infiniteadventure:

lupinatic:

here-is-the-place:

When people say these books are children’s books, as if to demean them, I balk. These books dealt with themes that adults do not fully understand or wish to. It dealt with racism, classism, sexism, homophobia, prejudice, and general ignorance. These books taught us that it doesn’t matter how you were raised, but that you get to choose to be kind, loyal, brave, and true. They taught us to be strong under the pressures of this world and to hold fast to what we know to be right. These books taught me so much, they changed me as a person. So just because they’re set against a fantastical backdrop with young protagonists does not mean that their value is any less real.

This.

First book: Starts with the double murder of a pair of twenty-one year olds who were much missed and leaving their baby son a war orphan. A child growing up in abusive conditions that would give Cinderella the horrors. Dealing with peers and teachers who are bullies. The fickleness of fame (from the darling of Gryffindor to the outcast.) The idea that there are things worth fighting and dying for, spoken by the child protagonist. Three children promptly acting on that willingness to sacrifice their lives, and two of them getting injured doing so.

Second book: The equivalent of racism with the pro-pureblood attitude. Plot driven by an eleven year old girl being groomed and then used by a charming, handsome older male. The imbalance of power and resultant abuse inherent in slavery. Fraud perpetuated by stealing something very intimate.

Third book: The equivalent of ableism with a decent, kind and competant adult being considered less than human because he has an illness that adversely affects his behaviour at certain times. A justice system that is the opposite of just. Promises of removing an abused child from the abusive environment can’t always be kept. The innocent suffer while the guilty thrive.

Fouth book: More fickleness of fame. The privileged mistreating and undermining the underprivileged because they can. A master punishing a slave for his own misjudgment, and the slave blaming herself. A sports tournament which involves mortal risk being cheered by spectators. A wonderful young man being murdered simply because he was in the way. A young boy being tortured, humilated and nearly murdered.

Fifth book: PTSD in the teenage protagonist. Severe depression in the protagonist’s godfather, triggered by inherited mental health issues and being forced to stay in a house where abuse occured. A bigoted tyrant who lives to crush everyone under her heel, torturing a teenager for telling the truth in the name of the government (and trying to suck his soul out too). The discovery that your idols can have feet of clay after all. An effort to save the life of someone dear and precious actually costing that very same life. The loss of a father-figure and the resultant guilt.

Sixth book: The idea that a soul can be broken beyond repair. Drugs with the potential for date rape are shown as having achieved exactly that in at least one case, resulting in a pregnancy. Well-meaning chauvinism trying to control the love life of a young woman. Internalised prejuidce resulting in refusing the one you love, not out of lack of love but out of fear of tainting them. The mortality of those that seem powerful and larger than life.

Seventh book: Bad situations can get worse, to the point where even the privileged end up suffering and afraid. More internalised prejudice and fear hysterical terror of tainting those you love. Self-sacrifice and the loss of loved ones, EVERYWHERE. Those who are bitter are often so with a reason. The necessity of defeating your inner demons, even though it’s never as cool as it sounds. Don’t underestimate those that are enslaved. Other people’s culture isn’t always like your own. Things often come full circle (war ending with the death of a dearly-loved pair of new parents and their orphaned baby son living with his dead mother’s blood relative instead of his young godfather). Even if ‘all is well’ the world is still imperfect, because it’s full of us brilliant imperfect humans.

 
So… still think that Harry Potter is a kid’s series with no depth?

Note to self: Print this off, give to English teacher.

(via merewetherdreams)

A student blows up at a teacher, drops the F-bomb. The usual approach at Lincoln – and, safe to say, at most high schools in this country – is automatic suspension. Instead, Sporleder sits the kid down and says quietly: “Wow. Are you OK? This doesn’t sound like you. What’s going on?”

He gets even more specific: “You really looked stressed. On a scale of 1-10, where are you with your anger?” The kid was ready. Ready, man! For an anger blast to his face….”How could you do that?” “What’s wrong with you?”…and for the big boot out of school. But he was NOT ready for kindness.

The armor-plated defenses melt like ice under a blowtorch and the words pour out: “My dad’s an alcoholic. He’s promised me things my whole life and never keeps those promises.” The waterfall of words that go deep into his home life, which is no piece of breeze, end with this sentence: “I shouldn’t have blown up at the teacher.” Whoa.

For the first eight years of our marriage, [Michelle and I] were paying more in student loans than what we were paying for our mortgage. So we know what this is about.

And we were lucky to land good jobs with a steady income. But we only finished paying off our student loans—check this out, all right, I’m the President of the United States—we only finished paying off our student loans about eight years ago.

thedailywhat:

Kickass Dad of the Day: When Stuart Chaifetz learned that his 10-year-old son, Akian, was being violent and disruptive in class, he was puzzled. He knew Akian, who has autism, to be mild-mannered and sensitive, and had a hunch that something more was going on. But after several meetings with a team of school officials created to help special-needs students, nothing changed. So Chaifetz did what any concerned parent would do.

On the morning of Friday, February 17, 2012, I wired my son and sent him to school. That night, when I listened to the audio my life changed forever. I heard my son being bullied by his teacher and aide. The six and a half hours of audio I had proved that my son wasn’t hitting the teacher because there was something wrong with him — he was lashing out because he was being mocked, mistreated and humiliated. His outbursts were his way of expressing that he was being emotionally hurt at school.

The New Jersey father has since launched a website full of damning evidence and aFacebook page, and he is petitioning the state to change legislation so that teachers who bully children are immediately fired. The aide has been fired, but the rest of the staff have merely been relocated.

“I seek a full and public apology from all those adults who were in my son’s class for what they did to him,” Chaifetz says. “It is also far past time that these issues are allowed to be hidden from public view.”

[vvv]

The problems of American education are not unsolvable, but the remedies must be rooted in reality. Schools are crucial institutions in our society and teachers can make a huge difference in changing children’s lives, but schools and teachers alone cannot cure the ills of an unequal and stratified society. Every testing program—whether the SAT, the ACT, or state and national tests—demonstrates that low scores are strongly correlated to poverty. On the SAT, for example, students from the most affluent families have the highest scores, and children from the poorest families have the lowest scores. Children need better schools, and they also need health clinics, high-quality early childhood education, arts programs, after-school activities, safe neighborhoods, and basic economic security. To the extent that we reduce poverty, we will improve student achievement.

The United States of America on college education

• Student: I'm not going to go to college because I don't want to go into debt.
• USA: YOU USELESS PIECE OF SHIT. YOU'RE GOING TO AMOUNT TO NOTHING YOU FUCKING SCUMBAG. YOU'RE THE REASON WHY MY TAXES ARE SO HIGH.
• Student: I'm just going to attend a small community college instead.
• USA: HAHAHA YOU WERE TOO STUPID TO GET INTO A GOOD UNIVERSITY. ENJOY YOUR MCDONALD'S DIPLOMA.
• Student: I attended a four year university and received a diploma in a field I am interested in. Now I am $50,000+ in debt.
• USA: YOU DUMBASS. WHY THE FUCK DID YOU GO TO COLLEGE WHEN YOU KNOW YOU COULDN'T AFFORD IT? YOU DIDN'T EVEN CHOOSE A USEFUL MAJOR EITHER. GOD PEOPLE LIKE YOU MAKE ME SICK.

deconversionmovement:

Why We Need College Degrees More than we Need Faith

By Lawrence M. Krauss

Rick Santorum has made a number of outlandish statements recently during this presidential campaign that appear derive from his religious worldview, ranging from the claim that contraception is ‘harmful to women’ to the claim that birth control encourages more abortions. But while his criticism of President Obama’s encouragement of Americans to attend college, calling such aspirations snobby, was also off the mark-those with a college degree, for example, have been shown to vastly greater earning potential and job opportunities than those without one-his claim that many students who enter college with a ‘faith commitment’ leave college without one may in fact have some basis in reality. However, the conclusion he draws from this claim is precisely wrong.

Read More

“If it is true that those who are more educated have a greater tendency to question their religious faith, shouldn’t we consider that this might be telling us more about religious faith than about how harmful getting a college degree can be?”

This is a great article. Click through to read the rest of it. 

(via fuckyeahtopher)

A great teacher can offer an escape from poverty to the child who dreams beyond his circumstance. Every person in this chamber can point to a teacher who changed the trajectory of their lives. Most teachers work tirelessly, with modest pay, sometimes digging into their own pocket for school supplies - just to make a difference. Teachers matter. So instead of bashing them, or defending the status quo, let’s offer schools a deal. Give them the resources to keep good teachers on the job, and reward the best ones. In return, grant schools flexibility: To teach with creativity and passion; to stop teaching to the test; and to replace teachers who just aren’t helping kids learn.

An Open Letter To Newt Gingrich From A Black Kid Who Grew Up In A Poor Neighborhood
Posted on December 5, 2011 

Dear Newt Gingrich,

I recently saw you stand up in front of a group of people and allow some of the most idiotic, unfounded, racist, and ignorant words pass your lips that I’ve ever heard from a member of a group of the most unqualified presidential candidates America has ever seen.

To have the audacity to say that poor kids, and let’s be clear that’s republican speak for black and brown kids, “have no habits of working and nobody around them who works” is not only an insult to me as black man who grew up in one of those “really poor” neighborhoods you spoke of but it’s an insult to my mother. And it’s an insult to many other black and brown children, adults, and hard working parents(often single parents) who get up every single day to try to provide a better life for their children in poor neighborhoods.

As a child grew up in Compton in the early 90′s, one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in America, I watched my mother work tirelessly, sometimes juggling multiple jobs to provide for myself and my sister. Day in and day out just like many other parents in poor neighborhoods she did what she had to do in order to provide for us. You know what that turned into Mr. Gingrich?

A son who received academic and athletic scholarship offers from three Ivy League schools and countless other universities, a son with a college degree in Criminal Justice who graduated with honors from every school he attended, and a daughter who not only attended a Gifted and Talented Education high school but is one year away from completing a degree at UCLA.

This is not just the case for my family. I know I speak for many other hard working black, brown, and even poor white families who have the same experiences in the poor neighborhoods to look down upon from your elitist 1% out of touch pedestal. To say that an entire community “literally has no habit of showing up on Monday” or “they have no habit of staying all day” I say that is a load of shit.

Millions of poor children watch their parents show up Monday and many of them sometimes have to suffer from the fact that their parents have to stay at work ALL DAY.

And lastly, you suggest that to remedy this “problem” as you so blindly see it is to make poor kids assistant janitors and pay them to clean the restrooms? Your solution is child labor. Degrading young children by suggesting they clean toilets while painting all union workers as lazy leeches. It’s a shame they don’t have the work ethic of hard working Americans like Kim Kardashian who worked so hard in her sex tape before we crowned her a role model for young girls and showered her with money and adoration or Paris Hilton who was forced to clean so many toilets as a teen to learn “work ethic” before her parents handed over the millions.

This not only echoes the depth of your ignorance but just how truly unqualified you are to ever be president of this country. Your assumption that poor people have no ingrained work ethic and “have no habit of ‘I do this and you give me cash’ unless it’s illegal” is not only dangerously ignorant but it proves you have no connection with the true heart of this country.

I believe I speak for most if not all of “poor” America when I say Mr. Gingrich you have no habit of performing, thinking or speaking in a manner that warrants becoming the leader of the free world and the 45th president of these United States of America. You represent a party of greedy, selfish, out of touch, wealth protecting, non tax paying, destroyers of the middle class. You know nothing about us. But your words in your speech in Des Moines told us everything about you.

Which is why I hope you win your party’s nomination so that poor and impoverished families can at least experience four more years of a man working diligently to help them and the communities they call home that you have proven to know nothing about. president number 44.

PS. You look like someone poured mashed potatoes into a suit.

One teachers approach to preventing gender bullying in a classroom

When an adult took standardized tests forced on kids - The Washington Post ›

Research and Documentation Online: How to properly cite your sources when writing papers ›

Contraceptives no more cause sex than umbrellas cause rain.

The good news: some 82% of us are talking to our teens about sex. We’re consistently sharing our values about when sex is appropriate, and we’re working hard to help our kids distinguish between healthy and unhealthy relationships. Where we’re falling short is that we’re not concretely explaining how to prevent problems like unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections. Though the vast majority of the survey respondents had talked to their kids, more than a quarter conceded they hadn’t shared tips about how to say no to sex. And while 94% thought they could influence their teens’ decisions about whether to use condoms and other forms of birth control when the time came, only 60% had actually talked to their kids about different methods of birth control.

inothernews:

thedisgruntledgradstudent:

timekiller-s:

everqueer:

Dear 53%ers:

Congratulations on all your success. I mean that. But all this “the gov’t never helped me” stuff? Yeah, about that:

- That no-frills State U. education you paid yourself through was so cheap because it was subsidized with tax dollars. The scholarship you earned, same deal.

- The road you drive on to work didn’t magically appear there. It was a gov’t project.

- You’ve likely never been hospitalized for food poisoning. Federal food inspectors do good work.

- Your business has been able to flourish in part thanks to protection from police and fire departments … UNION WORKERS and gov’t employees all.

- The Internet is a wonderful thing that makes wide dissemination of your ideas quick and easy, isn’t it? Yep, another innovation of the bloated, incompetent federal government. 

- At this very moment you are paying my salary to defend your right to your poorly-formed opinion and to be callous toward your fellow man. You’re welcome, jerks.

Sincerely,

An American soldier in Afghanistan

This is beautiful.

I do not understand why these concepts are so hard to grasp for some people.

Two words: “Willful blindness.”