officer at Rolesville High School, identified by police as Ruben de Los Santos, a five-year veteran of the Rolesville Police Department, can be seen throwing 15-year-old Jasmine Darwin to the ground, with the circumstances that led to the incident as yet unclear.

High school police officer filmed slamming young girl into North Carolina classroom floor | The Independent

Enough with the administrative leave for violent, rouge cops. They need to be arrested, held without bail until their timely and speedy conviction, and then jailed for a very long time.

And if it was a citizen under the age of 18 they got violent with? Or the citizen was killed by the officer? Then they should never, ever be let out.

Abuse the public trust and abuse the public should equal going directly to jail and staying there.

If officers of the law cannot be trusted to follow the law then they need to be treated as what they are, the absolute lowest and worst form of criminal.

Minnesota Football Boycott: Un-Righteous Activism

On By peanutgallerynhIn American Injustice System,, Media and Culture,, Schools,Leave a comment

The university did not make the findings of its Title IX–mandated EOAA investigation public, citing student privacy concerns, but local news station KSTP obtained and published the document on Friday.

The report lays out a nightmarish scene in which a drunk, initially reluctant female student consents to sex with two men at an off-campus apartment, only to have the encounter recorded on camera and shared that night. From there, the report says, the night devolved into a series of assaults. …Men whose identities were confirmed by interviews and cellphone messages obtained during the university’s investigation allegedly held her shoulders down and forcefully had sex with her. 

…The university’s EOAA investigation found that four players had violated the school’s policy regarding sexual assault, eight had violated the sexual harassment policy, and 10 had violated the student conduct code by lying to investigators or obscuring evidence.

…If the alleged violations did occur, as the university’s investigation concluded, getting kicked off the football team is meager justice. But to the players, the suspensions were cause for righteous anger, and a boycott was the logical next step.

…At bottom, the Minnesota boycott was an old story smuggled in under the banner of social justice—not one of athletes mobilizing for justice, but of institutions closing ranks when one of their own is accused of wrongdoing. Note that the Minnesota coaching staff backed the players: a good tell that the boycott was something other than the cry of the marginalized.

The Minnesota football boycott wasn’t athlete activism.

Sigh…

Nigeria’s Chibok girls rescued from Boko Haram will be sponsored by African American billionaire Robert Smith — Quartz

On By peanutgallerynhIn Africa,, Chick Stuff,, Education,Leave a comment

Shehu says Smith is “currently sponsoring the education of 24 girls from Chibok, among them the first set of escapees from Boko Haram at the American University of Nigeria (AUN), Yola.” AUN is owned by Atiku Abubakar, Nigeria’s former vice- president. Given the high cost of tuition ($8,000 for an academic session minus housing and meals), AUN is typically regarded as a school for children of Nigeria’s elite. Smith has also “offered to pay for the education of the 21 released girls through negotiations and is offering to take responsibility for all the others who will hopefully be eventually set free,” Shehu says.

Nigeria’s Chibok girls rescued from Boko Haram will be sponsored by African American billionaire Robert Smith — Quartz

Good.

Virginia school system pulls classic novels ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’, ‘Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’

On By peanutgallerynhIn Media and Culture,, Schools,Leave a comment

Two classic American novels have been temporarily pulled from book shelves in a Virginia public school system.

Virginia school system pulls classic novels ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’, ‘Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’

WTF?! If the books made someone uncomfortable then they did their job. They are about uncomfortable topics. They are supposed to make the reader think.

Sigh….

Texas Lawmaker Wants To Force Teachers To Out LGBT Students To Parents 

On By peanutgallerynhIn Media and Culture,, Modern Parenting,, Schools,Leave a comment

Sen. Konni Burton argues that “a parent has a right to full and total information [about] their child.”

…Because in Buron’s mind parents own their children.
…Because in Burton’s mind human beings can own other human beings?

Texas Lawmaker Wants To Force Teachers To Out LGBT Students To Parents | NewNowNext

Biatch

What A 1950s Texas Textbook Can Teach Us About Today’s Textbook Fight

On By peanutgallerynhIn Chick Stuff,, Education,, Media and Culture,, Race,Leave a comment

On the Mexican-American history textbook:

“One of the fundamental problems with the scholarship of the book is that you have non-historians writing a textbook for history,” said Trinidad Gonzales, a professor of history at South Texas College. “It’s really a polemic masquerading as a textbook, and it’s really trying to argue that Mexican-American culture, including Catholicism, is a fundamental threat to American democracy.”

On seventh-grade Texas history textbook, published in 1954:

“What you have set up here is this mythology. The women who helped these brave men were wives and mothers. They were connected to men through marriage and motherhood. They were not single women. They were not working women. They were not reformers,” [Dr. Nancy Baker Jones of the Ruth Winegarden Foundation for Texas Women’s History] said. “They were the women that were in their socially approved places to the exclusion of many other roles that women have played and contributions that women have made and lives that women have lived.”

This textbook was used by public school students across Texas in the late 1950s and early 1960s, so it helped shape the perceptions and attitudes of people who today would likely be in their ‘60s.

…The textbook acknowledges that slavery at least played a role in the Civil War, but it also treats African-Americans as sub-humans, and again, only defines their history in terms of the convenience of slavery to Anglo, white property owners.

…”That was not just the reigning consensus in a middle school Texas history textbook. That was the reigning consensus in the 1950s in the northern and mid-western dominated college history professoriate. That’s the way college history was written about.” [Benjamin Johnson, an associate professor of history at Loyola University in Chicago]

[Walter Buenger, a professor in the history department at Texas A&M University] agrees. He says academics taught a whole generation to think of African-Americans as “children who were easily misled” after the end of slavery, which he says translates into modern day racism.

What A 1950s Texas Textbook Can Teach Us About Today’s Textbook Fight – Houston Public Media

hmmmm

State Board of Education Rejects Mexican-American Studies Textbook

On By peanutgallerynhIn Education,, Race,Leave a comment

After months of protests from historians, teachers and lawmakers, the Texas State Board of Education this morning unanimously rejected a controversial 

Mexican-American studies textbook that would have been used in public schools.

About a dozen professors across Texas found hundreds of factual errors in the textbook. Many were also upset that the book, titled “Mexican-American Heritage,” promoted stereotypes of groups of people.

The book called Mexican people lazy and said Chicanos wanted to destroy society. 

State Board of Education Rejects Mexican-American Studies Textbook | KUT

hmmm

Texas and Textbooks

On By peanutgallerynhIn Domestic Affairs,, Education,, Local Interest,, Modern Parenting,, Religion,, Schools,Leave a comment

Texas and Textbooks | The Huffington Post

Sigh…

Some background history:

Conservative members of the Texas Board of Education don’t want to create a group of state university professors to fact-check students’ textbooks for potential errors, despite recent controversies…

Source: Texas Board of Education Refuses To Allow Professors To Fact-Check Textbooks

~~~

A broken process at the Texas State Board of Education has allowed right-wing activists to politicize the facts—or fiction—that get taught in history class.

Source: Was Moses a Founding Father? – The Atlantic

~~~

Moses and the American Constitution: If Texas wants biblical characters and states’ rights in textbooks, publishers are happy to deliver.

Source: Texas board of education hearings: Moses and states’ rights in social studies textbooks.

~~~

No matter where you live, if your children go to public schools, the textbooks they use were very possibly written under Texas influence. If they graduated with a reflexive suspicion of the concept of separation of church and state and an unexpected interest in the contributions of the National Rifle Association to American history, you know who to blame.

…Texas originally acquired its power over the nation’s textbook supply because it paid 100 percent of the cost of all public school textbooks, as long as the books in question came from a very short list of board-approved options.

…The books on the Texas list were likely to be mass-produced by the publisher in anticipation of those sales, so other states liked to buy them and take advantage of the economies of scale.

…All the bickering and pressuring over the years has caused publishers to shy away from using the kind of clear, lively language that might raise hackles in one corner or another. The more writers were constrained by confusing demands and conflicting requests, the more they produced unreadable mush.  ..The [Thomas B. Fordham Institute evaluation of US history standards for public schools authors] said,

“the document distorts or suppresses less triumphal or more nuanced aspects of our past that the Board found politically unacceptable (slavery and segregation are all but ignored, while religious influences are grossly exaggerated). The resulting fusion is a confusing, unteachable hodgepodge.”

All around the country, teachers and students are left to make their way through murky generalities as they struggle through the swamps of boxes and lists. “Maybe the most striking thing about current history textbooks is that they have lost a controlling narrative,” wrote historian Russell Shorto.

And that’s the legacy. Texas certainly didn’t single-handedly mess up American textbooks, but its size, its purchasing heft, and the pickiness of the school board’s endless demands—not to mention the board’s overall craziness—certainly made it the trend leader. Texas has never managed to get evolution out of American science textbooks. It’s been far more successful in helping to make evolution—and history, and everything else—seem boring.

Source: How Texas Inflicts Bad Textbooks on Us | by Gail Collins | The New York Review of Books

Group of U-Va. students, faculty ‘deeply offended’ by Thomas Jefferson being quoted at school he founded 

On By peanutgallerynhIn Media and Culture,, Race,, Schools,Leave a comment

“We are incredibly disappointed in the use of Thomas Jefferson as a moral compass,” the group of more than 400 students and faculty members complained in an open letter after the U. Va. president quoted him.

Group of U-Va. students, faculty ‘deeply offended’ by Thomas Jefferson being quoted at school he founded – The Washington Post

hmmm

Police arrest Colorado Springs boy accused of stabbing fellow sixth-grader 

On By peanutgallerynhIn American Injustice System,, Local Interest,, Modern Parenting,, Schools,Leave a comment

An 11-year-old boy accused of stabbing Kyler Nipper with a pencil in their middle school hallway has been arrested on suspicion of second-degree assault, the Colorado Springs Police Department said Tuesday.

Police arrest Colorado Springs boy accused of stabbing fellow sixth-grader | Colorado Springs Gazette, News

Seriously? With a pencil?

Since When Did Police Officers Replace the Principal’s Office? 

On By peanutgallerynhIn American Injustice System,, Race,, Schools,Leave a comment

School administrators are increasingly relying on law enforcement to keep students in line, and the results can be dire.

Take the case of Michael Davis, a five-year-old student with disabilities in the Stockton Unified School District.  A senior police officer in the school district’s police department decided to “scare him straight” after Michael acted out in his classroom, and the situation quickly spiraled out of control.

When Michael got upset and could not calm down, the officer zip-tied Michael’s hands and feet and took him to a mental health facility. Michael’s family filed a lawsuit, and the police officer was finally dismissed from the department four years later, shortly after the family settled with the district for $125,000.

…Police officers are ineffective substitutes for counselors or other adults trained to work with young people who need guidance more than harsh discipline. 

…Many schools have called the police to enforce minor violations like “disruption,” “disturbing the peace,” vandalism, tardiness, and inappropriate use of electronic devices — hardly criminal offenses.

…In the San Bernardino Unified School District, for example, campus officers arrested around 30,000 students between 2005 and 2014, mostly for minor infractions like tagging and disobeying curfews.

…These policies disproportionately target students of color and young people with disabilities, unnecessarily feeding them into the criminal justice system. Black students are three times as likely as white students to face school-related arrest. Students with disabilities are three times as likely as students without disabilities to be arrested on campus.

Since When Did Police Officers Replace the Principal’s Office? | American Civil Liberties Union

Aghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

That’s our f’ing future we are warping and destroying!!!!