EleCivil
-
Posts
838 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
1
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Blogs
Posts posted by EleCivil
-
-
If you had 10% blacks going to 90% white schools, or 10% whites going to 90% black schools, would that have provided proper 'integration'? No way.
The dirty little secret of education is that in many districts, schools ARE still segregated, because neighborhoods are segregated. Not by law, but by cost of living.
Where I live, there are three big districts: One is about 90% black and working-class. One is about 90% white and middle-class. One is about 99% white and upper-class.
Then there are the charter schools, which are all about 99% black and working-class, and the private schools, which are all about 99% white and upper-class.
The predominantly black schools have less funding, because they are located in areas with few home-owners (i.e. no property tax to pay for schools). As such, they are dumping grounds for rookie teachers who put in their one or two years and then get the hell out of there to teach in a "good" district. These schools are physically run-down, dirty, understaffed, and overcrowded, and they're always rated in "academic emergency" (on the verge of being closed for low test scores). Often times, they do not have playgrounds or sports equipment for the kids at recess - just an empty parking lot.
The school where I work is in such a location - the student population is 98% Black, 1.5% Hispanic, and .5% Caucasian. Over 95% of the kids live below the poverty line, few of them with both parents. Several are homeless, living out of shelters. Some of their parents are gang members, raising their kids to follow in their footsteps. Some of the parents are in prison. As if their lives weren't tough enough, they're being sent to a rather dreadful school, where a lack of funding prevents art, music, gym, extra-curriculars, science, and social studies from being taught. NONE of that would fly in either of the white districts.
The school from the article sounds disconcerting, at best. It's a charter school, which means it gets its funding on a per-student basis...but it has only three students. And its one teacher is responsible for all subjects in grades 7-12? Sketchy. Also, when there are so few students around, it can seriously hurt the socialization process - if one of those three kids doesn't really "click" with the other two, he/she isn't going to have any friends. Homeschoolers (the good ones, anyway) remedy this by getting their kids into a bunch of afterschool programs with peers...but it seems like the whole point of this school is to AVOID peers.
I could understand doing something like this in an emergency situation, in which a student is in such danger that the parents deem it necessary to pull them out of school, and one-on-one tutoring and homeschooling are not possible, but...I don't know. It just rings as "off" for me.
-
I read Catcher (as well as his other book, Franny and Zooey) back in high school, but I didn't really get into them. I should give them another shot - maybe I'd appreciate them more, now.
-
If that's supposed to be ages 6-10, I don't believe it. Years 6-10 (ie. end of primary school through to just before their junior year in high school), I can believe, but not kids ages 6-10.
I've caught 7 and 8 year olds (2nd and 3rd graders) searching for porn on school computers. And based on some of the notes I've intercepted and some of the conversations I've overheard, none of them need a dictionary to define "oral sex".
That's the funny thing - by the time a kid is old enough to use a dictionary to look up "oral sex" (they're overestimating how much children use dictionaries), they've already heard twenty different slang terms for it. Their main reaction is going to be "Oh. I thought that was called..."
-
I can't wait to miss that one.
After reading much of his work- which has gay characters which earned him many gay fans, I feel really betrayed by OSC. I can't stand that Mormon mother....
Yes, I'm aware of Card's dickery. But I loved his books before I knew about it, and I can't bring myself to stop loving them. The artist may be a raging jackass, but the art is still good. Well, not "Empire." That was god-awful. And his sci-fi re-telling of the Book of Mormon was kind of weird. And one of his books was pretty much "The Life of a Mormon Computer Programmer...and also, there's a gay serial killer. And ghosts! Ghosts that live in video games!" Needless to say, not the best read.
Come to think of it, Ender and the books on writing were good. Screw the rest of it.
As with poetry, the young pupil has to be allowed to discover it as if it was his discovery, or a shared experience, and not a requirement of the curriculum.Depends on what kind of poetry, and how it's being taught. I've yet to meet a student of any age who doesn't dig Shel Silverstein, and The D-minus Poems of Jeremy Bloom always brings it home. But even young students can get into the deeper stuff.
The other day, I was sitting cross-legged on the floor with my 4th graders, all taking turns reading Langston Hughes poems. (It's not officially in the curriculum, but I found a whole box of his books gathering dust in storage, so I had to grab 'em.) Some would drum on the floor and read to the rhythms. Some would improvise a melody and sing his more bluesy verses. Others would stand and recite, carefully. Some of them were simple poems about rain or snow, others about politics and "current" events that I knew they didn't quite understand (Awkward moments include: "How do you say this word? N-e-g-r-o?" and "What's a minstrel show?"), but it didn't matter - they could listen to the sounds rather than the words.
Sure, some were more into it than others, but when even half a class is coming up to me to recite poems from memory during their down time, I consider it a win.
I think the common thread, here, is performance. Shakespeare plays and Hughes poems are both meant to be performed. Reading them silently to yourself might work decently enough for word nerds like me, but for NON-crazy people, they've got to be seen and heard. Speaking the words yourself makes them yours, and all of a sudden it doesn't matter whether you can understand and analyze every word - you can catch hold of the mood and tone and just let it carry you.
-
As a rule, I run on one of two settings: stoic or goofy. I've no room for squishiness, and typically no stomach for it. But that first picture, damn it all:
Awwwwwwww.
-
I took it out of the library a while back.
It was entertaining, but not at all what I was expecting. I'd thought it would be mostly about Ender's search for a new Formic homeworld, but a good two thirds of the book was about personality conflicts and relationships between passengers on his first relativistic, near-light speed trip to a human colony.
Now, that's fine with me, because I think OSC is at his best when he's writing about psychologically broken characters and their subtle power struggles, but if you're looking for sci-fi exploration, aliens, and colony planets, you'll be waiting a while.
Oh, and get ready for gratuitous Shakespeare references, 'cause a good fourth of this book revolves around the crew of a colony ship organizing a readers' theater performance of The Tempest. No, really.
Overall, I liked it for what it was, but I probably won't have the urge to read it again. And this is coming from a man who's read Ender's Game about 12 times, and the rest of the series at least 5 (yes, even those last few "A space wizard did it!" books that no one else seems to like).
And hey, since I'm here, I'll plug his books "Characters and Viewpoint" and "How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy." Both great books on writing, regardless of your genre of choice. I know they've probably been mentioned here before, but it's worth repeating.
-
As a putative writer, a word I realize I'm using very loosely, hearing this sort of dialect direct from the horse's mouth, and frequently enough so it could become reproducible, is wonderful stuff. Leanring, and then knowing that language will allow you to introduce characters who'll talk like some kids really do. Authenticity. What more could a writer want?
Well, I grew up in this same area - I lived in what was lovingly called "The White Ghetto" or "The Wonderbread Projects" - so I was already fluent. Heh.
Another advantage to growing up in the same area where I'm teaching? I understand "Welcome Back, Kotter" more than I ever have in the past.
Another one I hate is unexplained plurals. "I talked to my Moms, and she say we gotta be home by 9." Moms? You got more than one?Hep me!
From what I've seen, that's just a nickname. They're not pluralizing; it's just more socially acceptable than "Mommy" and more affectionate than "Mom." Kind of like calling your grandfather "Gramps."
-
These grammar/usage pet peeves make me smile. If you were to visit my school, you might all suffer massive brain hemorrhages within minutes. If "I'll go with" bothers you...
My students tend to believe that every preposition is interchangeable, the word "is" and all it's forms do not exist, subject/verb agreement is optional, and that when in doubt, use the words "dude!" "man!" or "fuck!" (including in academic papers). Also, the word "up" always, ALWAYS precedes the words "on," "off," "out," and "in".
For instance (overheard earlier today):
A: "Where Malahj'zia?"
B: "He up on bus, dude!"
A: "Man! Why he on bus?"
B: "Fuck, they all BEEN been up on that bus."
A: "Dude need to get up off that bus."
B: "He do!"
I live in a world of non-standard American English Vernacular.
-
I love the Happy Fun Ball. And Phil Hartman.
My all-time favorites:
-
"Education is not the filling of a bucket, but the lighting of a fire."
-W.B. Yeats
"Love need not be a command nor faith a dictum. I am my own god. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us."
-Charles Bukowski
"Ulysses S. Grant:
Ulysses S. Grant was a BIG fat guy with a beard who was drunk all the time and became president for some reason. In other words: Ulysses S. Grant = PUNK."
-From the novel "Punk Land" by Carlton Mellick III
-
Hmmm, it never occurred to me to edit a document backwards. Interesting idea.
I know that Oscar-winning film editor Walter Murch has said that he sometimes views scenes backwards just to judge their timing and visuals, to see how things look going the other way. But editing visuals is a lot different than editing words.
It's the same basic idea - he uses it for timing and visuals, I use it to catch typos and spelling/mechanics errors that might have slipped in. It doesn't really help for editing story cohesion, realism, or scene transitions, but it's great for the mechanics. It's more like proofing than editing, I guess - that's why it worked so well for me when fixing up non-fictional school papers.
When you read straight ahead, especially something you wrote yourself, your brain tends to fix its its own errors. (See?) But if you're going backwards, you can really look at each word individually.
I imagine using a text-to-speech program would work the same way, actually. Same with reading aloud, provided you go slow enough to read what it says on that page/screen rather than what you think it says.
-
I swear by the backwards edit technique. It was a staple of mine throughout college, both when editing my own papers and when editing others'.
-
So, in preparation for the COP15 climate change conference, the Copenhagen city council sent a bunch of postcards to city hotels urging that the owners refrain from hooking up clients with prostitutes.
In response, prostitutes (legal, there) are offering free services to anyone who brings them one of these anti-hooker postcards.
This story has everything: Prostitutes, protest, AND that letter "O" with the diagonal line through it (?). Throw in a couple explosions and a subplot about time travel, and we've got a summer blockbuster.
-
I've gotten some decent feedback from "Anonymous", which makes me wonder whether or not they would have been willing to send anything at all without that option. Still, messages like the one in the opening post are a clear example of John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory.
-
If somebody had wrote the above in a novel or short story on Nifty or here on A.D., I would've said, "oh, that's totally unbelievable! Why would a teacher try to pay somebody to kill one of his students, just because the student was gay?"
And what I think is the most important question:
Where the hell is a school teacher getting the kind of money it takes to hire a hit man!?
And, of course, the follow-up:
Are they hiring?
-
There is a children's book that's commonly read in fourth or fifth grade, titled Frindle. It is about a boy in fifth grade who has a personality clash with his teacher, a no nonsense pedant. The boy coins a word, frindle. He and the teacher battle over him using it, and because the class sees the possibilities, all of them begin using the word, too.
Heh. I just had my 5th graders read that book.
Clearly, this guy hasn't read Frindle. At the end of the story, we find out that the teacher was secretly working on the kid's behalf, as the "Frindle" phenomenon would have never been as widespread without opposition. By casting herself as a villain, the teacher helped the kid achieve fame and fortune, even though he never realized it until the very end.
Anyway, I had a similar incident with some students last year. They would shout the same nonsense word in the middle of class. Repeatedly. Every day.
I ended up "snap-suspending" a couple of them ( a one-day suspension, given by a teacher rather than an administrator). It sounds ridiculous to suspend someone for something like that, I know, but it became necessary. If a student shouts something every time a teacher is trying to teach, it can get the rest of the class off-balance, making learning difficult, if not impossible. And I can't let a few goofs rob the rest of the students of the opportunity to learn. Plus, managing a classroom is a lot like managing a dictatorship: Hang a few of the repeat offenders publicly, and the rest fall into line.
So, I can see the principal's point of view. However, I think he's going about it the wrong way. When they interrupt a class, and keep other kids from learning? Absolutely, bring the hammer down. But banning the word will only make it more popular. It's like saying "Don't think about elephants!" - of COURSE they're going to think of elephants! Let them "Meep" 'til they're blue in the face when they've got free time. Let them wear "Meep" shirts. Even better, have faculty and staff start doing it. It'll just be a matter of time until they get bored with it, as it'll lose it's edge. It worked for me.
More people with contempt for authority need to grow up to become authority figures. We know how our own kind thinks.
-
(Actually, I wear a black fedora, but that was close enough.)
-
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8301120.stm
We should not be punishing patriotic Americans who have stepped forward to serve the country," Mr Obama said."We should be celebrating their willingness to step forward and show such courage."
Mr Obama did not give a timetable for repeal of the policy, passed by Congress in 1993, under which thousands of service members have been discharged.
Repeated, because this stood out to me:
Mr Obama did not give a timetable for repeal of the policy...So don't get too excited, yet.
But in the video clip, he did say that legislation has been introduced in the house to end DADT.
-
Sounds fun.
-
Wow...what did you plant?
It's not quite ripe, yet - the eyes are still a bit green.
-
My gut instinct, upon reading anything written from a fiscal libertarian viewpoint, is to shout "CLASS WAR!" and throw a brick through a window. But I'll refrain from doing so, for now. Heh.
I see a lot of begging the question and strawman arguments.
He starts out be equating economic beliefs to religion, and asking why we aren't equally accepting. Two things come to mind:
1 - Many people are NOT accepting of others' religious beliefs. In many cases, tolerance is the best we can aim for. As in, "I disagree with you completely, and I wish you would change your mind, but I guess we'll have to live with each other."
2 - Unlike economics, no one (in America, anyway) is FORCED into a religious system. We are going to be in an economic system, however, be it a free market, a regulated market, a state system, or even a barter system. You don't really get a choice, there. As such, it isn't a matter of "You go your way and I'll go mine." It's a matter of trying to convince others so that they will vote (or revolt) with you in order to reform or maintain the current system. That's how democracies work.
His next premise seems to be "If the poor don't like being poor, why don't they just get rich, already?" (Now, why didn't I think of that when I was standing in line for food stamps with my parents? Jeez, if only there had been some libertarian venture capitalists around at the time to set me straight.) This is followed closely by "Illegal immigrants come to America to be exploited."
The author asks "Do you admire highly paid sports figures yet disdain highly compensated business executives?" My response is a resounding "Hell, no" on both sides.
"Does it matter whether the shareholders in the companies that employ these executives feel they are getting their money's worth? And if you're not a shareholder, what makes this issue your concern?"
It's not a matter of "Those execs make too much money." It's a matter of "Those execs make too much money when compared to their workers." If an exec is making a million dollars a year in "bonuses" while the average worker gets a twenty dollar gift card to Wal-Mart and is forced to buy their own health insurance, it's everyone's concern, because those particular execs ARE making their fortunes on the backs of the poor. The way I see it, if an exec wants a raise, he'd better give everyone under him a raise, too. Can't do it? Earn more money, or be content with what you've got. That's right - contentment. It's a dirty word to capitalists, I know, but I happen to like it.
The author then wheels out my old favorite, the "pull yourself up by the bootstraps" argument. Nice, in principle, if you ignore things like generational poverty. Children growing up in middle-class homes with professional parents are familiar with THOUSANDS more words by the time they enter Kindergarten alongside underprivileged children. This alone is enough to put them at an instant disadvantage, from which many of them never catch up. Add to that the fact that schools in poor districts are often underfunded, understaffed, and ignored until it comes time to flog them for not measuring up to the standards set by middle-class, middle-age, suburban white people working for a standardized testing corporation. States then use these numbers as an excuse to deny more funding to these very schools, leading to a cycle of under-education of the poor. In simpler terms, you're shouting "pull yourself out of that hole!" while setting fire to the rope.
"If a poor person becomes rich through hard work then resists handing his money over for the benefit of the poor, is he a traitor to his class? Should he be treated differently than someone who inherits great wealth? How about someone who wins the lottery? Why?"
Yes, no, and no. Why? Because a person who becomes rich due to the opportunities given them in this country should give something back to it.
The author's next point is awesome in that he contradicts his own earlier viewpoint in an essay about challenging contradictory viewpoints:
"...does it matter to you if the attendant incentives and disincentives reduce the total amount of wealth available to be shared? Is making all people equally poor an acceptable solution to inequality?"
Earlier, he said:
"Is there a fixed amount of wealth in the world for all to share? If so, where did it come from and how has mankind been getting richer for the past 200 years?" With this earlier question, he is implying that there is no fixed amount of wealth (a common libertarian viewpoint, and a necessary premise to the "bootstraps" argument mentioned above - 'the rich aren't taking all the money, the poor just need to make some more!').
He then argues that progressive taxation disincentives will reduce A FIXED AMOUNT OF WEALTH, leading to everyone being "equally poor." But, Mr. Author...if venture capitalists start becoming "equally poor", they can pull themselves up by their bootstraps, right? I mean, you have no problem telling poor people to do that, now (via the coded language of "taking responsibility").
He then goes on to equate taxes to stealing from children, Big Brother spying, racism, and gangs of thieves. Nice.
"Do you resent being asked to justify your economic beliefs or the moral foundation they rest on? Do your ends always justify your means? Do you feel entitled to having your beliefs respected solely because they are yours? Would you feel the same way about your mathematical beliefs?"
If you can't justify your beliefs, you should get some new ones. Seems simple enough to me. No need to "resent" a challenge - you should view it as a way to get your point across.
"Are you comfortable holding contradictory beliefs? When was the last time you questioned them?"
Question everything. It is my strong belief that one should not hold strong beliefs.
"What do you do when you discover you hold two beliefs that contradict each other?"
The whole world and all of life is a big, flying mess of contradictions and confusion. That's what makes it so damned beautiful. Hail Eris.
And, of course, the author shoots himself in the foot by throwing all sense of impartiality out the window with his closing sentence: "What other outcome would you expect when moral foundations crumble?"
And here I thought capitalists were OPPOSED to begging. No wait, they don't like begging for money. Begging the question is cool.
Overall, though, I thought it was a fun read. Not the best pro-capitalism challenge I've had, though. I've got a friend who I swear was possessed by the ghost of Adam Smith. Now THERE'S a guy who can almost convince me to support a tax cut for the rich. Almost.
...CLASS WAR!!! *windowbrick*
-
A creeping plague, I suppose. And like everything good, it began in CA.
C
And, like everything else that starts in California, it hasn't made it to Ohio, yet. The clips work for me.
-
Oh, jeez, this is the humor board, and here I am talking about mass extinction and starvation.
Hang on.
-
Yeah, I used to say the same thing until a scientist/friend corrected me: apparently, the real problem with global warming is unstable weather, not necessarily hot weather. This accounts for the increase in hurricanes, flooding, longer-than-normal or shorter-than-normal winters, etc.
Exactly - "global warming" is almost a misnomer. It gives the impression that we'll feel it getting warmer, or that it will snow less, or some such. More heat means more movement. This means more hurricanes, thunderstorms, and, yes, blizzards. But that's not that bad - humans are resourceful, they can adapt to weather. That's why they're living in the desert, the plains, the tundra, the jungle, and everywhere in between. More dangerous is its effect on plants and animals - we're talking climate change, not weather change. Changing the length of growing/mating/migrating seasons, the amount of rainfall in a given area, etc. can all be disastrous for agriculture. Changing the levels of precipitation vs. evaporation affects the water cycle - the Great Lakes are already showing signs of falling water levels. The tops of the Great Lakes aren't freezing, completely, in the winters - that means they spend all winter losing fresh water, rather than retaining it.
It's not a "Day After Tomorrow"-esque instant deep freeze that's going do us in, or even the increased violent weather - it's slow starvation and dehydration as we screw with the growing and water cycles. Not with a bang, but a whimper. But, of course, no one wants to make a summer blockbuster out of a whimper. Heh.
The main effect we have to worry about, first, is that the polar icecaps are shrinking at an alarming rate. This raises sea level above what it is now, and will continue to do so as the ice melts. There's an obvious problem here: some huge percentage of the world's population lives within a few miles of an ocean. I forget the number, but something like 70%, I think. Just a few inches of sea level rise, and that land these people live on disappears under the waves.And that's not the only problem with melting ice caps.
Polar ice caps consist of fresh water. The oceans consist of salt water. The organisms living in the ocean are adapted to a very specific saline level. As ice caps melt, more fresh water is released into the oceans, changing the percentages, and causing either mass migration or mass extinction. Combine this with the fact that our CO2 emissions are falling back into the oceans, changing them into a weak carbonic acid. Changes in salinity, acidity, and temperature (even one or two degrees) are causing what is believed to be a Great Extinction level event - ecologists are saying that there are more species going extinct every day than we can count.
That huge population you mentioned that lives near an ocean? A lot of those civilizations depend on fishing. Even if they aren't submerged, the changes in fish population/migration could trigger mass starvation and an increase in poverty.
Scan to donate
Things that make you got WTF!?
in The Raccoon's Den
Posted