Students On Strike
College students across 32 states skipped classes yesterday. Well, that actually happens everyday, but yesterday they had a purpose beyond sleeping in. These motivated matriculators are protesting budget cuts, employee layoffs, and increasing costs which damage the quality of education. I think. It’s also possible they just wanted get out of class. Also their teachers might just be offering them extra credit for making so much noise to administrators.
Students from all walks of life participated in the chaotic movement. See them as you want to see them but student protestors include athletes…and basket cases…and princesses…and maybe even a criminal. Whoever they are, they better not mess with the bull or they’ll get the horns.
One witness reportedly heard the following exchange yesterday.
UPTIGHT TOP BRASS AUTHORITY FIGURE: “What was that ruckus?”
FAST-THINKING ANGST-RIDDEN STUDENT: “Uh, what ruckus?”
UTBAF: “I was just in my office and I heard a ruckus.”
F-TA-RS: “Could you describe the ruckus sir?”
And so it went until the hard-nosed administrator threatened to “crack skulls” if the demonstrators persisted.
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The walkouts ranged from coast to coast. Students from CUNY to the University of Washington participated in the nationwide “March 4th National Day of Action for Public Education.” Their goal was to shut down campuses for half a day in protest of rising tuition costs and supporting educational workers. Another problem seems to be that tuition is going up as scholarship opportunities go down.
In a USA Today article on the student rally, Maryland junior Jon Berger was quoted as saying:
“We’re seeing more classes taught by adjuncts and grad students who aren’t getting paid (fairly). We’re seeing larger class sizes, and some kids in certain majors … can’t get all the courses they need in four years.” Read more »
History Haters In The House
There’s a lot of reasons certain people hate history. Those reasons usually have something to do with stupid teachers who could bore children at a birthday party. Apparently some of these brainless yahoos are in charge of educating the youth of North Caroli
na.
Some Tar Heel State educators don’t think much of George Washington, Abe Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson or any other historical figures before 1877. According to proposed curriculum changes, teenagers shouldn’t have to bother with trivial little events from the past like the American Revolution or the Civil War or like, you know, irrelevant stuff like that.
In other news, the North
Carolina Department of Public Instruction is apparently hiring idiots just in case you are in the job market, completely clueless, and eager to contribute to another bloated government agency that uses tax dollars to issue moronic and dangerous initiatives.
In a nutshell, the idea is to teach high school juniors and seniors American history from 1877 on. Instead of getting the story before that time period, freshman would take a global studies course, ostensibly to learn about the environment and what makes polar bears cry. I guess this plan will remove the challenges of explaining slavery and the war it caused; although, good luck explaining every Founding Father reference Martin Luther King Jr. ever made. Does this make LBJ the new Abraham Lincoln? Yuck. My fingers just threw up in their mouth a little.
The goal of this flubtubbery* is to help students learn about recent history in greater depth. And to think, for years I’ve been explaining to students how impossible it is to understand our current world without the proper context of the past.
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Don’t just take my word for it. Listen to what Rebecca Garland, chief executive officer for the aforem
entioned N.C. Dept. of Public Instruction, has to say. She’s left plenty of slack here to strangle her own logic. You’ll have to pardon my interruptions.
“We are certainly not trying to go away from American history,” she began in a recent interview. TRANSLATION: We are trying to go away from American history.
“What we are trying to do is figure out a way to teach it where students are connected to it…” TRANSLATION: The reason teachers (oh, I’m sorry, educators) like me are boring is because we are so bored. REALITY: Why don’t these people call me? I’ll gladly charge the government exorbitant consulting fees to teach teachers how to impact students. It’s a wild strategy I’ve developed called teaching the freaking American Revolution through the eyes of people who were actually there! One recent problem has been using guesswork texts from modern blowhards who write boring and self-serving books about history. They are boring, not Thomas Paine and Ben Franklin. Read more »
Wanna Fix The Economy? Start With Gym Class
You’ve probably heard by now that Americans of today are the fattest civilization in world history. Those extra pounds come at a cost to our health
and pocketbooks. We need to help set our kids on the right track to avoid some scary trends in their future.
The NFL Network got me curious about all this with an ongoing advertising blitz to keep gym in school. Kurt Warner smiles and tells us our kids aren’t getting enough exercise. Okay, I think. Then I see Hines Ward, Super Bowl hero and newly elected “Dirtiest Player In Football” by his peers, along with other football stars running in thirty-second slow motion chunks with a bunch of kids. I wonder, have schools really been eliminating gym class and physical exercise? I process. This is the American public school system. Congress is involved. I conclude that yep, if there’s a wrong option to be pursued, our politicians will run that sick rabbit down like greyhounds on a fast track.
I hear you already, oh defender of government. Here he goes again, connecting fat kids with government while bashing politicians. You’re right. I’ll spare you my tales as a No Child Left Behind contractor and the pros and cons of that legislation. I’ll also try to tread lightly over our government in school is destroying our future pamphleteering. It’s really quite simple though, and it goes like this.
Call it EduClaytion’s Razor. Maybe you’ve heard of Ockham’s Razor, that medieval scholar who decided that if you have two or more alternatives when trying to figure out a solution, just pick the simplest explanation. Well, with EduClaytion’s Razor, whenever you have to figure out what went wrong in a particular situation, and the government is at all a character in the story, then go with the politicians involved (they’ll be the ones telling you they can make things better) and figure out what they did this time.
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The NFL Network’s site for the Keep Gym program clearly lists some facts about the importance of this drive to keep kids active. You don’t have to be a child psychologist to know that video games (and I’m a big fan) and computers have kept a lot of young people (old peeps for that matter) indoors. But consider these lowlights.
- Childhood obesity has tripled since 1980
- “Health care providers are finding more and more children with type 2 diabetes and other conditions stemming from obesity and inactivity that were previously diagnosed almost entirely in adults aged 40 years or older.”
- “Current annual medical costs related to obesity total $147 billion nationally…”
- Unfit and overweight kids perform worse academically than students who score well on fitness tests.
There’s a ton of meat (forgive the pun) in those four points, but consider that while as calories increase:
“The percentage of students who attend daily PE dropped from 42% in 1991 to 28% in 2003. Fewer than 8% of U.S. middle schools provide daily physical education for the entire school year.”
If anybody needs to run it’s junior high students. In America, health problems equal money problems, but moral and monetary issues are also connected. Develop these thoughts on your own, but obesity is only one side of this story. We aren’t even mentioning consequences of hormonal frustration and pent-up aggression. Maybe you’ve heard about increasing violence in our schools. It’s almost like our political and educational leaders want kids to be as screwed up as possible heading into life. Read more »
We’re All On Drugs
Pfizer is getting in on the bailout fun. The pharmaceutical giant will provide free drugs to folks who have lost their jobs recently. The interesting point here w
ould have to do with the inclusion of Viagra for the jobless.
Call me old-fashioned, but if you’ve recently lost your job, the last thing you need is Viagra and the distractions that come with all that. If your distractions last for more than four hours, how in the world will you get any applications filled out? I would focus on beefing up a resume instead. I can imagine the conversation.
DOCTOR: What seems to be the problem?
JOBLESS GUY: I recently lost my job.
DR.: What am I supposed to do?
JG : Give me Viagra.
DR.: Do you work in porn?
JG: No, I just want to be ready in case the time is right.
[Cue terrible music by middle-aged cover band] Read more »
A Case For Advancing Religion
Do you think it is illegal in America to display a cross in a cemetery? You might be surprised to find out that the Supreme Court has gone rounds over this issue, and another battle is slated for this summer.
The case of interest is Salazer v. Buono. Since 1934, a cross has been displayed on top of Sunrise Rock at the Mojave National Preserve as a monument to World War I soldiers. Former preserve employee Frank Buono, a vampiric Roman Catholic who apparently hates crosses, is suing to have it removed. The ACLU is leading his charge.
The problem, these plaintiffs claim, is that this 8 foot cross is intended to “advance religion.”
Yes, I’m sure millions will turn to the violence of Christianity because of a funeral marker no one would ever know about if not for this case.
Over the past few years, Congress has moved to protect the memorial by eventually making Sunrise Rock private property. Now Buono has extended the suit to outlaw congressional moves to protect religious symbols. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit is once again on the anti-religion side of the issue. Read more »
Hitting The (History) Books
If you like to read and hate wasting time, let me save you some. Somehow I’ve managed to read three popular history books already this year. One was decent, another okay, and the third rubbish.
1. A Short History of the United States by Robert Remini
This ambitious work moves swiftly and covers the basics with lots of sweet, little nuggets along the way. Remini balances the tone to appeal to both long time students and newcomers to the material.
2. The Politically Incorrect Guide To American History by Thomas Woods Jr.
Here you go conservatives. This book assumes a couple of things. First, that you’ve probably heard some traditional history lessons in the past. Second, that you don’t bowl with liberals on Friday nights. Woods doesn’t attack anyone directly but makes the general argument that history has been revised in favor of a liberal agenda. He certainly makes some interesting claims, but I would have to analyze the work more to be sure everything he says holds up. Nevertheless, a good change of pace and certainly better than…
3. American Creation by Joseph Ellis
Ugh. Where to start. You know that look the American Idol judges give a contestant who completely bombs? How anyone can take the Founding Fathers and American Revoluton and make it downright boring, let alone unreadable, is beyond me. If you can stay awake, beware. Ellis is motivated by something and it ain’t exactly accuracy. The overall goal of this dribble seems to be to:
a. Make people hate history by shredding every bit of fascination from the story. Read more »
Is It Time To Start Teaching U.S. History 3?
Students routinely take U.S. History 1 and 2, with the halves hinged at the Civil War. The big theme throughout those courses is that expansion leads to conflict. Then nuclear weapons showed up and the stakes of the conflict soared. After civil rights movers, cold warriors, and global connectors, the world is a different place. At some point in the future, the third phase of American history will be put in perspective.
The most likely end point for U.S. 2 will be 1991. Most people don’t realize how much the world changed just as Bill Clinton packed up the Arkansas caravan and headed to D.C. The Cold War against communism faded as technology destroyed communication as the world had known it. With no superpower to despise and the internet on the rise (thanks Al Gore), Clinton’s focus became different than any president before him. The times they were a-changin’.
Of course, nature abhors a vacuum so a new enemy rose up, and soon planes, buildings, and people became targets of the anti-West, radicals hell bent on destroying, well, most everyone.
If this U.S. History 3 course is created by mid-century (2050), that will be around 60 years to be covered in one survey course. U.S. 2 currently studies less than 150 years (1865-Present) while U.S. 1 includes over four centuries. Why the disparity? Are historians that bad at math? Read more »
The Commonwealth Strikes Back
Should public school teachers be allowed to go on strike? That’s the question up for debate again in the Pennsylvania legislature.
Pennsylvania has set the pace for teacher walkouts in recent years, one of only 13 states left where such protests are legal. That’s right, 37 states already ban teacher strikes. According to a PhillyBurbs.Com article:
“More than 60 percent of all teacher strikes since 2000 have occurred in Pennsylvania, even though its teacher salaries are among the top 10 highest in the country.”
What do they think this is, professional baseball? Naturally, teachers in PA have a tough time garnering sympathy outside of their families. School kids absorb most of the wallop. With the current state of many public schools one could almost say that having to attend is already painful enough. After all, even in a good school district high school is terrifying enough for most kids. Read more »
Welcome To Here
In The Matrix, Morpheus tells Neo he can take the blue pill and go on believing whatever he wants to believe. Or he can take the red pill to stay in Wonderland and find out how deep the rabbit hole goes.
This is a red pill type site with a weekly column (and some extras in between) that provides information in an entertaining way. It’s about clear thinking and good writing. It’s about truth.
I’m a writer/speaker who teaches history and political science at a local college by day. Where is local, you say? Well, that would be Wonderland of course.
From pop culture to pop politics, this is my column.
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