And so the natural right of parents to direct and oversee the education of their children in a fashion consistent with their religious and moral beliefs has been abrogated by the European Union.

A German family filed a complaint alleging that their freedoms were violated by a German law requiring attendance in public or state-sanctioned private schools. The family's religious beliefs are opposed to some topics addressed in state-sponsored education, including sex education and mythological fairy tales.

Instead, the parents attempted to educate their children at home using a Christian syllabus developed by the "Philadelphia school," a Siegen, Germany, institution that is not recognized by the German government as a legitimate private school.

But the ECHR ruled that the objectives of a state-sanctioned education "cannot be equally met by home education" and that the law didn't violate the family's religious freedoms.

The court wrote that it was in the "general interest of society to avoid the emergence of parallel societies based on separate philosophical convictions and the importance of integrating minorities into society."

It ruled that the parents were allowed to educate their children from a religious perspective "after school and at weekends. Therefore, the parent's right to education in conformity with their religious convictions is not restricted in a disproportionate manner."

Oh, and about the law that was upheld – it isn’t a new one. It was one of the progressive educational reforms by an earlier Socialist government – the National Socialist regime of Adolf Hitler. So even today, it is Hitler who controls what and when German parents can teach their children.

Posted by: Greg at 10:05 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 277 words, total size 2 kb.

And so the natural right of parents to direct and oversee the education of their children in a fashion consistent with their religious and moral beliefs has been abrogated by the European Union.

A German family filed a complaint alleging that their freedoms were violated by a German law requiring attendance in public or state-sanctioned private schools. The family's religious beliefs are opposed to some topics addressed in state-sponsored education, including sex education and mythological fairy tales.

Instead, the parents attempted to educate their children at home using a Christian syllabus developed by the "Philadelphia school," a Siegen, Germany, institution that is not recognized by the German government as a legitimate private school.

But the ECHR ruled that the objectives of a state-sanctioned education "cannot be equally met by home education" and that the law didn't violate the family's religious freedoms.

The court wrote that it was in the "general interest of society to avoid the emergence of parallel societies based on separate philosophical convictions and the importance of integrating minorities into society."

It ruled that the parents were allowed to educate their children from a religious perspective "after school and at weekends. Therefore, the parent's right to education in conformity with their religious convictions is not restricted in a disproportionate manner."

Oh, and about the law that was upheld – it isn’t a new one. It was one of the progressive educational reforms by an earlier Socialist government – the National Socialist regime of Adolf Hitler. So even today, it is Hitler who controls what and when German parents can teach their children.

Posted by: Greg at 10:05 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 290 words, total size 2 kb.

And it is very possible that the young man is related to at least one of my students student, as he attended one of our feeder schools.

A 12-year-old football player from North Shore Middle School died Wednesday afternoon after collapsing while his football coach gave a speech on the importance of academics.

The unidentified seventh grader was the third local football player to die within 10 days.

The team had held a "light football practice and conditioning drills" before the talk, according to Galena Park Independent School District spokesman Craig Eichhorn.

Eichhorn said that attempts to revive the student by two coaches were unsuccessful. EMS personnel also tried to revive the youth with a defribillator, Eichhorn said.

The student was transported to the East Houston Regional Medical Center, where he was worked on for "several hours. At one point, they did get a slight pulse from him, but despite their best efforts, they were unable to save him," Eichhorn said.

Earlier this week, a player from Rice University died after practice. And last week a student from a school in HISD (a cousin of one of my students) died of a previously unknown heart condition while walking around the school track after school.

I'm really expecting this to be a rough day today. Ours is a close-knit community, if a large one, and I expect this to be taken hard by students and teachers alike.

Please pray for this young man, his family and friends, his classmates and teachers, and my entire school district.

Posted by: Greg at 11:14 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 281 words, total size 2 kb.

I'm tired of being the t-shirt police.

I'm tired of having to parse out meaningand weighing the relative level of suggestiveness of messages on t-shirts.

And it is a nationwide problem.

Ashli Walker rifled through a rack of designer T-shirts one recent afternoon, pondering which one she should buy and wear the next day to Eleanor Roosevelt High School in Prince George's County. The big black one that read, "TRUST ME..I'M SINGLE"? Or the snug white T-shirt emblazoned with, "I KNOW WHAT BOYS WANT"?

They're blatantly sexual, occasionally clever and often loaded with double meanings, forcing school administrators and other students to read provocations stripped across the chest, such as "yes, but not with u!," "Your Boyfriend Is a Good Kisser" and "two boys for every girl." Such T-shirts also are emblematic of the kind of sleazy-chic culture some teenagers now inhabit, in which status can be defined by images of sexual promiscuity that previous generations might have considered unhip.

The T-shirts, which school officials say are racier than ever, are posing dress-code dilemmas on Washington area campuses. School systems typically ban clothing that expresses vulgarity, obscenity or lewdness or that promotes cigarettes, alcohol, drugs or weapons. For instance, T-shirts advertising Budweiser or the movie "Scarface," with Al Pacino holding a tommy gun, are taboo.

But sexually suggestive T-shirts often fall into a gray area that requires officials to evaluate one shirt at a time. Some messages are considered harmless -- "Single and Ready to Mingle" or "My Boyfriend Is a Good Kisser." Others are not.

"We try not to make a huge deal out of it, but we also want to be protecting the school environment," said Rick Mondloch, an associate principal at Robinson Secondary School in Fairfax County, who recently ordered a "Pimps" shirt turned inside out. "These shirts are more risque than they were even five years ago and probably a little more blunt, so you have to be attuned to it."

I still recall a struggle we had over a t-shirt several years ago. Several girls had bought shirts that looked like old-style ads depicting a couple of soft-serve ice cream cones.. The slogan? "Tasty Cones -- Give One A Lick!" , with the little twirl at the top of each dessert placed strategically over the nipples? Dirty messages on the shirts? Or dirty-old men oggling innocent teenage girls (one parent's argument)? You decide.

Personally, I'm for uniforms for all students -- just to get the inapprorpaite messages off the shirts and the pants up to the waist.

Posted by: Greg at 10:35 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 432 words, total size 3 kb.

From the stupid school board file.

An award-winning Texas art teacher who was reprimanded after one of her fifth-grade students saw a nude sculpture during a trip to a museum has lost her job.

The school board in Frisco has voted not to renew Sydney McGee's contract after 28 years. She has been on administrative leave.

The teacher took her students on an approved field trip to a Dallas museum, and now some parents are upset.

The Fisher Elementary School art teacher came under fire last April when she took 89 fifth-graders on a field trip to the Dallas Museum of Art. Parents raised concerns over the field trip after their children reported seeing a nude sculpture at the art museum.

The parents had signed permission slips allowing their children to take part in the field trip.

McGee's lawyer said the principal at Fisher Elementary School admonished her after a parent complained that a student had seen nude art.

McGee said the principal had urged her to take the students to the museum.

Now, McGee, who was honored with a Star Teacher Award two years ago, is on paid administrative leave until her contract with the school district expires in March.

So let me get this straight – the teacher was disciplined because there was art at the art museum? Like nobody knew that there might be a non-pornographic nude sculpture or painting somewhere in the building? What sort of morons are we talking about here?

But some parents are fighting back.

Other parents are worried about the future of the art program at the school, which they cite as a reason for moving into the neighborhood.

"Our main concern right now is what's going to happen to the children and what's going to happen to the art program at Fisher Elementary. It is the best art program. That's the reason we moved to this neighborhood. It's because of the teachers," said Shannon Allen, a parent. "It was a principal-approved trip. What's the big deal?”

I agree. It is not like the teacher brought a Penthouse into the classroom or stood the kids in front of an erotic sculpture. They passed by something in the museum – a public place – and caught a glimpse of a work of art.

Sometimes IÂ’m sort of ashamed to be an educator in Texas.

Posted by: Greg at 09:00 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
Post contains 397 words, total size 2 kb.

What next -- a prohibition on checking references from the bibliography?

When McLean High School students write this year about Othello or immigration policy, their teachers won't be the only ones examining the papers. So will a California company that specializes in catching cheaters.

The for-profit service known as Turnitin checks student work against a database of more than 22 million papers written by students around the world, as well as online sources and electronic archives of journals. School administrators said the service, which they will start using next week, is meant to deter plagiarism at a time when the Internet makes it easy to copy someone else's words.

But some McLean High students are rebelling. Members of the new Committee for Students' Rights said they do not cheat or condone cheating. But they object to Turnitin's automatically adding their essays to the massive database, calling it an infringement of intellectual property rights. And they contend that the school's action will tar students at one of Fairfax County's academic powerhouses.

"It irked a lot of people because there's an implication of assumed guilt," said Ben Donovan, 18, a senior who helped collect 1,190 student signatures on a petition against mandatory use of the service. "It's like if you searched every car in the parking lot or drug-tested every student."

But the school can search every car in the parking lot without a warrant -- that is part of the agreement you make with the school when you get your parking sticker. And they can search your locker without a warrant as well.

And speaking as a teacher, I've seen how rampant plagiarism really is. Several years ago, one of my students submitted a research paper in which he told of sittin on a hillside overlooking Nagasaki, mentally tracing the path of the falling atomic bomb. The paper was lfed in its entirety from a website ("but I didn't copy anything -- my uncle wrote the paper for me"). In my college-level night class, I recently received a paper which was cut and pasted from multiple sources without even anything to connect the parts -- and included the claim that the NAACP had given the author their photo archive for cataloging and preservation (a direct copy from the Library of Congress website) without a single citation.

Either our students need more to develop greater personal honesty, or they need to accept that being checked for plagiarism is part of the implied contract between teacher and students.

Posted by: Greg at 10:12 PM | Comments (41) | Add Comment
Post contains 425 words, total size 3 kb.

HIV, AIDS and other blood-borne pathogens have only been a serious concern in this country for a quarter-century – how could anyone dealing with medicine or science possibly be so cavalier about the health of others?

A science teacher was suspended for allowing students to use the same instrument to draw blood from their fingers as part of a class project, district officials said Tuesday.

About 50 students in two science classes at Salina High School South used the same lancet, or small pin, to prick their fingers on Monday, said Carol Pitts, spokeswoman for the Salina school district.

The science teacher, who was not identified, was suspended with pay during an investigation, Pitts said.

Pitts said there was additional concern that some of the students may have come in contact with blood when they washed the science experiment slides. She said it was unclear what experiment the classes were doing, but they may have been checking blood glucose levels.

She said the district was taking steps to ensure that the students were tested for diseases such as HIV — the virus that causes AIDS — and hepatitis, both of which can be spread by using a shared instrument to draw blood. The district was working with Saline County Health Department to establish testing procedures for the students.

"This is minimal risk," said Yvonne Gibbons, director of the health department. "I don't think there is any reason to panic, but we're cautioning the school to take the best possible course they can, and that would be to have the kids tested."

I’m a recently diagnosed diabetic, married to another diabetic. We each do glucose tests a couple of times a day – and we are scrupulous about ensuring that we dispose of the used lancets and test strips in a save manner for the sake of others. If this teacher was allowing lancets to be reused, he or she deserves to be fired. If it was just the lancing device, I’m less concerned but still troubled. Safety when dealing with body fluids should always be the rule in a classroom.

Posted by: Greg at 11:27 AM | Comments (76) | Add Comment
Post contains 354 words, total size 2 kb.

Just goes to show what we have always known -- those with the least education tend to be least involved with the civic life of their community.

High school dropouts are significantly less likely than better-educated Americans to vote, trust government, do volunteer work, or go to church, according to a new report that reveals a widening gap in "civic health" between the nation's upper and lower classes.

The report, a portrait of civic life in the United States, finds that Americans' disengagement from their communities during the past few decades has been particularly dramatic among adults who have the least education. Among people who lack a high school diploma, the percentage who have voted plummeted from 1976 to 2004 to 31 percent -- half the 62 percent of college graduates who voted in 2004.

Now the question has to be asked -- is this due mainly to poverty, or is it due to differences in attitudes? It appears that there is a connection. So not only does lack of an education lower one's income potential, it also lowers one's engagement in the community around you.

Posted by: Boyo at 09:57 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 202 words, total size 1 kb.

This move will do nothing to eliminate the advantages and disadvantages inherrant in the college admissions process.

Harvard University, breaking with a major trend in college admissions, says it will eliminate its early admissions program next year, with university officials arguing that such programs put low-income and minority applicants at a distinct disadvantage in the competition to get into selective universities.

Harvard will be the first of the nationÂ’s prestigious universities to do away completely with early admissions, in which high school seniors try to bolster their chances at competitive schools by applying in the fall and learning whether they have been admitted in December, months before other students.

Some universities now admit as much as half of their freshman class this way, and many, though not Harvard, require an ironclad commitment from students that they will attend in return for the early acceptance.

Harvard’s decision — to be announced today — is likely to put pressure on other colleges, which acknowledge the same concerns but have been reluctant to take any step that could put them at a disadvantage in the heated competition for the top students.

Except it does nothing to eliminate what is seen as being at the heart of the problem.

But at Harvard and many other universities officials have grown concerned that early admissions present a major obstacle to low-income and working-class students. Such students have also been hurt by steep tuition increases and competition with students from wealthy families who pour thousands of dollars into college consultants and tutoring.

“I think there are lots of very talented students out there from poor and moderate-income backgrounds who have been discouraged by this whole hocus-pocus of early admissions by many of the nation’s top colleges,’’ said William R. Fitzsimmons, Harvard College’s dean of admissions and financial aid.

So how is this going to stop the spending of large sums of money by wealthy students intent on getting into the right school? How is this going to make college more affordable to the students in the middle -- neither poor enough to qualify for a free ride nor wealthy enough to afford it? It is all window dressing!

Absent a system like hospitals use to award residency positions -- one with nationwide competition and a matching system that includes all applicants and schools -- you won't get away from teh identical problem.

But then again, such a system would never be accepted.

It would kill athletic programs. It would end legacy admissions. And what of the poor kid who wants to go to a local college in his or her hometown who is instead assigned to Middle-Of-Nowhere State University in Hicktown, Montana?

So while the Harvard move looks good on paper, it doesn't really address the issues at hand -- and cannot.

Posted by: Greg at 10:34 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 479 words, total size 3 kb.

Well, TSU has taken their crooked ex-prexy out of the classroom, removing her from her position as an accounting profafter she was indicted on financial fraud charges.

Texas Southern University has relieved former President Priscilla Slade of her teaching duties and started the process to revoke her tenure, campus officials said Thursday.

The university's acting president, Bobby Wilson, notified Slade of the decision this week, saying her presence in the classroom poses "an ongoing threat of disrupting the academic process."

The move comes just days after Slade, who faces felony charges related to her spending of university money for personal expenses as president, requested and received teaching assignments this semester.

In June, the university's governing board fired Slade for using school funds to buy furniture, landscaping and a security system for her house, but did not take away her tenured faculty position. Her return last week provoked immediate controversy.

"There were a lot of people who were upset that the ex-president was allowed to teach," said board Chairman J. Paul Johnson. "It has been disruptive."

Slade has no place in the classroom -- and is one more example of what is wrong with tenure.

Posted by: Greg at 10:35 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 210 words, total size 1 kb.