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US and Canadian Politics. technology.
environment. energy. education. health.
civil rights. social equality. novelty items.
and just maybe 1 lolcat. Glorious and free. in Toronto
From The Globe and Mail:
Suggesting that Ontario’s province-wide Grade 3 and 6 literacy and math tests are useless, as the New Democratic Party’s education critic Rosario Marchese did this week, is to reveal a party that is not to be taken seriously, at least on education.
This is the party that, when it governed Ontario under Bob Rae, set up a royal commission that recommended these very tests. The Conservative Party later implemented the testing regime, and the Liberal government has added resources that have helped literacy scores improve markedly.
2011 Ontario election financial aid students tuition education
We can tell our children that school is important until we’re blue in the face, they’re not stupid. They see the loudest applause is for the kids on the field. They know teachers are paid poorly and don’t drive fancy cars. They know people plan Super Bowl parties but mock the National Spelling Bee. In other words, they see the hypocrisy, and we can’t expect society to correct itself. If we want to have any lasting influence on the way our kids approach education — the way future generations approach education — then we have to grab our pom-poms and paint our faces and celebrate intellectual curiosity with the same vigor we do their athletic achievements.
Why I’m raising my son to be a nerd - CNN.com
We also don’t believe in the value of education, culturally — we just like to say we do because as citizens of an industrialized nation, we’re supposed to.
(via chameli)
(via randomactsofchaos)
From the Ottawa Citizen:
Keon, a lifelong Tory who sat in the federal Senate as a Progressive Conservative before he reached mandatory retirement at 75 last year, praised McGuinty for what he’s done on health, sure (“he’s really been ahead of his time”), but also on education (early and higher). He said McGuinty had “brilliantly managed” the recession and Ontario’s recovery. One sample:
He’s committed to making Ontario’s publicly funded education system even better, and the link between education and health is enormous. Under his leadership, peace and progress have returned to Ontario’s public school system, children are getting the attention they need through smaller class sizes and more teachers, and now he’s introduced full-day kindergarten for four- and five-year-olds to give kids a wonderful start in life and set them on the road to a long, healthy, productive life.
via Jordan
High-school teachers around the country are being subjected to harassment and threats urging them to avoid teaching factual climate science.
“’Evolution is still the big one, but climate change is catching up,” says Roberta Johnson, executive director of the National Earth Science Teachers Association (NESTA) in Boulder, Colorado. An informal survey this spring of 800 NESTA members found that climate change was second only to evolution in triggering protests from parents and school administrators. One teacher reported being told by school administrators not to teach climate change after a parent threatened to come to class and make a scene. Online message boards for science teachers tell similar tales…
“There seems to be a lynch-mob hate against any teacher trying to teach climate change,” says Andrew Milbauer, an environmental sciences teacher at Conserve School, a private boarding school in Land O’Lakes, Wisconsin.”
(Source: jtotheizzoe, via climateadaptation)
I don’t even know…. I think I’m going to have to kill my self soon.
From the article:
“That long-held empirical value of pi, I am not saying it should be necessarily viewed as wrong, but 3 is a lot better,” said Roby, the 34-year old legislator representing Alabama’s second congressional district, ushered into office in the historic 2010 Republican mid-term bonanza.
Republicans education fucking circles how do they work? comedy news
I weep for the future.
THIS will make you laugh all day long.
Here’s my fav quote from a truly outraged American:
“A ‘teacher’ told my child in class that dolphins were mammals and not fish! And the same thing about whales! We need TRADITIONAL VALUES in all areas of education. If it swims in the water, it is a FISH. Period! End of Story.”
Thank you for this erinnn. There is just not enough humour in politics.
Texas is finished removing “liberal bias” from its school books.
“The education board has dropped references to the slave trade in favour of calling it the more innocuous ‘Atlantic triangular trade’ and recasts the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as driven by Islamic fundamentalism.”
“Study of Sir Isaac Newton is dropped in favour of examining scientific advances through military technology.”
Nationwide boycott? Our level of education is already gutter-worthy but I can’t imagine where we’ll end up after distributing this garbage. I’m not sure there’s anything much more dishonest than deliberately teaching people untruths in pursuit of an end that is more than deprived of moral excellence. Nothing is really more important than education and it’s truly the key to finding solutions for the problems we currently face and will face in the future.
I’m definitely going to cause an uproar over this within my own academic circles. I don’t want one of those books to even be near me in fear of being contaminated.
