Happy New Year! I’ve spent the day so far lazing around, eating leftover pizza and listening to music. And that’s about all I’m going to do, I think.
I’ll be back at work blogging tomorrow.
In the meantime, does anyone have any especially fond memories of Tom Martin and/or Steele from the past year?
Oh, and here’s a video from an Old School New Wave band called Polyphonic Size. It was 1983. They were from Belgium.
Cassandra – maybe a similar movement, but with one finger and the arm held at waist level?
@Cassandra
State inspectorate? I’m guessing, if it’s a public school, it’s under the supervision of the state. Here at least (and neighbouring countries), teachers also have a state board/licensing agency. Parents can complain with them too. If the parents complain to the inspectorate about a general issue, the inspectorate will deal with it. But if they complain about a specific teacher, they’ll be forwarded to the agency who sends their people to investigate whether said teacher does their job right.
(Google gives me NBPTS for USA, but I don’t see any complaints number. Then again, our agency also has it well hidden. You would not believe the sh*t parents complain about, and these people are obligated to investigate every complaint.)
You know that annoying finger gesture some people use to indicate quotation marks? Now I’m trying to imagine one for semicolons.
Make a “V” and stab the air in front of you. Voila, the “Visible Colon”. You could sort of hook the middle finger down to make a semi-colon.
Ice, there is no real oversight body for teachers in the US. States have some control over credentialling them, but even that can end up delegated to local boards/districts (the Los Angeles Unified School District used to do in-house credentialling. It wasn’t portable to other districts, but Calif. allows for such a limited certificate. They are the largest school district in the state, serving hundreds of thousands of students).
And each district/school determines how to discipline teachers.
Duuuuude! That must sound like bureaucrat nightmare!
As much as I’m all for personal liberties and rights and freedoms and whatnot, I’m super relieved that there’s an organisation that writes down the things I must do, with my subject it’s practically up to the words I’m allowed and not allowed to use. Might sound like a dictatorship nightmare, but there’s a thing being a physicist and loving to have all the rules laid down before you. 😛 By other physicists, luckily. I suppose the fact that I’m a friend with the woman who wrote the national curriculum for elementary school physics definitely helps. I know she did it first and foremost to protect the rest of us. And the state inspector for physics teachers with the Agency is super awesome too. At the end of our certificate testing… he gave us cake. :3
While I’m at it, mind if I rant for a second? There might be curse words. I apologise, but I think I’ll explode.
In short, our government FINALLY implemented the curriculum for sex ed. They called it “health education”, and it consists of 4 modules (one of them for healthy diet. And there’s nothing better than to tell 13 year old girls they should count their calories *gags*), last module is sex ed, finally. And it has horrible, super awful stuff like kids masturbate, and that’s NORMAL. There’s homosexual people, and they’re people too and things they do in bed is NORMAL. And, shocking enough (even for me! I never thought anyone would MENTION this!), that there’s a difference between sex and gender, with a short mention that some people are not the gender of the body they were born in. AND IT IS NORMAL.
… can you imagine what kind of a fucking ruckus this curriculum is causing? I ignored most of it, even when our Cardinal spent the Christmas mass shitting against our politicians AND ESSENTIALLY CALLING THEM STUPID MEANIES BECAUSE SEX ED (that showed more about what Cardinal is made of, if you ask me). But just today… Croatian Helsinki Committee (that’s essentially our biggest human rights organisation) wrote a public letter essentially saying how sex ed in the curriculum is WRONG and AGAINST HUMAN RIGHTS.
Why? Because Human Rights Declaration says: “Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.”
That’s rich, coming from a country where home schooling is illegal and only state certified and controlled schools are allowed to operate. And only following the national curriculum.
And where there were numerous hate crimes against the gays. And there are actual documented cases of children being taken away from their parents after they hooked up with same sex partners. And where the government signed a contract with Vatican 15 years ago making Roman Catholic religious class de facto obligatory in all state schools.
@Ice
Sorry to kinda ignore the rant part, but that sex ed sounds glorious. I am just gonna pretend we have that in the US for a few minutes to make myself happy. Sigh.
Wow, I’m genuinely impressed that they’re talking about gender identity. I wouldn’t have expected that.
Actually, that “Haterush” band doesn’t sound like a hate group to me, from what little I’ve listened to them so far. They just sound like a generic metal band with an unfortunate name. And a budget so low they can’t afford to get some artist to make a painting of a warrior for their cover.
I knooooow! It sounded too glorious! They even talked with queer organisations and LISTENED. Added some pro queer literature for teachers to read and everything. Last time government tried sex ed, they ordered abstinence only and even the students complained it was crap.
Church and parent organisations have been throwing a collective fit ever since September. But I *seriously* lost it this morning, when the public letter by the Helsinki Board went through the media. Human Rights Declaration is the sole reason they exist, and yet it seems as though they actually never read the damn thing.
“Teacher – Um, what? Also, while we’re on the subject of writing, we need to have a chat about your use of semi-colons.”
Please? I’ve tried, repeatedly, with examples, and it just goes right over Steele’s head.
Speaking of sex ed, my pro-life republican mother was telling me about a 14year old who gave birth and killed the baby, and is being tried as an adult. My mother thinks this is BS because the girl was taught abstinence only “sex ed” and didn’t know what to do.
This gives me a glimmer of hope that at least some republicans do not think the world would implode if teachers put condoms on bananas. (US here, Ice that does sound glorious, and the fall out horrible, I hope someone says hey can shove it, the curriculum stays as written.)
Just dumping this in the newest thread because it’s kinda cute:
@argenti
I am not pro-life or republican, but not killing babies (outside the womb) doesn’t seem like the kind of thing that would be taught in sex Ed, abstinence only or not. I can see how getting pregnant would be something she wouldn’t know how to to handle, but then carrying it for nine months and then killing it? I’m sorry, I can’t dig up any sympathy on that.
Hey Boobzland! Had a nice New Year’s? I did – consumed some EggNog, attended various gatherings of people whose company I enjoy, and made some progress on The Fountainhead.
And then I logged onto the Internet to find that Erin Pizzey has joined A Voice for Men. Icing. I do believe 2013 is shaping up to be the Year of the Movement.
@Starla: at 14. At 14 she was taught only that she had to carry the baby, and that she was a hopeless slut for getting pregnant. She was indoctrinated into a way of thinking that utterly hated her.
…at 14.
Think about some of the implications there for a minute.
Starla, it’s this “I can see how getting pregnant would be something she wouldn’t know how to to handle” and the being tried as an adult part. Certainly she should be tried, but it’d be nice if shit like this means they change sex ed so it teaches wtf to do if pregnancy happens (OMGS, abortion, it is an option here! The world might explode if schools taught that) — and, of course, how to prevent pregnancy in the first place.
Thank you Howard, killing a baby you know you could’ve aborted, or give up for adoption, that’s one thing. Killing a baby you’ve been told you’re a horrible slut for having, a kid your parents will hate you for having…there’s a reason there are safe haven laws, but they work a hell of a lot better if women know they can use them. And well, can go anywhere without their parents driving >.<
In short, it’s a whole lot of fucked up all around, and very wrong for it all to fall on her young shoulders.
@howard
I am thinking about it. And I agree that’s terrible. But if she was already considered a hopeless slut, she either could’ve chosen abortion (not something that culture smiles upon I’m sure, but still not as bad) or adoption (still be shamed but at least then not as a murderer, and the child lives). But how on earth was killing her baby going to undo her being shamed?
Under what circumstances should a 14-year-old ever be tried as an adult for anything?
@katz
Murder?
Starla, how the hell would a fourteen-year-old CHILD get an abortion? A child from an abstinence-only family who (if she’d ever been told anything about it other than that it’s evil) would likely have no way of knowing where to start looking? And given how few abortion clinics there seem to be in so many US states, it might have been physically impossible for her to get to one. And all this without her parents knowing – even if she could get it done at all in that situation? Given the whole “abortion is KILLING BABIES” line, who’s to say that this poor kid even thought there’d be much difference between an abortion and infanticide? Come on, you’re putting adult reasoning on a child, a probably terrified, brainwashed child.
@kitteh
Depending on what state she is in ( i don’t know) you can get an abortion without parental consent. Also depending on where you are you could go to any docter and get an abortion pill. And if abortion is evil, I’m sure killing your live baby definitely is. And there isn’t to my knowledge an age limit for giving up a child for adoption. I don’t understand why everyone keeps telling me she’s 14, I know she’s 14. But if I’d been pregnant that young I don’t think killing my baby would’ve even crossed my mind (I also live in a bible belt, with no sex Ed whatsoever). It’s horrible that she grew up in that environment, but there were other decisions she could’ve made and I fail to see how murdering her child could have possibly looked like the best one. I’m sorry.
Starla, 14-year-olds’ brains are not cognitively or neurally adult yet. They can’t think or reason at an adult level.
You aren’t her, Starla. You don’t know her position except for the same things we have all mentioned. Doesn’t the fact that she did kill the baby suggest something about her mental state and fears? It might have been the ONLY way out she could see. She’d hardly be the first girl to have taken that way in desperation.
Florida — http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/18/cassidy-goodson-14-year-old-mom-kill-newborn_n_2154995.html
Their state laws on abortion — http://www.prochoiceamerica.org/government-and-you/state-governments/state-profiles/florida.html