Hopefully, we’ll be telling our grandkids about this one.
Follow the link for the full text…
Browsing Posts in Education
I should be going to bed but I wanted to direct whatever little bit of audience I still have to two related articles. The first, from The Nation (subscription required, but here’s the interesting bits) regarding a new Unicef report, Child Poverty in Perspective: An Overview of Child Well-Being in Rich Countries:
Congratulations: Children in the United States do not have the worst quality of life in the developed world. That honor is held by Britain–with the United States a close second. America’s infant mortality rate is exceeded only by Hungary’s; New Zealand is the only country where more people under 19 meet violent deaths each year. On teenage motherhood, we’re way ahead: forty-six births for every 1,000 girls between 15 and 19. The closest challenger (New Zealand again) can manage only thirty. Children born in the richest nation on earth are also the most likely to be noticeably poorer than their neighbors: 21.7 percent of America’s children live in households whose income is less than half the national median. Britain, at 16.2 percent, comes second in the inequality sweepstakes.
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The study shows that the two countries with the greatest economic inequality are also failing their children in less tangible ways. British children reported the worst family and peer relationships and the highest incidence overall of risky behavior (smoking, drinking and unprotected sex); American children ranked third from the bottom (above Britain and Poland) in terms of their personal feelings of well-being. Sure, American adolescents drink and smoke less than kids in some other countries. But the cost of the right’s attempt to meet teenage sexuality with moralizing and repression rather than education is obvious in the teenage pregnancy rates. The country that came out best overall in the study was the Netherlands, known for its traditions of openness and tolerance.
The areas where American children fare worse than most–infant mortality, low birth weight, early childbearing, family instability and child poverty–are all directly related to the status of women. As Ruth Rosen writes in this issue, American women are still underpaid; still working double shifts; still shouldering on their own the burden of care for children and the elderly; still denied the right to control their fertility; still seen as a “special interest group” rather than half the nation. It is incredible that these things still need saying more than a generation after the rebirth of the women’s movement. If the other half can’t be made to see that women’s rights are vital for the whole community, the effects of gender inequality on children of both sexes might at least offer a compelling argument.
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But at least we can afford massive tax cuts and an immoral war.
The second is more narrowly focused on child care and is also at The Nation, but it is a non-subscription article so I will just post this minor excerpt and encourage you to follow the link.
It is as though Americans are trapped in a time warp, still convinced that women should and will care for children, the elderly, homes and communities. But of course they can’t, now that most women have entered the workforce. In 1950 less than a fifth of mothers with children under age 6 worked in the labor force. By 2000 two-thirds of these mothers worked in the paid labor market.
Both articles underline the disassociation in American politics with true family values. Not the faux values proposed by the Republicans or the rhetoric from the Democrats. These are the values that American families care about. Or at least they would if anyone told them there was another way.
While I’m posting videos from Countdown, here’s Keith Olbermann giving our Secretary of State a little history lesson on WWII.
On Sunday morning on Fox News, the Secretary of State said that if Congress were now to revise the Iraq authorization, “it would be like saying that after Adolf Hitler was overthrown, we needed to change, then, the resolution that allowed the United States to do that, so that we could deal with creating a stable environment in Europe after he was overthrown.”
Jews on First has a follow-up on the on the New Jersey teacher who got caught on tape proselytizing in class and then lied about it. The student is being harassed by the town while the teacher has gotten no punishment, although the superintendent did call him a “wonderful teacher”. Apparently no action has been taken by the school district at all. The student is quoted as having told the superintendent, “I thought when I gave this information to you, it would be handled by an adult, I guess I was wrong.” For a refresher here is what the teacher got caught on tape teaching his History class:
[Jesus] did everything in his power to make sure that you could go to heaven, so much so that he took your sin on his own body, suffered your pains for you and he’s saying, “Please accept me, believe me.”
If you reject that, you belong in hell. The outcome is your prerogative. But the way I see it, God himself sent his only son to die for David Paszkiewicz on that cross … And if you reject that, then it really is to hell with you.
He also specifically singled out a Muslim student and told her she would be going to Hell. I’m thinking the LeClairs are about to win a lot of money in a lawsuit. I hate to see something like that done to a school, but sometimes an example needs to be made. This foolishness cannot be tolerated in our public schools.
I’m a day late with this story, but it reminded me of something that happened when I was a student. A History teacher named David Paszkiewicz in New Jersey (who is also a Baptist minister) got caught proselytizing Christian fundamentalism to his students in class.
Instead of teaching them History, he was teaching them, “that a being must have created the universe, that the Christian Bible is the word of God, and that dinosaurs were aboard Noah’s ark. If you do not accept Jesus, he flatly proclaimed to his class, “you belong in hell.[...]he also dismissed evolution and the Big Bang as non-scientific, arguing by contrast that the Bible is supported by what he calls confirmed biblical prophecies.” He also singled out a Muslim student and “lamented what he saw as her inevitable fate should she not convert.”
The best part is how they caught him though. One student, Matthew LaClair, complained about the event to the school principal and requested a meeting with Mr. Paszkiewicz and the principal. But in the meeting Mr. Paszkiewicz denied it and said that the student had taken something he had said out of context. And now, for the big pwning: “At the end of the meeting, LaClair revealed that he had recorded the remarks, and presented the principal with two compact discs. The teacher then declined to comment further without his union representative. However, he fired one last shot at the student, saying, ‘You got the big fish … you got the big Christian guy who is a teacher…!’” Self-important deceitful ass. UPDATE: There has been a response from some of the other students who attend the school at the original blog that posted this, The Lippard Blog.
My High School (Flippin High School – Go Bobcats!) probably had one of the highest minister to non-minister faculty ratios of any public school anywhere. Our Civics/History, Math, Biology, and Band teachers were all ministers of some sort. That’s in addition to our men’s Basketball coach (who also taught Health) and High School Principal. And that’s out of about a dozen to fifteen teachers total. Mostly, they were Church of Christ or Southern Baptist, so they weren’t exactly liberal in their beliefs either. But I will say one thing for my school, everybody there believed in the separation of Church and State. If they didn’t believe in it, at least they followed it.
We had only one incident of anything like this that I can remember. It was actually not even a regular teacher or minister that did it either. It was some wack-job they brought in as a substitute for our Physics teacher. He was real brilliant too. Instead of just trying to convert us to his religious beliefs by talking to us, he actually handed out those little Jack Chick tracts. One of the students in class that was arguing with him was a Mormon and he gave her a Jack Chick all about how Mormons are going to burn in Hell for worshiping a false god. Unfortunately for him, she wasn’t one to be bullied around and went straight to the principal’s office after class with his tract. I don’t know exactly what happened from there, but he wasn’t teaching class next period and we never saw him again.
Ed Brayton speculated that this goes on, unreported, all the time. I don’t know if that is true or not, but I do know that at least at my school, they have it right. This was at a small school in deep backwoods Arkansas. If they can get it right, hopefully a lot of schools are.
(By the way, if you actually go to my high school’s web page and look at some of the pictures, they aren’t crazy militia people (well, most aren’t). For some reason they always take group pictures during Spirit Week. Those appear to have been taken on Camo Day.)
This time from UCLA. A student was using the computer lab but failed to produce his ID during a random check. The Community Service Officers (whatever that is) asked him to leave but he didn’t so they called in the police. While they were gone to get the police he began making his way out of the lab. On arriving, the police grabbed him and when the student began yelling “Get off me!”. So far no big deal, right? They arrest the guy and figure out what is going on at the station. This is what they decided to do instead:
It was at this point that the officers shot the student with a Taser for the first time, causing him to fall to the floor and cry out in pain. The student also told the officers he had a medical condition.
UCPD officers confirmed that the man involved in the incident was a student, but did not give a name or any additional information about his identity.
Video shot from a student’s camera phone captured the student yelling, “Here’s your Patriot Act, here’s your fucking abuse of power,” while he struggled with the officers.
As the student was screaming, UCPD officers repeatedly told him to stand up and said “stop fighting us.” The student did not stand up as the officers requested and they shot him with the Taser at least once more.
“It was the most disgusting and vile act I had ever seen in my life,” said David Remesnitsky, a 2006 UCLA alumnus who witnessed the incident.
As the student and the officers were struggling, bystanders repeatedly asked the police officers to stop, and at one point officers told the gathered crowd to stand back and threatened to use a Taser on anyone who got too close.
Laila Gordy, a fourth-year economics student who was present in the library during the incident, said police officers threatened to shoot her with a Taser when she asked an officer for his name and his badge number.
Obviously, it’s unknown if it had anything to do with what happened, but CBS reported the student’s name was Mostafa Tabatabainejad. The sergeant had this to say: “If he was able to walk out of here, I think he was okay.” There is a student-recorded video of the event on the first link, but it is having trouble running, so it has been uploaded to Youtube:
At least Abel didn’t get tasered. But then, his name isn’t Mostafa.
There was a very good article on TomPaine.com on Tuesday that illustrates the problems with Republican bias against social programs.
The simple fact is that Pelosi’s legislative record on supporting veterans’ health care, education and other benefits is among the best in the House, while Buyer’s ranges from mediocre to atrocious, depending on who’s doing the rating. This is not a subjective judgment, but is based on two separate analyses of voting records by distinctly different veterans organizations—the venerable Disabled Veterans of America, and the upstart Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. (Check the ratings yourself from VAWatchdog.org and IAVA.)
It’s the current Republican leadership in Congress and the White House that own the worst record for supporting veterans legislation—a surprising reality utterly at odds with their support-the-troops rhetoric. Some of the loudest proponents of the war—embattled Sen. Mike DeWine of Ohio comes to mind—have some of the poorest records for supporting veterans (overall, Senate Republicans had a “D†average from the Iraq and Afghanistan veterans’ group), while the most prominent war critics and political liberals—Ted Kennedy, for one– have been the strongest supporters of vets’ legislation (the Senate Democrats had a B+ average).
These votes touch almost every aspect of veterans’ lives: The will of the majority has been to cut funds for brain injury research (more than 3,000 veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan have suffered severe brain trauma); to use phony prewar statistics to calculate an unrealistically low but politically palatable cost estimate for veterans health care (causing a $3 billion budget shortfall now coming due); and to rebuff Democratic attempts to correct inequities in the G.I. Bill that cheat National Guard and reserve troops (who have contributed half the fighting force in Iraq and Afghanistan) out of college aid.
So much for supporting the troops. One party talks about it. The other one does it. It is one of the Republicans favorite tactics to assign their opponents with the faults of the Republicans so their opponent appears weak if they try to point out who is really at fault. Unfortunately, it works.
• After World War II, millions of veterans lined up for hours for a remarkable purpose: To register for free college educations, to buy homes with no money down and mortgages cheaper than rent, to sign up for vocational training and job counseling, and to apply for business and farm loans—all courtesy of Uncle Sam and the original G.I. Bill.
• In the wake of the Iraq war and occupation, a different sort of line came be found at military bases nationwide: bread lines. Thousands of military families have been left so impoverished they must queue up for donations of surplus cheese, day-old bread and damaged boxes of frozen food . This is especially true for bases in areas with high costs of living, such as the Marine Corps’ Camp Pendleton near San Diego, where food lines have become a weekly fixture.
When our warriors come home from Iraq, all too many find empty bank accounts, maxed-out credit cards and the realization that the college benefits used to entice enlistees often don’t cover the costs of a 4-year degree, nor support their families while they’re in class. And they actually have to have a payroll deduction in order to even qualify for those benefits. Still others, wounded in a war costing the country $10 million an hour, learn that their president and Congress have cut programs to heal their injuries, post-combat stress, and economic distress. Some vets wait six months for medical care. There are an estimated 200,000 homeless veterans from all eras on the streets at the moment; at least six hundred of them are known to have served in the current war in Iraq.
It’s hard to comprehend that we could have been a more progressive nation 40 years ago than we are today. Did we just decide we are the greatest nation of all time and quit striving for the American Dream?
Unfortunately, this is not merely a story of shortchanged veterans and hypocritical congressmen who support war but not warriors. That’s just an awful symptom of a bigger problem: a wholesale failure to invest in America’s future. Just imagine how a politician today would be mocked if he proposed offering an entire generation free college (with stipends), subsidized mortgages, job training and medical care. Yet today’s unthinkable was yesterday’s matter of course. There was no hesitation, no griping about government being the problem, not the solution. This bit of modern conventional wisdom—the animating principal of the government haters now in charge of our government—would have seemed like crazy talk back then to most Americans. And when FDR signed the G.I. Bill on behalf of 16 million veterans—1 out of 8 Americans at the time—he ended up powering far more than a return to the status quo. The G.I. Bill transformed the nation and the American Dream, opening up the colleges (formerly elite bastions), raising suburbs out of bean fields (a nation of renters became a nation of homeowners), growing the middle class (from 1 in 10 before the war to 1 in 3 a decade after), and providing the medical, engineering and scientific prowess to conquer dread diseases, usher in the information age and win the Cold War. It was what every social welfare program must aspire to be if it is to succeed: a hand up, not a hand-out.
Such luminaries as Bob Dole, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, William Rehnquist, Warren Christopher, Gerald Ford, George H.W. Bush and George McGovern, among many others, got their starts through the G.I. Bill, as did 14 Nobel Prize winners, two dozen Pulitzer Prize winners, 238,000 teachers, 91,000 scientists, 67,000 doctors, 450,000 engineers and a million assorted lawyers, nurses, businessmen, artists, actors, writers and pilots. This was a wise investment in every sense: A 1988 congressional study found that every dollar spent on education under the bill returned $7 through increased productivity, consumer spending and tax revenue. Unlike the $505 billion and counting being flushed down the Iraq drain, the G.I. Bill left us safer, stronger, more united and more prosperous. That’s called investing in the future—not for the next quarter, but the next quarter century.
We need that sort of an investment today, a new G.I. Bill for all Americans—not only for those in the military, but those young men and women who might choose other forms of service. Had FDR lived to serve out a last term in peacetime, America would have had such a program of national service. What heights could we have lifted our young people with the half trillion dollars flushed so far down the Iraq drain—and the even larger sum that staying the course will undoubtedly cost in the future. Instead, the American Dream so generously nurtured through the G.I. Bill after World War II is now under siege, from the cost of college to the cost of homeownership to the shrinking middle class to the declining numbers of advanced engineering and science degrees our young people earn.
Now we have the unbearable sight of breadlines for the families of our brave military men and women, inadequate budgets to care for wounded veterans, G.I. Bill college benefits that disappear in a haze of Pentagon fine print—and of congressmen and a president who point fingers everywhere but the mirror.
I was going to say something about how America’s priorities are mixed up when we spend so much more money on destruction that we do on creation, but I don’t think America has priorities anymore. Unless you can count making as much money as possible as a priority. The massive class divide in this country is pushing us back towards the feudal age.
