The Skepticality podcast has been doing a real bang-up job of covering the controversy over “Intelligent Design” propaganda piece Expelled, mostly be interviewing the various scientists touched directly by the controversy. The most recent interview was one of the most frustrating—Dr. Randy Olson, who moved from being a biologist to being a filmmaker. Dr. Olson has a lot of criticisms of people he calls “evolutionists”, but I got the feeling he was more interested in knocking heads than really being right, and he might do well to reconsider some of his own ideas. Even though he agrees with people who accept the theory of evolution, he insists throughout the interview in using the term “evolutionist”. This is short of calling someone a “Darwinist”, but it’s still falling for a right wing frame. The right wing frame is to suggest the the controversy is over a clash between two belief systems of equal evidential validity: Christianity and “Darwinism”, much like their other favorite clash, between Christianity and Islam. And that the battle is merely to be won on faith. But evolutionary theory is not a belief system, and nor is it necessarily in conflict with Christianity, since most mainstream Christian churches accept it the same as they accept that the Earth goes around the Sun, contrary to Biblical claims otherwise. It’s a well-established theory with no real evidence against it, and mountains of evidence for it. Mind-boggling, impossible to tally amounts of evidence for it. Using terms like “evolutionist” undermines this reality. Dr. Olson would not call people who accept the reality of gravity “gravitationalists”, so why buy into the right wing frame on this one?
Obviously, you can’t just call the defenders of evolutionary theory biologists, because more than biologists defend it—the larger scientist community and non-scientists like me are avid defenders of the importance of accepting reality. And of course, this group has religious and non-religious people in it. So what to call them? I suggest “reality-based community”, which has more syllables than “evolutionists”, but rolls off the tongue more easily. The best part about it is that it reframes the debate in more accurate terms: As one between people who accept evidence and appreciate knowledge, and people who insist on viewing the world through a magical lens.
This is extremely bizarre. A Staten Island high school has banned girls from the prom if they don’t have a male date. It’s a girls-only school, which probably means that proms generally have a huge number of girls and not that many guys. Maybe the principle is pitying the boys at the prom, feeling they shouldn’t be outnumbered. There’s other speculations.
“That makes sense only because it probably controls the chaos,” Valente said. “You know you’re there with somebody, you’re less likely to go crazy.”
So, there’s a grave danger of high levels of squealing and circle dancing. I say, good practice for the weddings the principle presumably wants them to have in the future.
Another edition of “What’s Cary Tennis been smoking?” He’s been a lot better lately, so there’s not been any reason to write posts wondering about the potency levels of his preferred smoking materials, but today’s column is a doozy. The guy who writes in has a Bible-thumping friend, and the letter writer is an atheist, and they have fun with their contentious differences. It’s all fun and games until someone gets hurt, right?* Now his friend, who teaches at a church school, is being pressured to teach young earth creationism to the kids, and the guy is fixing to do it, after going through a hefty process of convincing himself that he’s really considered the evidence, which is impossible, because honest engagement with the evidence in this case leads to one conclusion—evolution is the reality. I don’t say this lightly. We all have biases and prejudices that color our views and in many cases, the evidence is hazy enough that people can have real disagreements with no real conclusion. This isn’t true in the contentious debate between evolutionary theory and Adam and Eve. Objectively, one side has marshaled an irrefutable amount of evidence and the other is blowing smoke out their asses.
So what his friend is doing is that he already decided to bend over for the bullshit and is looking for a rationalization for it, so he doesn’t have to admit that he’s a wanker. Our letter-writer, however, is livid. He thinks teaching creationism is a form of child abuse, and while I think the term is overheated, I agree that using children in service of whack-a-doodle ideologies is cruel to children, especially in cases where your lies to them could have serious, long-term negative consequences on their job prospects. (The whole classroom, for instance, is automatically seeing any chance of going into sciences plummet through the floor because of this stuff.) Tennis, however, has one of his goofier answers, which is for this friend to dispassionately treat the misuse of these children as if he’s reading a book on anthropology.
Help me understand this batsh*ttery, please. From the great Sunshine State town of Land O’ Lakes…
Hat tip to reader Beth, who said “I assume this is the result of some fundies and their anti-harry-potter obsession?”Substitute teacher Jim Piculas does a 30-second magic trick where a toothpick disappears then reappears.
But after performing it in front of a classroom at Rushe Middle School in Land O’ Lakes, Piculas said his job did a disappearing act of its own.
“I get a call the middle of the day from the supervisor of substitute teachers. He says, ‘Jim, we have a huge issue. You can’t take any more assignments. You need to come in right away,’” he said.
When Piculas went in, he learned his little magic trick cast a spell that went much farther than he’d hoped.
“I said, ‘Well Pat, can you explain this to me?’ ‘You’ve been accused of wizardry,’ [he said]. Wizardry?” he asked.
Tampa Bay’s 10 talked to the assistant superintendent with the Pasco County School District who said it wasn’t just the wizardry and that Piculas had other performance issues, including “not following lesson plans” and allowing students to play on unapproved computers.
Piculas said he knew nothing about the accusations.
“That… I think was embellished after the fact to try to cover what initially what they were saying to me,” he said.
From Echidne, a jaw-dropping tale from the fundie vs. reason battleground in our public schools.
Substitute teacher Jim Piculas does a 30-second magic trick where a toothpick disappears then reappears.
But after performing it in front of a classroom at Rushe Middle School in Land ‘O Lakes, Piculas said his job did a disappearing act of its own.
“I get a call the middle of the day from the supervisor of substitute teachers. He says, ‘Jim, we have a huge issue. You can’t take any more assignments. You need to come in right away,’” he said.
When Piculas went in, he learned his little magic trick cast a spell that went much farther than he’d hoped.
“I said, ‘Well Pat, can you explain this to me?’ ‘You’ve been accused of wizardry,’ [he said]. Wizardry?” he asked.
Read that next to this post by tristero, to really get that he’s not kidding when he says this.
(UPDATE: OMG. Tampa resident Michael Hussey of Pushing Rope has an even better pic of Brian at his pad; and a ton of additional information on him, including an ethics investigation.)
What is the Day of Silence?
The National Day of Silence brings attention to anti-LGBT name-calling, bullying and harassment in schools. This year’s event will be held in memory of Lawrence King, a California 8th-grader who was shot and killed Feb. 12 by a classmate because of his sexual orientation and gender expression. Hundreds of thousands of students will come together on April 25 to encourage schools and classmates to address the problem of anti-LGBT behavior.Hillsborough County Commissioner Brian Blair’s a Day of Silence hennypenny. He is the opponent of openly gay candidate Kevin Beckner, who is running for Blair’s seat. The county schools are participating in the Day of Silence, but as usual, the idea of kids engaging in a silent, passive act against violence, harassment and prejudice during the school day is just too much to bear for people of apparently weak faith.
I know what you’re thinking — what’s that about “Killer Bee”? Blair formerly tussled on the ropes as one of the WWE’s Killer Bees — take a look at this homo-fabulous pic of him in his bee suit with his partner.“I have always believed that all citizens are equal and should be treated accordingly. On the other hand, no group of citizens should be given government sanction and support to promote their social and sexual agenda upon the rest of us and especially, on our children.”
“Considering the fact that the same school system does not want to allow just one Minute of Silence in the classroom for God, this is preposterous.”
“Can you imagine asking for a ‘Day of Cheer for Heterosexuality?’ If no action is taken to change this policy, then perhaps it is time for another surgical strike from the majority; ‘A Day of Abstention’ from school participation might be considered.”
We have another apoplectic elected official, this time here in NC, who is threatened by the Day of Silence. She’s after the jump.
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Update: Another aspect I hadn’t included—the way that teen pregnancy affects the drop out rate. Considering that abstinence-only is just going to increase the number of teenagers having babies, this is another example of how high drop out rates are a feature, not a bug, of current education “reforms”.
I shouldn’t be surprised to see that this story about the appallingly low graduation rates in the cities of America is being underreported. Reporting this story is facing up to the ugly underbelly of America, and the way that the conservative backlash against the great liberal reforms of the mid-20th century has quietly managed to recreate the America that Republicans dream of, with a huge gap between the rich and everyone else, and a large and growing undereducated underclass. The Women’s Take post optimistically addresses attempts to reduce the dropout rate, but I’m going to point out that the numbers are so high that we have to accept that the high dropout rate in certain cities is a feature, not a bug, of the various educational “reforms” that have been touted over the years.
If you read the report by the EPE Research Center (PDF), you’ll see what I mean. We don’t have kids falling through the cracks. The crack is the point, and the kids who stay on the surface are the minority. Baltimore, Cleveland, Detroit, and Indianapolis all have graduation rates under 35%. That’s not dropout rates—that graduation rates. And there are 17 major U.S. cities that have graduation rates below 50%. But even more sobering, and what shows what’s really going on here, is the comparison of the graduation rates between cities and suburbs.
Students at the Bronx High School of Performance and Stagecraft watch and discuss Barack Obama’s speech on racial reconciliation and how it relates to their lives. Listen to these young people.
A teacher took the time to draw these young people out and make it a safe environment to bring up hard issues and he facilitated a healthy discussion about becoming politically engaged.
Why is something so simple so difficult for adults? We should be embarrassed at so much of our population’s lack of interest in thinking through our biases and bridging these divisions. How does it get stamped out of us?
I find it interesting that the NY Times published this article about bullying at school and then published this one about workplace bullies. I thought that this meant that the Times was doing a series, but unfortunately, they’re not. Which is too bad, because I think bullying is an interesting area to explore. It’s like there’s two worlds in America—the officially recognized one where people are kind and polite, and the one lurking right underneath where bullying happens.
The article about Billy Wolfe from Fayetteville, Arkansas is really the sort of feature story that the Times still excels at. It really captures the essence of bullying. The kid selected is picked for reasons lost to the mists of time, or most likely for arbitrary reasons that were rationalized after the fact. The abuse is back-breaking and non-stop. Most school officials look the other way, because, let’s face it, there’s almost something biological in people that makes them dislike the unpopular even if the unpopular are unpopular for no reason at all.
But what I really liked about the article was that it really clues you in to why bullies bully. Let’s face it; they’re proud of their behavior. Picking on other people to make yourself feel more powerful has this ability to make other people believe that you’re something special, at least for short periods of time. I got bullied in school a lot, but it really petered out in high school, and I think it’s because kids grow up and the social rewards of being brutish start to peter out as kids get more sophisticated. But Wolfe is 15, and so he’s in the thick of it.
Apparently a short mohawk is considered a violation of “proper grooming” and it “interferes with the conduct of education.” Yes, this is what school administrators in Parma, Ohio are wasting their time on.
Michelle Barile, the mother of 6-year-old Bryan Ruda, said nothing in the Parma Community School handbook prohibits the haircut, characterized by closely shaved sides with a strip of prominent hair on top. The school said the hair was a distraction for other students.I’d love to know what other hairstyles qualify as distracting; that has been used in many instances to challenge ethnic/kinky hairstyles that weren’t pressed/relaxed.“I understand they have a dress code. I understand he has a uniform. But this is total discrimination,” she said. “They can’t tell me how I can cut his hair.”
An administrator at the suburban Cleveland charter school first warned Barile last fall that the haircut wasn’t acceptable. The school later sent another warning to her reiterating the ban.
…Rather than request a hearing to appeal the suspension, Barile said she’ll enroll him at another school. Changing the hairstyle is not an option, she said.
I’d say bring out the tiny violin in most cases of a homophobe being publicly called out, but the family, particularly the children, of an anti-gay media-seeking blowhard like Ken Hutcherson of Antioch Bible Church (near Seattle) do not deserve to be ostracized or called names.
Rev. Hutch’s wife Pat went to a school board meeting to express her dismay at the public reaction to her husband’s reputation after his appearance on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day at Mount Si High School. Video and much more are below the fold.
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It’s going to be so hard to watch the last season of “The Wire” as it comes out, one episode at a time, at least after getting to watch the previous 4 seasons on DVD. That’s the bad news. The good news is that multi-episode marathons that last into the night aren’t good for my sleep schedule. Maybe now that I’ll have to watch it week by week, I’ll appreciate even more the subtle way the writers create cliffhangers.
Spoilers from here on out.
As you can guess, we finished out watching the 4th season of “The Wire” last night, which just happened to coincide with my discovery that Barack Obama admits to being a fan of the show when asked the fluffy taste questions. The season was centered around the schools, and because the show centered around four 8th grade boys, this season had something of a slightly less cynical flair. Slightly, mind you, because the show doesn’t abandon it’s realistic and hardened view; there’s not much in the way of happy endings for these 4 young men in their last year of being able to stand in the realm of possibility for their lives, before the world conclusively moves them onto paths that will determine their future. I don’t think the show has caused me to tear up as much as it did during these last couple of episodes, where you see 3 of the 4 boys get eaten up by the system, with only one escaping the grind out of a sheer stroke of luck. But even with that objectively sad ending, I felt that there was something of a lightness to this season, that the small sprays of hope that people cling to during the entire season might be a tad more substantial than usual. It was more a tone issue than a plot issue—as usual, nothing seems to work out for the fictional residents of Baltimore we’ve grown so affectionate towards—but still, I smelled a small sense that somewhere, somehow, something might work out for someone. Cedric Daniels seems to be doing alright, at least. Are David Simon and Ed Burns setting us up for a fall in season 5? I wouldn’t bet against it.
How glad was I that they showed that when schools “teach to the test”, it’s only natural and understandable that the kids reject that by refusing to take the tests seriously? I’m torn between wanting to see more of Bunny Colvin and not wanting to see him suffer any more frustrations with the ass-covering, refuse-to-get-shit-done aspects of bureaucracy.
Reading that the Texas Board of Higher Education is considering accrediting The Texas Based Institute for Creation Research made me have to lay down for awhile, which meant I got behind on my work, which makes me fucking crabby. I blame the god botherers directly for my problems today, therefore. If Texas does this, then we rightfully deserve repercussions of the sort described by PZ Myers.
I hope Texas scientists can slap that Board into wakeful reality before that meeting, because if this goes through, the trust I can give Texas-trained teachers is getting flushed right down the sewer. And if Texans can’t fix this, the rest of the country has to step up and deny certification to anyone trained in Texas — their diplomas and degrees will be worth about as much as Monopoly money.
Through Ezra (at his new blog!), I found this great review by Malcolm Gladwell of James Flynn’s What is Intelligence?. It’s quite timely now that the racists are trotting out their favorite theory that gets trotted out every few years, smacked down, and then trotted out again once they figure everyone has forgotten the last smackdown, the theory that the IQ gap between whites and blacks must reflect fundamental, immutable, genetic traits, ergo a racist caste system is organic and not the product of oppression. Lord Saletan played the racist sucker for this go-round, making ridiculous claims about having poured over the evidence and having to accept (with a supposedly heavy heart) that the IQ fundamentalist, KKK-propaganda generators were right. Gladwell politely and semi-obliquely calls bullshit on Saletan’s claims of heavy research.
“Economic and cultural theories have failed to explain most of the pattern,” Saletan declared, claiming to have been “soaking [his] head in each side’s computations and arguments.” One argument that Saletan never soaked his head in, however, was Flynn’s, because what Flynn discovered in his mailbox upsets the certainties upon which I.Q. fundamentalism rests. If whatever the thing is that I.Q. tests measure can jump so much in a generation, it can’t be all that immutable and it doesn’t look all that innate.
I’ve been meaning to post about this for a few days, due to my dedication to Molly Ivins’ belief that Texas is a state to be watched, because so many right wing ideas and strategies hatch here only to be exported elsewhere. It appears that the director of the statewide science curriculum Chris Corner was fired for having the nerve to forward an email that indicated that she might just believe that the science classroom is for science and not for religious indoctrination. (Needless to say, I am pretty sure the “uppity bitch” element played a part in this—Texas both has a long tradition of smart-assed liberal women and the men who will do anything to make sure we get the smackdown.) From the Statesman:
Chris Comer was director of the science curriculum for the Texas Education Agency for nearly a decade when she was forced to resign recently. Her offense, as unbelievable as it is to relate, was forwarding an e-mail message about a presentation by an author critical of the intelligent design approach to science education.
The education agency, of course, portrays the problem as one of insubordination and misconduct. But from all appearances, Comer was pushed out because the agency is enforcing a political doctrine of strict conservatism that allows no criticism of creationism……
Robert Scott, the new education commissioner, is not an educator but a lawyer and former adviser to Gov. Rick Perry. This presents an excellent opportunity for the governor and his appointee to step in firmly to put an end to ideological witch hunts in the agency.
The person who called for Comer to be fired is Lizzette Reynolds, a former deputy legislative director for Gov. George Bush. She joined the state education agency this year as an adviser after a stint in the U.S. Department of Education.
In her memo criticizing Comer, Reynolds said that Comer’s passing along the e-mail “assumes this is a subject that the agency supports.” That’s absurd, of course, but it is in keeping with enforcing a doctrine that says creationism must not be criticized.
One version of a den of liberal iniquity.
This is a great boon to the pro-comprehensive sex education forces: A group of 10 prominent scientists and researchers in adolescent health and sexuality have written an extensive letter to the Democrats in Congress, requesting that they cut funding for abstinence-only education immediately. It’s a long letter, but well worth reading the whole thing. It’s important to publicize this, because the Democrats need to be in a position where they can’t ignore the issue, and can’t keep trying to save face on this. Right now Democrats are in a political bind, because abstinence-only proponents are super eager to label anyone who advocates for effective programs (i.e., comprehensive sex education) as advocates for teenagers fucking in the streets. And we’re not, and some of us would point out that even if teenagers are fucking in your streets, it’s probably over so quickly you won’t even notice.
What needs to happen is basic reframing. This isn’t about who wants who to have sex with who when, but about who wants kids to be healthy, and who is resigned to letting them get sick. Which is all you’re going to get with abstinence-only. But it’s more than just what “works” better in terms of reducing STDs and pregnancy rates (though comprehensive sex education does), but it’s a philosophical question, too. The very idea that schools should be in the business of reinforcing ignorance instead of improving knowledge is a violation of basic American ideals. Abstinence-only is part of a larger right wing strategy of defining the mission of public education as propagandistic—who cares if you teach them things that are enriching or even fucking correct? The schools are there to preach conservative, white, Christian cultural superiority to a captive audience, in this view. After all, it’s not just abstinence-only that’s part of the agenda. It’s also teaching creationism in schools, and teaching a propagandistic view of history that whitewashes issues like slavery (and that the South seceded over it) and the Indian genocide. Which is turn is about producing another generation of idiots who get boners at the idea of more imperialistic war-mongering, well up until they’re a few years in and realize it’s stupid, you know, after it’s too late to do anything short of damage control. (See: Iraq War)
The more liberal view of education is that it’s about getting educated, not indoctrinated. And comprehensive sex education really epitomizes this philosophy in a way that’s easy to understand. You teach the kids all the various ways to protect themselves, and encourage them to think critically about these methods, instead of giving them as “Do as I say (and not as I do, since I and pretty much everyone will fuck before marriage)” message. The right wing fear that kids won’t do the “right” thing if you give them information and coax them to use their noggins is ill-founded; it’s just setting kids up to learn all the lessons the hard way. Ah, yes, you do get the clap when you fuck around without a condom. Wouldn’t it have been nice if someone had told you that, so you could know beforehand what to do? Having a narrow set of knowledge only works if you live a structured existence, like a child in school, but in the real world, the environment and your life is more open-ended and that’s when those critical thinking skills kick in.
I agree with Ann and Jen; it would be awesome to get a chance to go to this event called ChastityFest 2k7. I think I love the name best of all, since it’s got that straining-to-be-hip quality I so enjoy in conservative outreach to young people. Motto: “Keeping your hymen for real, yo.” Ann’s description captures the beauty of this:
Jen and I are practically in tears over the fact that this event on Tuesday, a panel discussion called “Modest Proposals,” is full up, so we can’t go. Because it offers a chance to see — live and in the modestly-clothed flesh! — Laura Sessions Stepp, Wendy Shalit, and Dawn Eden. (Plus Dr. Miriam Grossman and the founder of Princeton’s chastity group).
Wowza. It’s bound to be chock full of slut-shaming, victim-blaming, and pining for the good ol’ days when women went to college to earn their MRS.
Other panel ideas: You’re Not A Whore If You Sell It For A Diamond and Girls Who Actually Study On Study Dates Don’t Get Married. And don’t miss the earnest hand-wringing panel on whether or not hand jobs count as a way to keep him happy enough to provide the flowers without giving up your ticket to the white wedding dress.
What I like best about the college outreach on abstinence-only is that anti-choicers dispense with the myth that both men and women are expected to button up, a myth they have to reluctantly promote to get abstinence-only into the high schools. But once they get out of the federal dollars-with-federal regulations arena, it’s all about how girls need to keep their knees together and just accept that guys are going to fuck everyone who lets them (and maybe a couple who don’t, but of course, that never happens to good girls).
Piecing it together, the life narrative they’re pushing is that you make yourself the good, virginal girl who generously marries a guy who sleeps around, quite possibly behind your back while you’re “courting”—he’s a guy, you’re not putting out, boys will be boys, at least you got the ring, right? And, bliss. That this is the perfect formula for creating marriages based on virgin/whore complexes for him that will lead to more cheating is not pointed out. That this will create jealousy and resentment for her is also completely ignored. Mainly, the hope is the allure of the big white dress and sparkly diamonds (and the threat that no one will give you those unless you bribe him with sex) will distract the girls from the troubling “what about the actual happiness in marriage?” question.
Something so simple turned into something so damn difficult.
Last night, Marc make the extremely good point that people who dismiss Stephen Colbert’s run for President for lack of seriousness are themselves Not Serious People by real world standards.
The only people who deserve to be the next President are people who had the gall to stand up to the current one before it was cool. And you know who did that? Stephen freaking Colbert. He may well have been the first person in the history of the universe to stand in the same room as George Bush and point out *exactly* why Dubya’s an embarrassment, a war criminal, and a sourpuss. That it was also funny is incidental; Colbert demonstrated more backbone in the face of Republican evil than the other candidates combined. I’m surprised he’s still breathing, honestly.
It’s a shame that Colbert’s possession of a pair of non-gender-specific gamete-producing organs should be a rare trait, but I was reminded again yesterday of how the Democrats could start learning from him instead of waving him off as if he’s just a joke.*
Today, we learned that the Democratic controlled Labor HHS Appropriations conference committee report includes the full $28 million increase requested by President Bush for failed abstinence-only-until-marriage-programs. The Democrats have now granted the president and his anti-sex education zealots a whopping $141 million dollar budget for abstinence-only programs — something they could never achieve even under a conservative Republican Congress!
God, the tampon wars have nothing on this. What the hell kind of police state are we tolerating in schools?
In short, this teenage girl spilled some cake, was told to clean it up by security guards, and when she didn’t do it to their satisfaction, they assaulted her, called her names, and broke her wrist. Another kid taped the assault on his cell phone, and he was also pinned and arrested. The video above has videos and pictures of the whole thing.
I have to say, when camera phones started coming out, I found them mildly irritating, but now I’m really grateful they’re around. We’ve been seeing a slow creeping of state surveillance of the citizens, but these camera phones are helping restore us to the surveillance situation that’s required in a democracy, where citizens supervise the government and authority. A handful of people (though not many) in the comments here and Offsprung on the “no bags” post were casting around for a way to minimize the seriousness of the situation when we allow security paranoia to take over our schools to that degree. Now we get a good look at the very serious dangers of letting a bunch of petty thugs with power issues run mini-police states in the schools.
Oh, you know some asshole is thinking it.
A school in New York is having problems because their absolute “no bag” policy is a bit anti-female, surprise surprise. As any woman reading this is immediately thinking, the problem with not letting students carry even small bags to school is that female students have a very real need to carry pads and tampons. The danger of bleeding through your pants is statistically much higher than the danger that you’re going to turn out to be a school shooter, but that fact didn’t give the assholes who passed this policy pause.
Realizing that it’s a bit problematic to leave female students bleeding from between their legs with no way to plug it up, the school has tried to compensate by allowing students who are currently on their period to bring small bags to school during their period, but no other time. Anyone who was ever a teenage girl and remembers the high percentages of creepy men—many who work in schools—who enjoy humiliating you by prying into your privacy can see the immediate problems with this policy.
The girl was called out of class by a security guard during a school sweep last week to make sure no kids had backpacks or other banned bags.
Samantha Martin had a small purse with her that day.
That’s why the security guard, ex-Monticello cop Mike Bunce, asked her The Question.
She says he told her she couldn’t have a purse unless she had her period. Then he asked, “Do you have your period?”
Samantha was mortified.
She says she thought, “Oh, my God. Get away from me.” But instead of answering, she just walked back into class.
At home, she cried, and told her mother what happened.
Of course, even if the rule was followed to the letter and security guards were miraculously discreet instead of getting a rise out of making teenage girls feel uncomfortable about their socially awkward fact of being members of the second sex—a fact teenage girls are just adjusting to, mind you—carrying the purse to class would broadcast loud and clear to other students that you were having your period. And we all remember, I’m sure, how teenagers are generally a classy set about each others’ sex-and-body mortifications. I guess they could make the mandatory humiliations a little more fair by walking around demanding randomly of teenage boys that they describe their unbidden boners.
Luckily, the students are standing up for the right of teenagers everywhere to have a little privacy about their awkwardly and newly sexual bodies.
The small Sullivan County school has been in an uproar for the last week. Girls have worn tampons on their clothes in protest, and purses made out of tampon boxes. Some boys wore maxi-pads stuck to their shirts in support.
After hearing that someone might have been suspended for the protest, freshman Hannah Lindquist, 14, went to talk to Worden. She wore her protest necklace, an OB tampon box on a piece of yarn. She said Worden confiscated it, talked to her about the code of conduct and the backpack rule — and told her she was now “part of the problem.”
Good for them. If kids these days are like that, I feel a surge of optimism about the fate of the Republic. God, high school was hard enough having to put up with other kids, but seriously, the insane adults on paranoid power trips that seem to rule every high school made it a living hell.
Sherri Shepherd proves what political consultants know all too well — too many Americans are woefully ignorant — and, worse, apathetic about their ignorance — and that makes it easy to manipulate the sheeple with "truthiness" and repetitive marketing to drill the desired "opinion" into their feeble brains.
This exchange says it all — Whoopi Goldberg asked Ms. Shepherd, who does not believe in evolution, whether the world is flat.
The following day she clarified her remarks by saying she had a “senior brain-poopy moment.” I'm not sure that Elisabeth Hasselbeck helped her out much with this additional defense:
WHOOPI GOLDBERG: Is the world flat?
SHERRI SHEPHERD: Is the world flat? (laughter)
GOLDBERG: Yes.
SHEPHERD: …I Don't know.
GOLDBERG: What do you think?
SHEPHERD: I… I never thought about it, Whoopi. Is the world flat? I never thought about it.
HASSELBECK: I don’t think you have to learn to be perfect either… you’re just yourself. I thought you handled that so well yesterday. You said ‘You know I actually, my mind is full of what’s my son doing right now, what am I going to feed him for dinner, I’m a mom.’ Like I think that’s completely fine to say ‘You know what, today I don’t care if the earth is round or flat. I may not care tomorrow, I just wanna know that…’
Kyso has an interesting post up about the discourse that posits that certain liberal arts majors (like mine—English literature) are “useless”. It started with a thread that I couldn’t get invested in at Offsprung, because it was about whether or not you should pick your major for love or money.* It’s all very romantic, but I went to college with my dad’s advice to just get that damn piece of paper at the end and as quickly (therefore cheaply) as possible, which would incline me to say to pick your major for love, because that’s the only way that coursework will be exciting enough to get you to class every day and get that piece of paper for you.
Kyso’s post about defining terms was interesting. The “can’t get a job with an English degree” has never proven to be true in my lifetime. Sure, you may have to get a job closer to entrance level coming out, and I did, but I got promoted nearly immediately in most workplaces and I wouldn’t have if I didn’t have the degree—and the way of speaking, carrying myself, dressing, and socializing that all indicates that I have one. I would say that what I do now, which I would actually call being a “writer” or a “cultural critic” would be pretty much impossible if I hadn’t been dumped into course after course where our main objective was to read a lot and come up with interesting and thoughtful opinions on the material. I’d like to flatter myself and say that I have some sort of natural talent and would have been a big time blogger without the degree, but there’s exactly no way. Natural talent will only get you so far. You need training and, just as importantly, you need social capital.
You don’t need brains when you have beer.
My home state of Texas has much to apologize for, and our wretched contributions to the state of education politics is not the least of it. Decades ago, the right wing strategy of stuffing school boards full of right wing wackos—which is easy to do, since most people don’t research their school board candidates before voting—was invented and perfected in Texas. A string of nightmares followed in terms of right wing propaganda being pushed in science, history, and health classes. Some swear in East Texas they still call the Civil War the War of Northern Aggression in the classroom. I know that we weren’t allowed to read about evolution or the Big Bang in my high school science classes, though my teacher got around the injunction by assigning us to read a biography on Charles Darwin, which just so happened to have the theory of evolution in it.
Present trends promise to get worse with the appointment of repugnant wingnut Don McLeroy to the president of the state school board. He’s got some sketchy ideas on the value of knowledge for a man that’s supposed to be in charge of passing it on to the young. Check out his response on the question of whether or not Texas wants to continue withholding information about contraceptive use from high schoolers, now that we’re #1 in the country in teenage pregnancies.
I figured with the slanted spin this is about to get, I might as well lean on the other side of it.
“I remember Alan Keyes . . . I remember him using this in his campaign against me,” Obama said in reference to the conservative firebrand who ran against him for the U.S. Senate in 2004. Sex education for kindergarteners had become an issue in his race against Keyes because of Obama’s work on the issue as chairman of the health committee in the Illinois state Senate.
“‘Barack Obama supports teaching sex education to kindergarteners,’” said Obama mimicking Keyes’ distinctive style of speech. “Which — I didn’t know what to tell him (laughter).”
“But it’s the right thing to do,” Obama continued, “to provide age-appropriate sex education, science-based sex education in schools.”
As you can imagine, the right wingers are dutifully pretending that giving factual, age-appropriate information to your children—information they need to help protect themselves against child molesters, in no small part—is exactly the same thing as having orgies in the classroom.
There can only be one conclusion: If increasing the rates of child sex abuse will help the Republicans to victory in 2008, the wingnutteria is all for it.
Hyperbole aside, the game of “gotcha” on sex education has got to stop. That some adults out there can’t grow up about sex is no reason to risk children’s health and well-being by lying to them about basic biology or allowing them to have irrational fears about their body’s changes as they grow up. The media enjoyed taking out Jocelyn Elders over her wise opinion about teaching kids that masturbation is okay and healthy—though the news reports at the time implied that she was suggesting that actual masturbation techniques be taught, which I doubt is true—and they’re trying to pull the same stunt with Obama. And the real victims are kids in all cases. The Elders controversy was a clear-cut case of sex paranoia completely and utterly trumping rationality. You can’t make a very good argument that it’s great to teach kids that they should stay hands off themselves and instead go so crazy with frustration they run out and fuck the first willing person well before they’re old enough to understrand the ramifications, but who cares when you can count on people’s prudery to shut down all thought processes?
For further reading, check out this blog post about how comprehensive sex education, not abstinence-only, helps kids delay sex. People make better decisions when given better information! Who knew?
The ignorance about HIV/AIDS in this story out of Silverhill, Alabama is astounding, enraging and sad.
A couple who checked into a recreational vehicle park with their 2-year-old foster son were told the boy couldn’t use the showers, pool or other common areas because he has the HIV virus.How long has information been out there that you cannot catch HIV though casual contact? The foster mom casually mentioned the two-year-old’s status to the admission clerk, and the information made its way to Wales West owner Ken Zadnichek, who apparently disregarded the obvious — the foster parents care for this child and neither of them were affected by daily contact with the boy. His response boggles the mind.Dick Glover said the owner of Wales West RV park near Silverhill demanded a doctor’s letter about the child’s condition before allowing him use of the swimming pool and showers.
“As if what he’s got is going to wash off,” Glover, 69, of Saraland told the Press-Register for a story Friday.
“We weren’t sure if somebody could get the virus if the child upchucked on them or from blood or what,” Zadnichek said Thursday. “We didn’t know what the risk was. That’s why we asked for something from their doctor or the county health department.”Zadnichek also said he might require guests to fill out medical questionnaires in the future, in light of the Glovers’ complaints.
Honesty is no virtue when it comes to misleading women about sex, says drunk buddy Jesus.
If you need an operation and the doctor tells you that overall, seven-eighths of patients have a successful outcome, you might think that was a pretty good deal. But suppose the operation failed. While you’re in the recovery room, the doctor tells you, “Oh, by the way, for people like you, the operation only succeeds 30% of the time. But we’ll sell you the solution to the botched operation.? You’d be furious. You’d sue that doctor for malpractice if you didn’t punch him first.
Wow, if such behavior was going on, you’d think it would end up in the movie Sicko. Luckily, the only people who are stupid enough to believe that doctors push contraception to trick you into having sex so you’ll get pregnant so they can give you abortions that aren’t paid for by insurance, so they have to charge minimal prices and operate generally at a loss are people who, like Morse, appear to think that people really hate having sex and need heavy pressure to do it. It would be more fun to mock people like Morse who think that other people would love to quit having sex if doctors didn’t make them do it, if Morse and others like her didn’t basically have the President’s ear.
A long-nursed grievance comes to fruition today.
I wish I could find the Supreme Court moving to protect white privilege and against school integration programs today more surprising, but I don’t. The right makes a big deal out of how they supposedly organized to resist Roe v. Wade, because they know sexism is more socially acceptable than racism, but the entire rise of the conservative movement and the ascendancy of the Republican party owes more to anger over Brown v. the Board of Education and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that sent conservative racists fleeing the Democrats into the welcoming arms of the Republicans. White supremacists have been giving the Republicans a lot for a long time, and this is how the party repays them. Simple, brutal politics.
Scott Lemieux has a breakdown of his thoughts on this, which I recommend reading. One salient point is this:
Given the modesty of the Seattle program — which used race only as a tiebreaker, making the potential injustices of the classification particularly dubious — it is clear that no affirmative action program is going to survive an encounter with the Roberts Court in its current configuration. This is another area where replacing O’Connor with Alito makes a major difference.
That’s a somewhat flippant title, but it underscores what I feel is an important reaction to this.
When an arrest was made on February 23rd ten weeks after Laura Dickinson’s death, it was the first time her family knew she had been raped and murdered. It was the first time her fellow classmates at Eastern Michigan University knew she had been raped and murdered, too. In her dorm room. Since December, they’d thought the 22-year-old had died of natural causes…
Eastern Michigan University’s violation of the Clery Act—a federal statute enacted in 1990 that requires all colleges and universities receiving federal aid to record and disclose information about crime on and near their respective campuses—is painfully ironic, as such violation proves its very need. Given the grimly similar circumstances to the case out of which the requirement was born, the violation is particularly tragic as well: The Clery Act was named for Jeanne Clery, a Lehigh University freshman who was raped and murdered in her dorm room in 1986, and whose parents discovered that the university had not disclosed to current and prospective students 38 violent crimes on the campus in the three years preceding Jeanne’s murder.
There are so many levels on which this is a disgusting breach of public trust on the part of Eastern Michigan University. Their impulse to sweep a rape and murder under the rug to protect their image is an impulse one could imagine many other universities emulating; enrollment is king and every student who decides not to go to Eastern Michigan University based on bad publicity is money out of the administration’s pockets. As Melissa points out,
Eastern Michigan University decided that the rape and murder of more of their female students was a risk they were willing to take, if only they could avoid a little more bad publicity.
How’s that working out for ya?
Yes, Eastern Michigan University, how indeed?
When people act badly, as Eastern Michigan University certainly did, they also expose that which they fear. When what they fear is as craven as this, that fear must be exploited, to warn other universities that Eastern Michigan University’s example must not be followed, or their precious enrollment will suffer, too.
(Also, I have to say, it takes some balls to announce the standard 5% increase in room and board in the midst of this scandal.)
Update:
Eastern Michigan University
Eastern Michigan University
Eastern Michigan University
Eastern Michigan University
Eastern Michigan University
Eastern Michigan University
Eastern Michigan University
…just in case anyone needed a handy reference…or anything.
I know the Governator didn’t quite mean to encourage the idea that knowing two languages somehow makes you stupider than knowing one, but that’s the impression he left with his speech before a convention of Hispanic journalists.
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s remarks that immigrants should avoid Spanish-language media if they want to learn English quickly left some Hispanic journalists shaking their heads.
“You’ve got to turn off the Spanish television set” and stay away from Spanish-language television, books and newspapers, the Republican governor said Wednesday night at the annual convention of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. “You’re just forced to speak English, and that just makes you learn the language faster.”
As Marc notes, there are few things more endearing than having a speaker at your professional convention slam your profession, and quite a few of the attendees work for Spanish-language media. But more to the point, Schwarzenegger—who hasn’t managed to shake his own Austrian accent well enough for the standards he lays out—doesn’t really go to much effort to hide his hostility towards the idea that Mexican-Americans might cherish bilingualism.
“I know this sounds odd and this is the politically incorrect thing to say and I’m going to get myself in trouble,” he said. “But I know that when I came to this country, I very rarely spoke German to anyone.” …..
In October, the governor was criticized by Democrats when he said some Mexican immigrants “try to stay Mexican” when they come to the United States and urged them to learn English and U.S. history and “make an effort to become part of America.
No one disputes the idea that children of immigrants would do well to learn English, but anyone with a modicum of education in how language acquistion works will know that children who speak English in school will learn it. In fact, it strikes me as a distinct advantage to have English in school and Spanish at home, so you grow up bilingual. But by the Governator’s own measure, there’s something unseemly about using two languages frequently enough to be properly bilingual.
I wish I could chalk up our national inability to grasp that it’s a good thing to know more than one language to the simple fact of geography—we’re bigger than any European country, so linguistic diversity seems less compelling. But it’s more than that, and Schwarzenegger’s attitude here points to it. We’re actively hostile to bilingualism. I grew up on the border between Texas and Mexico and was raised by a family with many bilingual members and I can’t speak Spanish, because no one ever prioritized the acquisition of other languages. Now, there’s no doubt that I look like a pinche guera, but it would be nice not to be so utterly and stupidly the complete pinche guera package. And the Governator would do well not to discourage the great importance of teaching kids to speak many languages, if only to preserve the pleasure of having conversations that stupid Republican-voting, Mexican-hating assholes can’t understand when they eavesdrop in public.
What’s amazing to me about this new Creation Museum is that it’s about 500 times worse than I could have imagined it. First of all, there’s the aggressive stupidity, such as this explanation for how Noah got the dinosaurs onto the ark:
The Ark easily had room for the dinosaurs (as you can see in other articles in this issue). First, the Ark was the size of a huge cargo ship (at least 450 ft [137 m] long). Second, there weren’t many different kinds of dinosaurs (only about 50 “kinds”). Third, God most likely brought the smaller juvenile dinosaurs, not the aging adults, because they would be better suited for the voyage and the responsibilities of reproducing rapidly after the Flood.
But the levels of self-congratulatory stupidity are even more troubling. You see, the reason that you need to believe that the story of Noah’s ark and the flood is the literal truth instead of a myth is because the theory of evolution is the cause of racism. Aspazia linked images from an exhibit that shows the full delusional nature of the odd argument that “Darwinism” is the source of immorality, and that fundamentalist Christianity is the source of good.
