The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. – Benjamin Franklin
Listen To Takashi Hirose at 10:44 into the video.
Evacuate FUKUSHIMA – ???????? from LeChatBleuDansLaNuit on Vimeo.
Part 1 – The whole international press have blackout the worst catastrophe in modern history. So this is a humble reminder of what really is going on in Fukushima and beyond today ! There is a crime against humanity happening right under our nose and all we can hear is a deafening silence. Please spread this video as much as you can … in the name of humanity ! Thanks !
– Black Student Can’t Be Valedictorian (Courthouse News Service):
PINE BLUFF, Ark. (AR) – A high school southeast of Little Rock would not let a black student be valedictorian though she had the highest grade-point average, and wouldn’t let her mom speak to the school board about it until graduation had passed, the graduate claims in Federal Court.
Kymberly Wimberly, 18, got only a single B in her 4 years at McGehee Secondary School, and loaded up on Honors and Advanced Placement classes. She had the highest G.P.A. and says the school’s refusal to let her be sole valedictorian was part of a pattern of discrimination against black students.
Wimberly says that despite earning the highest G.P.A. of the Class of 2011, and being informed of it by a school counselor, “school administrators and personnel treated two other white students as heir[s] apparent to the valedictorian and salutatorian spots.”
Wimberly’s mother is the school’s “certified media specialist.” She says in the federal discrimination complaint that after her daughter had been told she would be valedictorian, the mother heard “in the copy room that same day, other school personnel expressed concern that Wimberly’s status as valedictorian might cause a ‘big mess.'”
In case you (still) haven’t seen this:
– George Carlin: The American Dream (Video)
– Typing Beats Scribbling: Indiana Schools Can Stop Teaching Cursive (TIME, July 6, 2011):
Who still writes in cursive?
That age-old writing method you might never have used since fourth grade will no longer be taught in Indiana schools come fall, thanks to a memo from school officials. Instead, students will be expected to become proficient in keyboard use.
Seems like a smart move as being able to type efficiently is a vital skill in today’s world, as opposed to knowing how to write cursive, which — like being able to churn butter and knowing how to hitch a horse to a wagon — is no longer needed.
But it might not mean the end of cursive entirely in the state. The directive from the state’s Department of Education allows schools to decide for themselves whether to continue teaching cursive or disband the archaic practice altogether.
NewsFeed has just one question: How will Indiana’s students know how to sign their name?
– 17,020 Becquerels/Kg Cesium in Dirt Cleaned Out from Elementary School Swimming Pool in Ibaraki Prefecture (EX_SKF, July 5, 2011):
And who did the cleaning? Children.
Now on to one of the favorite topics of this blog: Swimming pools in Japan.
Well they did it again, this time the Board of Education in Joso City in Ibaraki Prefecture. Back in May, as one of the annual, educational events of the schools, public elementary schools and junior high schools in Joso City had their pupils clean out the school swimming pools in preparation for the school swimming classes during summer. The teachers also helped out. Together, they cleaned the pools and scooped out the dirt that had accumulated at the bottom of the pools.
5 schools kept the dirt in a corner of the schoolyards. At one elementary school, a concerned PTA member decided to measure the radiation of the dirt. The result? 17,020 becquerels/kg of radioactive cesium.
There are 14 public elementary schools, 5 junior high schools in Joso City. The city’s Board of Education runs both elementary schools and junior high schools.
From Mainichi Shinbun (7/5/2011):
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It was disclosed that 17,020 becquerels per kilogram of radioactive cesium was detected from the dirt that were scooped out from the swimming pool when the teachers and pupils of one public elementary schools in Joso City did the cleaning of the pool in May. The amount is more than twice the safety limit set by the Ministry of the Environment for the radioactive debris that could be buried. The school moved the dirt in a separate area. Upon this news, the city’s Board of Education surveyed the situation of the pool dirt in city’s elementary schools and junior high schools on July 4, and found out there were 4 other elementary schools who had kept the dirt on the school premises.
– How one in four Americans don’t know who their forefathers declared independence from (Daily Mail, July 2, 2011):
Come Monday fireworks will light up the sky across America and many will enjoy time off work for Independence Day.
But shockingly nearly a quarter of Americans don’t appear to know who exactly they are celebrating independence from – for the second year in a row.
– PayPal Co-Founder Hands Out $100,000 Fellowships To Not Go To College (NPR, May 25, 2011):
Peter Thiel, the PayPal co-founder and one of the first investors in Facebook, is proposing a controversial path toward more rapid innovation. Today his Thiel Foundation announced that it was giving 24 people under 20 $100,000 fellowships to drop out of school for two years to start a their own companies.
Some of the recipients are leaving first-rate institutions like Harvard and Stanford to take the fellowship. In a press release, the foundation’s head, James O’Neill, said that in taking the fellowship they were “challenging the authority of the present and the familiar.”
Read morePayPal Co-Founder Peter Thiel Hands Out $100,000 Fellowships To NOT Go To College
WTF!
A Little Village Academy student cringes at an enchilada dish served at his school. Many students throw away their entrees uneaten and say they would rather bring food from home. The school, though, does not allow students to bring in their own lunches, unless they have a medical condition or a food allergy.
To encourage healthful eating, Chicago school doesn’t allow kids to bring lunches or certain snacks from home — and some parents, and many students, aren’t fans of the policy
Fernando Dominguez cut the figure of a young revolutionary leader during a recent lunch period at his elementary school.
“Who thinks the lunch is not good enough?” the seventh-grader shouted to his lunch mates in Spanish and English.
Dozens of hands flew in the air and fellow students shouted along: “We should bring our own lunch! We should bring our own lunch! We should bring our own lunch!”
Fernando waved his hand over the crowd and asked a visiting reporter: “Do you see the situation?”
At his public school, Little Village Academy on Chicago’s West Side, students are not allowed to pack lunches from home. Unless they have a medical excuse, they must eat the food served in the cafeteria.
Teachers, nurses and youth workers are being urged to set up pilot studies aimed at monitoring adolescent sexual orientation for the first time.
Children as young as 11 could soon be asked about their sexuality without their parents’ consent, it has emerged.
Teachers, nurses and youth workers are being urged to set up pilot studies aimed at monitoring adolescent sexual orientation for the first time.
A report commissioned by the Government’s equalities watchdog found that it was ‘practically and ethically’ possible to interview young children about their sexuality.
Controversially, it says parental consent, while ‘considered good practice’, is not a legal necessity.
Read moreAnd Now: UK Teachers, Nurses And Youth Workers Urged To Ask 11-Year-Olds If They Are Gay
Collapse we can believe in!
My Education, My Future
– Detroit Schools Closing: Michigan Officials Order Robert Bobb To Shut Half The City’s Schools (Huffington Post)
DETROIT (AP) — State education officials have ordered the emergency financial manager for Detroit Public Schools to immediately implement a plan that balances the district’s books by closing half its schools.
The Detroit News says the financial restructuring plan will increase high school class sizes to 60 students and consolidate operations.
State superintendent of public instruction Mike Flanagan says in a Feb. 8 letter that the state plans to install another financial manager who must continue to implement Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb’s plan after he leaves June 30. Flanagan’s said approval of Bobb’s plan means the district can’t declare bankruptcy.
Bobb filed his deficit elimination plan with the state in January, saying it would wipe out the district’s $327 million deficit by 2014
Bobb was hired in March 2009 by then-Gov. Jennifer Granholm.
The videos are a flashback and a must-see.
More about Ron Paul:
– Rep. Ron Paul of Texas Wins CPAC Presidential Straw Poll Again
– Ron Paul 2012 – Can you Hear us Now?
– Ron Paul: ‘Is the Gold Really There? Who Owns It?’
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Related information:
– British eight-year-olds publish study in top science journal (AFP)
– Kids’ bee study published in science journal (CBC News)
– Children’s bee study makes it to Royal Society journal (BBC News)
A bumblebee collecting pollen of a cherry blossom. A group of British children aged between eight and 10 had their school project on bees published by the prestigious Royal Society in a world scientific first, the society said Wednesday.
A group of British children aged between eight and 10 had their school project on bees published by the prestigious Royal Society in a world scientific first, the society said Wednesday.
The pupils from Blackawton primary school in the southwestern English county of Devon investigated how bumblebees see colours and patterns using a series of experiments in a local churchyard.
The findings by the 25 children, drawn up with a scientist who lives in the area, have been published in Biology Letters, a peer-reviewed journal published by the Royal Society.
“The field of insect colour and pattern vision is generally poorly understood and the findings reported by the school children represent a genuine advance in the field,” the Royal Society said in a statement.
The headmaster of the school, Dave Strudwick, said his pupils “devised, conducted and wrote up an experiment which resulted in genuinely novel findings, so they deserve to be published.”
The children used patterns drawn with coloured pencil to see whether the insects would go for sugar water and avoid salt water.
“We discovered that bumblebees can use a combination of colour and spatial relationships in deciding which colour of flower to forage from. We also discovered that science is cool and fun because you get to do stuff that no one has ever done before,” they concluded in the paper.
Biology Letters editor Brian Charlesworth said their paper was a “world first in high quality scientific publishing.”
The study can be read at http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2010/12/18/rsbl.2010.1056.abstract
December 22, 2010
Source: Physorg.com (Watch the 17min. video!)
In case you want to know why education sucks:
– George Carlin: The American Dream
DECEMBER 22–A 13-year-old boy was arrested Friday for using a permanent marker while in class at his Oklahoma City middle school, a violation of an obscure city ordinance.
According to an Oklahoma City Police Department report, the boy was spotted “in possession of a permanent marker” by Roosevelt Middle School teacher DeLynn Woodside. The 50-year-old educator told cop Miguel Campos that the student was “writing on a piece of paper, which caused it to bleed over onto the desk.”
Woodside, pictured at right, reported that the child, whose name was redacted by police from the report, attempted to hide the marker when she asked him for it. Strangely, Woodside’s Facebook page reveals that her “likes and interests” include the official “Sharpie Permanent Markers” page on Facebook.
Campos reported that he allowed Woodside, a seventh grade math teacher, to “sign a citation” against the boy, who was then transported to the Community Intervention Center, a juvenile holding facility. A police sergeant subsequently “booked the marker into the property room.”
A police spokesman referred to the student’s bust as a “citizen’s arrest” effectuated by Woodside.
The marker ban–which apparently is aimed at curbing graffiti–stems from a city ordinance making it illegal to possess spray paint or a permanent marker on private property (without the owner’s permission).
(Click on image to enlarge.)
Source: The Smoking Gun
As you read this, there are over 18 million students enrolled at the nearly 5,000 colleges and universities currently in operation across the United States. Many of these institutions of higher learning are now charging $20,000, $30,000 or even $40,000 a year for tuition and fees. That does not even count living expenses.
Today it is 400% more expensive to go to college in the United States than it was just 30 years ago. Most of these 18 million students have been told over and over that a “higher education” is the key to getting a good job and living the American Dream. They have been told not to worry about how much it costs and that there is plenty of financial aid (mostly made up of loans) available.
Now our economy is facing the biggest student loan debt bubble in the history of the world, and when our new college graduates enter the “real world” they are finding out that the good jobs they were promised are very few and far between. As millions of Americans wake up and start realizing that the tens of thousands of dollars that they have poured into their college educations was mostly a waste, will the great college education scam finally be exposed?
For now, the system continues to push the notion that a college education is the key to a good future and that there is plenty of “financial aid” out there for everyone that wants to go to college.
Recently, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan visited students at T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Virginia and encouraged them to load up on college loans….
“Please apply for our financial aid. We want to give you money. There’s lots of money out there for you.”
So where will Arne Duncan be when those students find themselves locked into decades of absolutely suffocating student loan debt repayments?
What young high school students are never told is that not even bankruptcy can get you out of student loan debt. It will stay with you forever until you finally pay it off.
Read moreThe Student Loan Debt Bubble And The Great College Education Scam: 16 Shocking Facts
MIAMI (AP) — Nearly one-fourth of the students who try to join the U.S. Army fail its entrance exam, painting a grim picture of an education system that produces graduates who can’t answer basic math, science and reading questions, according to a new study released Tuesday.
The report by The Education Trust bolsters a growing worry among military and education leaders that the pool of young people qualified for military service will grow too small.
“Too many of our high school students are not graduating ready to begin college or a career — and many are not eligible to serve in our armed forces,” U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan told the AP. “I am deeply troubled by the national security burden created by America’s underperforming education system.”
The effect of the low eligibility rate might not be noticeable now — the Department of Defense says it is meeting its recruitment goals — but that could change as the economy improves, said retired Navy Rear Admiral Jamie Barnett.
“If you can’t get the people that you need, there’s a potential for a decline in your readiness,” said Barnett, who is part of the group Mission: Readiness, a coalition of retired military leaders working to bring awareness to the high ineligibility rates.
The report by The Education Trust found that 23 percent of recent high school graduates don’t get the minimum score needed on the enlistment test to join any branch of the military. Questions are often basic, such as: “If 2 plus x equals 4, what is the value of x?”
The military exam results are also worrisome because the test is given to a limited pool of people: Pentagon data shows that 75 percent of those aged 17 to 24 don’t even qualify to take the test because they are physically unfit, have a criminal record or didn’t graduate high school.
Educators expressed dismay that so many high school graduates are unable to pass a test of basic skills.
Discipline: The Pui Tak Christian School (pictured) have defended their actions of taping up the four-year-old using duct tape
Teachers tied a four-year-old boy’s hands up with duct tape after he misbehaved in class, it was claimed today.
The child’s father Harold Irving said he was totally stunned when he arrived at the Pui Tak Christian School in Chicago’s Chinatown to discover his son trussed up last Wednesday.
But the school insisted that the boy had struck two staff members and acted out of control and needed to have his wrists taped up.
Mr Irving, a former police officer, told the Chicago Sun-Times: ‘I received a call from the school informing me that my son was in the principal’s office because he refused to take a nap, and he didn’t want to wash his hands.
‘I told them that I would come and pick him up. I arrived shortly after that and found him standing there with his hands duct-taped together.
‘I was absolutely stunned. I had never seen anything like that in 10 years as a police officer and my 44 years of life. I have never seen anything like that done to a child.’
Mr Irving, who also has a seven-year-old daughter at the school, filed a complaint with police alleging unlawful restraint and contacted the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services.
Read moreChicago School Teachers Use DUCT TAPE To Restrain 4-Year-Old Boy
The commission has taken up the case of a father who has battled education authorities because his daughter’s fingerprints were taken without permission Photo: ALAMY
The commissioner is also concerned that parents are not allowed legal redress after one man was told he could not challenge the compulsory fingerprinting, without his permission, of his daughter for a “unique pupil number”.
In many schools, when using the canteen or library, children, as young as four, place their thumbs on a scanner and lunch money is deducted from their account or they are registered as borrowing a book.
Research carried out by Dr Emmeline Taylor, at Salford University, found earlier this year that 3,500 schools in the UK – one in seven – are using fingerprint technology.
EU data protection rules, Brussels legislation that overrides British law, requires that the gathering of information such as biometric fingerprints, must be “proportionate” and must allow judicial challenges.
“We should be obliged if you could provide us with additional information both regarding the processing of the biometric data of minors in schools, with particular reference to the proportionality and necessity in the light of the legitimate aims sought to be achieved, and the issue concerning the availability of judicial redress,” said the letter, seen by The Daily Telegraph.
Read moreEU Tells Britain to Justify Fingerprinting Children in Schools Without Parental Consent
Babies who watch TV are more likely to have delayed cognitive development and language at 14 months, especially if they’re watching programs intended for adults and older children. We probably knew that 24 and Grey’s Anatomy don’t really qualify as educational content, but it’s surprising that TV-watching made a difference at such a tender age.
Babies who watched 60 minutes of TV daily had developmental scores one-third lower at 14 months than babies who weren’t watching that much TV. Though their developmental scores were still in the normal range, the discrepancy may be due to the fact that when kids and parents are watching TV, they’re missing out on talking, playing, and interactions that are essential to learning and development.
This new study, which appeared in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, followed 259 lower-income families in New York, most of whom spoke Spanish as their primary language at home. Other studies examining higher-income families have also come to the same conclusion: TV watching not only isn’t educational, but it seems to stunt babies’ development.
Trashed student cafeteria in No.2 middle school Liupanshui city, Guizhou province, China
The inside of the trashed student cafeteria
It is generally estimated that there are some 80,000 – 100,000 public protests a year in China, many of them violent and most never reported. I don’t know how useful a measure of true discontent this figure is – after covering India for four years, I expect they have many more – but one recent protest reported in a Chinese newspaper, Guizhou Metropolis Daily, catches my eye.
The paper reports that a group of Chinese middle school children (aged 15-18) trashed their school cafeteria, smashing windows, breaking tables and (as the pictures show) generally laying waste to the place. The students – the school has 4,000, of whom two-thirds live in school during the week – were persuaded to back to their dormitories only after the police rushed to the café 20 minutes after the rampage began.
I’ve heard of student grumbles in China – about everything from lack of jobs to being forced to give up their summer holidays to attend the parade for the 60th Anniversary of Communist Party rule – but nothing like this. The official cause of the riot, if that’s not too strong a word, was put down to rising prices in the school cafeteria which was sub-contracted to a private company. The price of a litre of hot water had risen by 3p, the price of all dishes, by 5p.
Read moreChinese schoolchildren go on the rampage, trash student cafeteria
Must-read!
By Ed Dante
Editor’s note: Ed Dante is a pseudonym for a writer who lives on the East Coast. Through a literary agent, he approached The Chronicle wanting to tell the story of how he makes a living writing papers for a custom-essay company and to describe the extent of student cheating he has observed. In the course of editing his article, The Chronicle reviewed correspondence Dante had with clients and some of the papers he had been paid to write. In the article published here, some details of the assignment he describes have been altered to protect the identity of the student.
The request came in by e-mail around 2 in the afternoon. It was from a previous customer, and she had urgent business. I quote her message here verbatim (if I had to put up with it, so should you): “You did me business ethics propsal for me I need propsal got approved pls can you will write me paper?”
I’ve gotten pretty good at interpreting this kind of correspondence. The client had attached a document from her professor with details about the paper. She needed the first section in a week. Seventy-five pages.
I told her no problem.
It truly was no problem. In the past year, I’ve written roughly 5,000 pages of scholarly literature, most on very tight deadlines. But you won’t find my name on a single paper.
I’ve written toward a master’s degree in cognitive psychology, a Ph.D. in sociology, and a handful of postgraduate credits in international diplomacy. I’ve worked on bachelor’s degrees in hospitality, business administration, and accounting. I’ve written for courses in history, cinema, labor relations, pharmacology, theology, sports management, maritime security, airline services, sustainability, municipal budgeting, marketing, philosophy, ethics, Eastern religion, postmodern architecture, anthropology, literature, and public administration. I’ve attended three dozen online universities. I’ve completed 12 graduate theses of 50 pages or more. All for someone else.
Read moreThe Shadow Scholar: The Man Who Writes Your Students’ Papers Tells His Story
Cows eat grass. You wouldn’t think it’s a big deal to state this, but at Iowa State University a highly qualified job applicant who had the temerity to voice this simple biological fact was ejected from consideration for a post leading a sustainable agriculture program, The Chronicle of Higher Education reports:
Among those who study sustainability, saying cows should eat grass is not a controversial statement. But saying so in Iowa—which grows more corn than any other state—is likely to attract attention.
Well, it sure did. Ricardo Salvador is a well-respected sustainable agriculture expert and a former professor at Iowa State—and a natural, many observers thought, to lead the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture as its new director. A finalist for the position, however, he didn’t get the post even when the top candidate turned it down. Apparently, his cow comment came back to haunt him:
The remark that may have sunk Mr. Salvador’s candidacy came 37 minutes into his on-campus presentation. While discussing a research project in New York State, he mentioned meat being “produced in the natural way that meat should be produced, which is on land suitable for grasses and perennial crops.”
If this were a TV game show, a loud buzzer would have gone off and Mr. Salvador would have been escorted from the stage that very moment. Because apparently he was supposed to say that cows should eat corn. Even if that’s not natural or sustainable, it’s simply how things are done in Iowa, a state built on big agriculture:
Corn allows cows to get fatter faster and be ready for slaughter sooner. But there are downsides, including the fact that cows have trouble digesting corn and must be fed antibiotics to prevent them from becoming ill. What’s more, the beef from corn-fed cows tends to have more fat.
The danger of the truth is so great that the Chronicle couldn’t even get Wendy Wintersteen, the dean of Iowa State’s agriculture school, to go anywhere near it. When asked whether cows evolved to eat grass, she replied, “I don’t have an opinion on that statement.”
Sheesh. Consider, for a moment, the man that the Leopold Center is named for, famed conservationist Aldo Leopold. In 1939, in the essay “A Biotic View of Land,” he wrote:
Each species, including ourselves, is a link in many chains. The deer eats a hundred plants other than oak, and the cow a hundred plants other than corn. Both, then, are links in a hundred chains.
Sorry, Mr. Leopold, but I’m going to cut you off right there before you say anything more inflammatory. Some university officials are not going to be happy about this.
Listen to Gerald Celente America!
Rome is burning:
So what have the elitists planned for the US? Total collapse and/or WW III?
– Former CIA And Military Officials To Obama: Israel Prepares To Attack Iran This Month
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The HM Inspectorate of Education (HMIe) reported that they were told a “small but significant” number of staff lack the necessary skills to teach the ‘three Rs’ in the classroom.
Among the deficiencies highlighted to the watchdog by head teachers were basic spoken grammar, fractions, long division and mental calculation.
Although some newly-qualified teachers (NQTs) were confident about teaching the 3Rs, the report found that in many instances this self-belief was “superficial”.
Details of the documents were published the day after it emerged just two teachers have been struck off for incompetence over the past two years.
Spending on education has doubled since devolution began a decade ago, but standards have stagnated and Scotland has slipped down international league tables.
Read moreNew UK Teachers ‘Cannot Read, Write Or Count Properly’
This is pure madness. Always follow the money!
Besides do you think it is healthy to be pregnant all of the time?
That is exactly what the pill does to the body, because the pill’s job is to deceive the body to believe that it is pregnant.
Guess why some women have gained so much weight since they started taking the pill.
The number of 11 and 12-year-old girls prescribed the pill by a family doctor has soared five-fold in the past decade, according to figures.
More than 1,000 girls in the first year of secondary school have been given prescriptions for the pill, according to figures from GPs, while a further 200 have long-term injectable or implanted contraceptive devices.
The disclosure prompted warnings that Britain was “facilitating the sexualisation of young people at an every younger age”.
It follows the publication of guidance by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence that sex education should be introduced from the age of five.
Trevor Stammers, chairman of the Christian Medical Fellowship and a GP in south London, told The Sunday Times: “If sex education is introduced in primary schools in the way being proposed, we will see many more 11-year-old girls seeking contraception without pointing out the risks…. We are going to make matters worse.”
One pupil complained that his school was being turned into a “prison” because of the use of CCTV and other security measures Photo: PA
Researchers found the widespread use of CCTV, ID cards, electronic registration systems, fob-controlled gates and fingerprint technology as schools attempt to crackdown on troublemakers.
Staff at one comprehensive patrolled corridors and playgrounds with radios to make sure children behaved at lunchtimes, while teachers at a private school used technology to spy on children’s computer and internet use.
Researchers suggested that the sheer scale of surveillance was fuelling paranoia among many pupils.
According to the report, children at an all-girls’ secondary school claimed that “voyeuristic” cameras could be used to monitor them in changing rooms and toilets.
The conclusions, in a study by Hull University, come amid growing concerns over a rise in the use of surveillance techniques in schools.
As many as 85 per cent of teachers have reported the use of CCTV in their schools and one-in-10 admitted cameras were even trained on toilets.
This comes despite claims in another report that the collection of CCTV images or other biometric information could contravene the Data Protection Act.
