I like that 5th graders comment too but I have to say the article makes a very good point. Kids, esp "socioeconomically challenged" kids like I teach, def could use longer school yrs and days, but they also need more art, enrichment, etc to fill those days, not just more lectures or worksheets, so I hope they're willing to ponny up the dough to make it happen!
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/09/27/obama-proposes-longer-school-day-shorter-summer-vacation/?test=latestnews
Monday, September 28, 2009
Sunday, September 27, 2009
RE: America being the best contry on Earth
some very good points... it takes work, it is not our birth right
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Shaq vs. Phelps video...
I only watched the races, but I must admit Shaq is quite a unique athlete and personable guy. However, Phelps took it easy on him....disappointing.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Friday, September 11, 2009
Pseudohermaphradite runner Semenya
I'm not sure if anyone else is following the controversy over a track star in South Africa. For a background story and decent breakdown read here: http://www.sportsscientists.com/2009/09/semenya-and-hermaphroditism.html.
Personally, I do not think Semenya should be able to compete as a woman. I like the article's point that stated in 1996 when gender screening was done, 8 females tested similar to Semenya. However, I feel that these woman should have been disqualified. Any changes in hormones from conception can greatly alter a person's life and even if these hormones have been discontinued, they still influenced and affected the person.
Monday, September 7, 2009
Google search as part of healthcare debate
I <3 Google and find most things they do interesting. Well, apparently they have a political advertising director and their search ads seem to be beginning to play a role in the health care debate.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/healthcare/la-na-health-internet4-2009sep04,0,824292.story
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/healthcare/la-na-health-internet4-2009sep04,0,824292.story
America can only be as good as it's citizens. Even though there is a separation of church and state...education must agree on basic moral beliefs to instill on all its students.
Thrift, integrity, self-reliance, modesty.... a good start
Manhattan Institute fellow Steve Malanga writing in the Institute's City Journal:
The genius of America in the early nineteenth century, Tocqueville thought, was that it pursued "productive industry" without a descent into lethal materialism. Behind America's balancing act, the pioneering French social thinker noted, lay a common set of civic virtues that celebrated not merely hard work but also thrift, integrity, self-reliance, and modesty—virtues that grew out of the pervasiveness of religion, which Tocqueville called "the first of [America's] political institutions, . . . imparting morality" to American democracy and free markets. Some 75 years later, sociologist Max Weber dubbed the qualities that Tocqueville observed the "Protestant ethic" and considered them the cornerstone of successful capitalism. Like Tocqueville, Weber saw that ethic most fully realized in America, where it pervaded the society. Preached by luminaries like Benjamin Franklin, taught in public schools, embodied in popular novels, repeated in self-improvementbooks, and transmitted to immigrants, that ethic undergirded and promoted America's economic success.What would Tocqueville or Weber think of America today? In place of thrift, they would find a nation of debtors, staggering beneath loans obtained under false pretenses. In place of a steady, patient accumulation of wealth, they would find bankers and financiers with such a short-term perspective that they never pause to consider the consequences or risks of selling securities they don't understand. In place of a country where all a man asks of government is "not to be disturbed in his toil," as Tocqueville put it, they would find a nation of rent-seekers demanding government subsidies to purchase homes, start new ventures, or bail out old ones. They would find what Tocqueville described as the "fatal circle" of materialism—the cycle of acquisition and gratification that drives people back to ever more frenetic acquisition and that ultimately undermines prosperous democracies.And they would understand why. After flourishing for three centuries in America, the Protestant ethic began to disintegrate, with key elements slowly disappearing from modern American society, vanishing from schools, from business, from popular culture, and leaving us with an economic system unmoored from the restraints of civic virtue. Not even Adam Smith—who was a moral philosopher, after all—imagined capitalism operating in such an ethical vacuum. Bailout plans, new regulatory schemes, and monetary policy moves won't be enough to spur a robust, long-term revival of American economic opportunity without some renewal of what was once understood as the work ethic—not just hard work but also a set of accompanying virtues, whose crucial role in the development and sustaining of free markets too few now recall
Thrift, integrity, self-reliance, modesty.... a good start
Manhattan Institute fellow Steve Malanga writing in the Institute's City Journal:
The genius of America in the early nineteenth century, Tocqueville thought, was that it pursued "productive industry" without a descent into lethal materialism. Behind America's balancing act, the pioneering French social thinker noted, lay a common set of civic virtues that celebrated not merely hard work but also thrift, integrity, self-reliance, and modesty—virtues that grew out of the pervasiveness of religion, which Tocqueville called "the first of [America's] political institutions, . . . imparting morality" to American democracy and free markets. Some 75 years later, sociologist Max Weber dubbed the qualities that Tocqueville observed the "Protestant ethic" and considered them the cornerstone of successful capitalism. Like Tocqueville, Weber saw that ethic most fully realized in America, where it pervaded the society. Preached by luminaries like Benjamin Franklin, taught in public schools, embodied in popular novels, repeated in self-improvementbooks, and transmitted to immigrants, that ethic undergirded and promoted America's economic success.What would Tocqueville or Weber think of America today? In place of thrift, they would find a nation of debtors, staggering beneath loans obtained under false pretenses. In place of a steady, patient accumulation of wealth, they would find bankers and financiers with such a short-term perspective that they never pause to consider the consequences or risks of selling securities they don't understand. In place of a country where all a man asks of government is "not to be disturbed in his toil," as Tocqueville put it, they would find a nation of rent-seekers demanding government subsidies to purchase homes, start new ventures, or bail out old ones. They would find what Tocqueville described as the "fatal circle" of materialism—the cycle of acquisition and gratification that drives people back to ever more frenetic acquisition and that ultimately undermines prosperous democracies.And they would understand why. After flourishing for three centuries in America, the Protestant ethic began to disintegrate, with key elements slowly disappearing from modern American society, vanishing from schools, from business, from popular culture, and leaving us with an economic system unmoored from the restraints of civic virtue. Not even Adam Smith—who was a moral philosopher, after all—imagined capitalism operating in such an ethical vacuum. Bailout plans, new regulatory schemes, and monetary policy moves won't be enough to spur a robust, long-term revival of American economic opportunity without some renewal of what was once understood as the work ethic—not just hard work but also a set of accompanying virtues, whose crucial role in the development and sustaining of free markets too few now recall
Sunday, September 6, 2009
RE: Many conservatives enraged over Obama school speech
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/09/04/obama.schools/index.html?iref=mpstoryview
Seriously? This is crazy! If Bush had given a back to school speech, I personally wouldn't have wanted to watch it, and probably my students wouldn't have wanted to either (many of my students have already been indoctrinated by their parents :-) ), but I wouldn't have thought it was a big deal in any way, and certainly wouldn't have been mad about it.
As a teacher, here's how I interpret this: Obama is trying to use his "cult of personality," which he has, whether he's cultivating it or not, to encourage kids to make and reach goals that are good for them. My initial thought is that "what they can do to help the president" should have instead been worded JFK-style to say "what they can do to help their country," but would that have calmed these nuts down any? I'm not sure.
Seriously? This is crazy! If Bush had given a back to school speech, I personally wouldn't have wanted to watch it, and probably my students wouldn't have wanted to either (many of my students have already been indoctrinated by their parents :-) ), but I wouldn't have thought it was a big deal in any way, and certainly wouldn't have been mad about it.
Some of the controversy surrounding Obama's speech stems from a proposed lesson plan created by the Education Department to accompany the address. An initial version of the plan recommended that students draft letters to themselves discussing "what they can do to help the president."
The letters "would be collected and redistributed at an appropriate later date by the teacher to make students accountable to their goals," the plan stated.
After pressure from conservatives, the White House said that the plan was not artfully worded, and distributed a revised version encouraging students to write letters about how they can "achieve their short-term and long-term education goals."
A number of the president's critics, however, were not placated.
"As far as I'm concerned this is not civics education -- it gives the appearance of creating a cult of personality," said Oklahoma state Sen. Steve Russell, a Republican.
As a teacher, here's how I interpret this: Obama is trying to use his "cult of personality," which he has, whether he's cultivating it or not, to encourage kids to make and reach goals that are good for them. My initial thought is that "what they can do to help the president" should have instead been worded JFK-style to say "what they can do to help their country," but would that have calmed these nuts down any? I'm not sure.
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