Tuesday - June 05, 2012
here’s a followup to american use of english. interesting if true.
I’ve used up my store of words so this is just for the info. You might be interested.
Posted by peiper
on 06/05/2012 at 12:56 PM
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Permalink • American words are mangling our English.
I read this the other day, posting because it bothers me. Darn if everything doesn’t bug me these days.
I read this and thought, hey guy. You make it look like we forced it on your country. Anyway, he has so much I think is wrong for a guy who actually is smart and writes books that are good etc. But I’m bugged anyway.
Take a look.
Don’t talk garbage!...or why American words are mangling our English
By CHRISTOPHER STEVENSThe most delicate tool ever invented is the English language. It is endlessly rich, subtle, mellifluous and diverse — a vast mechanism built from 220,000 words, perfectly formed components that work together like jewelled cogs.
To wreck that mechanism deliberately — and to teach our children to do the same — would be worse than obscene. But that is what is happening.
A survey of 74,000 short stories written by British children has revealed that Americanisms are destroying traditional British words.
Like the grey squirrels that were introduced into the UK from the U.S. 130 years ago — and have almost wiped out our indigenous (and much lovelier) red squirrels — American words are infectious, destructive and virulent. And they are taking over.
Yeah okay. Lets talk for a second about that miserable grey rodent. The grey squirrel.
Just who Mr. Stevens brought the itty-bitty cute little things to these shores?
One of your own. That’s who.
the first greys were brought here from North America in 1876. Over the years more were introduced, notably by the Duke of Bedford to the park at Woburn Abbey where they thrived. http://www.squirrels.info/uk/in_uk.htm
Well pardon me if American English is not only meant to be easy to use but damn well descriptive as well.
American words are designed to be easy to use. They are simple to say and spell. They combine nouns and verbs, labels and instructions, so that they are convenient to pick up and apply. A country of immigrants, speaking a dissonant babel of Yiddish, Italian, Gaelic, Dutch, Norwegian, German, Polish and Russian, needed a common tongue.
Take sidewalk, for instance: it refers to that part of a road (the side) reserved for pedestrians (who walk). Two simple words are compounded to replace a third, pavement.
Yet pavement is a wonderful word, a fragment of old French that resonates with the ringing blows of medieval craftsmen as they laid a stone floor — pavire is the Latin word for beating or ramming down. Why must we in Britain discard a beautiful, meaningful word, and replace it with a Frankenstein creation?
American-English is a compound language — a language in kit form. Any word can perform any function. Listen to the jargon of a burger-flipper at fast-food restaurant: ‘Welcome to the drivethru,’ ‘What’s your order?’ ‘Do you want fries with that?’ ‘I’ve actioned it,’ ‘Have a nice day.’
Drivethru might be the worst of all possible words. It takes a verb and a preposition, and screws them together (Americans love doing that: walkup, stopover, hangout). Then it mangles the spelling.
Finally, it applies this hideous, mongrel expression to a place where the food isn’t fit for dogs.
In English, you can order your food, but food isn’t an order; you can fry potatoes, but they’ll be chips, not fries; you can take action and see action, but you can’t simply action anything.
The findings of the survey, by the Oxford University Press, revealed yesterday that British children no longer know the difference between real English and its half-delinquent American cousin.
Why isn’t sidewalk correct? It’s a walkway by the roadside. No? Yes? Floor. Now there’s a great word. When I read articles about people being injured or knocked down, the Brit press describes it as, someone was knocked down to the floor. Never mind it wasn’t indoors but out of doors. So GROUND I think should be the right word but here it’s all ‘floor.’
Here’s another word that drives me bananas when I see it used or hear it spoken.
Pressurized.
Over here, if I wanted to say for example that I felt pressured to do something or act in some way, the word used here is not pressured but pressurized.
I felt I was pressurized into making that chess move. Instead of pressured. That just doesn’t look or sound right. But that’s how it’s used here. I guess Mr. Stevens wouldn’t approve of the American use.
Oh yeah and lets get chips and fries out of the way. Picky-picky. First of all they are fried damn it. So we call em the way we sees em. Chips are these, these
how do I describe a chip. A particle? I don’t care if Brits want to call em chips. Go in good health and enjoy but don’t tell us that potatoes that are fried are not fries. And I especially don’t care for his put down regarding the food not being fit. Jeesh. I’ll let you guys fill in the rest.
I know Drew can pick it apart better then I will.
Hey .... why is “goods train” any more descriptive or any better then “freight train?” If it’s hauling a load somewhere it’s what? Freight. No?
U.S. English is sometimes called globish, bundling ‘global’ and ‘English’ into one concept. And as we know, some Americans have a rare ability to bundle all kinds of words together.
George W. Bush was capable of saying: ‘They misunderestimated me,’ and ‘Is our children learning?’ This was a president who treated English the way a horde of squatters treat a stately home — barging in, kicking holes in the walls, and generally leaving it in a foul mess.
Uh huh. Excuse me sir but I believe the squatter thing is STILL an English problem your govt. hasn’t done anything about yet. They said they would.
And you won’t find Americans that would put up with that in the USA. But in your country it’s always open season.
And I don’t believe Bush ever said Is our children learning unless that’s one line taken out of a line or a paragraph. I never heard him say misunderestimated either. Did any of you because he could have and I just missed it.
Of course, language is not a fixed thing that must not be tampered with. It has been evolving for 1,500 years, and in that time English has absorbed the vocabularies and grammars of half the world, as traders, invaders and refugees brought new words and ways of speaking to these shores.
It has been shaped and honed by the greatest poets who ever spoke in any tongue, from Chaucer and Shakespeare to John Betjeman and Dylan Thomas.
But the coarse, half-articulate version called American-English is not an evolution. It’s a degraded version.
Two centuries ago, British abolitionists fought the American slave trade. Now a new campaign of abolition is needed — to rid us of American-English.
For everyone who is fed up of hearing drugstore instead of chemist; windshield instead of windscreen; hood instead of bonnet; cookbook instead of cookery book; gas instead of petrol; cranky instead of irritable; smart instead of clever and subway instead of underground — we do not have to tolerate it. Throw these words out!
In Minnesota and Mississippi, the inhabitants are welcome to talk as they
Many words that seem American actually originated in the UK
wish. But in Birmingham, Blackburn and Barnstaple, we do not have to mimic them.
We need not replace our dustbin lorries with garbage trucks, our newspaper cuttings with clippings, our courgettes with zucchinis, our drawing pins with thumbtacks.
And we must resist all pressure to add prepositions to words that don’t require them. It’s fine to meet a friend — there’s no need to ‘meet with’ anyone. Why would you want to ‘reach out to’ someone when you can just ask?
When I was a boy, growing up in Stratford-upon-Avon, decades before the banking crisis and international terrorism stifled the tourist trade, Americans were everywhere. They came in homage to Shakespeare, while committing cheerful barbarisms on the bard’s language.
I admired their lack of hypocrisy — the way they’d buy the best seats at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, for instance, and then leave at the first interval, because they didn’t understand a word of it (I also liked the way this gave me a free seat for the second half.)
I learned that we were, as the playwright George Bernard Shaw put it, two countries divided by a common language.
What the tourists seemed to think, though, was that we Brits were putting it on, that our accents and vocabulary were an act, an entertainment for the benefit of U.S. visitors.
‘Do y’all really say “fortnight”?’ a woman once gasped at me. ‘How do ya even remember a word like that?’
In 1921, American journalist H. L. Mencken argued that, as his nation comprised twice as many citizens as our little island, and was a burgeoning superpower compared with our fading Empire, his language outgunned ours.
‘When two-thirds of the people who use a certain language decide to call it a freight train instead of a goods train, they are right,’ he wrote. ‘The first is correct usage and the second a dialect.’
That’s provocative and witty, but wrong. Linguists estimate that a working knowledge of American globish needs just 1,500 words, not even 1 per cent of the content of the Oxford English Dictionary. The rest is wasted.
If I am writing in dialect, it’s a dialect that is 100 times more beautiful and precise and fascinating and expressive than the debased version that Mencken wanted to foist upon us.
It contains words such as foist, for a start. And burgeoning. And mellifluous, a word I used at the top of this page: it comes from the Latin words mel, or honey, and fluere, meaning flow.
Flowing like honey — that is just what our language does. And that’s the way that British children should learn to speak it.
AMERICAN USE OF ENGLISH SOURCE
I let the darnedest things get to me.
Posted by peiper
on 06/05/2012 at 11:44 AM
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Permalink • Monday - May 21, 2012
Teacher loses it, school loses teacher
Ain’t No Minipsinatin Here!*
Teacher to student: You’ll get arrested for disrespectin President Obama, just like all them people that Bush arrested!
School Board to Teacher after story hits the news: Suspended!
NC teacher captured on video suggesting student could be arrested for Obama criticism
A North Carolina high school teacher was captured on video shouting at a student who questioned President Obama and suggesting he could be arrested for criticizing a sitting president.
The Salisbury Post, which first reported on the YouTube video, did not identify the teacher in question, who is reportedly on staff at North Rowan High School. The video does not show faces, but the heated argument in the classroom can clearly be heard.
“Do you realize that people were arrested for saying things bad about Bush?” the teacher said toward the end of the argument, telling the student, “you are not supposed to slander the president.”
The student told the teacher that one can’t be arrested “unless you threaten the president.”
The argument started when the classroom began discussing news reports that Mitt Romney bullied a fellow student when he was in high school.
It’s not a big story, but tough to just quote a few little parts. Follow the link and listen to the video. The teacher lost her mind when she felt the student was being critical of Teh Won. Student gets a national A+ in my opinion for the best line of the day:
The nearly 10-minute video, shot by a student and uploaded to YouTube on Monday, had been viewed more than 1,000 times by Friday afternoon.
It begins with a classroom conversation about a recent news story detailing Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney allegedly bullying a classmate in prep school. It turns into a heated, sometimes confrontational debate.
One student asks, “Didn’t Obama bully someone though?”
The teacher responds: “Not to my knowledge.”
In response to the Romney story, conservatives have recently been pointing to a passage in Obama’s book, “Dreams from My Father,” in which the president writes that while in grade school he shoved a little girl, the only other black student in his grade, after other students called him her boyfriend.
When the student tells the teacher that Obama admitted to bullying a girl in school, the teacher goes on the defensive.
“Stop, no, because there is no comparison,” she says. Romney, she says, is “running for president. Obama is the president.”
When the student says they’re both “just men,” the teacher continues to argue that Romney, as a candidate for president, is not to be afforded the same respect as the president.
The teacher tells the class Obama is “due the respect that every other president is due.”
“Listen, let me tell you something, you will not disrespect the president of the United States in this classroom,” she says.
The student replies that he’ll say what he wants.
“Not about him you won’t,” the teacher says.
Later in the conversation, the teacher tells the class it’s criminal to slander a president.
“Do you realize that people were arrested for saying things bad about Bush?” she says of former President Bush. “Do you realize you are not supposed to slander the president?”
The student responds by saying being arrested for talking badly about the president would violate the right to free speech.
Now that this story is hitting the news, and the teacher’s lack of control and unusual views of the laws et al are in full public view ... um, hearing ... the school board had a bit of egg on their face and is looking for a washcloth ...
SALISBURY — Rowan-Salisbury Schools officials suspended a North Rowan High School teacher Monday while investigating an incident caught on camera where the teacher told a student he could be arrested for speaking ill of President Barack Obama.
In a nearly 10-minute YouTube video shot by a student in the classroom, Tanya Dixon-Neely, a social studies teacher, told students criticism of the president could lead to jail time.
...
Dixon-Neely has been suspended with pay, according to Rowan-Salisbury School System Spokeswoman Rita Foil.
And she’s a social studies teacher ... I think that passes for history these days? So, who were these people who were arrested or reprimanded for criticizing Bush? It certainly wasn’t anyone in Hollywood or the news media. Or those Code Pink people. Or Cindy Sheehan. And who taught this teacher her very broad definition of slander?
Yikes. Home schooling. Looks better every day.
Oh, and suspended with pay. So this is what, just a bit of smoke and mirrors until the press goes away?
Posted by Drew458
on 05/21/2012 at 01:38 PM
Filed Under: • Education • Obama, The One •
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Permalink • Tuesday - May 01, 2012
here’s an idea. keep bad teachers on the job but payem less. say what?
A MUST share if I only posted the headline I saw in one morning paper today.
I know newspapers have to grab our attention, and sometime the headlines do not always square with the actual story.
However, where unions are involved in any step whatever in the process, you’ll almost always find a snake pit.
Here’s the headline.
BAD TEACHERS SHOULD BE PAID LESS, SAY MINISTERS.
Hey, wait a minute. How many parents will welcome bad teachers at any price?
Does anyone know any parents anywhere that would? I betcha even union heads want the best (left wing) teachers for their offspring. But yours? Maybe not.
In the last 18 months only one of five teachers judged to be incompetent was sacked.
And he or she had to be pretty bad for the teachers union to allow that.
MPs back plan for performance-related pay in schools
Weak teachers could be paid less than the very best performers under Government plans to improve standards of state education, it has emerged.
By Graeme Paton, Education EditorMinisters are considering plans to create a clearer link between pay and classroom performance as part of a new drive to boost results and attract the best graduates into the profession.
The disclosure came as a cross-party group of MPs warned that a new system of performance-related pay was needed to stop the worst teachers hiding behind a “rigid and unfair” national salary structure.
It follows warnings from Ofsted last year that teaching was not good enough in more than four-in-10 schools, with “dull” lessons leading to poor standards of classroom behaviour.
Last night, it emerged that Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, has already written to the national body that reviews teachers’ salaries to seek advice on how the Government can “strengthen the link between pay and performance”.But the move has been attacked by teaching unions who are strongly opposed to any attempt to dismantle national rules on pay and conditions.
They have already threatened strike action over proposals to introduce regional pay rates across the public sector.
But the cross-party committee’s report said: “No longer should the weakest teachers be able to hide behind a rigid and unfair pay structure.
But why keep weak teachers at all? At any price?
Some students will do well in spite of teachers. They are exceptions and there are always those. But not by huge numbers. Kids need the best they can get in schools and especially in the world we have today. 2nd rate is just not good enough. Been a very long time since I attended school, so I’m not an expert on the subject. My uneducated guess is that most teachers are up to the mark. The sexy stories that concern the bad ones give the impression that the entire profession is populated by second rate failures.
But it’s certain as well that as long as unions protect the less worthy, things won’t much improve.
Posted by peiper
on 05/01/2012 at 09:45 AM
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Permalink • Sunday - April 29, 2012
nice rack but no votes say college uptights. college just ain’t fun anymore.
This is an update to a story posted about a month ago, or slightly less. Thought it was all over and forgot about it. Well apparently some have not forgotten.
This is in ref. to a young college girl with a sense of humor. I guess the post of Librarian of the Oxford Union is an elected one and she ran for the position.
Her tongue in cheek slogan was “Vote for me, I have a great rack.” Well. Even some men it’s been reported, were offended. Orf wiv er ed.
OK, maybe she was out of line. They say she was, I think they need to chill out but it isn’t me umble self that gets to make those momentice decisions.
So as I said at the top, her slogan was not forgot. Nope. An open and shut case of, Forget about it. You forget about it, I’ll forget about it, we’ll both forget about it,
but I’ll remember and don’t you forget it.
Model disciplined in Oxford University sexism rowA former model involved in a sexism row at Oxford University is hauled before a disciplinary committee.
By Richard Eden
When Madeline Grant made a light-hearted reference to her breasts in her application to be the Librarian of the Oxford Union, she hoped that it would prick the pomposity of those undergraduates who took themselves too seriously.
The 19-year-old former model has, however, now discovered just how seriously the officials at the Union, whose past presidents include Sir Edward Heath and Boris Johnson, take the sexism row.
Mandrake can disclose that the English student at St Hilda’s College is to be hauled before a disciplinary committee on Wednesday, charged with bringing the Union into disrepute.
“It’s ridiculous,” says Grant, the daughter of the former BBC sports presenter Sally Jones. “At great expense, they are paying for former Union officials to come to Oxford and sit on the committee which will decide my fate.”
In February, the alumna of King Edward VI High School for Girls posted election material for the position which contained a reference to her breasts. “I don’t hack, I just have a great rack,” she wrote.
This prompted a much-talked-about row among her fellow Union members. The comments, which were contained in a “draft manifesto” that was posted on an official Union noticeboard as part of her election material, were condemned as “deeply offensive”.
She tells me: “I’m wondering if I should leave the Union. The main speakers they have lined up are Geri Halliwell and Nelly Furtado, so I wouldn’t miss much.” Ouch.
EVERYTHING just HAS to have an ISM.
So where’s the ‘sexism’ here? Oh right. Some woman’s group is also offended saying she defamed their fair sex.
The men are offended cos they’re probably the type who want racks but can’t have em without surgery, and the feminazis ??????? I guess they’re just offended because they think they should be. Actually, there really aren’t all that many who are bothered. But in these times it does not take a lot. Even one will do.
Posted by peiper
on 04/29/2012 at 12:01 PM
Filed Under: • Education • Humor • UK •
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Permalink • Thursday - March 08, 2012
3 cheers for pupils at Zwelihle High School in Umlazi, South Africa. Well done kids.
Here’s something of real interest from the morning papers.
This is how it’s done by school kids, who’ve been pushed that one bit too far.
I’m certain they’re black because too many white kids in this situation would first look to make sure nobody’s rights were being violated. Plus if it happened here in the UK they’d have had to get the folks from Health and Safety to approve, which they might provided the bad guys got a head start and were wearing head gear like construction helmets. Then some ass wipe civil rights group would get their licks in finding that the bad guys were disadvantaged growing up and you know the rest.
So here’s three cheers and three cheers more, for those wonderful kids who took their school back and eliminated a couple of gremlins in the process.
For the pupils at Zwelihle High School in Umlazi, South Africa
HIP, HIP HURRAY
South African schoolchildren stone to death two teenage robbers (who were chased by FIVE HUNDRED pupils)
By NICK ENOCHSouth African schoolchildren aged between 12 and 14 have stoned to death two teenagers who allegedly stole from them in class.
The pupils attacked the gang of three youths, believed to be aged 15, after their money and mobile phones were taken at gunpoint.
About 500 pupils from Zwelihle High School in Umlazi, on the outskirts of Durban in KwaZulu-Natal region, chased the thieves, who had apparently entered the premises through a hole in a fence.After catching up with them, some of the schoolchildren then pelted them with stones.
Two gang members died while a third suffered life-threatening injuries.
The incident is a shocking extension of the country’s vigilante culture.Many of the country’s poorest areas as so ill-served by police that locals routinely administer ‘street justice’ against alleged criminals.
So common are vigilante attacks that the Zwelihle lynching, which happened on February 24, has passed almost unremarked upon locally.
The local Daily News newspaper was one of the few media organisations to cover the story.It quoted a unnamed female pupil who witnessed the 10am attack.
‘We know these guys. They bully the schoolchildren all the time and steal their money and other valuables. They are known to attack pupils inside the school too’, the pupil said.The pupil explained that during the course of the robbery, some of the schoolchildren started to suspect that the robbers’ gun was not working.
‘They confronted the robbers and asked them if their gun was working. They started running. This did not stop us. Everyone gave chase. We were all sick and tired of their bad habits’, she said.It was as the gang ran towards a nearby township, the pupil told the paper, that some children started to throw stones.
‘Some of the pupils eventually caught them at the settlement. They started hitting them and pelting them with stones. More than 500 children were there.’
She added: ‘We are very happy they are dead. At least now they won’t worry anyone.‘It is also a warning to other robbers. We are not afraid of guns. They will feel fire if they rob us again.
‘We are sick and tired of being terrorised by criminals and bullies in the area.’
On the other hand, here’s how things are done in a socialist nanny state where nobody wants to hurt the feeling much less anything else, even of criminals. The headline reads,
GUN ROBBERS WALK FREE
Three teenagers from “ respectable” families who carried out a series of gunpoint street robberies walked free from court after a judge said their criminal records would be punishment enough.
Hey-hey. That’ll teach the little bastards okay. Bet they’re quaking in their boots but more from laughter then fear.
Then there’s this from last week’s Mail.
Fergie’s killer aide could be freed from jail within weeks
By Ian DruryA former royal aide who is in prison for murder could walk free within weeks.
Jane Andrews, 44, once one of the Duchess of York’s most trusted members of staff, will appear at a parole board hearing as early as mid-March.
Andrews, who spent nine years as Sarah Ferguson’s dresser, could be recommended for release if the panel thinks she has been rehabilitated.
A parole board source said: ‘If she is successful, it is possible that she will be released back into the community next month.’
Andrews was jailed for life in 2001 for killing her wealthy boyfriend Thomas Cressman.The builder’s daughter from Cleethorpes murdered Mr Cressman at the house they shared in Fulham, West London, after he made clear he would not marry her.
In a cold-blooded revenge attack she clubbed him unconscious with a cricket bat before stabbing him in the chest with an 8in knife and fleeing the scene.
Posted by peiper
on 03/08/2012 at 06:33 AM
Filed Under: • Education • OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT • Politically-Incorrect • Success Stories •
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Permalink • Saturday - February 11, 2012
University puts up posters giving foreign students lessons in how to use Western loos
I think I have mentioned this story before but in light of this article which caught my eye, it’s topical and worth repeating.
In the 60’s I was in the Navy and attended an Army school at Fort Slocum,NY. just off the coast of New Rochelle.
All branches of the services went there as the govt. decided for economy’s sake, it would be easier and less expensive to run one school for all, rather then each branch having their own.
The school also hosted foreign students. Including a contingent from Pakistan. Who had no idea apparently what our toilets were used for and so, they used the communal showers.
The situation was corrected quickly.
Toilet training for 18-YEAR-OLDS: University puts up posters giving foreign students lessons in how to use Western loosBy REBECCA SEALES
The stereotypical student is a messy sort of beast, with a fondness for alcohol and daytime TV and an allergy to washing up.
But for all their foibles, most people would expect the teenaged scamps to have mastered the use of a toilet.
Not so at Swansea University, where campus chiefs have put up signs in a helpful attempt to provide students with toilet training.University bosses said they put up instructions about how to use the toilets properly after some were found in a mess, sparking a series of complaints.
Explaining their decision, they blamed ‘cultural differences’ in the way the toilets are used by foreign students, some of whom are used to the ‘squat toilets’ common in parts of Asia and Europe.
A university spokeswoman said: ‘The posters were produced to help address cultural differences that were unfortunately causing damage and hygiene issues.
‘Swansea University is a multi-cultural campus community, and the informational posters were produced for use in both male and female facilities.
‘The information was produced in conjunction with the International College Wales Swansea and displayed in key areas around the campus.
‘Since the inception of these posters, the situation has greatly improved in the affected areas.’
But the posters have sparked outrage at the university, which has 18,000 students and boasts alumni including author Kingsley Amis, rock star Nicky wire of the Manic Street Preachers and England cricketer Simon Jones.
Law student Stephanie Preedy, said: ‘We all needed good A-levels to get into university, yet they don’t think we know how to use a toilet?
‘It’s ridiculous and quite belittling.’
Hannah Prosser, a third year English student said: ‘Most of us found the posters quite funny until we realised it wasn’t meant as a joke.’
more at the link above
Posted by peiper
on 02/11/2012 at 05:28 AM
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Permalink • Wednesday - January 18, 2012
HITLER ONCE SAID …..
Hitler once said, give me the children. Almost worked.
I was gonna do another anti EU rant when I ran across this. So hey. Now I don’t have to cos this does it for me.
Important, scroll down at the link for the video which I am unable to embed here.
Revealed: How children are ‘brainwashed with European propaganda’ handed out by EU staff at education fairs
European Commission official says they need ‘to start early enough with the young people before they form prejudices and are misinformed by other sources’
By CHARLES WALFORDEU ‘propaganda’ is being handed out to teachers to indoctrinate pupils at a young age, it has emerged.
A Brussels official responsible for providing classroom material to UK schools admitted a desire to teach youngsters about the ‘values of EU membership’ from a young age, before they are ‘misinformed’.
The revelation that aggressively pro-European leaflets were being handed out at an education fair to ‘brainwash’ pupils has been heavily criticised.
UKIP deputy leader and education spokesman Paul Nuttall MEP told the Express: ‘It is what we always suspected but could never prove. Now we can. They [the EU] are effectively using our cash to brainwash our children. And it has to stop.’
A video has emerged of Judith Schilling, the European Commission’s publication manager, handing out EU-focused leaflets at the Education Show in Birmingham.
She tells an interviewer: ‘Everybody has now picked up on the idea that we will never succeed to convince people about the value of being a member of the European Union if we do not start early enough with the young people before they form prejudices and are misinformed by other sources.’
Mr Nuttall said he has written to Education Secretary Michael Gove and Schools Minister Nick Gibb saying the teaching programme appears to breach the law banning promotion of ‘partisan political views’ in schools.
Pupils must be given a balanced presentation of issues, he said.
Mr Nuttall has also called for the European Commission to be made to halt its schools programme pending an inquiry and to order schools to stop using such aids.
Ukip leader Nigel Farage said: ‘It is vital that such an important issue, which is essentially the deliberate political indoctrination of our children, be dealt with in as open and as transparent a way as possible.’
It comes after the EU was accused of trying to ‘brainwash’ children after pupils all over the country were given pencil cases with its logo emblazoned across it.
Posted by peiper
on 01/18/2012 at 02:28 PM
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Permalink • Thursday - January 05, 2012
Digging Beyond The Headlines
About a zillion blogs and news sites are running this story:
Kenyan Parents Attack Teachers After Widespread Exams Failure
The chairman of the Kenyan teachers’ union says angry parents are attacking teachers nationwide after their children’s dismal performance in a national exam.
Wilson Sossion of the Kenya National Union of Teachers said Thursday that rioting parents have forcefully closed at least 10 primary schools. They are angry that their children failed national exams that determine if the children get into high school.
Sossion says the union is investigating the death of a head teacher from a school in Narok, a town in central Kenya. The man is believed to have committed suicide after the results of all 38 students from his school were canceled over allegations of cheating.
Government statistics show that more than half the 760,000 children who sat the examination last year may not go to high school.
And, given just that bit of info, the comments are flying all over. Blame the teachers! The schools need more money! Tax the rich! Blame Bush! Sounds a bit familiar, right?
The first thing you need to know: in Kenya, if you don’t pass the grade school exit exam you don’t get to go to high school. An 8th grade education is deemed sufficient for many jobs, and that’s all you get. Further down the road, you have to pass the high school exit exam to both graduate and to earn a chance at a spot at university. Nothing I have read has made me aware that Kenya has any kind of vocational education program, as many counties here in the USA do for students who may want to head straight into the workforce in lieu of further schooling. But in the US, even those kids graduate high school right? I think so, but we have lots of schools here. It’s not like that in Kenya.
But is there any more to this story?
Well, yes.
There is a “scandal”; the kids who went to very small, expensive, private schools all did extremely well (Kenyan TV news video report). Is this really a scandal though, when in most of these schools you need to already be a very good student to get in to begin with? Or was there cheating?
Hmm, it seems there was plenty of cheating going on, but I can’t find out if it was only at the fancy schools or not. I only found that nearly 8,000 students in 335 schools had their exams nullified ...
Pupils from 335 schools countrywide had their results cancelled due to cheating, Education minister Sam Ongeri said on Wednesday.
Prof Ongeri noted that senior teachers, supervisors and even parents were involved in abetting the vice.
In one instance, a teacher conned parents and candidates of Sh810,000 in the pretext that he would supply them with Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) exam papers in advance. In another case, a pupil had answers written on a sandal he was wearing in the exam room.
Prof Ongeri on Wednesday displayed the sandal as he released the KCPE results. He also showed a shirt with exam answers written on it.
Naturally, when accused of being complicit in the cheating, the teacher’s union immediately announced plans to sue the government for leaking the answers ahead of time ...
Teachers plan to sue Knec over tests
Teachers have demanded naming of those behind the Standard Eight examination leakages that led to the cancellation of results for 7,900 pupils.
Kenya Union of Post-Primary Education Teachers assistant secretary-general Lewis Nyakweba and Kenya National Union of Teachers’ Nyamira branch executive secretary Julius Matwere threatened to take legal action against the Kenya National Examinations Council (Knec) over the leakages.
“We are going to stage demonstrations against Knec for cancelling results of many children in the country without explaining who was responsible and how examination question papers leaked from its custody,” Mr Nyakweba said.
... and it looks like at least some of it was going on in the tony private schools ...
Knec cancelled Standard Eight results for 22 schools, mainly private academies in Nyamira County that were allegedly involved in examination irregularities.
Ok, that accounts for 8K out of 380K; two percent. What about the rest? What really is going on here? Probably less than 1% of the students go to private academies, yet half the kids in the country failed the test. That’s 50 times more than those who failed just because they cheated. Was the test too hard? Was it the wrong test? Is government run public education in Kenya just about worthless? Or are Kenyan students just not capable or willing?
Of course, there will always be voices calling for lowering the bar ...
[from before the exam was given] The 2011 KCPE results were released earlier this week on Wednesday 28 December. According to the KNEC, out of the total 776,214 candidates who sat for the KCPE this year, just under half (48.26%) attained 250 marks and above (the cut-off pass mark out of a possible 500 marks) and only 5,806 (0.75%) scored over 400 marks. Two candidates — a boy and a girl — tied to take the top positions with 442 marks each.
When one considers that an average of 30% of KCPE candidates each year fail to secure a place in secondary school, and the proportion seems to be increasing year on year, it becomes clear that the competition to excel in KCPE is pretty high, so much so that cases of exam cheating have become increasingly rampant with each passing year. This year, some 8000 candidates (about 1.5%) had their results cancelled as a result of cheating and other irregularities.
...
it becomes clear that the time is nigh for us as Kenyans to rethink our attitudes towards the meaning of success when it comes to academics. Students are under too much pressure, not just to pass exams but to excel. The all-or-nothing attitude is part of the reason why exam cheating and leaking of exam questions is turning slowly into a cartel involving not just pupils but their parents, teachers and exam invigilators!
It’s high time for our primary school pupils to be appropriately counselled to know that there is more to life than passing exams, and failing KCPE should not mark the end of the road.
But it just may be that the bar was already set quite low ... and in truth it is the students who are the problem ...
A mathematics teaacher from a school in Nairobi says that his students have such a negative attitude that when asked to worked out the change from a hundred shillings after buying bread worth sh 40, 30% of the students did not attempt while 25% of those who attempted did not get it correct. Not that these students are not able to answer the question but the attitude they approach the test makes them blind to such a problem.
KCSE 2011 mathematics paper 1 and paper 2 on a scale is the most favourable in many years. Paper 1 is such a aper that the current form two student may score 80% which an A. The current form three student can easily schore an A in paper 2.
We loud the KNEC for attempting to demystify the examination by encouraging the student with problems that they are able to attempt. It may be be what the teachers have been waiting for to motivate students to like mathematics. However it will not be strange to find that most students will not perform well in the subject.
As an aside, if I recall my high school days, I’d say that at least a quarter of the students weren’t really ready for it, and just kind of cruised through in neutral. And that was back in the good old days. Maybe Kenya ought to be proud that a mere 30% couldn’t cut it. And it may also be that not going to high school is not that big a deal in Kenya, I don’t know. In the USA it is. Heck, since we long ago dumbed down our schools to the drooling level, now every menial job demands a college degree, because most college degrees are no better than what a high school diploma used to be. So if Kenya has not yet dropped the bar onto the ground and then dug a deep ditch for it, more power to them. And thus an 8th grade education there may not be so bad at all, really. But what if they have, and even a slow student over here could ace the KNEC primary school tests? What would that say?
So I still don’t have the answer to the big problem. But I do know it isn’t wise to take some of the news at headline value: 11 Kenya exam officials killed in line of duty is misleading in the extreme. Almost all of them had died in car accidents at early points in the year, or from terrorists. Not a single one died at the hands of those outraged parents who are attacking the teachers and education bigwigs. Meanwhile Kenyan parents are locking teachers into their classrooms, and in parts of Africa that is one really bad precursor. Machetes and fires often follow on.
Posted by Drew458
on 01/05/2012 at 02:19 PM
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Permalink • Thursday - December 15, 2011
Today’s Lesson: Sex Sells
‘Why I stripped on webcams to pay for my uni fees’: Woman tells how she turned to the sex industry to fund her studies
* She is forced to continue stripping because ‘there are no jobs for young people at the moment’
* One in five lapdancers are students, NUS warns
* NUS says students turning to ‘informal’ sector for cash
* Emma Green was paid £200-a-week to strip for men on webcam
That about says it all, doesn’t it? Read the rest. Savvy young business woman, or lazy skank making excuses? It’s not like she was going for a degree in particle physics.
Personally, I think she looks pretty used up for a 25 year old.
The Brit press loves to publish these “I was forced to turn tricks to pay for my school (or baby, or whatever)” stories, in a bit of socialist arm twisting, since Big Bad Government had to audacity to cut down on the education free ride a while back. Remember the riots?
Posted by Drew458
on 12/15/2011 at 01:49 PM
Filed Under: • Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat Leftists • Education • Media-Bias • UK •
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Permalink • Tuesday - December 13, 2011
For your dancing pleasure
I’ve not been posting lately. Just another bout of bad health. I seem to have gotten over it, though my doctor will tell me for sure later this morning.
I’m posting this video of Barbara and Tim Haller. They were my bosses when I worked for the Dayton Arthur Murray Studio. They taught me how to dance, and I taught my wife how to dance. (wife was one of my first students) Enjoy!
Looks like they are at the Manchester Inn in Middleton. Again. I’ve performed there several times with my students.
Posted by Christopher
on 12/13/2011 at 06:01 AM
Filed Under: • Education • Fun-Stuff •
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Permalink • Sunday - December 11, 2011
Can’t Say Better Late Than Never
Peiper mailed me this essay a few weeks back. Lazy me for not posting it then, but things haven’t changed one white in the meantime. The author laments the loss of nearly all labor skills in the UK, and is bothered that while the demand for a good part of that labor still exists, the only people available with the skills to perform it are foreigners. Generations of left wing schooling has taught the nation that it beneath them to get their hands dirty doing work ... with the result that their are now millions who are completely unemployable, and this has caused
A million young Britons are on the dole while motivated foreigners fill job vacancies
The economic news has been relentlessly bleak. But it is not the Eurozone nor the banking crisis that presents Britain with its greatest potential crisis. It is unemployment - or rather the fact that so many Britons today are actually unemployable.
This week, unemployment hit a 17-year high of 2.6million and experts warned of a ‘lost generation’ of young people since more than one in five, or one million, aged between 16 and 24 are now out of work.
But these statistics are far from the only ones we should be worried about. What is really alarming is that while fewer and fewer Britons have work, foreigners seem to be taking all the jobs that are available.
Last year, as the number of Britons with jobs fell by 311,000, the number of overseas-born people taking jobs in Britain rose by 181,000 or by 495 per day.
To politicians, obsessed as they are with equality, the disappearance of the working class is a wonderful endorsement of their policies. They boast how so many more of our young are in higher education than ever before, being trained to do something useful in society when they leave college. And it is true that some of them are.
But huge numbers of the young emerge from their colleges resolutely unemployable in any obvious capacity. They have been gulled by these boastful politicians into learning subjects which are entirely unsuitable for higher education, ranging from media studies to hairdressing - subjects which in the past were learnt on the job through apprenticeships and experience.
There are three unbudgeable historical reasons for the unemployment catastrophe we face. The first is the wrecking of our educational system during the Sixties and Seventies. The second is the dismantling of our entire manufacturing and industrial base during the Eighties in favour of ‘service’ and ‘financial’ industries. And the third is the welfare state - which is largely responsible for the erosion of the work ethic in our society.
Fifty years of bad education, 30 years of placing all our hopes in the City of London, and three generations of welfare dependency have put this country in a position where it is almost impossible to see how it can help itself out of its difficulties.
No politician dares to tell the truth to the million unemployed young people, and the millions more ‘students’ who hope to be employed when their studies are complete.
The truth is that this country has been ruined by a political and establishment class with no vision. A class which has undermined the notions of endeavour and duty and replaced them with a cradle-to-grave sense of entitlement in which the State would always bale you out if you were too lazy or too incompetent to work.
It was this deluded liberal class which instilled the belief that to work in a shipyard or a factory or to learn a craft is humiliating —much better to go to a Mickey Mouse university to study some pointless degree.
The result is that we live in a country which makes hardly anything the rest of the world wants to buy. A country whose future is deeply perilous and which has long since lost belief in the three things which made Britain great in the days of Brunel and Wedgwood: training the young; trade; and honest, hard work.
Surely this is a UK-only kind of situation that could never ever possibly happen here in the USA. Right? I’d ask Pedro, Juan, and Jorge their opinions, but they’re over there up on that ladder, still painting that house since 7 o’clock this morning.
It’s a good essay, well worth the 10 minute read. One thing about it that I do disagree with though, is that the old English class prejudice against being in trade is still in evidence: although the author bemoans the lack of painters, plumbers, electricians, and other manual laborers, he can’t let go of the rotten “this kind of work is suitable for those with low intelligence” attitude. Wrong. Wrong, wrong. “dirty hands, empty head” is a crock; there is no reason on earth that a crown molding specialist can’t have a degree in philosophy, or that an electrician couldn’t possibly understand quantum. Besides ... these days a plumber earns more than a corporate middle manager, sets his own hours, runs his own show, and doesn’t ever have to attend a Monday morning status meeting.
Posted by Drew458
on 12/11/2011 at 07:44 PM
Filed Under: • Education • UK • work and the workplace •
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Permalink • Monday - November 21, 2011
family planning for kiddies age 8 to 9? welcome to the brave new world
SEX ED for kiddies?
At what age should it start at? Is it necessary in the first place?
Someone wrote an interesting article today with reference to faulty parenting. Not so much that the parents were bad ppl or child abusers. But that they belong to a generation that just doesn’t know any better. That’s how they were raised and that’s how they raise their own. Specifically, the making of sex objects however unintended, of little girls. I almost think I understand even without approving. The examples given in the article of the very explicit MTV for example. It’s become the norm and many moms just don’t see any harm. Who am I to judge? I’m not a parent. It must be scary these days because often times, there just isn’t any decent way to always know what a kid is up to. But gosh, at four and five when they’re still practically in babyhood, I don’t think they should be exposed to the things so freely available today. Things that now are simply taken as a matter of course. And have you folks noticed that nobody is ever embarrassed by anything these days? Really. There was a time when some things that are personal and that would cause great embarrassment, are now spoken of freely. Confessions on TV etc. and celebs talking about everything from their bedroom habits to their bowel habits. And many even shed copious tears. Now that is embarrassing. To watch it. Happily, we haven’t a TV here. Don’t miss it.
Today, it’s reported that a judge has ruled it’s okay to use foul language in public, and even use the ‘F’ word to cops because bad language in public is so common nowadays, that it no longer shocks anyone. Therefore, there are no grounds for a legal issue. I’ll post the article in awhile. I guess what I’m getting at is that what’s acceptable now is a lower standard by a very large number of people. I got a bit off topic I know, but it all seems to run together. Doesn’t it?
Parents rebel over lessons on sex for pupils aged four and plans to teach homosexuality to six-year-olds· Disgusted parents threaten to pull children out of classes
· ’My boy still believes in Father Christmas - he doesn’t need to be told about these things,’ said one mother
By CHRIS BROOKEA primary school is facing a parents’ revolt over the content of sex education classes for children as young as four.
Up to 20 families are said to be prepared to withdraw youngsters from the lessons because of concerns they are being sexualised too soon with discussions about homosexuality, masturbation and orgasms.
Under the plans, those aged six could be taught about same-sex relationships and the difference between ‘good and bad touching’. Topics for ten-year-olds include orgasm and masturbation.
Parents who let girls dress in sexy outfits and wear make-up ‘can’t tell right from wrong’
Headmistress says letting youngsters dress in sexy clothing is a sign of society’s eroded moral values
Near-pornographic images on shows such as X Factor partly to blame
By DAILY MAIL REPORTER
Posted by peiper
on 11/21/2011 at 11:07 AM
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Permalink • Thursday - October 20, 2011
Why Me?
Some idiot at church found out I’m unemployed. He asked if I would tutor some church members looking to get their GED.
I said ‘sure’, thinking that if this is successful, I’ll add it to my resumé.
So, I spend an hour or two, depending on attendance, each Wednesday evening, teaching.
I am appalled!
The students I have are so deficient in math that I wonder how they even got to high school before they dropped out! They have no knowledge of basic math that I learned in 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade.
Okay, I’ll give one a pass, She’s dyslexic. If her mom hadn’t told me I’d’ve thought she was an idiot. Knowing that she’s dyslexic, I can teach her. I just had to know that up front.
But I’ve spent my time teaching math: basic geometry; fractions–how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide; and we still haven’t gotten to converting fractions to decimals and percentages. Stuff I learned in grade school. How did they get to high school before they dropped out?
Mind you, I’ll still add it to my resumé.
Posted by Christopher
on 10/20/2011 at 09:15 AM
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