Cash for grades? Whose crazy idea was that?

I’ll swap you two Cs for an A…

Not quite. Apparently it was a fund-raising scheme that backfired.

A $20 donation to Rosewood Middle School would have gotten a student 20 test points – 10 extra points on two tests of the student’s choosing. That could raise a B to an A, or a failing grade to a D.

Susie Shepherd, the principal, said a parent advisory council came up with the idea, and she endorsed it. She said the council was looking for a new way to raise money.

“Last year they did chocolates, and it didn’t generate anything,” Shepherd said.

Shepherd rejected the suggestion that the school is selling grades. Extra points on two tests won’t make a difference in a student’s final grade, she said.

But it does sell the idea that fake intelligence can be bought by people rich enough to afford it. Cripes, I’m glad this idea fell through. Kids are dumb enough as it is without parents paying schools to add bonus points to test results. Like that changes the fact that your kid has no idea where the Mississippi river is, or who was the first President or whatever fact got missed on the test in the first place. Good grief.

Carmen Zepp, a Raleigh parent, said there should be policies against offering students test credit for anything other than what they’ve learned.

Zepp objected this year when her daughter’s social studies teacher at Knightdale High School had students bring to school tissues and hand sanitizer. The supplies counted for 25 percent of a “supply check” grade.

“It’s awful,” Zepp said. “It’s indicative of the fact that our schools don’t have enough money. They can’t get tissues or hand sanitizer or whatever without bribery. And that’s pretty sad.”

Shepherd, the Rosewood principal, said her school needs more technology. She said any money raised would help buy digital cameras for the school’s computer lab and a high-tech blackboard.

What happened to low tech whiteboards, overhead projectors and handwriting skills? Surely most kids can get the tech at home anyway. Interesting note about tissues and sanitizer though. I recall in school we had tissue on our list of things to buy but we didn’t get graded on whether or not we actually brought the stuff to school. What a weird arrangement.

So, if money isn’t going into schools for supplies and necessary technical advancements (can’t say everything they want falls under “necessary”), where is it going?

ChristWire writer wants to buy a Canadian?

First, quoting from Amber in all her (hopefully) satirical glory. First there’s a bit of a tirade about Mexicans and then:

Thinking about this, one thing popped into my mind. Why can’t I own a Canadian?

Think about it. Racism is ugly and trusting one’s neighbors is Christlike, so we should also let people from ALL the lesser Americas to come visit us to work as well. Canada is a country full of snow-bound savages who are good at chopping wood and light industrial tasks.

Pause for LOLS.

Reminds me of those hilarious questions the tourist industry shares about ignorant Americans (and others) about this great land that’s really big.

But I digress.

TBear offers a sensible comment to counteract all the asshattery:

It may be a joke, but how do you feel when you read “jokes” told at the expense of American values and stereotypes or about the enslavement of a fellow human being. Nobody anywhere should use slavery as a joke. It is a disgusting part of North America past that sane minded individuals are happy has ended. Using slavery as a punch line undermines severe oppression slaves endured.

Additionally, I am a Canadian, but I have lived in many countries. What this article promotes is found around the world. Canada is a thriving country with an excellent economy and an amazing democratic system. Yet these “jokes” are pervasive on the internet and in other forms of media, and they restrict Canada from gaining the respect it deserves.

Jokes may be intended to be light hearted, but when you are the subject you are never happy about it. I acknowledge that this article must be written in jest, but I still reserve my right to be grossly offended at the content and the intended or unintended propagation of negative stereotypes.

I agree.

I don’t think ignorance and stupidity need to be tolerated, not this kind anyway. People need to be taught, not humoured. It’s beyond inappropriate to encourage this kind of thinking, even in jest.

Research proves it, tv is “detrimental”

What is it now, you ask? A recent study into parents, toddlers, and attentiveness has led to expected results. Science Daily includes the journal information at the bottom of their report on it for those interested in seeking the whole thing out.

The researchers studied about 50 1-, 2-, and 3-year-olds, each of whom was with one parent, at a university child study center. Half of the one-hour session, parents and children were in a playroom without TV; in the other half-hour, parents chose an adult-directed program to watch (such as Jeopardy!). The researchers observed how often parents and children talked with each other, how actively involved the parents were in their children’s play, and whether parents and children responded to each other’s questions and suggestions.

When the TV was on, the researchers found, both the quantity and the quality of interactions between parents and children dropped. Specifically, parents spent about 20 percent less time talking to their children and the quality of the interactions declined, with parents less active, attentive, and responsive to their youngsters.

Were they studying TV as a background attention catcher, or parents’ attentiveness while physically watching TV? It’s not completely a TV’s fault parents don’t pay attention, if that’s the direction they were going here. Similar results probably would have happened had the activity been housework, food prep, or any other random every day thing a parent does. Parents can’t possibly devote 100% attention to their child every moment of the day. Maybe TV is an added distraction, but it would never be the sole cause of parent-child interpersonal dysfunction. There are always more factors in play, more forces at work.

Not every parent would automatically pop the TV on to fill silence in a room. Some parents are naturally more intuitive and play well with their children and give them plenty of fun and functional activities and a lot of opportunities for talking back and forth. Other parents might rely more on siblings to fill attention gaps, much to the thrill of siblings, I’m sure. Maybe they’re relying on daycare or babysitters or nannies to provide the necessary socialization because they don’t have the time or inclination. We don’t know.

I’d be curious to see how the selection process worked. Did they get samples from enough kinds of families? Rich, poor, working class, etc? Would ethnicity skew these results at all? What about size of town they live in? Would the channel matter? Were they picking families that already admitted to high television use, or did they mix it up to include some that rarely watch, too? What if a parent picked Much Music Retro instead of a Q&A quiz show? Could they see the TV or just hear it? How was “level of interaction” determined in order to figure out how much less there was when the TV was on? Did volume play a role? Too many questions for the amount of information we have, sadly.

If this study is going to be worth a nod, it’ll have to be tried again with a bigger pool than 50 kids, surely? It’s evidence of a trend, but what else can really be said about it?

Quotable cowbells

No, I’m sorry. I misread it. It’s Kbells (sic throughout):

I kind of have a problem with discrimination laws in general. Is it really the Governments business who I hire or rent to? Theses laws have some employers reluctant to hire minorities in vital positions because they are afraid that if it doesn’t work out they won’t be able to fire them without a lawsuit. I’ve known employers who will reserve a harmless, dead end job for the minority employee. They will also try to double up by hiring a black woman making it harder for a black men to get hired. Now they will have to hire a gay, black woman.

I always thought people should be hired because they are the best qualified, not because an employer needs to meet some quota “equal opportunity” malarky. On the flip side, a crap ass effort can be given by anyone on any job. To assume you’ve been sacked because of your ethnicity rather than anything you haven’t (but were supposed to have) done is like putting the cart before the horse, isn’t it? Or am I having a hard time approaching this because I’m a white lower-class French-German-Irish-Canadian right-handed, brown-haired, eyeglass-wearing woman?

Oh, to have a world not built for sorting folks into labels… what a world it could be.

Anyway, the quote is under an article at WorldMag which reports on a successful gay rights issue being supported and approved by Mormons in Utah – the right to housing and employment:

Passage made Salt Lake City the first Utah community to prohibit bias based on sexual orientation or gender identity. Under the two new ordinances, it is illegal to fire someone from their job or evict someone from their residence because they are lesbian, bisexual, gay or transgender.

The gay community of Utah is willing to tick the win column on this one and why not?

“What happened here tonight I do believe is a historic event,” said Brandie Balken, director of the gay rights advocacy group Equality Utah. “I think it establishes that we can stand together on common ground that we don’t have to agree on everything, but there are lot of things that we can work on and be allies.”

God will, of course, still strike them down if they dare try to get married, but I suppose it’s a start.

“The church supports these ordinances because they are fair and reasonable and do not do violence to the institution of marriage,” Michael Otterson, the director of public affairs for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints said.

Yes, gay marriage has the power to do violence. I had no idea. The love is that amazing, eh? They’ll actually destroy an institution with it. Wow. Makes me think the institution of marriage isn’t built very well, if that’s the case. And how many wives can Mormons have again? But exceptions are only good when they’re in your favour. Right…

(full AP article)

You’re so vain, I bet you think this plate’s all about you…

Sorry. I don’t even like that song. However, it was all I could think of to lead into results of an attempt to bring Christian vanity plates to cars in South Carolina. Similar stories have been in the news before, but now the Daily Telegraph reports on the pro-choice judge who said the one word they never wanted to hear: NO!

The southern state’s legislature had already approved the licence plate, but Cameron Currie, the district judge, said the plate was unconstitutional because it violated the First Amendment, which requires the separation of church and state.

“Such a law amounts to a state endorsement not only of religion in general, but of a specific sect in particular,” Ms Currie wrote.

Well done, Judge Currie, for coming down the side of equality here instead of preferential treatment.

“Whether motivated by sincerely-held Christian beliefs or an effort to purchase political capital with religious coin, the result is the same.

“The statute is clearly unconstitutional and defence of its implementation has embroiled the state in unnecessary (and expensive) litigation.”

Via Friendly Atheist, I get a link to more information showing just how petty and egotistical this plate war is.

some legislators openly admitted that they would not vote for similar plates for minority faiths.

Nobody would be forced to buy them; vanity plates are entirely optional. Generally I think they’re pretty stupid, but whatever. If your whole identity is tied up in how strangers see your car, you’ve got bigger problems than what your license plate says.

(If you think that’s bad…)

Too many snowflakes make an avalanche

And for a teacher already snowed under, an unexpected encounter with a motivational speaker allowed her see the snowplow she never noticed before — quit catering to kids who won’t try.

had I heard that message years ago, it would have helped with my teaching. For a long time, I thought that it was my responsibility — in some form or fashion — to “move the rock” for my students whenever they were not performing well in class. If they were challenged to complete assignments on time, or if they didn’t perform well on assignments, I, like most of my colleagues, would cut them slack and give extensions or permit rewrites. If their motivation was insufficient, I worked even harder to make my classes more interesting. I’d go to the teaching workshops. I agreed to follow Student Services’ advice to redesign assignments so that literally everyone enrolled in my classes — qualified or not — could succeed. Mid-semester, I would inevitably feel like I was doing ten times more work than they were. In fact, I was doing considerably more work than the students were.

As a student, I deserved every crappy mark I ever got. I never blamed anything but my own apathy when I handed in poorly written work, incomplete assignments or did inadequate studying for tests. I also deserved every excellent mark I got because I worked for them. It was so much easier to do the work whenever I loved the class, of course.

Sure, there are stories of great teachers who change the world for their kids, and others where only one kid sees how great the teacher is and they both benefit by some oddball tutoring. But too many stories are like the ones I’ve quoted above. Generations of kids have been raised in a gimme world where hard work never has to pay off because doing nothing results in the same rewards.

I’m glad I washed out of teaching. I think if I had to let kids pass when they hadn’t learned everything they’d need for the following years, I would have felt like quitting anyway. Yes, it’d be great if every aspiring teacher worked as hard to inspire students as this woman did – especially if it paid off.

But when all that work doesn’t pay off? How can anyone expect kids to learn how to deal with life’s challenges if we never let them experience any?

—-
Unrelated but interesting to me – a study done to determine how many college students lose religion led to interesting results. Those who went into biology and some other sciences didn’t lose much in the way of god-belief. Education courses are apparently a major haven for religious folks and for people like me who turned out to prefer social sciences instead (thank the maker of fine macaroni) usually wind up with the least faith of them all. More about that here.

“Ridicule is the passport into the violence to come”

I’m picking on Andrée Seu again today. She was the one whose commentary I tsk’d over in regards to how women dress. Today her gripe is with Larry David’s character urinating on Jesus in a recent Curb Your Enthusiasm episode. I admit that I can agree with her assumptions of quality television.

One good thing about not being a TV watcher is that I am impervious to the “frog in the pot syndrome.” Everything shocks me because the last I tuned in was to the 1960’s Bonanza.

Supposedly if you throw a frog into a boiling pot of water, it’ll leap out in a panic. If you start with the frog in cool water and slowly warm it, the frog gets used to the changes in heat and doesn’t realize it’s getting boiled alive until it’s much too late to do anything about it. Turns out that’s all a lie. Once the frog gets uncomfortable, it’ll make every attempt to get the hell out.

Unlike this woman, I’m not at all shocked by what passes for entertainment in the world. She must wander the world with her ears blocked and blinders on if she hasn’t already noticed all the terrible humour out there. She’d be wrong to assume that’s all there is, though, just based on one bad experience.

So when my friend told me about the Sunday, October 25 episode of HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm, I suffered a genuine Alvin Toffler “future shock.”

Future Shock was written by Toffler in 1970. In it he suggests that technology has been changing so fast that it becomes stressful and traumatic for people who can’t adapt as fast. As someone who is witnessing the dawn of a New Library Age (more on that Monday and the coming weeks) I can concur in theory. I doubt a new library catalogue for the province is going to change divorce rates or increase drug use but I’ll bet library crime will see a big boost once people realize fines have increased to a dollar per DVD per day. I suspect a lot more will walk out the door and never return rather than get properly borrowed.

But I digress. Back to the Curb Your Enthusiasm episode.

The plotline involves Larry David, who plays a caricature himself on the show, going to the bathroom in the home of a Catholic woman where there is a painting of Jesus on the wall next to the toilet. The David character somehow manages to spray a drop of urine onto the icon, and it lands on Jesus’ cheek, below his eye.

Later the woman emerges from the loo and announces that a miracle has happened: The Jesus picture is crying. The audience has a good laugh at the stupid Christian’s expense.

I’m going to agree with how tacky it is. It’s sad that people like Larry David use their shows to malign stupid Catholics. It’s not really their fault they see miracles where none exist. It’s built into the lifestyle. Unlike the frog who isn’t dumb enough to stay in a stupid situation, so few Catholics are willing to do the same. They can’t see how stupid it is for some reason.

Why would the first assumption be a miracle rather than thinking Larry’s an ass who can’t aim his stream? Why would any Christian put Christ’s picture so close to the toilet anyway? I’m forever worried I’ll drop a comb down the bog, they’d risk knocking Jesus in every time they reach for a new roll of toilet paper? Bizarre is all I can say about that.

The German population of the 1930s didn’t wake up one morning and decide to kill Jews. The relentless poisoning of the atmosphere through media softened them up. For instance, Julius Streicher’s Der Sturner magazine ran cartoons featuring characters with large noses, engaged in immoral acts. Ridicule is the passport into the violence to come.

Catholics had nothing to do with all that, of course. Pius was the very vision of piety. God must have wanted all those Jewish folk to die horribly. Hate Hitler, but don’t question God. But he did save some Jews, apparently. By insisting they abandon their faith and become Catholics. Isn’t that helpful? Sure is, betcha by golly.

No, the Germans left it up to their leaders to make some bad decisions and let themselves be encouraged to act on their dislike and distrust of the Jewish population. Why were they disliked and not trusted prior to the 1930s? I’m not a historian so I can’t illustrate just how the rest of Europe felt about them, let alone the Germans. I do know that Hitler’s holocaust wasn’t the first ever attempt to rid the world of Jews. It’s a two thousand year old prejudice. Maybe older. Is there any valid logical reason behind antisemitism beyond religious differences? Not that I can see.

You know how fear breeds? By pairing ignorance with superstition. Rather than make attempts to understand something different, it’s mocked, ridiculed and demonized instead. Is that fair? Hardly. The only way to fight prejudice is to be willing to look beyond it for some truth.

The difference between the presumed offenses Christians experience and the real offenses Jewish people have experienced is very great. I don’t think ridicule has to lead to violence, though. Propaganda can be a step toward violence, but Larry David demonstrating a complete lack of care is just bad television. Did people laugh at the crazy Catholic? Probably. Were Catholics offended? Probably. But they can’t say he didn’t illustrate a common fault of the Catholic faith. Belief without proof. Ignorance with superstition.

That’s something everyone should work on fixing, regardless of religious leanings.

Brookstone can have my business, too

I love silly persecution stories. This one I find via World Net Daily. Apparently a man was ejected from his job with Brookstone for telling a gay co-worker how wrong it is to be gay.

Peter Vadala was fired, and the company says he violated a tolerance policy. But Vadala reports his dismissal came because he expressed his Christian view of homosexuality after a female manager made repeated references, as she approached him four times during work hours, to her plans to marry her lesbian partner.

“At the start of the day, she told me she was getting married. I told her ‘Congratulations,’ and asked, ‘Where’s he taking you on your honeymoon?’” Vadala said.

“She replied that her partner was a ’she,’” he continued, “So I immediately tried to change the subject.

“I think she knew I was uncomfortable talking about it,” he continued. “But, she brought it up to me three more times during the day.

Girls tend to do that when they’re getting married, so I gather. Rather than try to change the subject, Vadala could have asked her about the honeymoon destination, if it was going to be a large service or elopement, and be cordial and politely interested for a few moments before wandering off. What did he do instead?

What do Christian Scientists believe?

When my alarm went off this morning I caught the tail end of an interview on Saskatchewan’s Morning Edition where Sheila Coles was wrapping up a chat with Linda Feldmann, the Washington Christian Science Monitor correspondent about the governor races from yesterday.

Why would CBC use a Monitor correspondent? Wouldn’t a Christian Scientist rag be a teeny bit biased when reporting on results? Or would they be no worse than any other media? She sure seemed to be on Sarah Palin’s side, at least, and approved her endorsement of candidates.

I see that support for gay marriage collapsed in Maine and Washington State’s referendum to keep gay couple rights on par with hetero couples had similar problems, but narrowly won out in the end.

Beats me why people make such an issue out of that. Daft. Stupid bible, making a sin out of it. Stupid. Stupid.

Ah well anyway, that’s all I’ve got right now. I should probably care more about the political jungle that is the U. S. of A. We’re neighbours after all. I should be caring what Canada does, too. I’m one of the 70ish percent that never got around to voting against our mayor last week. I totally meant to…

If you can’t control yourself, it won’t matter what women wear.

I don’t know what to make of a letter like this. It was posted by Andrée Seu, a woman who writes for WORLDmag.com:

I don’t know how it affects women, but men need some inner backbone on this subject, too. And someone needs to point out for women the desperate need for modest apparel. Too low at the neck, too high at the hem (if there is one), and too tight up and down—it all cheapens the woman (“strutting her stuff,” so to speak), and makes men’s lives miserable

I can only assume this is an American Christian man, but surely he’s not going to suggest women need to wear hijabs because he can’t figure out how to control his urges and deal with them maturely and responsibly. Although it seems Andrée agrees with me, stating how Cro-Magnon this concept ought to be, she soon changes her tune.

We have not cared enough about men, and our guilt is great. “For it is necessary that temptations come, but woe to the one by whom the temptation comes” (Matthew 18:7). If we thought plunging necklines were harmless, a cultural fad; if we sold ourselves the notion that ubiquity made for desensitization; if we deceived ourselves into believing that the game of “entice and deny” was fun for them—let us be sure that this one man’s letter represents thousands. What was lust for thousands of years is still lust. What was cruel for thousands of years is still cruel.

What was useful to propagate a species for thousands of years is still useful. Without lust in some measure, how does any creature attract a mate or keep one? I’ll agree with her in essence, though. There is a tendency in our society for women to behave and dress in a way that would indicate a willingness to strip and wiggle, even if they don’t actually have any desire to do either on the demand of a man. I can certainly understand why the guy might feel there are mixed messages coming from all directions. Because there are.

But it isn’t just a problem for the women to do something about. Who designs clothes? Who selects costumes for TV shows? Who picks what television shows will get a pass after the pilot is viewed? Who decides what qualifies as attractive? Who buys for stores? Who photographs women for CD and magazine covers? Who pays for the lascivious advertising? Who scripts it? Who hires the women willing to put themselves in front of the cameras to flaunt their bodies for a buck?

Many women may be willing to tramp around playing Sex Object all the time, but how many men are going to stand up and complain about that? This guy seems to be doing so, but not because he protests the only role seemingly available for women in our society, but because he doesn’t trust his own ability to resist primal urges related to these supposed feminine wiles.

I’m in my mid 60s, and I fight this battle every single day, and it is not fun. It’s warfare, and not only in the secular workplace. Even my dear Christian sisters in the Lord are for the most part clueless! And there’s no way to educate them that I know of, because the reaction would be to cry bondage or legalism, or worst of all, ‘What’s wrong with you, man?’ There is nothing wrong with me. I am just a man, struggling every day to keep myself pure, just as the Bible says, ‘The holiness without which no man shall see the Lord.’

I don’t think he wants to educate these women. He’s having trouble controlling himself, so he seeks to control how women dress as if that will solve the problem. It’s not their problem, though. It’s his. Making women cover up doesn’t solve the problem these kinds of men have with sexuality. I don’t mean promiscuity — I just mean women and the shapes we mature into, just as men may become more muscular and broad shouldered as they age.

But what’s Andrée’s suggestion?

Sanctification begins in the mind. Next time we’re standing by the water cooler, sisters, and engaged in conversation with a colleague of the male persuasion with whom we are tempted to flirt and preen, how about if we pretend that he is our brother, or father. I would not be surprised if this new mental habit proves enormously helpful in curbing the cruelty.

Yeah, it’s cruel of women to taunt men with bodies they have no intention of giving over. It’s one thing when the men appreciate the flirting on the level it’s given, as harmless fun, but obviously not every guy can think of a woman’s body as harmless and I suspect that few women would pick up on the difference when they wiggle over to the water cooler on stilettos to flaunt their boobs and asses as they lean over to get a drink.

Where am I going with this? I think I’m aiming for an education angle. As women, we need to be more aware of how we come across to men. We need to be more reserved in some cases because our natural bodies (with unnatural improvements?) are going to get some men excited whether we wear sweats or lingerie. No matter what we women do, there will be men turned on and incapable of looking at us like rational equal human beings. Men we might be grossly turned off by if we realized exactly what they were thinking when they look at us.

There will be men who think like this man, who’ll blame us for their control issues. It’s not our fault, but I think we should be aware of them anyway. I suspect these are the kinds of guys who make the headlines when women get assaulted.

** This has been a cross-post. Check for comments at ADKOB **