Here Comes Another One: Miss Jada Williams!!

h/t New Black Man



You better do it girl!! Come on! - Blaque Swan

Jada Williams, Student, Allegedly Harassed For Award-Winning Essay Comparing School To Modern Slavery

(Strike-through mine.)

Reading, Writing, and Walking Out!

After the Washington state government proposed in a special legislative session to cut education funding as a way to close a $2 billion budget gap, hundreds of students from Garfield High School walked out of class in protest, the Seattle Post Intelligencerreports.

See what happens when you stop funding education? You start losing R's.

Occupy Your School! What!

Vanilla ice cream, Cadillac car.
We're not as dumb as you think we is!
     -black comedian whose name I can't remember. I would've made that the title, but you can see how long that is.

Bronx Students Occupy Public Education, Release 10-Point Plan

       A group of young activists from the Bronx called say they’re being deprived of a quality education, and they’re prepared to fight for something better.

The Revolution Will Be Taught, Part I

The importance of teaching accurate history cannot be overemphasized. It gives children a proper sense of their selves and their communities. What Texas, and Arizona by the way, did to the textbook standards of their soft subjects in racist, egregious, and just plain wrong. Texas's partisan state board of education put forth standards propograting a racist and inaccurate history. I found that insulting as well as disappointing.

So hearing that the NAACP and LULAC are joining forces against Texas’s SBOE gave me incredible pleasure. (h/t Joe @ racismreview):

The Texas NAACP, Texas LULAC and Texas Association of Black Personnel in Higher Education (TABPHE) are holding a press conference, with partnering groups to announce the filing of a request for a proactive review by the U.S. Department of Education and its Civil rights division. The request addresses many aspects of discrimination against minority public school students in Texas, including recent changes to history and educational standards in social studies. Texas State NAACP President and National Board Member Gary Bledsoe said, “Education remains the most critical element in the long term economic and social interests of all American citizens. Reasonable people of good will must guarantee that all students, regardless of race or economic circumstances, be given the tools needed to become successful in a rapidly changing global economy. We must also be held to a high standard of accuracy in conveying historical events to students who will use this information to compete for educational access not only in Texas, but increasingly around the country and world. We must not allow the use of our compulsory education system to misinform and negatively impact the academic capacity of our most important natural resource – our children. Our action today seeks on objective review of the partisan attack on the public education system in the State of Texas.”

State LULAC President Joey Cardenas said, “We were shocked at the actions by the State Board of Education in emasculating our history. It is necessary for our own well-being and that of the people of our State that we do all that we can to ensure that what they have done does not end up being a reality. Our State and nation will suffer from what they have done and emotionally and psychologically it will greatly harm our young people. Dr. Rod Fluker of TABPHE said that one of the things we are most worried about is how this will impact teachers and the kinds of attitudes it will bring to our next generation of young people to move into this field. This is a serious problem.” Bledsoe said that one thing we are looking for is to invalidate the standards so that they do not become a reality. “This is like a criminal assault. The message is that you have no worth. We cannot let this become official policy.” Cardenas added that “we have engaged the State in litigation before and will do so again if necessary.

“In challenging the Standards, the Texas NAACP wishes to applaud State Board of Education Members Lawrence Allen and Mavis Knight for supporting us in this initiative. Dr. Felicia Scott of TABPHE said that it is important to note that the most offensive items were opposed by all 5 minority Board members who voted as a block, “that really says something about how offensive these matters are, and this is from a purely academic and humanistic perspective with no injection of politics.” 

I'll share more of my thoughts later. For now, Professor Kevin Michael Foster, a graduate faculty member in the Departments of African and African Diaspora Studies, Curriculum and Instruction, and Educational Administration, says this (email reprinted with his permission):

Subject Line: Supplemental strategies in light of noxious social studies standards




Greetings all,
On the tail of the complaint [by the NAACP and LULAC] to the Dept of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, I can’t help but again express my thorough frustration with the social studies knowledge (and dispositions) among the Texas-taught undergraduate students I work with at UT Austin. Encouraged by Board Member Knight’s interest in what is taught elsewhere, I’d also like to think about multiple strategies — a program of activities — to see to the good sense education of Texas school children regardless of the “standards” that we end up with.


Joe Feagin alluded to a reality that several of us experience on the collegiate level. My general experience is that the miseducation of high achieving students in Texas is thorough — not simply that they have been undereducated, but that they have been and are systematically miseducated in the sense used by Carter G. Woodson.  Black and non-black, Hispanic and non-Hispanic, huge numbers across demographic groups doubt the intelligence and worth of non-whites as students as UT. It is especially painful to see Black and Brown kids who finished in the top ten percent of their high school classes yet come to UT with doubts about their own intelligence and worth. They have been taught the glories of The Alamo and Texas Independence with no context to bring out (for instance) the historic role of the slavery issue in the region. In defiance of the historical record and decades of historical analyses, they are taught that the Civil War was about “state’s rights” and not really about slavery (as if in this context those two were separable). They are taught that Affirmative Action is among the greatest unfairnesses today — a red herring of the first order — especially for settings like UT, where the only meaningful affirmative action that takes place is for student athletes (and in a context where even there it is not done with adherence to the spirit of the original concept).


By contrast, and to Board member Knight’s query, in my youth I was required to read Souls of Black Folk (Du Bois), Up From Slavery (BTW), The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Why We Can’t Wait (MLK), The Autobiography of Ms. Jane Pittman (Gaines), Mules and Men (Zora Hurston), large chunks of The New Negro (Alain Locke, ed) and other texts. During most of those years I lived on Nannie Helen Burroughs Avenue and was expected to know who this important and great woman was as well.  Much of my reading was required in school. That which was not required by the school was required by my father and nurtured by my (former schoolteacher & guidance counselor) grandmother. Today we still need both forces — what the approved curriculum standards require and what we as a community require in addition.


As I raise my 10 year old son and 8 year old daughter, I perceive a profound need for a war on multiple fronts. One front is that of the specific Texas Curriculum Standards. And even here, while there is a need for straight on attack (e.g. “complaints” to OCR), there is also space for battle on the flanks (for instance cataloging and publicly rebutting the problems with the standards and providing parents with talking points for conversations with teachers and principals as they ensure that their children aren’t fully subject to the brainwash education).


Another space for action is to actively create and disseminate a supplemental curriculum, one specifically aimed at correcting for the anticipated (and realized) negative consequences of students (of all backgrounds) being taught histories that validate the indefensible, that force classroom discussion into ridiculous directions, and that undermine true knowledge of self and history among African American students, Latino students and others who find their well-informed understandings (or even nascent yet accurate understandings) of themselves and their world under assault. To take just one example,what if students were expected to read and consider Uncle Tom’s Cabin, easily one of the most important books in U.S. History, gigantically influential in its time, for the longest time second in sales only to the Bible, and a text that raises the paradox of having emancipatory goals while simultaneously cementing damaging stereotypes. There is so much to work with in this highly readable text — for history, for literature, for critical thinking — and yet most students have not read it.


In this sad state of affairs I am sure of at least two things: 1) We must act to alter inaccurate standards; and 2) we must in the meantime produce and disseminate viable supplements to counter the damage that the inaccurate standards are doing in the meantime. For those whose official capacities allow it, proaction should not be seen as an option but rather as a responsibility.


With apologies for the rant, but a deep commitment to not stand idly by, I hope that all have a happy season.


-Kevin


Kevin Michael Foster, Ph.D.


Executive Director, ICUSP Phase II
http://www.utexas.edu/diversity/ddce/icusp/


Graduate Faculty Member,
Departments of African and African Diaspora Studies, Curriculum and Instruction, and Educational Administration
University of Texas at Austin

Reading, Riting, and Rithmetics (sic) (Additional Info)

(According to the first-ever comprehensive study (pdf) comparing the percentage of U.S. students in the graduating class of 2009 who have advanced skills in math with the percentages of similar high achievers in 56 other countries, approximately 6 percent of U. S. students perform at the advanced level in math compared to 28 percent of Taiwanese students and more than 20 percent of students in Finland and Korea, for example.)

A new study has found that the achievement gap is larger (pdf) than we thought. According to the NY Times:

Only 12 percent of black fourth-grade boys are proficient in reading, compared with 38 percent of white boys, and only 12 percent of black eighth-grade boys are proficient in math, compared with 44 percent of white boys.

 Yep.

Only 12 percent of black fourth-grade boys are proficient in reading, compared with 38 percent of white boys, and only 12 percent of black eighth-grade boys are proficient in math, compared with 44 percent of white boys. (emphasis mine)

I get their point. It’s just not funny.

via RacismReview:


http://www.easternecho.com/index.php/section/comics#img14



See No Race, See No Racism: More Proof that Colorblind Ideology Doesn't Work

Okay. So usually, I'm just sick. Since my last post, I've been sick and desparately trying to get my thoughts together. And quite honestly, if I spent less time commenting at other blogs, I probably would have more energy for my own blog. The problem with that is that I'm not sure of the quality of the work I'd do. I mean, here's an example of my free flowing thought process when trying to put my thoughts to words. I'll use bullet points to help us both out.

• What are the tea pots complaining about? (Remember my open question for tea partyists?)
• Taxes? That's the tangible negative impact this current administration and Congress have had? Maybe I'm not making my aforementioned question clear.
• And for the love of all that's good and holy, paying taxes is NOT like slavery (You'll have to scroll down and/or search the word "slave").
• It's a bit dismissive and racist to make that comparison anyway. Don't you think?
• Oh, crap. What was my first point? Conservative hysteria and paranoia.
• And how do they call themselves Christian?
• And why do they get all pissy when their racism is called out? Cause really. Complaining about spending now?
• What did Andrew Briebart just say?
• Dinesh D'Souza wrote what?!
• Of, forget it. My head hurts. What's up over at prometheus6/racismreview/timwise?

It's just that I have so many thoughts going through my head. It's hard to pick one thing to write on and then to stay focused on that thing. Especially if I'm trying to find some references to source.

But in my constant search for the truth, I did come across another very important new study (h/t Tim Wise) titled, "In Blind Pursuit of Racial Equality?" Basically, being colorblind renders us impotent to dealing effectively with race. Sure, there're other studies that find the same basic thing. But, with all those people who just swear that talking about, thinking about, or even acknowledging race/ism only increases the division between racial groups, the more evidence, the better.

The State Against Black Men

As posted by Dr. Terence Fitzgerald over at racismreview, I really like the 4th paragraph and my comments are posted after the essay:

Yes We Can, But Who Cares? Implications of the Schott Report on Black Males in Public Education
By Dr. Terence Fitzgerald

The Schott Foundation for Public Education is an organization whose mission is “To develop and strengthen a broad-based and representative movement to achieve fully resourced, quality pre-K-12 public education,” recently published some heart-rending findings on the state of Black males in public education. The report, Yes We Can: The Schott 50 State Report on Public Education and Black Males 2010 reveals states, districts, and public schools that are statistically making academic gains toward closing the achievement gap (i.e., graduation rates and scores on state standardized examinations) between Black males and their counterparts. For example, the report affirms that the top ten best performing states in regard to decreasing the graduation gap between Black and White males are Maine, North Dakota, New Hampshire, Vermont, Idaho, Montana, Utah, South Dakota, New Jersey, and Iowa respectively. The ten best performing districts in this regard are Newark (NJ), Fort Bend (IN), Baltimore County (MD), Montgomery County (MD), Gwinnett County (GA), Prince George’s County (MD), Cumberland County (NC), East Baton Rouge Parish (LA), and Guilford County (NC). In my opinion, the report would make a stronger argument and cause readers to give a heavy pause when looking at the data when it was combined with an explanation as to why these states and districts are showing an improvement in the graduation rates.

Teaching Stupid

You know, like teaching math or science. Now, there's teaching "stupid." The sad thing is, a lot of people would pass.
_________________________

Twisting History in Texas

Hell, No! They Won't Go!

Reading a Salon article by Glenn Greenwald brought me to this:

“The expectation in Washington is that ‘We can kick you around, and you are still going to give us money,’ ”

Philly Ethnic Minorities Need to Form Some Alliance

For real. Cause if ya both being screwed, your problem ain't with each other.

Now first, hat tip to field negro on this one: The strange case of Tiana Drummond-Phiri.

I'm just sharing a portion of Annette John-Hall's article on the incident that happened last school year:

Let's see if I have this straight.Tiana goes home fearing her fate. Farley, fractured eye and all, goes out later that day to indulge in some underage drinking for more than two hours, according to his own testimony. Farley is allowed to testify without repercussions. But Cann, Tiana's primary witness, is pulled from the stand after the prosecutor asks for a conference, according to Tiana's lawyer. A public defender called by the court then tells him he could be criminally charged if he testifies. He doesn't.

Tiana had to be at the station to take the train home. No one can explain why Farley was there, including Farley. (Well, the detective noted in his report that kids often go to the station to hang out and smoke cigarettes. Nothing like a cigarette after a hard day at school.

Farley fought. Tiana didn't.Tiana gets slapped with nine criminal charges. No one even looks in Farley's direction.

Prison School?

Michelle Chen
Lawsuit Charges NYC Police With Criminalizing Kids
Jan 21, 2010
 
After years of complaints and mounting tensions in New York City public schools, civil liberties activists have filed landmark lawsuit against the city government and police force. The NYCLU accuses the NYPD’s School Safety Division of systematically violating children’s civil rights and creating a school climate of violence, arbitrary arrest and discrimination.
 
School to Prison Pipeline
 
Read more.

Got Give It Up for Mississippi

I'm not finished with the whole "lets make the Bible more conservative" issue, but I just got this in the inbox. Thought I'd share. And mind you:

White children who got the full story about historical discrimination had significantly better attitudes toward blacks than those who got the neutered version. Explicitness works.

And a sentence I think I'll try to flesh out more cause I find it interesting:

"It also made them feel some guilt," Bigler adds. "It knocked down their glorified view of white people." They couldn't justify in-group superiority.

Mississippi Mandates Civil Rights Classes in Schools

All students will study the nation's racial troubles and progress in US history
courses.

By Carmen K. Sisson
The Christian Science Monitor
October 4, 2009
http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/1008/p25s02-usgn.html

McComb, Miss. - The boxwoods are perfectly trimmed to
spell out McComb. It's a warm, Mississippi welcome from
"The Camellia City of America," where streets are named
for states, and flowers spill from planters accenting
century-old architecture.

Only when you stroll beyond downtown, into older
neighborhoods, do you catch a faint whiff of another
time, a summer when the air seemed to always be filled
with smoke, the streets stained with blood - a time
when McComb had a darker moniker: "The Bombing Capital
of the World."

Most Mississippi children have never heard of Emmett
Till, the 14-year-old black child whose 1955 lynching
in Mississippi by a white mob galvanized the civil
rights movement. They haven't heard of the 1964
"Freedom Summer," when 1,000 volunteers swept into this
area to register black voters. They don't know about
ordinary citizens who faced extraordinary odds to bring
change.

But they're going to know all about it soon. In a
groundbreaking reform - believed to be the first in the
nation - Mississippi will require civil rights as part
of its US history curriculum. McComb schools made that
move in 2006; but starting next fall, the stories of
the civil rights era will be taught - and tested - in
all public schools.

In many places, it will end a decades-old culture of
silence. People here don't like to remember the nights
of church bombings and explosions; the sound of rifles
being loaded in the dark as citizens patrolled
sidewalks and sanctuaries, trying to stem the violence.
They don't like to remember the fear and distrust -
between blacks and whites, but also among themselves.

"They just don't talk about it," says Jacquelyn Martin,
a black civil rights organizer. "People don't
understand that part of the healing begins when you
talk about it, so they just keep it to themselves."

Making it a subject in school is "a pretty drastic
change," says state curriculum specialist Chauncey
Spears. "But how can you have a strong education
program when you have high-achieving grads who have
such little understanding of their own history?"

Mississippi Senate Bill 2718, passed in 2006, mandates
all kindergartners to 12th-graders to be exposed to
civil rights education. In the younger grades, students
will read books such as "I Love My Hair!" as a way to
discuss concepts like racial differences in skin
complexion and hair texture. Later grades will delve
more deeply into how ordinary citizens shaped the civil
rights movement and the long-term effects those changes
had upon the nation.

Mr. Spears says the new curriculum is being taught this
year in 10 pilot programs. Teacher workshops begin this
month, taught by the state Department of Education in
conjunction with the Fannie Lou Hamer National
Institute on Citizenship and Democracy at Jackson State
University, Teaching for Change in Washington, and the
William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation at
the University of Mississippi.

Mandating the new curriculum was the only way to ensure
it would be taught, says Spears. It's not that teachers
haven't wanted to teach civil rights, though he admits
that's probably the case in some places. It's more a
symptom of a nationwide problem, an educational
stricture some say is an unwelcome byproduct of the No
Child Left Behind Act: Teaching to the test. As the
stakes become higher, the curriculum narrows.

In some schools, Spears says, there's such intense
pressure to rectify faltering math and reading scores
that everything else is "pretty much ignored."

But how do you chart such relatively new territory in a
state where the history is still so fresh?

WHEN EDUCATORS BEGAN ASKING these questions, they
sought inspiration in the McComb High School classroom
of teacher Vickie Malone. Three years ago, when she
began teaching "Local Cultures" as an elective to
seniors, she had no idea what the course would become.
She just wanted her students to hear all the voices of
history, both black and white, taught in an open way
that promoted understanding, not fear.

"I wanted them to understand choices, and how
profoundly they can affect the rest of your life," Ms.
Malone says. "A lot of kids today are just numbed out,
but back then, the kids were the movers and the
shakers."

(Indeed, in 1961, 300 students walked out of Burglund
High School to the McComb City Hall in support of
voting rights - 116 of them were jailed.)

It's painful, this exploration of history, but then,
nothing has been easy since Malone developed the class.
Because it's new, and not a critical course like math
or reading, it's often left off the master schedule by
accident, forcing her to recruit students. Even then,
it's not a quick sell. They don't need it for a
diploma. It won't get them into college.

The class is fashioned more like a college seminar than
a high school elective. There are no rigid rows of
desks, multiple-choice tests, or rote memorization.
Instead, students gather at a table to talk about
issues that even their grandparents and parents - some
of whom were participants on both sides of the civil
rights battles - may have difficulty discussing.

In one class last month, they examined dual
perspectives, and each student wrote a poem from two
angles, examining life through the eyes of another.
There were the expected combinations:
Popular/unpopular, rich/poor, white/black. But there
were surprises as well, and as they read their work to
their peers, there was occasional muffled admiration.

"Whoa," a student said, after one reading. "That's
deep."

Sometimes, discussions get heated, like the day a white
student became incensed by a black classmate's seeming
nonchalance to learn that one of McComb's top black
athletes had been recruited by an exclusive, all-white
academy.

"I thought she was going to leap across the table,"
Malone recalled. "She kept saying, 'Doesn't it make you
mad that you can't go there?' "

Some days there are tears. For Sarah Rowley, 17, the
class has been a watershed. Initially she saw it as "an
easy grade," but quickly realized she was wrong. Much
of the class centers on gathering oral narratives from
residents who grew up in a radically different McComb,
a place where inequality and violence was a part of
life. In the middle of one interview at the home of
Lillie Mae Cartstarphen, Sarah asked an innocent
question about the role of law enforcement during that
time.

Sarah's grandfather had been a McComb policeman and,
later, chief of police during the 1960s. In her
family's eyes, he was a hero. But, says Sarah, her
voice trembling as she recounts the answer: "[Ms.
Cartstarphen] said you couldn't trust policemen, that
they were just as involved as the KKK. Even now, it
makes me want to cry. I thought, 'I have to regain my
composure. I can't let this interfere with what I'm
here to do.' But I felt like I was in a tug of war.
Here is this woman telling me this, but my family .
they're such good people. What do I do?"

She talked to Malone and to her father. She prayed.
Eventually, Sarah says, she made peace with the legacy
of a man struggling to keep his job, feed his family,
and survive in a troubled era. She's certain he'd make
different choices if he were alive today.

It's more difficult to talk about things with her
boyfriend, who attends Parklane Academy, which is 99
percent white. When Sarah reads books like "The
Mississippi Trials, 1955" she's overwhelmed by sadness.
But he doesn't want to hear about it, she says. "He
thinks it's over with and in the past. He gets up and
walks out.... He's growing up in this mind-set that's
so sheltered. It breaks my heart."

Malone's emphasis on seeing all perspectives makes it
easier for Sarah to cope. "I have to remember that if I
was in his shoes, I'd be the same way," Sarah says. "In
the South, it's a very, very touchy subject."

But Sarah believes passionately in the class - she took
it twice and returned this year as a teacher's aide:
"Stories like Emmett Till's - that should tear
everybody up. People need to know ... like they know
the Civil War.... Being in your little bubble isn't
going to help you at all."

And ultimately, say proponents of the curriculum
changes, that's the goal: Making Mississippi's future
better, even if it means dredging muddy waters.

DR. SUSAN GLISSON, director of the William Winter
Institute for Racial Reconciliation at the University
of Mississippi, spends a lot of time thinking about
this, analyzing where the state has been and where it's
going. Pockets of progress are punctuated by serious
challenges.

"Kids are practically being funneled from school to
prison," Ms. Glisson says. "When you throw in a failing
economy, terrorism, fears of wars abroad, and the first
African-American president, you have a potentially
dangerous situation. It requires us to be as vigilant
as ever."

The Southern Poverty Law Center cites a 50 percent
increase in hate groups and extremism in the US since
2000. As part of the Klanwatch project, the nonprofit
monitors more than 900 such currently active groups, 22
of them in Mississippi, and nearly 400 concentrated in
the remaining secession states: Texas, Louisiana,
Alabama, Arkansas, Tennessee, Georgia, Florida,
Virginia, and the Carolinas.

In McComb, the curriculum change has sparked a storm of
controversy. In his Aug. 29 editorial, "A Relevant
Subject," McComb Enterprise-Journal editor and
publisher Jack Ryan tried to allay fears that kids will
be force-fed a message of "white people bad, black
people good."

He says the issue "cuts too close to the bone." When
officials began talking about teaching civil rights,
they discussed omitting McComb church bombings. In
1984, when the newspaper published a 20-year
anniversary "Freedom Summer" report, a white employee
told him she wished they'd "just leave that stuff
alone."

Those feelings are echoed in public comments posted on
the paper's website below Mr. Ryan's editorial.

"I can't imagine what this course will accomplish other
than to open old wounds, some of which aren't healing
well as it is," says one poster.

But Spears says that's why Mississippi should pioneer
civil rights education: "It's not over, and that says a
lot about what this state can potentially become. We do
struggle, and out of necessity, we can't just stand pat
with the challenges we face."

Glisson agrees: "Mississippi owes this to the nation,
because so often we have led negatively. With better
understanding, we can make the state better."

That may come from the younger generation of
Mississippians like Delisa Magee, a black student in
Malone's class.

"We're not bad people; it's just our past," says
Delisa, as she puts away her notebook and heads to a
pep rally. "There's still so much racism down here on
both sides. It needs to change."

Rally for Education Equality

I wish I could show more, but I haven't been able to find video.

If This Was Only about Texas, I Probably Wouldn't Care

The really scary thing isn't that Texas is getting these books. The real scary thing is that since Texas is one of the top 2 markets for school books, publishers tailor their books for Texas and sell them to other states across the nation.

Via my email from change.org -

Ed Board Extremists Target Social Studies
By TFN

Having done what they could to muck up the state’s science curriculum standards, fringe right-wingers on the Texas State Board of Education are now moving to politicize the social studies curriculum for public schools. Texas Freedom Network just sent out the following press release:

The Texas State Board of Education is set to appoint a social studies curriculum “expert” panel that includes absurdly unqualified ideologues who are hostile to public education and argue that laws and public policies should be based on their narrow interpretations of the Bible.

TFN has obtained the names of “experts” appointed by far-right state board members. Those panelists will guide the revision of social studies curriculum standards for Texas public schools. They include David Barton of the fundamentalist, Texas-based group WallBuilders, whose degree is in religious education, not the social sciences, and the Rev. Peter Marshall of Peter Marshall Ministries in Massachusetts, who suggests that California wildfires and Hurricane Katrina were divine punishments for tolerence of homosexuality.

It gets worse.

Barton, former vice chairman of the Texas Republican Party, is a self-styled “historian” without any formal training in the field. He argues that separation of church and state is a “myth” and that the nation’s laws should be based on Scripture. He says, for example, that the Bible forbids taxes on income and capital gains. Yet even such groups as Texas Baptists Committed and the Baptist Joint Committee have sharply criticized Barton’s interpretations of the Constitution and history.

Barton also acknowledges having used in his publications and speeches nearly a dozen quotes he has attributed to the nation’s Founders even though he can’t identify any primary sources showing that they really said them.

Some state board members have criticized what they believe are efforts to overemphasize the contributions of minorities in the nation’s history. It is alarming, then, that in 1991 Barton spoke at events hosted by groups tied to white supremacists. He later said he hadn’t known the groups were “part of a Nazi movement.”

In addition, Barton’s WallBuilders Web site suggests as a “helpful” resource the National Association of Christian Educators/Citizens for Excellence in Education, an organization that calls public schools places of “social depravity” and “spiritual slaughter.”

And what in the world is the point of putting a right-wing evangelical minister on a social studies panel?

The Peter Marshall Ministries Web site includes Marshall’s commentaries sharply
attacking Muslims, characterizing the Obama administration as “wicked,” and calling on Christian parents to reject public education for their children.

Marshall has also attacked Roman Catholic and mainline Protestant churches. In his call for a spiritual revival in America last year, he called traditional mainline Protestantism an “institutionally fossilized, Bible-rejecting shell of Christianity.”

Says TFN’s Kathy Miller:

“It’s absurd to suggest that Texas universities don’t have accomplished scholars in the field who are more qualified than ideologues who share a narrow political agenda. What’s next? Rush Limbaugh on the ‘expert’ panel? It’s clear now that just appointing a new chairman won’t end this board’s outrageous efforts to politicize the education of our schoolchildren. It’s time for the Legislature to make sweeping changes to the board and its control over what our kids learn in public schools.”

“With Don McLeroy’s confirmation hanging in the balance in the Senate and Lawmakers considering 15 bills that would strip the state board of its authority, these board members continue trying to push extremist politics into Texas classrooms. It’s as if they’re daring the Legislature to call them on it.”

The full press release is available here. You can learn more about Barton here and Marshall here.

This entry was posted on April 30, 2009 at 10:08 am and is filed under Uncategorized

Kindergarten Sex

Yes, I'm still tired of politics. But this is egregious.

McCain/Palin are now accusing Obama of wanting to teach 5 and 6 year olds about sex before they even learn their letters.

Well, guess what. I had sex ed when I was a kindergarten, and I can wrap up that days lesson in about a paragraph.

"No one gets to touch you unless you say it's okay. And any part if your body that covered by underclothing, no one at all except your parents or someone your parents tell you is safe should touch you there. And even if your parent touch you there, if it feels uncomfortable, tell a grown up. You can tell me." "Me" was Mrs. Dorsey, my kindergarten teacher.

So, just be advised, if you vote for McCain/Palin, you're voting to leave your children vulnerable to sexual molestation. Just so you know.

L.A. Teachers Fired for Being Too "Afro-centric"

Yeah. You read right, folks. There're a few links with the details. But basically, it works like this:

A teacher in Watts, Karen Salazar, contextualized her lessons so they would be more relevant to her mostly black students. Administrators accuse her of being too "Afro-centric" and brainwashing the kids.

Ostensibly, as I've learned from Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James W. Loewen, part of the problem with being too "Afro-centric" is that children may not love America. Oh. The horror.

This also illustrates the truth that black students don't refer to academic achievement as "acting white" for nothing. I've been there. You have to sit and listen to lies, exaggerations, denials, and half-truths, and become proficcient in reciting said lied, exagerrations, denials, and half-truths. I know did. And I hated it. This teacher shouldn't be fired. She should be given a gold medal. But her firing illustrates part of my reluctance to go into primary and secondary education. If she can get fired in Los Angeles, California for using 3-pages of the Autobiography of Malcolm X, a rap by the late Tupac Shukar, and a Langston Hughes poem, when I start teaching about the horror of slavery, the re-enslavement of African Americans after the Civil War, and the dozens of white racist riots around the country (And by that I mean, a least couple of dozens. There were probably more.), the African societies the slaves came from, the Black Freedom Movement and the backlash to the Movement - I could not just lose my job, they might even take my kids!

No, I don't have any, but you get my point. This firing is nonsense. And it's not the Los Angeles United School District that's "unique" here. Ms. Salazar is the unique one. Not many teachers take the chance she did. And kudos to her.

Here are those other links:
Feminsite
L.A. Times
VivirLatino
AngryBrownButch
Democracy Now!