Academic “freedom” bill is closer to law

April 29th, 2008 • 2 comments education, idiocy

Seems Rep. Stroms and her cronies don’t want to stop with their nonsense. Their bill, incorrectly dubbed an “Academic Freedom” bill, is steps from being signed into law according to the Orlando Sentinel. Great! Scopes and Dover don’t mean anything to these people because they’re morons, up and down. I’m glad the proud citizens of Florida voted these idiots into office and keep them there (I didn’t vote them in, I can’t vote in this state…YET). Governor Crist will happily sign this bill into law, I’m sure. Not because he understands what it’s about or why it’s a bad idea but because he’s an idiot too.

One of the supporters of this bill said the House should welcome signing it into law because it’ll bring lawsuits and they — the representatives in the House, many lawyers — will enjoy having lawsuits to fight over. That means they’re aware they’re signing into law a very unstable bill that will end up getting a number of schools sued and they’re OK with that. No, scratch that. They want that to happen.

I’m glad I don’t have children in this state’s school system but at the same time, sad at the same fact. I can’t send my kid to class with a tape recorder to tape all the stupidity that’s sure to come once August gets here and school’s back in full swing. I can just hear all the litigation now and how this bill will probably get repealed in less than two years for causing such a financial strain on both the school systems and the state.

Ugh, is this semester over?

April 7th, 2008 • education

I just finished writing a real steamer of a paper. It’s complete crap and my teacher’s going to know it is. All I can really gather from the paper was that I managed to read three books on varying degrees of Arabian and Middle Eastern politics and their formation in the post-colonial period and how Islam got to where it is today, politically…for the most part. Sure, I missed out on specifics about the Israeli/Palestinian conflicts (not really the topic of the paper) or intricacies of Wahhabiyya but still, I managed to eek out 7 pages of crap in an effort to not kill my grades. Oh well, one B won’t kill me.

Now I have to find an animal and map its cladogram back to the last known human concestor.

Mid-terms are nearly done!

February 25th, 2008 • chatter, education

I’ve just finished up a rough/not-so-rough draft of my mid-term for ANT4930-009 Anthropology of Islam. All I can say is that Professor Keshodkar certainly made us write a fairly daunting paper in just one week when we had a considerably less intense ethnographic paper due just two weeks ago. I really wish he would have switched the two around as our mid-term paper definitely divulges into topics that need more than a week’s worth of research and writing whereas the past ethnography based on Geertz’s work in Morocco and Indonesia did not need 4 weeks of research to write. It could have easily encompassed a week for the mid-term as most of the class did the paper in a few days, those extra 3 weeks were essentially wasted in retrospect. But this mid-term was too heavy for 7 days, far too heavy.

Well, at least it’s done until I can look it over with fresh eyes in the morning and make necessary revisions, especially since I have a hanging sentence at the end! Argh!

West Palm Beach woman sets to ban books she’s never read

July 11th, 2007 • 1 comment christianity, education, intolerance

Sean Prophet writes about a local woman getting the WPB school board to ban books that she’s never read based on her own personal beliefs. That’s right, beliefs. She’s on public record as having never read any of the books cover-to-cover but I’m going to guess it’s more than that, she’s probably never read any of them at all. She pretty much proves this when she met with the school board’s superintendent about it and couldn’t recite blasphemous passages or page numbers even though she’s required to provide sufficient proof to back up the complaint.

She wants 80 books on topics such as homosexuality, atheism, abortions, and even a book about Richard the Lionheart pulled from the shelves. Yep, she wants a book based on the trials of a noble and respected king, who also happened to be deeply pious, to be banned because she’s not even read the thing. I can imagine that right now, this woman is the laughing stock of her subdivision because she’s clearly displayed her own ineptitude and lack of sense in a very public way. Funny how I bet she skipped over all the books on demonology or the shady past of the Vatican because they have some religious roots. Next week will she want newspapers running recent stories of pastors charged with sodomizing and molesting children pulled from local newsstands because it casts a negative light on her fellow Christians in their time of backsliding. Or what about pastors that fraud and steal from generous contributors?

Not one to aid in his mother’s misguided plight is her atheist son whom she conjectures that he think she’s “pretty stupid.” I’m guessing he isn’t the only one based on this aberrant display of public foolishness. I don’t go to libraries and complain that they have Bibles, Korans, or Torahs on the shelves and demand they be pulled because I’m not the arbiter and controller of knowledge and feel that people are free to read whatever they want. Maybe that’s something she’ll learn too. But somehow, you know, I really doubt that. She’ll probably try and take this to the local court.

PBS to air three part documentary about Atheism

May 2nd, 2007 • 1 comment atheism, christianity, education, tv

My girlfriend linked me to an article about PBS airing a three-part Atheist documentary that’s being lambasted by America’s right wing. This is no surprise considering the documentary was very well received in England, whose non-theistic population is growing by the year. While not specifically an Atheist myself, I’m looking forward to this documentary produced by the BBC.

You can read the article for specifics so I don’t have to duplicate something I’ve already linked to. But I do love the following quote from some crazy fundie:

Janice Crouse, director of the Beverly LaHaye Institute for the conservative group Concerned Women for America, told Cybercast News Service that “airing the program gives credibility and cohesiveness to individuals who seek to undermine the beliefs and values on which democracy and the American dream are founded.”

Democracy is founded on monotheism and subserviency? I thought its foundation was laid in a polytheistic society that promoted social discussion and interaction versus that of bowing down to a sole leader, looking to them for all the answers. Man, I guess history has it all wrong! The “rule of the people, by the people” was really envisioned as “rule of the people, by a person”. I like the fact that this short documentary is “propaganistic” according to Crouse yet the numerous Christian-based television stations and radio shows aren’t even though they get to preach shove their views into your face without anyone saying a word.

Set your DVRs — or VCRs if you’re still using one — to record according to your local PBS schedule.

Books update!

April 23rd, 2007 • education, reading

I finally received my latest batch of books on Friday! I’m still wading my way through The Devil: Perceptions… but I’ve just received three more books in the mail. One is the much anticipated Satan: The Early Christian Tradition which is the second volume of four of the same topic. I also received The History of Hell by Alice K. Turner and Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know — And Doesn’t by Stephen Prothero.

I’m anxious to read the latter two as I’ve heard good things about Prothero’s book and Turner’s book should be interesting given her previous job as an editor at Playboy.

Books, books, books!

April 16th, 2007 • education, reading

I started off this year by actually reading a book, it was Gavin Baddeley’s Lucifer Rising which is named after the Kenneth Anger movie of the same name. I read this after I read the stellar book Lords of Chaos: The Bloody Rise of the Satanic Metal Underground by Michael Moynihan. If you’re looking at getting either, don’t bother with Baddeley’s book, it’s just not worth a read.

Then I started reading Three Books of Occult Philosophy by HC Agrippa and I had to stop due to the text alone. It’s just hard to read. Not hard to comprehend by any means, it’s just physically hard to read a book that was written in 1630. I will pick it up again this year I’m sure.

This week I received The Devil: Perceptions of Evil from Antiquity to Primitive Christianity. I’m only two chapters deep but I’m waiting for Russell to actually get to discussing “The Devil” and evil. So far it’s been what evil means to him “historically” and what a concept is (yes, he explains what concepts are for an entire chapter) and I’m ready to put this book up on the shelf already. I’ve heard that it’s a decent book but so far, I can’t see why or how it would be. I really hope I didn’t waste some money on what could be a pretty interesting read.

Today I received notice from Amazon that my pre-order copy of The Canon: A Whirlgig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science will be shipping earlier than expected! Woo! Early reviews are good for Natalie Angier’s newest book and I’m no stranger to science but it gets me giddy to get a book about it that I’m not required to read!

I’ve got more books on order that I’m eager to read but I have to plow through these others before I can undertake anything else interesting!

Update on Michigan’s iPod idea/scandal

April 15th, 2007 • education, idiocy

Over the past week since the idea was proposed, people have been muckracking about not only the state’s hapless financial problems but now they’ve got something else to bitch and moan about: Apple paid for part of the trip for the Senators pushing the bill .

Wow. Big freakin’ deal. I guess most people think companies wanting to land big customers never do things like this…ever. Or perhaps all of these people are just being naive. In the past, I’ve had companies buy me lunches (amongst things) to help sway me to their product and this is no different. Albeit a bit more pricy than a nice steak luncheon, it’s still in the same ball park of “Buy my product not that other guy’s.” Duke University did nearly the same thing two years ago and they’re not the only ones. Apple’s education program has many suitors to its courtships each year, whether they’re educational institutions or not. Fortunately for most of the education institutions, their meetings always bear successful fruit. And in the reverse, many companies out there actually pay other companies to come hawk their wares to them. In the end, the company selling the products not only gets a free plane ride, they probably sell some goods and make more money. So why is this such a big deal?

I have no idea but a lot of people are up-in-arms about it. Last year, Cisco came to my old job in this big fancy van to show off some VOIP products and their ability to converge with our existing network infrastructure. Monetarily how did this come about? Well, they paid us for them to come and gave us some free gadgets in the process. They spoke ad nauseum about their fancy IP phones and other sundries that most of us didn’t pay attention because we were too busy thinking “Just how in the hell am I going to teach end users how to use a $6,000 IP phone that can microwave meals?” but no one in our fair University was pointing fingers at us for trying to land a fish too big for our initiative. And this is where the Michigan deal is no different. Apparently, their school system is in pretty horrid shape and the state’s too poor — generally speaking — to do much about it. Now they bring about a new bill that, while costing a pretty $40M, could enhance the educational aspect of K-12 schooling. Starting at the toddler level, this would engrain a wonderful ideal into the children that these shiny iPods can actually serve a useful purpose other than blasting MP3s and syncing podcasts.

Unfortunately, most people are outside the realm of education and still think it’s their place to lambaste this (and most of them are NOT in Michigan so their thoughts should immediately be nullified). All the current commenters about this on TechDirt are people mostly under the age of voting and still want to spout off about how useless this endeavour is. From a simplistic standpoint, I don’t know too many kids that would be utterly unthrilled about receiving a free $300 device for their own personal use. When students get “free” laptops from their schools, many of them are overjoyed and end up actually using them for school work. What most — if not nearly all — people fail to realize in this bill, the iPod simply replaces the laptop but the educational value does not diminish.

Moral of the story? A big company wants you to buy a lot of their product from them so they fly you out for exclusive and personalized promotion of it. When this chance arrives, take it whether you go with their product or not. Why? This is an accepted business tactic regardless of what all the pundits may say to you.

Michigan’s in debt but they want to buy iPods

April 11th, 2007 • 1 comment education

This op ed is nearly a week old but I’ve had it on the back burner. Michigan’s idea is spot on except for the fact that they’re far too in debt to really accomplish this without making some serious cuts elsewhere. But this isn’t about debt or taxes, it’s about the possible future of this endeavour.

Many schools, especially post-secondary, are struggling to find ways to deliver their content to their students. Kids these days are becoming more and more distant in class while at the same time becoming less extroverted with their peers. This means children are doing less physical socializing and more digital socializing. With digital audio players such as iPods getting cheaper by the week, children are engrossing themselves with them more and more in order to stay within their own personal space. So what does this have to do with school? Well, since schools are struggling to get children actually interested in learning, many are starting to produce podcast lectures and put their work into other portable media formats for students who want their information on-the-go and in any format they so choose. This now enables students who prefer their white earbuds to white lined paper can now keep up with the rest of the class all the while staying within their own private circle of solitude, hooked into their own digital medium.

At my last job, one of my coworkers worked for nearly a year to get this set up for our students. Once fully implemented, the students actually started improving their grades and understanding of subjects once we got the video lectures posted to their Blackboards and the MP3s of their lectures uploaded. Since they were able to immediately subscribe to their class’s podcasts and grab the media enclosures, they soon sent them to their iPods and went on their way and amazingly started to learn. Now the school’s budget for this small project went from a little over $100,000 to nearly $1M USD in a year’s time because of the sheer increase in student achievement. Instead of just a few classrooms outfitted with the proper equipment and facilities to produce digital classes, they’ve increased the number to over 30 I believe. And we weren’t the first school to try this, we certainly were one of the only ones to do it on such a grand scale in such a small amount of time.

Now, what does all of this have to do with Michigan? They’re trying to learn from their contemporaries and give students their lectures in a portable format and give the students the means to make these formats portable for them without any cost for the student or the parents, directly. Instead of less fortunate students admiring a classmate’s shiny new iPod, they all get iPods so there’s no “me too” syndrome to be had. With this, they’re enabling their students to learn how and when they want to and there’s little to no worry about envy or jealousy from students about who has what since they’re all on a level playing field. Unfortunately for Michigan, this will mean a hike in taxes in order to support this and with their current debt, many people are outraged. Instead, they’re seeing this from the short-term effects instead of the long-term effects it could mean for their children and future students and their education. If children are the future and education is key, why cut off such an enabling endeavour from the outset?

I know from previous experience that the upfront costs are high but once you’re over that initial hump, most of the cost is a one-time cost. Michigan can buy a few million iPods in bulk, at what will most likely be a very deep discount through Apple Education or PowerSchool, and from there on, they get to outfit a few million students with a new learining tool that can really enable them to learn. From that, depending on success rate, they could continue to purchase iPods and in lower numbers since you do not have to give out new iPods to each student each year, your monetary output diminishes each year. And once the students leave high school, they’ll just take their iPods with them and hopefully use the same techniques in college to further their education.

While I can see why people are lambasting this idea from the get go, they need to look further into this and see how other schools and other school districts are succeeding with similar — if not identical — educational endeavours.

Let’s teach English like we teach Mathematics

April 3rd, 2007 • 2 comments education

Scrolling through my feed reader tonight after a wild round of Guitar Hero II, I found a little tidbit from science.reddit.com that wasn’t complete and utter crap: If We Taught English the Way We Teach Mathematics…. Beware foreign readers it’s completely America-centric.

This is incredibly well written and well thought out. It goes on to question what if we were given the very basic skills in English, as we are in math until post-secondary school, and are thrust out into the world with them; how would we survive? Pretty horribly I’d say. The article states that children in America are taught from an early age that math sucks and you should hate it, vehemently hate it. Even until our last year of high school, we’re clubbed into thinking it’s pretty much useless because we’re not given any good reason to apply any maths outside of the classroom. American schools want us to add, subtract, multiply, divide and sometimes deal with fractions and percents. Other than that, we’re taught (and sometimes told) that anything we learn aside from that is disposable will never be used in the real world. If that was really true, why would anyone want to become a math teacher? Or an accountant (why would you want to at all anyway)? Or a mathematical scientist or any type of scientist? No one would want to and we’d all live in a simple country based on the basic building blocks of math nearly devoid of any types of technology or luxuries we currently enjoy.

So, apply this to English. What if we’re given the basic ability to write, read, spell, comprehend, and so on in respects to any written or verbal communication we would ever encounter in our entire lives. Sadly, I know it’s already going this way. Pick any teen off the street and ask them to spell something like extradite or ask them to tell you whether irregardless is a real word. Ask them to name any play by Shakespeare other than Romeo and Juliet or see if they can tell you what Animal Farm is really about. Kids these days are barely being taught how to physically write let alone how to properly write. Since I’ve lived in Florida, I’ve noticed every person I’ve known under the age of roughly 20 is language retarded. Yes, exceptions exist but they exist for everything. If you start talking about something other than whatever’s on MTV or MySpace, they glaze over. Ask them what defensetrate means and they tell you it has to do with Iraq or the Administration. Anyway, off on a tangent.

Back to the topic at hand. What if children today were taught basic English and were shoved off into the real world with no applicable knowledge or understanding of it? What if they were actually reading is pointless and proper grammar was useless? This is exactly how kids are taught Math in schools these days. You’re taught to learn the basics in the driest manner possible without any examples of real world application. We’re given the least knowledge possible about the broad concept and beauty of math and are simply told “You’ll love it or hate it but you have to deal with that. I’m paid to teach it either way.” Why are children being thrust out into the world with a paltry knowledge of maths? Is math less important than anything else they’re taught? I hardly think so. I hate math with a passion but not because I was given little knowledge of it, I just hate it because my brain simply doesn’t function in that way. But that’s not the point. If all we’re given for knowledge of English is how to simply write a sentence, grammar and spelling not withstanding, we’re not going to go very far in life. That’s exactly what’s happening with math these days in American schools (and to English as well).

Last year I finished up a nearly three year stay at a local University and I met thousands of students in my job there. I came across so many students that couldn’t get by on anything mathematical without the use of a calculator. About 97% of them managed to pass remedial math classes and only took what was required of them. No one wanted to take abstract maths or number theory because they saw no application in it. I’m glad those kids will never become programmers or accountants. The other 3% were students who were taught at an early age that math can be fun and have worthwhile meaning if you bother learning anything past 2+2=4.

This trend will not only continue but worsen as the years pass. Primary and secondary school math teachers usually never have advanced degrees in any maths so they’re truly limited in how they can teach a class. These people don’t eath, breathe, and live numbers, they just teach them. Until you get to college, you’re met with teachers whose mathematical prowess can usually be match or surpasses by a number of students they teach.

As America gets older, its population gets less intelligent and this will not change until parents make a stand about the poor state of the education system.