We Want Idiots!

Joyner

Rick Joyner.

Rick Joyner declared on the most recent episode of his “Prophetic Perspective on Current Events” program that the Common Core educational standards amount to “treason.”

“Common Core goes to a new level of evil,” he said. “I cannot imagine any sane person wanting that garbage to be taught to our kids. Now I will say this boldly: This is treason. Maybe not intentional treason, but it’s ultimate effect, impact, will be to absolutely destroy America, make us incapable of competing or maybe even surviving in the world to come.”

Common Core is “abominable,” Joyner said, which is why he is “so thankful that we have got a president who understands” its dangers, predicting that Trump “will do something to probably help fix it faster than anything else he can do.”

Well yes, Trump is out destroy education, given the whole Betsy de Vos business, but to declare common core as treason? Please.  So what’s it going to be then, no standard at all? No standards for learning, no standards for schooling, no standards for jobs? Destroying America? Oh my yes, why education results in pesky people asking questions! Those meddling kids!

I expect this is about the incredibly bad system of vouchers, so we will end up with little to no public education, and only people with money will be able to actually educate their children. Everyone else? Eh, I’m sure the rethugs want a sea of idiots for a number of reasons. I’d be willing to bet the number of secular homeschoolers is about to increase.

Via Right Wing Watch.

Word Wednesday.

words

Footle 

Noun. Intransitive verb, footled, footling.

  1. To talk or act foolishly.
  2.  To waste time: trifle, fool.

Footling

Adjective.

  1. Lacking judgment or ability: Inept <footling amateurs who understand nothing – E.R. Bentley>
  2. Lacking use or value: Trivial <footling matters>

v.”to trifle,” 1892, from dialectal footer “to trifle,” footy “mean, paltry” (1752), perhaps from French se foutre “to care nothing,” from Old French foutre “to copulate with,” from Latin futuere, originally “to strike, thrust” (cf. confute). But OED derives the English dialect words from foughty (c.1600), from Dutch vochtig or Danish fugtig “damp, musty;” related to fog (n.).

“It was a unique machine. By the time of his last try, Marc had grasped the point of it: you had to make up a question in your head, then consult the oracle. He had hesitated between ‘Will I get my medieval accounts finished in time?’ which he found too footling, and ‘Is there a woman somewhere who will fall in love with me?’, but he didn’t want to know if the answer to that was no, so he had finally opted for a question which didn’t commit him to anything: ‘Does God exist?’.  – Dog Will Have His Day, Fred Vargas.

‘Man Up’.

I came across this wonderful response to the phrase ‘man up’ thanks to Wisconsin senator Steve Nass, who is all manner of bent over a course at UW-Madison: “Unpacking Masculinity At UW-Madison” and seeks to address the ways “media, hook up culture, alcohol, violence, pop culture” create expectations of masculinity.

Sen. Nass was terribly alarmed, and fired off an email:

Sen. Steve Nass, a frequent UW System critic, sent an email to his fellow lawmakers on Wednesday entitled “UW-Madison Declares War on Men and their Masculinity — Not a Joke.” The email accuses UW-Madison of being part of a national liberal effort to rid male students of their “toxic masculinity.”

“Our friends at UW-Madison, not happy enough with labeling ‘whiteness’ as a societal problem, now are attacking another social ill …, Men and their masculinity,” the email says.

“The supposedly underfunded and overworked administrators at our flagship campus have scrapped (sic) together enough dollars to offer a six-week program open only to ‘men-identified students,” the email goes on. “In short, the highly paid leaders at UW-Madison now believe that Wisconsin mothers and fathers have done a poor job of raising their boys by trying to instill in them the values and characteristics necessary in becoming a Man.”

The email concludes by encouraging legislators to reform the UW System in the next state budget.

What Sen. Nass misses entirely is that a lot of young men are seeking paths through all the baggage hanging from the concept of masculinity so that they can be themselves, in happiness, in pride, and in security. Why that would be awful, when toxic masculinity is right there, after all, it’s worked for thousands of years, right?

I visited the course site, and it all looks good to me, I wish such courses were all over the place.

Via Associated Press and Raw Story.

Word Wednesday.

Minatory

adjective.

1: menacing; threatening.

1525-35; from Late Latin minātōrius, from Latin minārī to threaten. “Expressing a threat, 1530s, from Middle French minatoire, from Late Latin

minatorius, from minat-, stem of minari “to threaten”.

“Now Molly put an arm about its neck, and she kissed it again, this time on the long flat cheek, and yet again, on the heavy supraorbital bone, and she looked up and past it, and into Yattuy’s face, and her expression slowly changed from the utmost tenderness that she had shown to the Beast, to a grim minatory glare; gone was the fond lover, and in her place was this stern and vengeful queen.” – Throne of Darkness by Douglas Nicholas.

A Desperate Need for New Material.

Trent Bennett (Malvern Hig School).

Trent Bennett (Malvern Hig School).

Facebook, Oh Facebook XIV. A Science teacher in Arkansas has been saying nasty things about President Obama and the First Lady. You won’t need three whole guesses to figure out the nature of the remarks. Parents aren’t terribly pleased with Mr. Bennett.

Parents want an Arkansas teacher out of the classroom after he compared Michelle Obama to a chimpanzee — and then called the president a “spider monkey.”

Trent Bennett, a science teacher at Malvern High School, apparently made the comments on his personal Facebook page, reported KARK-TV.

One post refers to “Michelle Obummer … America’s First Chimp,” and the teacher then doubled down on his racist comments when a Facebook friend questioned him.

Bennett described the First Lady as a “nasty chimp,” and he called President Barack Obama a “spider monkey.”

He also complained about “monkeys” rioting after the police shootings of black Americans, and said protests during the American Revolution era were more valid because they were over taxation.

Chimps. Monkeys. You’d think a science teacher would have at least gone with ape, but I have a sneaking suspicion that perhaps Mr. Bennett doesn’t believe humans are apes. Anyroad, this comparison is as old as the hills and beyond tiresome. All you bigoted asswipes, you are in desperate need of new material. Good luck finding any, I have noted over the years that bigots aren’t terribly creative. Too much brain atrophy.

School officials have launched an investigation into Bennett’s social media activity, which they described as “inappropriate” and “insensitive.”

Parents and civil rights activists say Bennett should quit or be removed from his job over his comments.

“Someone like Mr. Bennett that has his mindset and believes this, has no business molding the minds of children that will lead us into the future,” said Rizelle Aaron, president of the Arkansas State Conference of the NAACP. “If the allegations are true, he needs to resign, if he doesn’t, then the NAACP will do everything we have legally to make sure he is terminated.”

Here’s hoping this creep does get kicked out. He has absolutely no business around children, with that amount of poison leaking out of him all over the place.

Via Raw Story.

Word Wednesday.

Categorical.

adjective

  1. without exceptions or conditions; absolute; unqualified and unconditional:
    a categorical denial.

  2. Logic.

a. (of a proposition) analyzable into a subject and an attribute related by a copula, as in the proposition “All humans are mortal.”.
b. (of a syllogism) having categorical propositions as premises.

3.

a. of, relating to, or constituting a category.
b. involving, according with, or considered with respect to specific categories.

  • categorically, adverb.
    Origin: Late Latin categoricus, from Greek kategorikos, from kategoria. (1588)

“We already have. He recognised Perrault. After that, he’s categorical: no one went up until you did.” – The Frozen Dead, Bernard Minier.

Word Wednesday.

words

Agathokakological.

adjective ag·a·tho·kak·o·log·i·cal \¦a-gə-(ˌ)thō-ˌka-kə-¦lä-ji-kəl\

Composed of both good and evil. From Ancient Greek ἀγαθός ‎(agathós, “good”) and κακός ‎(kakós, “bad”).

There may be an opposite fault; for indeed upon the agathokakological globe there are opposite qualities always to be found in parallel degrees, north and south of the equator.– Robert Southey, The Doctor, Etc.

Purple Prose and Intellectual Pedophiles.

Lance Wallnau.

Lance Wallnau.

Lance Wallnau is on another tear, this time, about college, specifically, college professors. He indulges in some terrible purple prose in his attempt to get across just how really, truly, oh for realz, evil they are. Really.

Wallnau, an early and vocal supporter of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, is a leading advocate of Seven Mountains dominionism, the idea that Christians are to “do whatever is necessary” to take control of all aspects of the culture in order to implement the will of God throughout the world. One of the “mountains” that Christians needs to gain control of is “the university mountain,” Wallnau said, “because the professors are the factory foremen that are shaping the mind of the next generation.”

Wallnau lamented that radicals from the 1960s went into academia and have spent decades warping the minds of students, which is why conservative Christians continue to lose battles in the culture war.

Sigh. The ever present culture war. No, this is about Christians constantly attempting to retard any and all social progress, and to stomp on the idea of social justice. This is about wanting those mythical 1950s back, where you pretend everything was just great. There’s always noise being made about all the awful secularists, and the awful atheists, and the awful nones, and so forth, but very little about all those other Christians. People like to say that getting atheists to agree on something is like herding cats (which isn’t difficult at all), but the same applies to Christians. The various denominations of Christianity go on and on and on and on. They don’t agree with one another. Within that incomplete list, there are a fair number of Christians who would, and will be ardently opposed to your stance, Lance. Those would be Christians who think social progress and inclusivity is a good thing. You don’t want to win a culture war, you want to crush all dissent, and crown yourself the Jesus King.

“Anything we do regarding abortion, prayer, marriage,” he said, “anything we do that doesn’t get into the educational narrative that is affecting the minds of students will be lost within eight to 10 years because you’ve got gatekeeper priests, there are priests of Baal at the top of the university mountain, poisoning the minds [of young people.] They’re like intellectual pedophiles molesting the virgin territory of your children’s imaginations.”

Last time I looked, most people in college are legal adults. I have to wonder if you went to college, Lance, because professors don’t get to treat class time as “hey, free time, I can pontificate about whatever I want!” They have to teach a class, and their personal views aren’t a part of that. As for poisoning the minds of actual children, I don’t think we need to look much further than religion, do we?

Via Right Wing Watch.

Word Wednesday.

Wordless Wednesday is a popular thing for a lot of WordPress bloggers. I do love photography, but I also love words, so I’m going to do Word Wednesday. Just because. If you have a word you’d like featured, drop me a line (email is on the sidebar). All languages are happily accepted.

Esurient.

adjective.
1. hungry; greedy. 2. greedy; voracious.
Derived Forms:
esurience, esuriency, noun.
esuriently, adverb.
1665-75; < Latin ēsurient- (stem of ēsuriēns, present participle of ēsurīre) hungering, equivalent to ēsur- hunger + -ent- -ent.

adj.

1670s, from Latin esurientem (nominative esuriens), present participle of esurire “to be hungry,” from stem of edere “to eat”. Related: Esurience ; esuriency.

“My bear charm was fully charged and I felt completely restored, albeit dreadfully thirsty and a bit esurient.” – Hounded: The Iron Druid Chronicles, by Kevin Hearne.

Standing Rock Syllabus: Learn, Teach.

Credit: C. Ford.

Credit: C. Ford.

The New York City Stands with Standing Rock Collective then met again and we talked at length about the syllabus and how to curate emergent sections. We want our readers and future teachers to understand that we take Sioux notions of history seriously but came to impasses with certain materials that we wanted to include, but felt inadequate to interpret. So we direct educators and students to the crucial archives of Lakota Winter Counts. One of the founders of the resistance camps at Standing Rock, LaDonna Brave Bull Allard, has devoted her life to the interpretation of these counts and any responsible curriculum will point to them and invite students to think about and with them. Recognizing then, our limitations, we volunteered to work with our strengths and to curate specific sections of the syllabus, to take charge of, so to speak, the content and the form. Matthew Chrisler managed the group and ordered the text with Jaskiran Dhillon, New School Assistant Professor of Global Studies and Anthropology who stepped in at certain points to read over entries. Along with Matthew Chrisler, Sheehan Moore, a doctoral student in anthropology at CUNY, organized all of the PDFs to attach to our website for syllabus readers to view and download. In this way, there were multiple eyes on each section as it took shape. We also asked curators to narrow their selections to book chapters and specific articles to further focus the syllabus and keep it accessible for people who would read and download it in short amounts of time. We wanted people to read the syllabus and teach the material, but also to have access to the readings for themselves and their students and/or community members.

Although a “work in progress,” the current #StandingRockSyllabus places what is happening now in a broader historical, political, economic, and social context going back over 500 years to the first expeditions of Columbus, the founding of the United States on institutionalized slavery, private property, and dispossession, and the rise of global carbon supply and demand. Indigenous peoples around the world have been on the frontlines of conflicts like Standing Rock for centuries. The syllabus foregrounds the work of Indigenous and allied activists and scholars: anthropologists, historians, environmental scientists, and legal scholars, all of whom contribute important insights into the conflicts between Indigenous sovereignty and resource extraction. It can be taught in its entirety, or in sections depending on the pedagogic needs. We hope that it will be used in K-12 school settings, community centers, social justice agencies training organizers, university classrooms, legal defense campaigns, social movement and political education workshops, and in the resistance camps at Standing Rock and other similar standoffs across the globe. As we move forward, we anticipate posting lesson plans on our website that will be derived from individuals and communities using the syllabus in their respective locales.

While our primary goal is to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline, we recognize that Standing Rock is one frontline of many around the world. This syllabus can be a tool to access research usually kept behind paywalls, or a resource package for those unfamiliar with Indigenous histories and politics. Please share, add, and discuss using the hashtag #StandingRockSyllabus on Facebook, Twitter, or other social media. Like those on the frontlines, we are here for as long as it takes.

The #StandingRockSyllabus and accompanying PDFs can be found here.

The full story on the syllabus is here.  #StandingRockSyllabus. As Peter D’Errico says:

True to the purpose of digging to the roots of events, “#StandingRockSyllabus places what is happening now in a broader historical, political, economic, and social context going back over 500 years to the first expeditions of Columbus, the founding of the United States on institutionalized slavery, private property, and dispossession, and the rise of global carbon supply and demand. Indigenous peoples around the world have been on the frontlines of conflicts like Standing Rock for centuries.”

Importantly, #StandingRockSyllabus aims for audiences beyond the standard academic world: The authors built it for use “in K-12 school settings, community centers, social justice agencies training organizers, university classrooms, legal defense campaigns, social movement and political education workshops, and in the resistance camps at Standing Rock and other similar standoffs across the globe.”

This is an invaluable opportunity for teachers, please take advantage of it. This is also an invaluable resource and opportunity for those who wish to understand. As this is supposedly Native American Heritage Month (more on that later), spreading this everywhere would be be a great gesture. Lila wopila to all who do. (Many Thanks).

The Trump Investigative Fund.

Resist.

Resist.

There are journalists who are determined to report facts and make a constant effort to disclose the truth. That’s very important right now. Think Progress has started a fund, and if you are able to drop a few pennies, this is a good place to do so.

[Read more…]

The Resistance: Teachers.

67873793-anarchy-flag-wallpapers

[…] Inclusivity and representation aren’t just the responsibility of English and history teachers, said Rifkin, the private school physics teacher. In his class, he’s had students look at the demographics of physicists — a field dominated by white and Asian men —in order to open up conversations about implicit bias, racial privilege, and stereotypes. Both white students and students of color have responded well, he said.

“There was a big spike in the number of white students who say, ‘This makes me more comfortable talking about race, and this makes me recognize that I have advantages in America, and that I can do something with these advantages,’” Rifkin said.

“I saw a big spike in students of color in terms of how comfortable they felt in physics class, and how they identified as a physics students. And that is a slam dunk for me.”

[…]

“There was one white teacher who said, ‘You guys aren’t here to learn. You guys can’t learn. I don’t know why I’m giving you the tests, because you’re not going to do it anyway,” Felder said. “The majority of the students in the middle school were African American, so for a white teacher to say that, that destroys them.”

When you tell students you have high expectations for them, it can influence their academic success, Lauren Mims, the assistant director of the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans, said […]

Think Progress has a good look at educators who are fighting back: These educators aren’t tolerating racism in the classroom.

There aren’t many comments on the article, but they certainly demonstrate how Trumpoids think.

“Telling It Like It Is” the New Term for Bullying.

(Juan, CC BY-NC).

(Juan, CC BY-NC).

The Southern Poverty Law Center has a very in-depth look, following a survey, on the impact the presidential campaign has had on the nation’s schools, particularly the impact on students, and the impact on teaching. Normally, teachers take advantage of a presidential campaign to teach on a variety of subjects. That’s not the case this time. Many teachers are afraid to bring it up, because of the incitement it causes, which ends in harassment and bullying of some students, and other teachers are at a loss to explain to their students why this campaign was so utterly filthy, with none of the ideals and high standards they are taught about. Many teachers are heartbroken, seeing the profound fear many of their students have, even in kindergarten. The article is a long one, and there’s a .pdf available, and a link to full comments at the main page.

Every four years, teachers in the United States use the presidential election to impart valuable lessons to students about the electoral process, democracy, government and the responsibilities of citizenship.

But, for students and teachers alike, this year’s primary season is starkly different from any in recent memory. The results of an online survey conducted by Teaching Tolerance suggest that the campaign is having a profoundly negative effect on children and classrooms.

It’s producing an alarming level of fear and anxiety among children of color and inflaming racial and ethnic tensions in the classroom. Many students worry about being deported.

Other students have been emboldened by the divisive, often juvenile rhetoric in the campaign. Teachers have noted an increase in bullying, harassment and intimidation of students whose races, religions or nationalities have been the verbal targets of candidates on the campaign trail.

Educators are perplexed and conflicted about what to do. They report being stymied by the need to remain nonpartisan but disturbed by the anxiety in their classrooms and the lessons that children may be absorbing from this campaign.

Two responses from teachers illustrate their dilemma. A teacher in Arlington, Virginia, says, “I try to not bring it up since it is so stressful for my students.” Another, in Indianapolis, Indiana, says, “I am at a point where I’m going to take a stand even if it costs me my position.”

The Trump Effect: The Impact of the Presidential Campaign on Our Nation’s Schools.