I Speak of Dreams

How to Raise a Thug, part II

First example.

Second example:

Elizabeth Anne Moore, a reading teacher at a west Phoenix high school, has a new ending and a new title for the 350-page book she has written about being an educator. She'll call it, "Violated No More."

This week, Ms. Moore won a court injunction against a 15-year-old student who had been harassing her in class - including, by her account, telling her daily to "go [expletive] myself."

The student's father, Reyes Cavazos, said that his son missed the hearing because he wasn't where he was supposed to be to get a ride to court. He ascribed his son's misbehavior to growing pains, but said he deserved whatever punishment that the court ordered.

"He's a growing child," Cavazos said. "He's going through the typical teenage years. You know, he has good days and bad days."

Mr. Cavazos, with all due respect, what are the consequences YOU are going to impose on your son for his verbal violence and disruptiveness in class? In addition to the misery he has put Ms. Moore through, he is preventing the other children in the class from benefitting from the class.

Amazon Censors and Manipulates Reviews

I had read a book by a good writer, who is a male-to-female transsexual, about the his-to-her experience.  I couldn't remember the title or the author, so I asked Google: "transsexual writers".

What is the psychology of transexuality?  There is a very controversial theory expounded by J. Michael Bailey that homosexuality is an evolutionary mistake.  Here is a exposition and round-up of the theory and the problems with it, from a site called the Transsexual Roadmap.

Using the example of reader-reviewers of Bailey's controversial book,  The Man Who Would Be Queen the Transsexual Roadmap analyzes how Amazon ranking can be manipulated by the unscrupulous.

This is important, I believe, because Amazon has become sort of a library to a lot of people who may not understand the difference between objective evaluations and subjective evaluations, and the lack of control or editing in the Amazon review process.

Ted Barlow and his commentators have a pretty good discussion of some of the ins and outs of the ranking system. Kevin Drum and his commentators also talked about how the system works--or doesn't.

Go Me

This blog just passed 30,000 hits. Go me.

Blogs on Parade

I am actively shunning, avoiding, procrastinating, running away from real work. You benefit, if you click. The Typepad blogs that updated tonight at some point (so I didn't note between when and when. So sue me.)

The Need for Female Education

But the marriage quickly became a nightmare of quarrels and beatings. Just three month later, she lies in hospital, her pretty face and much of her body scarred by horrific burns, after she poured petrol over her head and lit a match.

In post-Taliban Afghanistan, despite a new constitution enshrining women's rights that the Western-backed government passed in January, this remains a depressingly familiar story.

Zahara is one of many women to attempt a fiery suicide rather than be trapped in an unhappy marriage or denied the opportunity to make something of their lives.

In the past year, the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission has recorded at least 110 cases of self-immolation by women in just five parts of the country.

There have been no fewer than 56 cases in Herat, a Western province ruled by a hard-line Islamist accused of continuing "Taliban-like" restrictions on women.

Rights workers say the phenomenon reflects a culture of violence, discrimination and broken post-Taliban dreams. They also say the problem could be far worse than the statistics show.

And ending medieval Islamic practices is bad how?

Teens and Ethnic Identity

This woman teaches in an urban, multi-ethnic school in Australia.  This is a fabulous post on the impact of ethnicity on the kids' self concept:

The best thing I've done with disaffected, ready-to-leave older kids recently is to give them a date, a lesson objective, access to all the materials available, and some decent time to prepare, then asked them to prepare and teach a lesson to the rest of their class.
[snip]
But the surprise of the term is how hyper enamoured these kids are of racial identity. At least one lesson in four will be entirely focussed upon race or the issue of racism, and it opens every sleepy teenage eye in the room.

(Ms. Frizzle found her), and this is my entry in Doc Shazam's Friday fun.

Education in a Democratic Society

Carla, posting a comment at Crooked Timber,  outlines a four-step solution to fixing public schools.  The emphasis added is mine.

One of the things I find most distressing about this whole conversation is that it elides the problems facing public schools and the people who attend and teach at them. A country—or locality—that does not maintain a strong commitment to a high-quality, free public education is willing to write off some of its citizens. We are failing in that, in many places, for many reasons. But the solution is not to further fragment the funding and further reduce the commitment. And I also believe that (a) teachers should be highly qualified and well-compensated (right now, the best way for a good teacher to make more money is to become an administrator, not stay a teacher), (b) teachers should have more say in teaching, © school should not have a three-month break in the summer, and (d) there should be some basic national standards (reading level; mathematical competency; historical knowledge, for example) that all students should learn. There’s plenty of room for local/state variation after that. Once we have achieved that, once we have built and put in place the mechanisms for maintaining a public education system throughout the country, then we can talk about vouchers and “school choice.”

I have trying to figure out why the Westminster deal got me so riled up.   I believe there are two very real threats to our future: accelerating income disparity, and the collapse of the public education system.

The Meaning of Westminster: Who Gets It and Who Doesn't

To me, the Westminster Situation--you read it first here and the recall campaign is here is a war of world views 

On the side of right  are those people who say that the Westminster School District must adopt language that follows the law.  The law may be wrong, but don't expect the school children in one little district to pay for the cost of following the law.

The other side lauds Judy Ahrens, Blossie Marquez-Woodcock and Helena Rutkowski as "saints".  Their metaphor is Christian Righteousness trumps all cost calculations.

Have You Read This? meme

Update #1--it looks like this list is the College Board's 101 great books list..

I started at Kelley's (who is thankfully feeling quite well, thank you), who sent me to Accidental Verbosity, who sent me to Misty.

The long list of books follows. Why have I read so many? Wonderful academic program in high school--a boarding school, no TV, the heyday (is that how you spell that?) of American Conservatory Theater which we patronized AND read the play afterwards, lots of mountaineering expeditions--good time to read the Russians and more challenging narratives like the Illiad--a love of reading.

Christian Right Rampage, or Misguided but Essentially Well-Meaning?

I wrote about this at the beginning of the month.  Why do I care about this issue?  What would you think the national response would be if three school board members took the law into their own hands, and refused to adopt state-mandated language about a person's racial identity because it offended their spiritual and political beliefs?   Well, it nearly happened, except it was language about individual's gender identity.  Read on.

In reference to the Westminster situation, there are at least two explanations going:

1. It is plot by right-wing Christian activists to destroy a school district, following the principles of R.J. Rushdoony and Robert Thoburn, eliminating public schools, through termite tactics and the rousing words of Gary North

2. Judy Ahrens is a well-meaning but misguided individual who doesn't understand the implications of what she is doing; Helena Rutkowski and Blossie Marquez-Woodcock have been captured by her passion for the issue, and are followers.