Isn't it sad that we have reached a point that a school would need to make a rule about this?

Dorm rooms doubling as steamy love huts have Tufts University throwing cold water on sex on campus - at least when horny students let it all hang out in front of red-faced roommates.

“You may not engage in sexual activity while your roommate is present in the room,” tuts Tufts’ 2009-10 guest policy, newly revised in response to student gripes about rambunctious roomies and their raunchy romps.

Tufts spokeswoman Kim Thurler told the Herald the 8,500-student school has fielded roughly a dozen complaints from chagrined scholars “who expressed concerns that they were experiencing uncomfortable situations" with their roommates’ sex-tracurricular activities.

The school put the rules in place because they didn't have a written policy telling students what the expectations were. One would have hoped that wasn't necessary.

Not, of course, that this is a new problem. I ran into it in college -- once. I was dating a girl who developed a serious illness., and one Saturday evening she and I fell asleep while watching television her dorm room one evening when she was feeling particularly sick. Her roommate -- who was noted for her promiscuity -- brought a guy back to the room in the middle of the night and the pair proceeded to hump like a couple of bunnies in heat, waking both my girlfriend and I (though we feigned sleep out of embarrassment). My solution -- the next morning I discretely dropped a hint to the guy in question that we had heard everything -- and my girlfriend did the same with her roommate. It was never a problem after that.

Of course, maybe morals are looser than they were in the mid-1980s. Or maybe we are just a more litigious society, and so the school feels a need to tell students to act with a little common decency.

Posted by: Greg at 10:32 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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You can get some of the funniest situations.

Take today. I was using a personal anecdote to illustrate a point, and was about to say something about my education that no ninth grader could have possibly known about me. Suddenly, one of the boys chimed in with exactly the bit of information I was about to mention – and I responded with surprise.

From there, it got really funny, with the following exchange:

Girl: How did you know that?

Boy: Easy – I’m psychotic!

Girl: I think you mean psychic.

Boy: Yeah – that, too.

Psychotic and psychic. Could be a long school year.

Posted by: Greg at 12:04 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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Here's my one fear as a teacher -- the kid who is so out of control that he (or she) is perfectly prepared to take a life.

And in this case, it was the life of a teacher, for no apparent reason.

A special-education teacher who had a passion for music was fatally stabbed Wednesday morning in a Texas high school classroom, and police took a 16-year-old student into custody.

Todd R. Henry, 50, worked with students at John Tyler High School who were either emotionally or behaviorally challenged, according to his older brother, Jody Henry.

“He loved it,” the elder Henry said. “He told me it was his calling. He had never been happier than when working with these kids.”

District Superintendent Randy Reid said the male suspect approached his teacher about 8:50 a.m. and stabbed him in the neck with a sharp object. A teacherÂ’s aide and two other students were in the classroom, and the aide subdued the suspect before calling district police, Reid said.

Reid said the student had been in and out of the district “a couple of times,” but declined to provide further details, citing privacy laws.

“It is our understanding at this time that there was nothing in the classroom that incited this situation,” Reid said. “It was a random act.”

I know stuff like this happens. A friend of mine was taken out of school on a stretcher several years ago with a stab wound he received breaking up a fight between a couple of girls. I know others who have been injured, though not necessarily with weapons, by kids who targeted them.

And let me say that in this instance the "privacy laws" argument is absolute bullshit. This isn't a school disciplinary matter -- it is a criminal act about which the public has the right to full details before they allow their children back into that building.

Want to know the real irony of this situation? Mr. Henry had previously worked as a prison guard. It just boggles the mind.

My heart goes out to the family of Todd Henry -- especially to his new wife, who is also an educator. May God console them -- and Mr. Henry's students and colleagues -- at a time that is surely one of unspeakable horror.

Posted by: Greg at 11:30 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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One of the highlights of American education is state and local control of our schools and curriculum. In recent years, there has been an increase in federal intrusion into education matters as the national government has increased the number of dollars passed on for special programs. But this new development seems to go beyond that – and raises a new issue that troubles me.

Millions of Americans are marching, blogging, calling Congress, E-mailing friends, and writing to newspapers to say that President Obama and Congress are expanding government too far, too fast. We need to do more, because itÂ’s clear that theyÂ’re not getting the message. The latest example: the House of Representatives is preparing to put the Department of Education into the business of creating educational curriculum for American students.

This week the House is scheduled to approve H.R. 3221, an education lending bill that CBO reports will increase the deficit by $50 billion. The bill includes a little-known provision to give the Secretary of Education $500 million - to be provided to any entity he deems “appropriate” - to develop and disseminate free and “freely available” online courses.

Now these courses will be online, and will presumably be national in their availability. And therein lies the problem. What standards will be used in designing these courses? Who will make this determination? Will states (and their local school districts) be required to accept these courses for credit, even if the content does not match up with their state standards in the subject area? What will this do for graduation requirements in states like Texas, which is preparing to begin a new testing regime that involves “end of course” exams for core courses and mandates that students accrue a certain number of points in each core area in order to graduate? Will passing one or more of these courses enable a student to avoid meeting that requirement for graduation? Are these courses to be designed to create a de facto NATIONAL set of standards to which states will be pressured to adhere? I think these are questions that must be answered before we proceed any further down this road, so that we can have a true debate on the matter both within the education community and in the public at large.

Posted by: Greg at 12:15 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Man, are the liberals upset over one sentence in a fifteen page document in the proposed 11th grade social studies curriculum in the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills.

Texas high school students would learn about such significant individuals and milestones of conservative politics as Newt Gingrich and the rise of the Moral Majority — but nothing about liberals — under the first draft of new standards for public school history textbooks.

And the side that got left out is very unhappy.

Now I’ll be honest with you – I don’t teach that particular class, so I hadn’t looked at that set of standards (in large part because of my recent vacation and my subsequent preparation for the upcoming school year). But as presented in the Houston Chronicle’s article, the proposal seemed to be too partisan for me – and who has EVER accused me of viewing the world through nonpartisan glasses (though I do teach my classes in a nonpartisan fashion).

So I did what I teach my students to do when confronted with such disturbing information – I went to the primary source, the website of the Texas Education Agency where the newly proposed standards are posted so that I could see the new standards for US History since Reconstruction.

Here is the entire proposed strand in which this particular proposal fits.

(10) History. The student understands the circumstances of the U.S. as it emerges into the 21st century. The student is expected to:

(A) describe U.S. involvement in world affairs including the Persian Gulf War, Balkans Crisis, 9/11, and global war on terror; and

(B) identify significant conservative advocacy organizations and individuals, such as Newt Gingrich, Phyllis Schlafly, and the Moral Majority.

(C) discuss the rise of domestic terrorism

(D) discuss the role of third party candidates, such as Ross Perot and Ralph Nader.

Taken in that context, the focus on conservatism is mighty reasonable. Indeed, it parallels the sort of focus given to twentieth century movements such as the progressive movement and the civil rights movement. And while there are howls of outrage over the inclusion of Gingrich, Schlafly, and the Moral Majority, it is hard to argue that the three were not major figures in what has been a long-term shift of the political culture of the US to the right, one that has lasted some three decades and which may not be over. Indeed, I happen to think that there would be a place for Rush Limbaugh and the rise of conservative mass media in that particular standard.

But while there is outrage over the inclusion of two conservative individuals and one conservative group in the standards, let’s look at some of the other individuals and groups who are included who are pretty clearly liberal icons – and some of whom could be reasonably seen as less significant than the three conservative inclusions. These include Upton Sinclair, Susan B. Anthony, Ida B. Wells, W.E.B. DuBois, Marcus Garvey, Martin Luther King, Jr, Cesar Chavez, Betty Friedan, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), American Indian Movement (AIM), Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey, Henry B. Gonzalez, Thurgood Marshall, and Delores Huerta. Taken in that context, one might argue that conservative figures are decidedly underrepresented – where is Barry Goldwater, for example? And let’s not forget that there have been assorted proposed changes to include a contemporary liberal strand to balance the conservative strand and include additional liberal figures like Hillary Clinton and Harvey Milk elsewhere throughout the curriculum, but no significant effort to include a more extensive or balanced look at conservative figures.

And then there are the PC changes in the curriculum. For example, the standards dump Omar Bradley and George S. Patton (and have never included Chester Nimitz) from the WWII TEK while adding Benjamin O. Davis and Oveta Culp Hobby – and while I would never diminish the accomplishments of either (Davis is a particular hero of mine), I question their relative significance compared to the three excluded flag officers. Similarly excluded figures (besides Barry Goldwater, who I noted earlier) include George W. Bush and Clarence Thomas – and native Texan Barbara Jordan. I understand the need to limit the length of the standards, but surely these individuals each belong in the document somewhere.

But that also raises an additional point – as we teachers are often reminded, the TEKS are the baseline of what you must teach, not the boundary line of what you are allowed to teach. We teachers are not forbidden to teach about any excluded individual or group – or to contrast the included figures and groups with their opponents. And as I noted earlier, the curriculum does present a fairly balanced portrait of America over the last fourteen decades. So while I would certainly make changes, I don’t find what is currently written to be unreasonable.

But I am curious – would the Houston Chronicle have presented the story in such an alarmist manner if the standards included an explicitly liberal thread but not a conservative one? And would protesting conservatives be given the same sort of kid-glove treatment as the upset liberals?

UPDATE: There's an editorial on the standards in today's Houston Chronicle -- care to guess which side it takes?

Posted by: Greg at 10:27 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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