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It's the shocker of the century, I tell you.( Read more... )Of course, the comments are atrocious. A lot of people there blame affirmative action, citing studies (that they can't name) proving that black people get into college 100, 300, 500, or 800 points lower on the SAT than their white peers. At some number that might be true, I don't know what number that is. Of course, getting into Harvard at 300 points lower than everybody else is still a major accomplishment... especially when, on the other side, "everybody else" includes people who got in because Daddy went to school there and bought them a new building last year. In the end, though, it doesn't amount to much. "Oh, their diplomas aren't worth as much because they got in at a lower SAT score!!!!" So? Look, it doesn't really matter if you got in because of the color of your skin or the color of your money - or heck, the color of your goddamn panties! What matters is staying in. Unless I'm mistaken, grading isn't typically done with affirmative action in mind (although bribes of cash or sex might be part of the equation, I guess), is it? If anything, I'd assume that the proportion of graders who think "oh, affirmative action!" and grade accordingly is about equal to the proportion of bosses and HR folks who think that and hire accordingly. And then there are the comments that combine that line about affirmative action with "Well, the black people I've met don't dress right and don't know how to talk and I don't like them". Who the hell are they hiring? I've yet to meet the person (of any race!) who didn't understand that you talk and dress and act one way with your family and friends and another way at the office and at church. (Worst is the person who phrased that exact argument as "Unlike ME, black people insist on clinging to their ethnic identity in clothes and hair and speech". Somehow that contrives to sound even more offensive than "They dress like slobs and can't string one word in front of the other and are all going in to work drugged up and playing loud music at their desks all day".) Edit: Telling quote from a comment by ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) cumaeansibyl: Fun fact: while I was at K, a fellow student discovered that the average high-school GPA of male students was lower than that of female students, low enough to be statistically significant. At another school this might be explained by athletics, but K is a Division III school, which means nobody gives a shit. Rather, as one of my profs pointed out, the majority of applicants to most co-ed colleges are female, and school administrations are loath to admit too many women for fear of being labeled a "girls' school" -- this is especially a problem at small, private liberal-arts schools like mine. Generally they aim for a max 60/40 split female/male split, but even that means rejecting more qualified female applicants in favor of their male counterparts. And guess what? We had hardly any black students when I went there, so it definitely wasn't about race. It was discrimination in favor of white men.
Now, like I said, if they could hack it, good for them. But I'd like to see some of those commenters argue that those nice white boys' diplomas are worth less because they got let in for being white boys, because that's where their logic takes them.Tags: articles, economy, race, racism
I'm feeling:  annoyed
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Who owns lesson plans? Is it the teacher who wrote them? Well, most of us would say that if you spend hours of unpaid labor doing work to make you better at your underpaid job, you get to own what you make then. And apparently some teachers would say so too, which is why you can buy teacher-made lesson plans online. (Of course, you could always buy lesson plans somewhere, but some teachers are cutting out the middle man and selling their own plans.) And then - shock and horror! - they're spending the money they earn. Oh, sure, mostly that money appears to be going towards classroom supplies, which I would think the state should pay for, but sometimes - terrible! - they're paying for things like mortgages and home repair and the occasional dinner out. Yes, they're living the high life and it's WRONG WRONG WRONG. Lemme tell you something. If teachers have to resort to selling the fruits of their hard (and otherwise unpaid!) labor online in order to pay off their mortgages (or, worse, purchase the supplies that should have been provided for them and their students already), there's room for outrage, sure, but not at the teachers. (For that matter, even if they're spending that money on fast cars and trips overseas in first class, who gives a fuck? This is a capitalist nation, isn't it? Can't they spend the money they earned from their time however they like? If we're gonna get all "socialist" about our public school teachers, well, I may just move! To Canada!) Of course, the comments are a pain. Some people are under the impression that buying and selling lesson plans is EXACTLY THE SAME as buying and selling tests. Stupid. We don't expect surgeons to re-invent the art every time they pick up a scalpel, do we? No, we tell them how the procedure goes when they're in school (and still being tested on these things) and then we let them do it. Why should teachers spend hours of their own (unpaid!) time writing up a lesson plan on something they have to cover when 50 other people have already done it? They've already passed their tests, we assume they know how to teach (if they don't, well, then they need all the help they can get, don't they?), so let's help them do it already! ( Read more... )Tags: articles, education
I'm feeling:  aggravated
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Here's one on the intelligence of fishiesNow, we all hear a lot about goldfish. People get goldfish for their kids because "they're easy to take care of, and die soon anyway". They put them in bare bowls because "well, they don't need more, and they die soon anyway, and they're not that bright". They don't do anything about stimulation because "well, they're not that bright, and they die soon anyway". These statements would be troubling, except that the premises are totally flawed to begin with! When properly cared for, goldfish live decades - so all those fish that "died soon anyway" did so because they were killed by incompetent owners. And given that you can teach a goldfish to do a variety of tricks, I'm not so sure they're as unintelligent as all that. It's cruelty to have an animal and not give it any form of stimulation at all, it's like locking them in solitary for their whole life! ( Read more... )Two articles on two different kindergartens. One on a charter school that "justifies" its trip to the farm by calling it "test prep".Some of the comments are disgusting, blaming parents for kids not going "to the zoo". When are they supposed to go to the zoo? On a weekday, when it closes at 5? On the weekend, when it costs $12 per person and is crowded besides and you have to do your shopping and your cleaning and visit family and go to church? Uncool, guys. ( Read more... )And one about an absurdly expensive private school for gifted kids( Read more... )An article on zero waste facilities and communities( Read more... )And finally, one on problems faced by African immigrants in the Bronx( Read more... )Tags: animal welfare, articles, early education, education, environment, science
I'm feeling:  bouncy
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They're all here, I'll just pick and choose( Not much snark this time )I want to end with the closing paragraphs of the actual article: Recently, Amy Utzinger, a mother of four in Tucson, Ariz., let her daughter, 7, walk down the block to play with a friend. Five houses. Same side of the street.
Afterward, the friend’s mother drove Mrs. Utzinger’s daughter home. “She said, ‘I just drove her back, just in case ... you know,’ ” recalled Mrs. Utzinger. “What was I supposed to say? How can you argue against ‘just in case’?”I'll tell you how you argue against 'just in case'. You point out that the risk of dying in a fatal crash is so insanely high that you never let your child enter a car without your permission and stare at this woman as though she's deluded - which she is if she has to drive your kid five houses instead of, you know, walking her... or watching from the porch. Tags: articles, child development, childhood, free range
I'm feeling:  cheerful
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I'll link and c+p it in a second, and I'll also quote (and snark) some of the more interesting comments, but before I even get to that part I want to say something. I've often found that, online, the people I disagree with have much worse writing skills than the people I *do* agree with - and to quote one of my new favorite characters, Clementine, I am not even exaggerating! This is doubly (and hilariously, and ironically, and sadly) true when I disagree with the self-proclaimed Defenders of Language. It's bad enough that one can't correct another person's spelling without making a huge error in their own comment, but these people who go on and ON about how much learning the "cannon" did for them cannot even tell the difference between "would have" and "would of", or between a full sentence and a barely comprehensible fragment. I'm not cherrypicking. I refuse to quote *all* of them just because they're hypocritically less literate than they claim to be, but keep this in mind when reading the comments: The critical ones are almost all like that. I don't claim to have perfect writing either (I never was clearly taught about commas and semi-colons, I freely admit that), but at least I don't claim my education is better because it involved some classics. (At least this group, unlike the ones who threw a hissy fit over the teaching of the specific jingle "I before E", seem to have enough reading comprehension skills to understand the article. That's a change.) Any comments in bold are left by me. Click for article!( Read more... )And of course, the comments.Before you click the link, note that a lot of the comments disparage comic books (and graphic novels don't exist). I still don't understand whence this scorn. Now, my uncle, back before he did all those drugs, used to be (my mother says) quite bright. And the whole class was shocked when he did superwell on his reading assessment in elementary school because "all he reads are comic books!" Of course, he read them voraciously and probably read some that were "above his level", and there's the difference. Ray Bradbury, in Fahrenheit 451, makes the point that it's the content, not the delivery that matters - if we tell great stories by television, they're still great stories. People forget he made that point in the book, but he did. ( Read more... )Tags: articles, books, education
I'm feeling:  sleepy
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Fairly interesting, but the real attraction is at the link in the article.GoToplessSee, you're reading along about history, and equality, and toplessness, and we've got some pictures and it's all well and good until suddenly, apropos of nothing, we get: Who can participate? We welcome everyone! GoTopless was founded by the Raelian Movement, which recognizes that life on Earth was created by advanced extraterrestrial scientists. These scientists, both male and female, used their mastery of genetic engineering to create humans in their own image (breasts included!). GoTopless includes thousands of women and men, who have a wide variety of beliefs, affiliations, etc...Right. Well, I cherish the right of all people to believe what they want to believe. I suppose randomly stating your belief that humans were created by aliens is, in fact, no weirder than if the same site had randomly stated that they're members of any more conventional faith. (Which just goes to show that there's a time and a place. Not everything needs to be linked to your religion.) This is them. I don't think I'm converting any time soon, but then, I'm also not converting to any older and more established belief systems. In 500 years, who knows what people will think? Tags: articles, links
I'm feeling:  tired
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Here's an article about parents who dislike their kids getting an icee (note spelling) at the playground or when out and about, and who are working to prevent unlicensed vendors for no reason other than that they don't like saying no to their kids. (That's how it reads, anyway.)Choice quotes: 1. Parents in most places improvise solutions — running the other way when they hear the jingle or telling their children that they left their wallets at home.
2. As a new mother, she said, people coach you on potty training and what to feed your child. “But the ice cream truck, nobody ever mentions that,” she said. I have the answer to both of them: Be the parent and tell your kid "no". No, they CANNOT have an icee. No, they CANNOT keep whining for one, repeatedly. My nieces, they know that asking over and over again will turn a yes or a maybe into a no, will turn a no into a time-out - or an immediate trip home. This isn't hard, is it? Or say yes. No skin off my back, that's for sure. ( Read more... )Tags: articles, food, kids
I'm feeling: annoyed
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Backers of Gay Marriage Rethink California Push ( Read more... )As Charter Schools Unionize, Many Debate Effect ( Read more... )Files Vanished, Young Chinese Lose the Future ( Read more... )Kyrgyzstan: At the Crossroad of Empires, a Mouse Struts ( Read more... )Scientists Worry Machines May Outsmart Man ( Read more... )Meet the New Elite, Not Like the Old ( Read more... )Tags: articles, china, education, gay rights, politics, race, science
I'm feeling:  busy
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An article on psychological problems faced by Chinese-American children coming "home" to their parents after being sent to live with their grandparents. Interestingly, it seems the worst of these problems are caused by what ought to be a good thing - due to the proliferation of preschool, parents are calling their kids home at younger ages than they used to, at 2 instead of 6. Of course, two year olds are less likely to understand that these strangers are their *families*, you know?( Read more... )An article on changing ways of life in the Amazon( Read more... )An article on Sephardic Jews on the Jersey Shore( Read more... )Tags: articles, child development, china, ecology, health, immigration, religion, science, south america
I'm feeling: cheerful
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I'm reading through the comments now.It's a pity some of the examples chosen are so... weird, like the kid who peed in the friend's yard and whose mother was surprised he wasn't invited back. ( Read more... )There's a wide range of comments, but there are a few that keep coming up that I wanna reply to. (Alas, comments appear to be closed now, so I can't do so there.) 1. There's the "I don't want to sit where your kid's (potty-trained) naked butt has been" argument. This makes a lot of sense as a personal squick, but as a rational "because of germs" argument it fails. If your pants and underpants can't prevent the terrible germs from eating you from the bottom, why would the kid's pants and underpants have prevented the germs from getting on the seat in the first place??? Unless you're both naked on the same seat, in which case you're being a little hypocritical. (And it's not like kids are bastions of hygiene anyway. I'm more worried about sitting where their hands have been than their butts!) I can only assume these are the people who, uh, sprinkle when they tinkle. 2. There's the "OMG! Pedophile! They'll hurt your kids!" argument which makes some more sense... except where it doesn't. For most people, nudity is less alluring than a certain type of clothing. I don't know, I guess pedophiles could be different, but I suspect that most of them would also be more attracted to clothed kids (especially in, say, "grown-up" outfits that are vaguely sexualized) than naked ones. 2a. There's also the "I don't want pedophiles seeing my kids and not going near them!" argument, which is another one that works as a personal squick (and one I wouldn't argue with) but that probably doesn't harm the kid at all. I can only repeat my earlier argument and say that if they're getting off watching your kid, they're probably doing it no matter what your child is wearing. (Best not to think about it too much.) 3. There's the "If you don't clothe them fully from the time they're born, they'll never learn social norms!" argument, which is just nonsensical. We all learn things as we get older. (And just because somebody allows their child more freedom in this area does not mean that they never discipline their child. Logic, plz.) 4. And there's one more pedophile argument (we sure do have a lot of them) which runs "If you don't make them wear clothes, they'll have no idea something is wrong if an adult tries to harm them!" That also makes no sense. Surely you can teach a kid about not touching private parts without making them wear clothes inside your own home? Or teach them that it's okay for KIDS to be naked but not grown-ups? Or, if you're a naturalist, teach them that some types of behavior are okay when naked, but not others? Tags: articles, child development
I'm feeling: awake
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retreat.... 
chipper
upset
bored![[info - community]](http://s.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
ecstatic
shocked
contemplative
excited
gloomy
bitchy
numb
pensive
blah
calm
thoughtful
determined
apathetic
predatory
awake
