A gathering of more than one-third of all full-time faculty members at West Virginia University voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to call on their institution’s president, Michael S. Garrison, to resign over his involvement in the awarding of an unearned executive M.B.A. degree to the daughter of the state’s governor.
The motion calling for Mr. Garrison’s resignation, which is nonbinding, was passed by 565 faculty members. Thirty-nine faculty members voted against the motion, and 11 abstained.
The measure considered at Wednesday meeting, which was open to all faculty members, was identical to a motion that passed last week by a wide margin in the university’s Faculty Senate (The Chronicle, May 6). The motion includes a vote of no confidence in Mr. Garrison, and calls on him to resign “for the good of the institution and for the benefit of our students.”
A friend (who is a female science professor) sent along this piece from The Chronicle News Blog:
For women contemplating careers as science professors, the numbers are daunting. More than half of the bachelor’s degrees in science and engineering these days go to women, but they run into a high hurdle when it comes to securing academic jobs. Fewer than one in three science and engineering professors are female, and the numbers for full professors drop to one in five. So Congress held a hearing today to consider how to raise those odds.
The first comment, from a “woman who left science for a more fulfilling career,” suggests that maybe women are just too smart to take that career path and points to this article so, she says, we’ll know what she means:
Why does anyone think science is a good job?
The average trajectory for a successful scientist is the following:
age 18-22: paying high tuition fees at an undergraduate college
age 22-30: graduate school, possibly with a bit of work, living on a stipend of $1800 per month
age 30-35: working as a post-doc for $30,000 to $35,000 per year
age 36-43: professor at a good, but not great, university for $65,000 per year
age 44: with young children at home (if lucky), fired by the university (”denied tenure” is the more polite term for the folks that universities discard), begins searching for a job in a market where employers primarily wish to hire folks in their early 30s
This is how things are likely to go for the smartest kid you sat next to in college. He got into Stanford for graduate school. He got a postdoc at MIT. His experiment worked out and he was therefore fortunate to land a job at University of California, Irvine. But at the end of the day, his research wasn’t quite interesting or topical enough that the university wanted to commit to paying him a salary for the rest of his life. He is now 44 years old, with a family to feed, and looking for job with a “second rate has-been” label on his forehead.
Why then, does anyone think that science is a sufficiently good career that people should debate who is privileged enough to work at it? [READ ON]
My friend says, “While I don’t necessarily agree with everything this guy says, his general sentiment is interesting and prudent…more distressing are the comments to the original chronicle article.”
As the craze for Obama spreads across the French countryside, the concern of Democrats Abroad is growing, as fear that Hillary could be doing irreparable harm to the Party’s likely standard-bearer in November starts to take hold.
“She’s playing the Bush card and the politics of fear. It’s because of her that we have the shameful racial bias that has been introduced into the country! It makes me crazy!”
“This election concerns the entire planet … it’s important to us … we are attentive to the emergence of this candidate bearing hope and who is open to the world.” Read the rest of this entry »
April 14th, 2008 by SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist
In this TMV blog I keep writing occasionally on subjects that have an important role to play in increasing positivity in discussion and debate on matters related to politics. After all what is politics?…Surely, not just the circus where politicians are the key players. Politics percolates down to, and influences, health, education, art and culture…In fact all spheres of life.
As India dreams of (and works towards) joining the big league of powerful/”developed” nations, there are many individuals/institutions that have raised pertinent points as to whether we are headed towards the “right” direction. The big questions relate to the need to retain the vitality of the social fabric and ensuring social equity in this mad race to reach the high GDP targets.
Recently, I came across two write-ups on these concerns, as also about the role of media, by those who have earned a name for their contribution in the field of education and social welfare in India. The first is by Madhav Chavan of “Pratham”, an NGO that was recently given The Hewlett and Gates Foundations Award $9 Million towards its “Read India Campaign”. To read Chavan’s article please click here…
(The grant supports Pratham’s “Read India” initiative, which is working in conjunction with Indian state governments to help ensure that children between the ages of 6 and 14 achieve basic mastery in these skills by the end of 2009. The grant to Pratham will improve basic learning skills in 100 districts of India, touching 10 million children spread over 10 states for three years.)
The second article is by a sensitive young lady concerned at the questionable priorities of the mainstream media. Writes Snigdha Jain:
— Rush-hour murder on Kalkaji street, April 8, 2008 — Tibetan protests burn bright, Olympics torch put out in Paris, April 8, 2008 —Gurgaon pub brawl injured two pilots and their friends, April 7, 2008 — Rape and murder of British teenager, April 6, 2008
“This is all that I get to read in the newspaper and see on the news channels everyday. The news that creates vibes or sells has to be related to crime or political gimmicks. All my mornings begin with reading about incidences of rape, murder, bomb blast, riot, suicide and so on. On the one hand, it instills a certain degree of fear in me but, on the other gives me a sense of comfort that I am not one of the victims. But, is it really so? Don’t we all get affected by things happening around us? Read the rest of this entry »
While Hillary Clinton reminds voters that, if she wins, they can tell their daughters a woman can be President, Barack Obama is going deeper into parenting advice and telling them what they might “not want to hear.”
After a programmatic answer about issues in education to a mostly African-American audience in Beaumont, Texas, according to Shailagh Murray of the Washington Post, Obama asked, “Can I make this one last point?” and went into a riff about the role of parents.
“It’s not good enough for you to say to your child, ‘Do good in school.’ And then your child comes home, you’ve got the TV set on, you’ve got the radio on, you don’t check their homework, there’s not a book in the house, you’ve got the video game playing.
“So, turn off the TV set, put the video game away, buy a little desk. Watch them do their homework. If they don’t know how to do it, give them help. If you don’t know how to do it, call the teacher. Make them go to bed at a reasonable time. Give them some breakfast.”
As the crowd cheered, Obama asked, “Can I get an ‘Amen’ here?”
“Since I’m on a roll, if your child misbehaves in school, don’t cuss out the teacher. You know I’m right about that. Don’t cuss out the teacher, do something with your child. I’m speaking the truth. I’m telling you, I won’t just tell you what you want to hear.”
February 16th, 2008 by SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist
I was a full-time journalist for more than two decades. And have been a teacher for a decade now. I enjoyed the article below, especially as a weekend read…A welcome relief from the almost morbid fixation on thrills/sensationalism related to politics (as if nothing else matters in life!!!)…
“We never forget our best teachers - those who imbued us with a deeper understanding or an enduring passion, the ones we come back to visit years after graduating, the educators who opened doors and altered the course of our lives…” More here…
February 16th, 2008 by SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist
I was a Beatles’ fan in my teens. A few years after the famous British pop group had visited their Guru’s ashram, I undertook a journey to Rishikesh in India. Situated on the banks of the mighty/holy river Ganga/Ganges when it enters the plains (with the Himalayas providing a picturesqe backdrop), the ashram became our abode for a few days in the early 1970s. Our co-blogger at the TMV, Brij Khindaria, who was then with the Reuters, accompanied us.
It was a fascinating experience. Although I ‘crashlanded’ learning the Maharishi’s ‘flying yogic’ technique, I thoroughly enjoyed my stay for a couple of days there…
“Crank? Crackpot? Charlatan? Maybe all three. Yet Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who died on February 5th (in his ‘home’ in the Netherlands), was generally benign,” says The Economist. “He did not use his money for sinister ends. He neither drank, nor smoked, nor took drugs. Indeed, he is credited with weaning the Beatles off dope (for a while). He did not accumulate scores of Rolls-Royces, like Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh; his biggest self-indulgence was a helicopter.
“Nor was he ever accused of molesting choirboys; his greatest sexual impropriety, it was said, was to make a pass at Mia Farrow…After the 1960s he seldom appeared in public.
“Moreover, his message was entirely laudable. He did not promote a cult or even a mainstream religion preaching original sin, purgatory and the likelihood of eternal damnation. He just wanted to end poverty, teach people how to achieve personal fulfilment and help them to discover ‘Heaven on Earth in this generation’. And yogic flying, of course…”
November 13th, 2007 by SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist
Helping slow learners in a school is a worldwide challenge. Now an education charity, which has the enthusiastic backing of the British Dyslexia Association, has achieved a 90 per cent success rate in returning children with severe literacy problems to mainstream classrooms, reports The Independent.
“The revolutionary scheme is being used in a dozen schools in Manchester and London, and the plan is now to set the scheme up in 10 other inner-city areas – bringing a lifeline to around 10,000 children suffering from dyslexia and other difficulties with reading and writing.
“Experts say there would be no shortage of volunteers for the programme, with estimates putting the number of dyslexic pupils in state schools at more than 300,000. In addition, national curriculum tests for 11-year-olds show around 120,000 youngsters a year leave primary school failing to reach the required standard in English. A recent survey by the National Union of Teachers showed the majority of teachers (77 per cent) believe they are not well enough trained to teach dyslexic pupils.
“Dyslexia is thought to be neurological in origin although there is also growing evidence of a genetic link. Tens of thousands of parents have only realised that their child may suffer from the condition when he or she falls behind in school. The Springboard project, which has also transformed the reading and writing skills of non-dyslexic children suffering severe literacy problems, relies on intense one-on-one tuition for up to two years, during which a host of innovative techniques are employed to improve the child’s skills.
“The scheme strips away the fear and stigma, to the extent that children at the unit are proud enough of their achievements to have their photographs taken while learning in it.”
October 30th, 2007 by JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
Have we now come down to the “nitty gritty” on why President George Bush is so absolutely adamant on nixing the expanded or even the REVISED expanded children’s health care…even though it has wide bipartisan support?
President Bush told Republican lawmakers on Tuesday he will not agree to legislation expanding children’s health insurance if it includes a tobacco tax increase, a decision that virtually ensures a renewed veto struggle with the Democratic-controlled Congress.
And there you have it. These are the days when educators, schools and presenters who go into elementary, junior and high schools try to warn kids about the dangers of tobacco. On a more personal note — something I seldom do on this weblog — I have been doing just that in October in my anti-drug program in schools which also includes a vigorous warning to kids about tobacco usage.
I’ve been doing this for many years — way before May 27th when my World War II veteran father Richard Gandelman who had survived the Great Depression, the war, raising three baby boomer kids, a host of illnesses including a cancer in remission, died after waging a courageous but futile battle against lung cancer. He had been a smoker all of his life until he quit some years ago via hypnosis. But he quit too late…
The last time I saw him in Connecticut he had lost 25 lbs. and gifted me a ring of his because he had already lost his wedding ring which slipped off his finger due to his weight loss. He sat at the kitchen table and joked about being able to eat seconds and even thirds of ice cream without gaining weight. He was on bottled oxygen the last six months of his life and when he breathed, he gurgled. He died two weeks after I last saw him. He was within a hair of dying of cancer when pneumonia finally took him.
So at a time in the United States when health officials, school officials, teachers and cancer victims are warning youngsters not to smoke, the President is clearly putting himself on the side of tobacco…and he has a long history of being there.
But will up-until-now loyal Republicans go along with THIS? Perhaps not this time:
The president also suggested he would not be willing to sign other types of tax increases that Democrats have attached to major legislation, including an energy bill, according to numerous officials who attended a closed-door meeting at the White House.
Bush’s remarks represented a hardening of the administration’s public position in a running veto showdown over Democratic-led attempts to enact legislation that provides coverage for 6 million children who now lack it. The officials who disclosed his comments did so on condition of anonymity, saying they were made in a closed-door meeting.
The president vetoed one children’s health bill, and Democrats failed to override him in the House.
His threat to veto a replacement measure that cleared the House last week has led to a hurried round of negotiations among lawmakers in both parties and both houses.
Their goal is to reach a compromise that can command enough votes to gain the two-thirds majority needed in both houses to override the president’s veto, if necessary.
The negotiations were private, but in an ominous sign for the White House, Republican leaders said during the day they might defy a White House veto.
Bush can couch this in the lofty rhetoric of him opposing tax increases. And he has already made it clear that his ideology takes precedence over allowing the original version of children’s health care from going through.
But in this instance he is making it abundantly clear what his values appear to be: to prevent a tax increase on his longtime big tobacco buddies that would help raise money and perhaps continue the trend towards making tobacco products more costly to those who make the unhealthy decision to use them — and make it increasingly inconvenient for young people to get started on an often tragic and ill-fated path.
October 22nd, 2007 by DR. CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS, TMV Columnist
This is a picture of Than Schwe’s latest publicity stunt in Burma, posting in public places, photographs of his innocent victims in chains and often beaten. Each prisoner is forced to hold a sign admitting to their crimes against Than Schwe. They were rounded up for as little as clapping as the monks and nuns marched, for as little as giving food to the holy people. One grim young couple who were arrested, appear to be holding their little child close in their arms. Arresting innocent people and babies. Beating people up. Murder in broad daylight.
Yes, Than Schwe, this is bound to bring you and your family and all who support you, the further dishonor from the world powers that you so deeply seek. Consider it a fait d’accompli. By your own choices, you are disgraced in the eyes of the civilized world.
Over these past weeks, I’ve sent notes by email to all my correspondents and other sources I could find within or near Burma.
In the past 14 days, Silence. Silence now from most all of them.
This is one of my notes sent, and the answer I received today.
Please, do you have any news of the monks and nuns in Burma in the last
week? I write for The Moderate Voice newsblog and have written
several pieces on Burma in the last two weeks. We all fear for the
holy people and those who have supported them. If there is any way
we can help, please let us know. We are in the US. With kindest
regards, this feels like a message in a bottle, Dr. C. Estes
We are sorry but we cannot have any further information.
Given Than Schwe’s absurdist propaganda released two weeks ago, “reporting” to the world as though we are all mentally defective morons, that he ordered raids of monasteries and there found American flags with Nazi swastikas marked on them, masses of pornography … that Than Schwe thought we would find his diseased 1950s ideas of American outrage to be in any way viable in 2007, is pathetic.
Compared to Than Shwe’s worldwide reputation now as a public assaulter and murderer of innocent holy people, families, elders and the young… by contrast, the Silence coming from the people of Burma seems like a language of its own… ‘the people’s Silence,’ an eloquent language that is true to their hopes and fears, a rarity in a Burma where twenty foot tall lies are daily propped up by little 5 foot-nothing Than Schwe.
There’s a saying in the family of humankind Than Schwe, that the larger the lie, the more easily it topples of its own weight.
Allen Ginsberg, American poet and Buddhist, was also eloquent about dictators like Than Schwe: In a work he called “Wichita Vortex Sutra…”
… war is language,
language abused
for Advertisement,
language used
like magic for power on the planet:
Black Magic language,
formulas for reality —
Communism is a 9 letter word
used by inferior magicians with
the wrong alchemical formula for transforming earth into gold
– funky warlocks operating on guesswork,
handmedown mandrake terminology
that never worked…
…Sorcerer’s Apprentices who lost control
of the simplest broomstick in the world:
Language
_____________
CODA
As per the older woman in the foreground of the photo. Don’t ever underestimate old women. They know what’s going on before most anyone else does. The dear child with her, is her reason for ‘reading the air…’ just in case refuge is suddenly needed.
October 14th, 2007 by DR. CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS, TMV Columnist
A Conversation with Dr. Jack Kornfield, American Buddhist Teacher trained in Thailand, Burma and India…on Burma, Buddhism, H.H. the Dalai Lama, and non-violence.
Kornfield is one of the foremost teachers of Theravada Buddhism in the West. He was trained as a Buddhist monk in Thailand, Burma and India (He is on the far right in the photo). He graduated from Dartmouth in 1967, joined the Peace Corps in Public Health Service in northeast Thailand, home to some of the last forest monasteries of Buddhist monks and nuns.
There Buddhist master Ajahn Chah became his teacher for many years. Returning to the United States, Kornfield took a Ph.D. in clinical psychology and became a founding teacher of the Buddhist Spirit Rock Center in Woodacre, California.
I met Jack some years ago when we were both teaching at a symposium in D.C. His father suddenly took a turn for the worse, and Jack was called away. I joined in teaching Jack’s group in order to help, and we have had a friendship since then.
Now 62 years old, he is a soft spoken, devout man with a secular sense of humor lurking beneath the surface, a wonderful trait in a religious. He meets yearly with the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, India, and has published twenty books.
Here is a part of our conversation from October 9, 2007, about the use of violence against violence; the potential use of violence to effect change in Burma… from one man’s deeply Buddhist point of view.
Clarissa Pinkola Estés: “Jack, Buddhists often seem simpatico with others I grew up amongst and admired; Amish, Mennonites, Quakers, Dunkards, priests, brothers and nuns of The Holy Cross … most all being people who often managed to act calmly in helping to aright injustices in the midst of mayhem all around. It’s one thing to be calm in a peaceful mountain monastery, and quite another to act calmly on a festering street corner in East L.A.
“But, right now, looking between the worlds at the murderous mayhems of our times, many hearts are breaking for the millionth time, Jack, and this time, it’s Burma again. On the newsblog I write for, Themoderatevoice.com, some thoughtful commenters have said, amongst other cogent ideas, that the Burmese monks and nuns perhaps ought arm themselves and overtake the junta.
“As an old believer, I know a literal warrior pledges to strive to act with courage in the face of scorn, ridicule and aggression… but not to act in violence. Yet, I know there are warrior traditions in my faiths, amongst them, the Knights, and that there is a warrior-monk tradition in Buddhism from times of old too, as amongst some of the Samurai. Neither of these ancient traditions are portrayed well in modern works, seeming instead to have been severed from their mystical underpinnings…
“… But, thinking of the Burmese again, can holy monks and nuns arm themselves in aggression? Can this be integrated somehow in the non-violent heart of Buddhism?”
Jack Kornfield:”I’d tell you a story about His Holiness, the Dalai Lama. A group of young Tibetans came to the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala. They told him they were very distraught by the suffering of the Tibetans, and thought they should go back into Tibet armed. They said, We have lost temples, nuns, monks, our culture. We want Stinger missiles for we have nomads who know the mountains and the Chinese don’t know our mountains, and we can launch from there.
“The Dalai Lama put his head in his hands and wept. He reminded them of the Buddhist precept of no killing, no harming living beings, the precept the Dalai Lama has taught all his life as the incarnate head of Buddhism. His Holiness told the young Tibetans, I don’t know if I have done the right thing; but I’ll step down if I have done it wrong. If I believed I have taught untruth, I would resign.
“I’ll tell you another story. We have in our history as Buddhists, many times of being treated unjustly… Yet, I knew Maha Ghosananda, the holy man of Cambodia. After Pol Pot, one-third of the population of Cambodia was massacred. Ninety-five percent of the monks and nuns were felled.
“We were in Thailand at the time, and traveled to where refugees were from Cambodia. And Maha Ghosananda came as the elder to the refugee camps, and he asked permission from UN to reopen a Buddhist temple right there in the camps.
“It was dangerous to do. The Khmer Rouge were underground in the refugee camps. The KR said to the refugees, You go to this man, this ceremony, and we will kill you later.
“But, there in the midst of thousands and thousands of tiny bamboo huts, Maha Ghosananda rang a sacred bell.
“25,000 refugees came; the ones who’d’ had their village temples burned, the ones who’d survived the murders by the Khmer Rouge of their elders, their children, their sisters, brothers, parents, so that now a family was one grandparent and two children left, or one uncle and one niece, left.
“Mahan Ghosananda chanted in Cambodian and Sanskrit, chanting from the Dhammapada, that Hatred never ceases by hatred, that hatred is conquered by love, that this is the ancient and eternal law…
“25 thousand Cambodians who had not heard the holy scripture aloud in years, were chanting and weeping. Read the rest of this entry »
October 11th, 2007 by DR. CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS, TMV Columnist
How it goes.
After the massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton Colorado in 1999 where 12 students and one teacher were murdered by high school seniors Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold (who then killed themselves)… many people in the community, in the nation and in the world wondered could more people have been saved? What happened to spread the alarm? Who heard it, who did not? What was the students’ response? The teachers’? What should have been set in place long before? There were many other questions. We might have one more small answer now.
Today, an extraordinary film was released by CNN, a home video made yesterday by a Cleveland Ohio student, Warren Marks, of his teacher and classroom of students at his Success Tech Academy when a ‘code blue’ was called over the loudspeakers. The students in Mark’s math class didn’t realize it, but at that moment, one of their classmates was loose in the school with a loaded firearm.
The students as shown on the video are very slow to react to protect themselves. Precious time is lost until what appears to be an alert teacher climbs up and stands on a desk trying to quiet and focus the raucous students, shouting at them that this is not a joke, to stop laughing, this is to be taken seriously.
More moments before the message sinks in; til the students organize and finally lock down in the classroom. This chaotic and slow response comes in part from the students not immediately having enough specific information about the threat.
For many persons in general, when confronted with alarm, it’s a knee-jerk reaction to initially question or disbelieve there’s a real threat. Despite old media which no doubt will now seek out students who have been proximate to violence before and portray that as ‘the norm’, most students reacted normally… they still expected the inside of the school to be a protected place.
Asa Coon, the troubled 14 year old student who was the reason for the ‘code blue,’ subsequently shot two teachers and two students, and then took his own life. One teacher was shot in the back, one in the chest; the latter teacher having now had surgery and being listed in ‘fair’ condition.
We know the drill.
1. Troubled student
2. Students complained about the student
3. Teachers brought the issue forward
4. Evidence of ill intents found in troubled student’s writing, video, artwork
5. Others tried to intervene but were not supported
6. Other attempted to install precautionary rules /devices in school system
7. Nothing effective accomplished
8. Student gave warnings of impending homicide/suicide
9. Student had known serious mental distress
10. Student kept falling through cracks in terms of containment, help.
11. Harassment, ridiculing, scorning confrontations against/ with troubled student continue by others.
12. Firearm obtained
13. One last straw occurs
14. Psychotic break
15. Murder, suicide.
October 10th, 2007 by DR. CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS, TMV Columnist
WAYS OF LEARNING…
I’m teaching myself to draw because I would like to be able to draw some ideas I have for editorial cartoons… some sharp and hard-hitting ones, I hope. I met a young guy at the camera store recently who is going to art school.
How I envy him; to have teachers to help you, tell you, show you, let you in on some of the ’secrets’, some of the simplified ways of proceeding that are effective, leave you be; to have time, to have that setting in which to work; the rays of comradaries with others who are wide open. It all sounds so wondrous even with the usual petty jealousies and egos sometimes permanently attached to air hoses.
But, my life has been different, more like the tsiganok road, the gypsy scholar. I have learned, mostly on the far back wall in my cave, most often in the tiny spaces I can pluck, pry from life, like picking time out of the tight corners of a walnut shell, for writing, for thinking, and especially for receiving thought and image and dream.
Tonight, I thought I’d share some of my struggle to learn this latest imperative; to draw; because I think there are a lot of peeps like me; who have heavy commitments of family, elders, animals, children, grandchildren, work, community, activism, and marvel sometimes to find one can actually make progress while riding a merry-go-round forward for miles and miles.
Somehow this week in addition to all other commitments–and learning to draw—and fix a broken faucet– I’m trying to get my ‘early flu shot’ because I’m considered in the ‘fragile group,’ which I hate mentioning even to myself… I was born with what used to be called ‘delicate health.’ Except my wings are broad and strong. Mostly.
So, here’s my plan for learning to draw. First, I’m cutting out pictures of different ‘types’ of cartoons/ drawings to try to get an overview of the stylistic field. I admire Ralph Steadman’s ink splatted cartoons; he was the editorial cartoon artist who accompanied/illustrated the madman Hunter S. Thompson in Gonzo. I like Ben Shahn and Speigelman’s Maus I and II.
And then there are the cartoonists who are lesser drawers to some extent, but who carry consistent sharp messages, like Oliphant. I notice that sometimes the message is greater than the draftsmanship and sometimes the draftsmanship is absolutely angelic, but the message is just eh, so-so. What would it be to have talent at both, I wonder.
Talent; one of the best definitions I know, is that talent is what comes easy. In which case I have no talent for anything, except possibly loving. I don’t recall anything else coming easy. I’ve had to work as hard as and sometimes harder than most to do elemental things, like learning to spell, to read, to write.
A few years back, I taught as an artist in residence in an elementary school and came across a teacher teaching ‘invented spelling.’ Wow, it was exactly my kind of blue highway. The emphasis was on the kids learning to write their stories instead of focusing on spelling the words right. Their parents, the teacher told me, often complained that they couldn’t read their kids ‘invented spelling.’ But I could, and realized I was a genius at reading such things. The weirdness of dyslexia will do that for you.
This teacher by placing emphases on storytelling and not ‘correct’ form, was allowing the songbirds to fly free in the children’s’ minds without putting harnesses on them and limiting their wingspans. I expect children who grew in this way, unencumbered by forms smaller than the vast well they were drawing from…though they would learn to spell correctly eventually, will now for all of life know what comes first in creative life is the story first, the tiny barricades and curbs to ‘standardize’ it, coming, most often, second.
Seeing the children take such joy in writing and illustrating their stories, again, made me wish I and others of my generation would have had that too. Instead, many of us were sort of all weirdly folded and stapled, before we could ride a bicycle; trees are always green and brown and never blue, never purple. But they are, I would protest, deep in the woods the bark is purple in dusk and the film under the bark is shiny silver.
But no. We’d not be having any purple or silver trees, or as I once drew, a red-headed friend with orange, and green fire in their hair. ‘That’s not real,’ said my teacher. But she must have forgotten that when you sit behind a red-headed child and the sun hits his hair, his whole head jumps into tiny rainbows on fire. So utterly awesome.
So, each time I draw, I still first have to drag aside all those lead curtains dropped down over the child artist, ones that fill the mind with endless questions of propriety rather than questions of wonder. However, I am making progress, I think. I now make Read the rest of this entry »
Randy Pausch is a man of his time, a popular computer-science professor who lectures about time management and has done pioneer research in robotics and virtual reality. He is 46 years old, happily married and has three young children. A year ago, he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and now has only months to live.
For almost everybody else, dying is the most private experience of a lifetime. Aldous Huxley once wrote about terminal illness: “We live in one universe and die in another.â€
Not Randy Pausch. He is sharing his final days as a joyous celebration of life, on his web site, in a lecture for his students and a YouTube encounter for the rest of us.
September 2nd, 2007 by DR. CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS, TMV Columnist
The underlying conservati/liberati philosophies of various professors has been given some sharp sunshine lately. Inquiries have surfaced about which profs/schools are too much of one and not the other. This has apparently led to a new genre of publishing for parents and students who wish to even more precisely target Universities which carry their own affiliations/ affinities and exclude their opposites.
One of the first forays into a new kind of ‘choice’ in university education, curriculum, professorial political philosophies to match a young person’s politics…is this book…
Choosing the Right College: 2008-2009: The Whole Truth about America’s Top Schools (Choosing the Right College) is a 1000 page paperback by John Zmirak who has edited two books previously about how to choose a college by the politic/ideology of professors and what some would think of as a classical or Great Books curriculum. His previous books are endorsed by Thomas Sowell and Phyllis Shlafly and Laura Schlessinger.
The publicity for the book reads:
“The guide also provides specific advice on which professors to seek out—and which courses and departments to avoid.
“As an exclusive feature, Choosing the Right College advises students which courses they should take at each school to provide themselves with a true core curriculum. This unique build-your-own-core feature is one more reason that Choosing the Right College has become the most valuable and trusted college guide on the market for students seeking a genuine liberal education.
There’s a bit of a clang there, between previous endorsers and the idea of ‘liberal’ education, but I ordered the book. I thought it’d give an interesting snapshot of our current culture changes in higher ed. perhaps… and, at least one man’s ideas about how to categorize it all. I’ll let you know.
In the meantime, I’m wondering about choosing teachers by their personal or public politics and philosophies. I can see how that would be useful if one were studying one’s own affiliated religion, Read the rest of this entry »
This time it’s aimed at what he calls a 16 year old high school “pinhead” (the one, obviously, who he disagrees with and who energetically challenged him).
You can watch the video, read a post with original reporting on what was reportedly said to the student who challenged O’Reilly before he went on the air — and then decide yourself by CLICKING HERE.
PS: O’Reilly is a real showman. But make sure you read the post before you watch the video. Also, note how at the end O’Reilly attempts to end the segment in a condescending way that puts down the 16-year-old “pinhead” — but the “pinhead” gets in the last word.
Hopefully both students won’t confuse a short talk show discussion aimed promoting “high concept” controversy and negative labelling as a thoughtful discussion of a controversial issue.
But we think they’re smarter than their elders elder.
June 14th, 2007 by SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist
Surviving in a growing climate of violence, aggression and competition is becoming a big challenge in the contemporary world, especially for children. So how does one retain one’s sanity?
It is always heartening when one hears about innovative methods to overcome the odds. And here comes the news about how Yoga is gaining in popularity among school kids ranging from four-year-olds to 12-year-olds in Britain.
No routine/classical Yoga for children. They are being taught yoga postures, breathing and relaxation techniques through adventure stories that capture a child’s imagination. And the results are encouraging.
“Everybody get into the lotus position…. A business that brings yoga to primary schools around the country is yielding startling results - quieter lessons, better test scores and more confident children,” reports Julie Ferry in The Independent.
“YogaBugs is a company that has trained more than 1,100 teachers in their dynamic yoga programme…Through government initiatives like the School Sports Partnership, these teachers are now seeing around 40,000 children a week take part in lunchtime and after-school yoga clubs, which aim to improve fitness, flexibility and concentration.”
Under the American legal system, there are appropriately few exceptions to the principle that a lawsuit must include the real name of the plaintiff – and that the accused be allowed to face their accuser in court.
The exceptions under which plaintiffs can file suit under a pseudonym usually include sexual abuse, which has been the case in a number of lawsuits against Roman Catholic archdioceses, as well as mental illness, personal safety and abandoned children.
But in a disturbing end run around that time-honored standard, the parents of a high school student are hiding behind a “Jane and John Doe” moniker in their civil suit against Bruce H. Smith Jr., a history teacher at Pleasant Valley High School in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania.
The Does accuse Smith of showing their daughter and other 16- and 17-year-old students photos of Sharon Tate and other nude and dismembered victims of the Charles Manson Family, and teaching from an unpublished personal memoir that includes sexual references.
The Doe’s lawyer, Cynthia Pollick, did not respond to my query about why they are being secretive, nor is it clear whether the federal court in which the suit was filed will allow it to go forward with pseudononymous plaintiffs.
What is obvious is that the Does, who are demanding a jury trial, are troublemaking wackjobs.
They claim in their suit that their First and Fourteenth Amendment rights were violated, that the district “retaliated” against them by revealing their names, that Smith “scared them” when he called them in an apparent effort to mend fences, and that they “have suffered substantial anxiety and emotional distress.”
The school district denies revealing the Does’ names and says it followed proper procedures after the parents complained.
Smith has not spoken publicly, but students say that he regularly gives students advance warning before presenting graphic images or excerpts from his memoirs, and uses them to reach students desensitized to violence and sex.
In the end, the Does will do far more harm to their child than Smith could have ever done.
This is because Smith is a teacher so beloved that area Internet bulletin boards are full of emails from present and former students praising him for his infectious teaching style and condemning the Does. There even was a demonstration in support of Smith outside of Pleasant Valley High School last weekend.
It is widely know at the school who the Goodie Four Shoes are, and their daughter surely will be teased, ridiculed and ostracized, a lesson that is not part of Smith’s creative curriculum.
This is a situation where it would be justifiable to out Jane and John Doe in the local newspaper for their self-righteous cowardice, but the Pocono Record doesn’t do bold or courageous, so I’m not holding my breath.
![[The Telegraph, U.K.]](http://www.timesonline.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00322/Cartoon_322830a.jpg)
