Thursday - February 18, 2010

School ‘spied on pupils at home through webcams’ …..  stand by for legal action …

This came through about a half hour ago. When I saw the headline I immediately thought it was here. But no. The USA.  Woo-Hoo.  Gonna be trouble now you betcha.
How could they (the school obviously) be so damn stupid? With all the law suits for doing less, with all the talk about big brother etc., the person or persons responsible sure weren’t thinking too clearly. No wait.  They weren’t thinking at all.

Administrators of a wealthy suburban school district have been spying on students and their families at home after giving them laptops fitted with webcams, according to a lawsuit filed by parents.

By Tom Leonard in New York
Published: 6:40PM GMT 18 Feb 2010

The Lower Merion School District, which administers a Philadelphia suburb that is one of the wealthiest parts of Pennsylvania, issued all 1,800 students at its two high schools with laptops so they could access school materials at home.

However, according to a civil action filed in the local US district court, neither parents nor their children were ever warned that the access worked both ways.

Michael and Holly Robbins claim they were alerted to the snooping when an assistant principal at Harriton High School warned their son, Blake, in November last year that he was “engaged in improper behaviour in his home”, citing a photo taken on his laptop webcam as evidence.

Mr Robbins said he later verified through the assistant principal, Lindy Matsko, that the school district was able at any time to “remotely activate” the webcam in a student’s laptop and “view and capture” whatever image was in its line of sight, all without the user’s knowledge or permission.

The lawsuit also argues that “many of the images captured and intercepted may consist of minors and their parents or friends in compromising or embarrassing positions” including “various stages of undress”, the lawsuit adds.

SCHOOL SPYS

Posted by peiper     on 02/18/2010 at 02:14 PM   
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   Tuesday - February 16, 2010

It’s a start

Faced with a terrible school situation in a town in Rhode Island, a place where just 7% of the 11th grade students are proficient in math, the school superintendent came up with a plan to improve things. The teachers would have to do some tutoring, eat lunch with the kids once in a while, and work less than half an hour longer per day.

The teachers get paid in the $70-$80K bracket. Plus bennies. Average income in the town is $22K.

The teachers union said no.

So the superintendent fired the whole damn bunch of them.

Posted by Drew458     on 02/16/2010 at 10:49 PM   
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   Friday - February 12, 2010

History of England starts at 1700, says university

Academics have attacked a decision by a top university to scrap research into English history before 1700.


By Graeme Paton, Education Editor

It was claimed that the move by Sussex University risked jeopardising the nation’s understanding of the subject and “entrenching the ignorance of the present”.
Under plans, research and in-depth teaching into periods such as the Tudors, the Middle-Ages, Norman Britain, the Viking invasion and the Anglo-Saxons will be scrapped, along with the Civil Wars.

The university will also end research into the history of continental Europe pre-1900, affecting the study of the Napoleonic wars and the Roman Empire.
The university said it was “reshaping” its curriculum and research following a £3m cut in Government funding.

Last week, universities across the country were told their budgets were to be slashed by £449 million next year, including a £215m reduction in teaching funding, with threats of further cuts in the future.

Well now I can understand that.  Budget cuts have to be made.  Especially when you have to find the money to fund the 2012 Olympics, the immigrants on state aid, the illegal immigrants on state aid, the asylum seekers who find their way to the UK and get to stay, terrorists and former (they claim) terrorists and various groups who have a human right to the money which I think might be everyone who wants a free lunch. Well heck.  You can see they have to make cuts in their budget to accommodate ,,, stuff.  Oh right.  Lets not forget all the MPs and their expenses. 

Lord Mandelson, the Business Secretary, has claimed that institutions can use the opportunity to focus resources on their strongest areas.
But in a letter to The Daily Telegraph, 17 leading historians said the move was short-sighted and risked undermining the public’s understanding of the past.
“To cut everything but the most modern puts in peril the public function of history, entrenching the arrogance of the present and making a mockery of the claim by the minister behind these cuts that ‘we also wish to keep this country civilised’,” said the letter.

The academics, who all trained at Sussex, said that the decision to sever ties with European history before 1900 was a particularly retrograde step.
“For a university which has long prided itself on its European links to abandon the serious study of such pivotal areas of modern history as the French Revolution will mean depriving Sussex graduates of the mental furniture of educated Europeans,” said the letter. “The university risks damaging its reputation as a centre of knowledge for European culture and history more widely.”

The letter to the Telegraph was signed by historians from universities including Nottingham, Southampton, Trinity College Dublin, Michigan, Sydney University and the University of London Institute in Paris.

Sussex is among dozens of universities being forced to make savings following savage budget cuts announced by the Government.
The University and College Union estimated that more than 15,000 jobs – the majority academic posts – could disappear in the next few years.
Positions are being cut at King’s College London, Westminster, Leeds, Sheffield Hallam and Hull, while entire campuses belonging to the universities of Cumbria and Wolverhampton are being shut.

Several loss making courses are also being scrapped across the country. The University of the West of England has already scrapped French, German and Spanish, and Surrey has dropped its BA in humanities.
The letter called on the university to stop proposals to withdraw from “research, and research-led teaching, in English social history before 1700 and the history of continental Europe before 1900”.

Prof Paul Layzell, deputy vice-chancellor, said: “The proposal put forward by the University of Sussex to withdraw from certain areas of research and specialist teaching in history reflects three factors: first, a strategic determination to focus our research in areas of sustainability and strength; second, to align undergraduate provision with areas of demonstrable demand; and, thirdly, a need to reflect the Government’s financial policy for higher education.
“The history degree at Sussex, as befits a programme offered by one of the top 20 departments in the country, will continue to be broad based and intellectually challenging.”
He insisted there were no plans for teaching to be “entrusted with non-specialists”.

SOURCE

Posted by peiper     on 02/12/2010 at 01:27 PM   
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   Monday - February 08, 2010

EDUCATION, IMMIGRATION, STUDENT VISA SCAMS. WHAT NEXT? HOW ABOUT A FIRE SALE?

It wasn’t long after I arrived on these shores that I discovered and was vocal about, what I perceived to be the giving away of this country.  It wasn’t rocket science or a great mental leap of any kind.  It was just obvious.  I suggested to some friends here that if Brits were in so big a hurry to give away their country, and it seemed to be that way, then why drag things out?  Why not just put the country up for sale on eBay and be done with it quickly. 

The town where pupils speak 150 different languages

By Daily Mail Reporter

Schools in just one town are having to cope with pupils who speak 150 different languages, a survey has found.

They range from the Ghanaian dialect of Akan, through the African language of Chichewa and the ancient Aztec tongue of Nahuatl to the Indian language of Telugu.

This is as well as the more common foreign languages of Urdu, Punjabi and Polish.
The survey in Reading, Berkshire, shows how schools are being put under mounting pressure by the rising levels of pupils who do not speak English as their first language.

SOURCE

White Cliffs of Dover to be sold to the French to help reduce Government’s debt

By Vanessa Allen

For generations Dover has stood as an indomitable symbol of Britain’s freedom and independence.

The town, with its white cliffs, port and sprawling castle stood at the very edge of the nation’s frontier with the Continent.

But now part of that proud history is up for sale and the leading bidder is revealed as the former age-old enemy – France.

The Port of Dover is being recommended by Government advisers for sale to the French authorities.

It is one of a string of public assets which have been earmarked for privatisation as the Government battles with a record £830billion national debt.

The proposal for the port has prompted outrage.

Prospective Tory MP for Dover Charles Elphicke said: ‘It’s clear Gordon Brown has no sense of the history of our nation or the pride of our town.

‘How dare he consider selling it all off to the French? Dover is the English border. The people of Dover have a clear message for him – hands off our port, hands off the English border.’

MAILONLINE

Oh heck. Just can’t resist one more example, not related to first story at top, which I suppose makes it even worse. And ppl have to be soooo careful when using words as you can all imagine.  Use the wrong pc word or phrase and naturally it goes from being a scam to a bad racial attitude.

New promise to end student visa scams: But the Tories jeer ‘haven’t we heard it all before?’

By JAMES SLACK

Alan Johnson yesterday promised yet another crack down on the rampant abuse of the foreign student visa regime.

The Home Secretary said tougher rules would be introduced requiring applicants to speak English to near-GCSE level and ban those on short UK courses from bringing dependents.

Officials claim the new regulations will lead to a sharp reduction in the 240,000 student visas currently issued by the UK each year - the equivalent of one every two minutes. But the Conservatives accused the Government of ‘floundering around’ as it sought to correct its own mistakes.

Bringing “dependents?” Students have a crying need to bring dependents?  Jeesh.
The rest of the article is HERE

Posted by peiper     on 02/08/2010 at 05:58 AM   
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   Tuesday - February 02, 2010

The Pope has made an unprecedented attack on the Government … pay attention to this.

Not fit for much in the way of posting today. Must be the weather.
Then I read this.  POPE & POLITICS. At first I didn’t pay it much attention.  But after awhile, seeing the comments ppl were making and hearing the issue debated on radio, I got to thinking this was more important then I first thought.

There are some folks who claim the pope has no business making any comments re. govts. anywhere. I’m not Catholic and I’m not religious either but, I’m not too sure about that last opinion.  Why shouldn’t the pope make his feelings known?  It isn’t as though it’s the old days when he could galvanize an entire country to do Rome’s bidding.  And I am not so sure he doesn’t have some valid points to make.  You don’t like what he has to say fine.  Then debate the issue without getting nasty.

The homosexual community have spoken out and many have even suggested that his planned visit here should be banned.  And these are the folks always banging on about rights and freedom of speech.  Oh right.  Freedom to express their views but damned if they want others to have the same privilege.

Lets be very clear on something.  The pope’s comments are NOT directed at that community solely.  He has spoken on a number of issues. 
Can anyone tell me why a Catholic school or a Baptist or Jewish school, should be bound by law to admit those who do not in any way share the faith or religion of a school?  And btw, many a non Catholic has received a pretty good education at Catholic schools. 

What most of this has to do with is that nut case Harriet Harperson (Harman) and her “everyone MUST be equal” crap.  It is she and her agency and the govt. that seem intent on interfering in religious schools and dictating to them.  And one really oddball thing about a lot of this is, many of them are not even religious themselves.  But they’re quite willing to tell the religious how their schools should be run, all in the name of ‘equality.’

Pope’s intervention sparks equality bill row

That’s the headline at the link above.  But what “intervention?” Is having an opinion and speaking out as head of a church, intervention?
Maybe it is.  It appears to be open to debate among quite a few people.

This is just one of the issues.

By politics.co.uk staff

Catholic pastors are preparing for their biggest confrontation with the government in years after the Pope encouraged them to take on Harriet Harman’s equality bill.

Benedict XVI has warned the legislation, currently working its way through parliament, imposes “unjust limitations on the freedom of religious communities”.

It could strip the Catholic Church in Britain of its ability to discriminate against homosexuals in employment matters and even force them to allow women into the priesthood.

Here are a couple of reader comments on this I found at the Telegraph.

Of course the Pope should comment. I am not a Roman Catholic but this government law is just one more assault on our freedoms. How ridiculous that anyone could consider it reasonable that someone who rejects and even opposes Christian values should be able to insist on working for a Christian organisation. This is a direct attack on the freedom to believe and associate with others who believe the same. I would not find it at all objectionable for a Muslim organisation to insist that its employees should all be Muslim.

I am Reformed and certainly do not agree with Roman Catholic Doctrines; nevertheless, one must ask, why is it that the Archbishop of Canterbury fails to speak out on moral issues with clarity? Is it because he is so liberal and is happy with the staus quo? He certainly gives the impression that he is “wishy-washy” in his theology, and fails to make an impact on society as a whole, far less politicians.

In any event, as I posted elsewhere today in the DT, the Equality Bill is not merely Harriet Harman’s desire; rather, it’s an EU diktat.

But not everyone agrees of course.

If the church cannot stop discriminating it is not serving its purpose, not following the inclusive teachings of the bible but off on its own sick perverted dogma. In our society we need to stop discrimination and the church should be leading that, not continuing to insist of legal permission to discriminate.

“to drive religious belief and practice into the sphere of the private only” Isn’t that where it belongs anyway? Worship whatever you want but don’t try to push it on me. Gay is not a choice. You are born that way or not. So to discriminate against it is the same as discriminating against someone for having a different skin color. It doesn’t make them worse or better just different.

Naturally enough my favorite is this one, no surprise.

I wish the press would stop the misuse of the word GAY. If they mean homosexual or lesbian then say so .

The comments are quite interesting and can be found HERE

Posted by peiper     on 02/02/2010 at 11:35 AM   
Filed Under: • Education • Nanny State • Religion • UK •  
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   Monday - February 01, 2010

Inequality in Britain isn’t down to class but brains. But the left wants to make it something else.

Maybe Ms. King from my previous post should read this. Bet she hasn’t.  She more then likely reads the Guardian and believes it all.  (for folks in USA, the Guardian is a very far LEFT paper.)

I won’t post all of this here but it is an interesting editorial. 

It has been claimed by many that the Brit PM and his party I should add, have been playing the class thing as though those less fortunate in lower incomes say, are there mostly because they are not being given the opportunities to better schools, jobs etc.  The process didn’t start with the PM I don’t think although Lyndon can fill that in for me.  I think the former street brawler who was the Deputy PM under Tony Blair, John Prescott, had a lot to do with that. Long story I’ll muddle if I try and go into all of it. 

Then we have Harriet Harman (referred to as Harperson) the minister of equality. She wants everything to be equal and everyone to be included.
She comes from a very posh very wealthy background, I have read.  What is it about rich folks who want to fit right in there and be one of the poor?
Being on good terms with ppl is fine but when you go so far as to try and drop your natural accent exposing a good education and start talking less posh just to “fit in with working class folks” well, says a lot doesn’t it?  I can not think of a conservative that would think that way. Least I hope not. Seems to be an affliction of the left.

By far the best predictor for income and status is your IQ at 10 or 11, rather than your social class,

By Alasdair Palmer

The National Equality Panel, set up by the Government to examine inequality in Britain, published its findings last week. And surprise, surprise: it found that there is a lot of inequality in Britain. People from poorer backgrounds do not usually achieve as much as people from richer ones.

That this is a basic fact of life in the UK is certainly true – although it is not true, as the NEP report claims, that we are significantly more unequal than most other Western countries. The differences are marginal. Even in the places it cites as egalitarian utopias, Sweden and Denmark, it is still the case that who your parents are has a very significant effect on how your life works out.

Indeed, no country anywhere comes close to the egalitarian ideal of ensuring that everyone, irrespective of their background, has exactly the same chance to succeed. And there is a very straightforward reason: people everywhere care more about themselves and their immediate families than they care about everyone else. We all devote our efforts and ingenuity to promoting our own and our families’ interests rather than those of “society as a whole”; when the two conflict, we prioritise the former. That’s why every attempt to achieve a society in which each person is treated in exactly the same way not only requires state coercion of the most extreme kind, but also always ends in abject failure.

SOURCE

Posted by peiper     on 02/01/2010 at 11:16 AM   
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   Wednesday - January 20, 2010

Here’s Fred on Everything. Topic today, Affirmative Action

I read this guy a lot. In fact, I get his newsletter. He is one heck of a good writer and even at the odd time I question something he says, he says it so damn well I keep reading. 

He has it right on this subject and I know that from some very personal experience. 

I just guess the problem is no less back in the states then it is here.  Wimps in position of authority seem to rule because other wimps just follow along out of fear or maybe not wanting to get themselves involved.  And they are everywhere.  I suppose in the world we inhabit these days, I understand it even as I dislike the idea.

Toward a Gilded Peasantry

Fred Reed

On the website of WLOX 13, “The Station for Southern Mississippi,” I find the story of Gabe Stabler, eight years old. Because he came home crying from the first grade every day, his parents put a tape recorder in his back pack to see what really went on in class. From the tape we learn much about his teacher, a Ms. Williams, and about affirmative action, and about the United States today:

Gabe: “I don’t know what to do on this.”

Ms. Williams: “Well, you’d better find out. It’s not hard. Nobody else didn’t have to ask no questions bout it. You know what to do, you just want somebody to just sit there and pet you about it, but I ain’t gonna do it. You know how to go in that lunch room and tear that food up every day. Ain’t nothing hard bout that sheet.”

Following this Miltonian eructation, we have:

Ms. Williams: “No, do your work. She ain’t goin to be sittin up in here wanting somebody to help her every time she, cause she don’t wanna apply herself to her work. You know how to go in that cafeteria and enjoy that lunch and breakfast every morning.”

Then, waxing ever more lyrical, even Ciceronian,

Ms. Williams: “Where this go?”

Child: “I colored that yesterday.”

Ms. Williams: “It shouldn’t of got changed at all, that ain’t nothing to be proud of.”

Ms. Williams clearly is barely literate, and should be in the first grade instead of teaching it. Gabe speaks better English than she does. In a country not sliding into degradation, a restraining order would keep her from coming within a hundred yards of a school.

Why do we permit this sort of thing? Ms. Williams is black. The story carefully doesn’t say so, but it doesn’t have to. Only the black uneducated speak as she does.

The proper response from parents would be fury. The discovery that this creature is attempting to turn their children into the equivalent of farm animals ought to result in the lynching of the school board of Mississippi. A civilized people with backbone will not allow their their offspring to be made into gurbling iPodded peasants. But we are not such a civilization.

Why is it happening? “Affirmative action.” Since Ms. Williams does not speak the language of the country, the only possible reason for hiring her is that she is black. She is not just slightly unqualified, allowing an expectation that she might catch up—this being the founding fantasy of “affirmative action”—but absolutely unqualified.

The pattern repeats endlessly. Today I have read that the Chicago police contemplate eliminating their entrance examination on the grounds that not enough blacks pass it. Firemen of my acquaintance tell of women too weak to handle a hose, of female paramedics who can’t carry a stretcher. While I was on the police beat at the Washington Times, I encountered a tiny policewoman who never had to drive the paddy wagon because her feet didn’t reach the pedals.

On intercity buses there once were signs, and probably still are, saying, “Seating is without regard to race, creed, color, sex, or national origin.” Today everything seems to be with regard to nothing else. Anything, everything, must be done to keep the affirmative-action classes happy.

This rush to degradation is not new. In 1981 in Harper’s I wrote, in a piece on race in education, “The bald, statistically verifiable truth is that the teachers’ colleges, probably on ideological grounds, have produced an incredible proportion of incompetent black teachers. Evidence of this appears periodically, as, for example, in the results of a competency test given to applicants for teaching positions in Pinellas County, Florida (which includes St. Petersburg and Clearwater), cited in Time, June 16, 1980. To pass this grueling examination, an applicant had to be able to read at the tenth-grade level and do arithmetic at the eighth-grade level. Though they all held B.A.’s, 25 percent of the whites and 79 percent of the blacks failed. Similar statistics exist for other places.”

If you think it desirable to have black teachers, as I do believe it desirable, then get those who are fit to do the job. Plenty of blacks speak English. If you can’t find enough, then do without. The same applies to women who can’t carry stretchers. Fat chance, though.

What price do we pay for this total abnegation of responsibility, civilizational self-respect, reason? One price is a quiet contempt for blacks, and hostility toward them. Competent blacks are no problem, but “If he doan be eatin dis sangwidge…” doesn’t cut it. Women make perfectly good paramedics, but what is anyone, fellow crewman or patient, supposed to think when she can’t lift the stretcher? (Answer: Scorn, anger.) What does a patient think on seeing a black doctor come his way? “Oh god….” The doctor may have gotten through medical school on ability but, given affirmative action, you figure he probably didn’t. Blacks know this of course, and resent it. Knowing that they are despised, they say the hell with it, and content themselves with just getting by. This is useful?

The suspicion of affirmative action pervades American life. After Katrina, a friend in federal employ visited FEMA. It was, he said, very heavily black, on which fact he blamed the disastrous performance of the agency in New Orleans. Was he right? I don’t know. In the absence of affirmative action, the question would not be asked.

Thus the defining principle of American politics arises: If you don’t think in racial terms, if you look only to ability, you are a racist. Count me in.

This leads to another question, seldom asked and never answered: how much does affirmative action really cost the country? If you hire someone to do a job who can’t do it very well, it doesn’t get done very well. This doesn’t strike me as a profound thought, but it seems to elude many people. In the case of Ms. Williams, the damage is great and clear. It isn’t always so stark. When you regularly pass over the first 135 people, all white, on a test for promotion to sergeant in a police department, so as to get to the blacks and Latinos, what kind of police department do you get? If you hire reasonably good female engineers because they are female, instead of very good males, the consequences are less obvious, but there.

And when it becomes a firing offense to notice, the result is a permanent, irremediable drop in the quality of the work force. I don’t suppose it really matters though. The only serious economic competitors the US faces are, oh, Japan, Korea, China, India, Taiwan, Brazil, and the European Union. Piece of cake.

FRED REED

Posted by peiper     on 01/20/2010 at 05:32 PM   
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   Thursday - January 07, 2010

UPDATE ON PREVIOUS STORY. SCHOOL DAYS ….  BOY STABS TEACHER, LET OFF WITH A WARNING.

Yeah right.  Just got this update on the last story about the little creep.
A warning.  Uh huh. That’ll really scare the hell out of the shit.  That’s the major trouble with young offenders. They are savvy. They know they’ll get away with things with little or no worry.  A warning.  His next victim will be a victim of that “warning” as much as a victim of the “yoot” involved here.
Best thing for the safety of society would be to do away with him, and harvest body parts for sick kids who really need help and who aren’t thugs.

10-year-old boy who stabbed teacher with a pencil escapes with a warning

By Jaya Narain
Last updated at 5:20 PM on 07th January 2010

A boy of 10 who stabbed one teacher in the chest with a pencil and attacked two others has escaped punishment.

The boy, who cannot be named, attacked the teacher during an incident at his primary school last term.

After kicking a female member of staff, the boy was being led to a ‘quiet room’ when he lashed out again.

He was later charged with the assaults and appeared before a youth court in the town on New Year’s Day.

But yesterday he accepted a warning over his behaviour from police officers after a review of the case was carried out.

The boy had previously been reprimanded for a kicking attack on another female teacher.

Last night union bosses condemned the decision and demanded more action needs to be taken to protect teachers.

John Girdley of the NASUWT said: ‘When pupils attack teachers - and this does happen - we consider this totally unacceptable.

‘Teachers are there to teach they are not social workers and not police officers. The school should take very robust action against a pupil, particularly one who repeats an assault.

‘This is made all the more serious when a weapon is used, however primitive the weapon may seem.’

He said: ‘If one of our members came to us and said they wanted nothing more to do with this child we would support them. That could reach a refusal to teach ballot- a form of industrial action - in extreme circumstances.’

A spokesman for the Association of Teachers and Lecturers said: ‘When a teacher is assaulted we would hope the school would actively pursue prosecution.

‘We would say that if there is an assault the pupil should not return to the school where it took place. If a teacher remains unhappy there is always recourse to private prosecution.’

A member of staff at the primary school said: ‘My colleague was a lucky man. That pencil could have pierced a lung or even worse.

‘To charge the boy, make him appear in court and then to reverse everything and just give him a warning - is that a punishment befitting the crime?’

The age of criminal responsibility in the UK is 10 and the authorities decided to give the boy a warning because of his age.

Angus Craigen, prosecutor, told the hearing in Blackpool that charges against the 10-year-old had been withdrawn.

Trevor Colebourne, defending, said: ‘There were three teachers involved and my client has asked me to apologise to all three. He is now in a different school.’

Last year, a teacher received more than £280,000 compensation for an assault by a teenage pupil which has left her with permanent back pain.

Sharon Lewis, 26, was attacked by a 13-year-old boy, who cannot be named, who jumped on her back and placed her in a headlock.

He ignored her pleas to stop and she eventually fell to the floor hitting a wall and window.

The attack ended her teaching career and left her with constant pains in her neck and down her back.

source

Oh well, the lawyer defending says his client say sorry. That’s all ok then. I think the lawyer needs the feel of something sharp in his chest.  Be interesting to know if he’d ever try and help some other creep for that kind of crime.  Hell, once stabbed he might become a conservative.

Posted by peiper     on 01/07/2010 at 01:26 PM   
Filed Under: • Crime • Daily Life • Education • UK •  
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More, SCHOOL DAZE … Schoolboy, 10, arrested after ‘stabbing teacher in the chest with pencil.

So then. What to do? What to do?  Maybe stick a pencil in the little shit so he knows what it feels like?
I was a sort of a hell raiser in school. By that I mean, I was always joking and generally made ppl laugh. In class, for which I earned a slap on the open palm with a ruler.  Or was made to stand in the corner facing the wall outside the class room. I got to know that corner so well I gave it a name. But it never occurred to me that I should hit a teacher or even use disrespectful language of any kind. How times have changed.

Dunce’s corner banned: It could breach a pupil’s human rights, say councils

By David Wilkes

It has been used as a punishment in schools since Victorian times.

Unruly pupils have been made to stand in the ‘dunce’s corner’ by teachers so that the lesson can carry on without further disruptions.

But now health and safety chiefs have warned that the practice is cruel, describing it as a ‘stress position’ that could breach a child’s human rights.

Schools have received guidelines from local education authorities saying that standing children in the corner is unsuitable and a less physical alternative should be used.

Some teachers won’t use the punishment because it ‘humiliates’ pupils in front of their classmates.

They are now advised to ask the pupil making a nuisance to explain to the class why he is interrupting the lesson.

Traditionalists have attacked the idea, saying teachers will end up with no means left to control disruptive-pupils.

Nick Seaton, chairman-of the Campaign for Real Education, called it ‘a ridiculous idea that compares what goes on in a classroom to Guantanamo Bay’.

He added: ‘Discipline is a major problem in classrooms at the moment and teachers have got to have some solutions for children who disrupt them or the whole system will fall apart.

‘We’re getting to the stage where teachers will not have any punishments at all. The hooligans will end up ruling the classroom.

banned dunce source

Schoolboy, 10, arrested after ‘stabbing teacher in the chest with a pencil’

By Daily Mail Reporter

A ten-year-old was arrested after a teacher was stabbed in the chest with a pencil during a class.
The boy reportedly grabbed the pencil from the teacher’s jacket pocket and then plunged it through the man’s shirt puncturing his chest near his heart.
The stunned primary school teacher then pulled out the pencil himself as colleagues called 999 and paramedics took him bleeding from the wound to Blackpool Victoria Hospital, Lancashire, for emergency treatment.

Police were also called to the school and took the youngster - described as being of very slight build - into custody.
The boy who has just reached the age when he can face the justice system is understood to have admitted what he has done.

A police spokesman said : ‘The teacher was very lucky, another inch and the sharp pencil could have punctured one of his main arteries.’
The incident is said to have occurred as the teacher tried to persuade the boy to go into the school’s quiet room used when a pupil gets unruly and needs time cool down.

The boy refused and claims the teacher tried to grapple him into the room and it was then he allegedly grabbed the pencil and stabbed him with it.
There had reportedly been an earlier incident in which the same boy kicked the same teacher.
Lancashire Police have confirmed the boy was arrested and questioned by officers about the incident.

If it is decided whether to report him for a wounding offence, a Youth Court is likely to impose a referral order on him as he has not been in trouble before.
Such an order means he could go under the guidance of a team of specialist youth workers and may have to write a letter of apology to the teacher.

Blackpool Education Authority said the boy had been excluded from the school as a result of the incident and would receive home tuition in the meantime.
The teacher is recovering from the attack over the festive break and is expected back in the classroom in the New Year.

YOUNG PUNK WITH A PENCIL

Posted by peiper     on 01/07/2010 at 10:20 AM   
Filed Under: • Crime • Education • UK •  
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   Sunday - January 03, 2010

SCHOOL DAZE, SCHOOL DAZE, GOOD OLDE FASHIONED SCHOOL DAYS GONE FOREVER.

But all is not lost.  Just ask elf ‘n’ safety.

I wanna write hundreds of words on this but I can’t think of one outside of ... HUH? Gee, in our day 100 yrs ago a sand box was fun. Now it could be a danger. And sadly, it really could be considering the times and the kind of ppl roaming about who shouldn’t be. Jeesh.

Health and safety rules to guard pupils against dangers of singing and spicy food
Schools are being warned to follow new health and safety rules designed to protect pupils from musical instruments, singing with a dry mouth, spicy food, a helicopter landing in the playing field and other bizarre hazards.

By Julie Henry, Education Correspondent

The guidelines produced by councils highlight a whole range of unlikely threats to be guarded against.
Headteachers are told to carry out “risk assessments” for scenarios ranging from a pupil injuring himself with a musical instrument, to a helicopter landing on school grounds.

Policies are having to be drawn up to meet health and safety diktats which are unnecessary, state the obvious or relate to incidents that are never likely to happen, according to headteachers.

One council has produced more than 70 risk assessment forms for schools, one of which focuses on “voice care” for teachers. It lists “hazards” including “throat clearing, failing to lubricate the mouth, singing in too high or too deep a tone, using a forced whisper or talking too quickly”.
It even advises against “hot spicy foods, very hot drinks and breathing continually through the mouth”, which it says can “have an adverse effect on the voice”.

Another authority has a 35-page health and safety code for primary schools which points out that hemlock and deadly nightshade plants should not be grown by children.
Headteachers said last night that the health and safety culture had gone too far.

“Schools used to feel under pressure to have a policy for everything that moves, now they have to have a policy for everything that might move and even for things which don’t,” said Mick Brookes, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers. “This guidance is produced by local authorities in the guise of being helpful but it is all about the transfer of responsibility.
“Schools do have to keep sites safe but this deluge of paperwork goes beyond that. It’s just too much information. These things need to be nailed down to sensible risk assessments. Time shouldn’t be wasted producing a policy on everything.”

Local authorities say the risk assessment guidance is sent to schools to in a bid to keep staff and pupils safe, as well as to protect officials from being sued if accidents occur.

FOR MORE ON THIS SUBJECT CLICK HERE

Posted by peiper     on 01/03/2010 at 01:05 PM   
Filed Under: • Education • Lawyers • UK •  
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   Thursday - December 31, 2009

Root Causes, Root Cures

Want to fix America? Tear down the entire education system and rebuild it the old way. Get the hippies, leftists, communists, revisionists, and America haters out. And the unions. All of them.

Walter Williams (Negro Card revoked, 1990) writes about the dreadful state of black city kid’s performance on standard school exams. Nothing to see here, move along, just throw more good money after bad, and don’t forget: doing well in school is acting white and being a race traitor.

Detroit’s (predominantly black) public schools are the worst in the nation and it takes some doing to be worse than Washington, D.C. Only 3 percent of Detroit’s fourth-graders scored proficient on the most recent National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) test, sometimes called “The Nation’s Report Card.” Twenty-eight percent scored basic and 69 percent below basic. “Below basic” is the NAEP category when students are unable to demonstrate even partial mastery of knowledge and skills fundamental for proficient work at their grade level. It’s the same story for Detroit’s eighth-graders. Four percent scored proficient, 18 percent basic and 77 percent below basic.

Michael Casserly, executive director of the D.C.-based Council on Great City Schools, in an article appearing in Crain’s Detroit Business, (12/8/09) titled, “Detroit’s Public Schools Post Worst Scores on Record in National Assessment,” said, “There is no jurisdiction of any kind, at any level, at any time in the 30-year history of NAEP that has ever registered such low numbers.” The academic performance of black students in other large cities such as Philadelphia, Chicago, New York and Los Angeles is not much better than Detroit and Washington.

What’s to be done about this tragic state of black education? The education establishment and politicians tell us that we need to spend more for higher teacher pay and smaller class size. The fact of business is higher teacher salaries and smaller class sizes mean little or nothing in terms of academic achievement. Washington, D.C., for example spends over $15,000 per student, has class sizes smaller than the nation’s average, and with an average annual salary of $61,195, its teachers are the most highly paid in the nation.

No, Williams doesn’t have the answers. Not all of them. But he is trying to make the first step by getting other black people to admit that the problem is theirs; it’s time to own up to it. Read the rest. This is the real CHANGE that America needs; without it we have no HOPE.

Posted by Drew458     on 12/31/2009 at 12:33 PM   
Filed Under: • Education •  
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   Tuesday - December 29, 2009

Bass Ackwards in Moonbat Land

Berkeley High School is considering a controversial proposal to eliminate science labs and the five science teachers who teach them to free up more resources to help struggling students.

The proposal to put the science-lab cuts on the table was approved recently by Berkeley High’s School Governance Council, a body of teachers, parents, and students who oversee a plan to change the structure of the high school to address Berkeley’s dismal racial achievement gap, where white students are doing far better than the state average while black and Latino students are doing worse.

Paul Gibson, an alternate parent representative on the School Governance Council, said that information presented at council meetings suggests that the science labs were largely classes for white students. He said the decision to consider cutting the labs in order to redirect resources to underperforming students was virtually unanimous.

Ass backwards into the future. Want to really know how to make our country excel? Turn out smarter people from school? Want to know how to do that? Stop molly coddling the little bastards. Teach, and teach hard. And stop every last cent of funding for “slow kids” past the 6th grade. If you can’t figure out how to study or learn by then, too bad. Put in a major exam at the end of 9th grade. If you don’t pass, then it’s off to a 1 year lawn mowing and cardboard box folding classes for you. And that’s all you get. Tough.

To get our best and brightest to be our best and brightest, we need to push them, and we need to start funding education for the advanced pupils. Screw the dumbshits. They aren’t going to be pushing back the frontiers of knowledge. Fuck their little egos; gear school towards the top 15%, and everybody else has to sweat it. Even the regular kids can make use of a regular education, and they’ll get one plus really learn how to strive. Raise the bar, then raise it again. Keep on raising it every few years.

Posted by Drew458     on 12/29/2009 at 01:31 PM   
Filed Under: • Education •  
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   Friday - November 06, 2009

Parents to be fined if they take their children out of sex lessons. It’s de law.

This is more or less an update and we’ve been through the subject here before.  I still think the starting age is too young but as I’ve noted, I’m not a parent.  Not very fair to parents who’d rather not have their kids in these classes.  Could that argument also be used btw, if a parent didn’t like the way history was taught?  Oh wait a minute.  From what I’ve heard, not much of that being taught anyway.
Recent poll found that a number of school age kids thought Hitler was a German football coach.  Kid ya not.

‘Attention children. To set the mood Miss Spilsbury will strip off to demonstrate upside-down pole dancing whilst snorting a line of coke...’

Parents to be fined if they take their children out of sex lessons

By Laura Clark
06th November 2009

Parents will face fines if they remove 15-year-old children from sex education lessons as they become part of the national curriculum for the first time.

Lessons in relationships and sex will begin at five, with prescribed content for each age group.

Parents will still be able to withdraw children on moral and religious grounds, but this right - which currently extends until students are 19 - will be lost at 15.

Mothers and fathers risk being fined and prosecuted under anti-truancy laws.

Under current arrangements, secondary schools must teach sex education but can choose the content. Primary schools do not have to offer it at all.

The shake-up, outlined by Children’s Secretary Ed Balls, will affect 600,000 children from September 2011. It drew immediate protests.

Campaigners said sex education in the last year of secondary school - to which all children will now be exposed - is often the most explicit, with pupils taught about how to use a condom and access to contraception and abortion.

Religious leaders said parents would ‘vote with their feet’.

The Government insists that only a ‘tiny minority’ of parents exercised their right to pull their children out of sex education.

Mr Balls said it would not make sense to keep the age limit of 19, because teenagers can vote at 18 and the age of consent is 16.
Enlarge What they will be taught

In a Government-backed poll nearly a third of parents wanted to retain the right regardless of age. But another third said it should end at 11 and 20 per cent said there should be no opt-out at all.

Mr Balls said the aim was for all children to have at least one year of sex education. He said the changes would help tackle teenage pregnancies. But critics said the Government’s strategy of handing out contraceptives and spreading sex education was already failing.

Tahir Alam, education spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain, said: ‘It is not for the state to become a parent.

‘We will be making representations to fight for the right of parents to withdraw their children from sex education.

‘Some parents view exposure of their children to this sort of material as morally objectionable and morally corrupting.’

DAILY MAIL SOURCE

Posted by peiper     on 11/06/2009 at 01:06 PM   
Filed Under: • Education • Sex • UK •  
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   Thursday - September 24, 2009

UPDATE … To a story that recently appeared here and I’ll bet nobody is surprised.

GIRL TIED TO FENCE AND BEATEN THEN SAVED BY SCHOOL EMPLOYEE, WHO GETS THE SACK.

BMEWS will recall that story from the other day.  Briefly to recap for those who don’t know.

Four school boys grabbed a young girl, tied her to a fence and beat her with a skip rope. Another kid saw what was happening and ran into the school and got an employee who ran out and got the girl free and also managed to get a couple of the little bastards.
The school reported to the girls parents that that their kid was hurt in a skip rope accident. Clearly a freeken lie by ppl who would normally instruct kids to be truthful.  Or they should and they might if they weren’t the same sort of shits as the boys who abused that little girl.
Well, the lady who saved the kid informed the parents of the truth, and got herself fired for her trouble.
And that brings us to this UPDATE on that story.

( A dinner lady is the person who dishes out the lunches in school cafeteria)

Bully exposed by sacked school employee revealed to be son of school governor

By Sarah Harris
Last updated at 12:30 PM on 24th September 2009

One of the bullies at the centre of a row over a sacked dinner lady is the son of a school governor.

Carol Hill, 60, was sacked for telling the parents of seven-year-old Chloe David that their daughter had been tied up and whipped in the school playground.

The school had informed Scott and Claire David she had simply been ‘hurt’ in an incident with a skipping rope.

Mrs Hill was suspended after the incident in June and yesterday it emerged that she had been fired by a disciplinary tribunal for breaching pupil confidentiality at Great Tey Primary School, near Colchester, Essex.

Angry parents are demanding the resignation of headteacher and governors at the school and some are threatening to remove their children if Mrs Hill is not reinstated.

Parents have questioned whether Mrs Hill’s sacking was influenced by the fact that a governor, who did not take part in disciplinary hearings, is mother of one of the four boys accused of tying Chloe’s wrists and ankles with the skipping rope.

Sarah Harris, 36, who has two children at the school, said the treatment of the dinner lady was unfair.

‘Maybe this would have been dealt with differently had a governor’s child not been involved,’ she told The Times.

‘You put your trust in these people not only to teach your children but to keep them safe and look after their pastoral care.

‘I am worried and very concerned as to what else may have been covered up.’

SOURCE

Sure does tell us a lot about our wonderful new world.  And of course we are all surprised by this. Instead of a damn good whipping the little SOB’s mommy covers up and costs someone their job. No sweat, no conscience, and no wonder her little angel is a snot faced bastard along with his friends.  And if she didn’t personally cover it up, then the school admin did. None of them should ever again be allowed to work in that sort of position.  But what are the chances of that happening?

Posted by peiper     on 09/24/2009 at 11:53 AM   
Filed Under: • CULTURE IN DECLINE • Education • Jack Booted Thugs • UK •  
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