Now comes another no-joke witch story, one I saw earlier today in the Chronicle of Higher Education weekly round-up by Don Troop, under the irresistible and accurately newsworthy headline, “The Liar, the Witch and the KKK’s Ridiculous Wardrobe.”
(Just ask if you want to know more about the Liar and the Wardrobe*.)
The university made the offer “solely to compromise the claim … without admitting the validity of plaintiff’s contention or any allegations of wrongdoing by the defendants. . .”
Jane Doe said she took a job with the university in 2007 directing a youth program. But an associate dean terminated her, despite her satisfactory performance at work, after learning she was a witch and her religion was Read the rest of this entry »
Here we go again. Families, child-rearing and home education publicly
stereotyped as conservative extremism and anti-human rights, sigh. If
you parent and/or educate children and don’t fit this stereotype, make
your voice heard too. Don’t let this define your principles.
The Convention on the Rights of the Child was adopted by the General
Assembly of the United Nations on the 20th of November 1989. As part of a celebration, internationalists backing this UN Convention have
declared November 20th of this year as ‘Children’s Day.’
In response, ParentalRights dot org will rally in Washington, D.C. on that day. The rally will be held at the U.S. Capitol from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., on the East Lawn across from the Rayburn House Office building.
Speakers during the rally will include Rep. Peter Hoekstra and Sen. Jim
DeMint, the lead sponsors of the Parental Rights Amendment; Gerard
Robinson with Black Alliance for Educational Options; William Estrada of
Homeschool Legal Defense Association; Dean and Julie Nelson of National Black Home Educators; and Steven Groves of Heritage Foundation.
Whether you homeschool or not, parental rights have been and are
continuing to be under attack.
Want your voice heard? ParentalRights.org wants to hear from you. If you have experienced any assault or threat to your parental rights, make your story known by emailing ParentalRights. . .
Homeschooling is a parental right…Let’s keep it that way!
6500 OLD MILLSTONE PLANTATION ROAD, TALLAHASSEE, FL
(off Thomasville Rd)
$5.00 Admission for Adults
Children under 12 Free
EVENTS for the DAY INCLUDE:
Seven Hills Handweavers Guild Demonstrations Spinning, Carding, Dyeing and Weaving Yarn and Weaving Suppliers from N. Florida and S. Georgia
Live Outdoor Theater Selections from A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Richard III
Live Music – bluegrass and bagpipes!
Hands-On Activities for Children of All Ages Weaving Maskmaking
AND A FALL PARADE!!
Parking is Limited, Please Carpool!
Bring a picnic and blanket and enjoy the day!
Sponsored in part by the State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Cultural Affairs, the Florida Arts Council, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
It is to be a place for the study and teaching of traditional arts and crafts, methods of farming and gardening and stewardship of the land, going all the way back to the prehistoric occupants of the land, some 12,000 years ago.
Among the areas of activity specifically listed in the Institute’s Articles of Incorporation are raising fiber producing animals — shearing, spinning, weaving — and the encouragement of fiber arts; traditional and experimental organic horticulture and agriculture, based in the philosophy of a self-contained, sustainable farm; growing and use of culinary and medicinal herbs; manufacture and repair of traditional implements, tools and furniture.
I am not making this up. Here I am, watching the big college football game of the week on tv — LSU v Alabama — suddenly wondering how I can be so riveted by any meme that involves a “beef jerky action cam!”
They arrived as early as 8:30 a.m., by bus, car and plane — from Bluffton, S.C., Des Moines and Dorris, Calif. — to rally with conservative lawmakers and possibly roam the halls of Congress.
“Can you hear us now!” they chanted from the foot of the Capitol, as they awaited the arrival of their heroine — [Michele] Bachmann.
“She’s very brave,” said Nancy Holmberg of Dorris.
“Palin/Bachmann 2012,” came a shout from the crowd. The crowd is also chanting Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s name and demanding that she come address them on the steps of the Capitol.
. . . Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) shook hands at a wall line like a presidential contender.
“This is too great,” he said.
Btw I heard this fellow Rep. King, on MSNBC this morning hyping the event. He specifically said it was a show of force meant to make moderate Democratic reps “more afraid of their constituents than they were afraid of Nancy Pelosi.”
Well, okay. At least we’ve now clearly established in your own words that the Republican goal is not good governance but FEAR. Now we’re just haggling over the price . . .
The old saying that you campaign in poetry and govern in prose was only partially true for Obama.
By late summer of 2008, he had already switched to prose. The cautious and calculating pragmatist who now runs this country was beginning to unpeel himself in those heady days.
Obama is not nearly as radical as some on the right like to make out and many on the left liked to think.
Dan Delong of Carlinville, Ill., at teacher at Southwestern High School in the nearby town of Piasa, will face a school board hearing November 2, after being suspended from teaching. A parent of one unidentified student thought the optional reading assignment was inappropriate for her child . . .
When this and this coincide in the same week, what are kids actually learning do you think, about the values woven into America’s power of story?
The teacher’s disciplinary hearing was Monday night, and perhaps there’s a better lesson in how it ended than in how it started, a fitting lesson of today’s American president as true to yesterday’s American precedent: Read the rest of this entry »
They have used the same arguments — for tradition and states rights, against “big government socialism” — in every era. In those past eras, history was not on their side. It is not in our time, either.
. . .These conservative arguments have always been tinged with more than a little hysteria, just like today. And no matter what, conservatives always insisted they owned the moral high ground.
Related news reinforces the Lux WorldView: the former governor of my state now accuses President Obama of attacking American capitalism. Jeb Bush does this not just publicly but apparently for calculated effect not on capitalism or the economy’s current crisis, but his own political prospects.
He needed to make the news he’s been so out of and must re-control if his plan to resurrect any of his traditional dynasties — the Bush family, GOP, Roman Catholic Church — with himself anointed to lead, has a prayer.
The latest round of thinking parents playing “What’s in a Name?” as a floating blog-game of religion and politics costumed as each other for Halloween, apparently started with Lynn and JJ and many commenters both places, riffing on Frank Schaeffer’s books and his new MSNBC repudiation of the evangelical radicalism he was weaned on, taught to use as a weapon of mass destruction in mainstream politics and governance, back in mid-century America. He used some very colorful and contentious language to make his case that this was a bad thing then and a worse thing now.
Oh,and Monty Python got involved because isn’t it axiomatic that satisfying intercourse between smart people just does revert to Monty Python sooner or later?
And here we are. My last comment at Cat’s is reproduced below as an invitation if you’re so inclined, to take on the Python persona of your choice and join the improv, here or there across artificial boundaries and dubious definitions as you prefer:
Well, let’s define terms immediately upon using them, or far better, stick to dictionary definitions. A good argument needs no redefinitions, right?
Or a good argument is almost entirely redefinitions. Need we first argue to define good argument?
To that point, I’m surprised you missed this Python definition of argument!
I laughed at that in the 70s because it was really absurd while Bill Buckley was doing Firing Line on PBS for real — breathing life into intellect and intellect into argument and argument into television.
Initially, Cleese simply contradicts everything that Palin says. Palin insists that it is not an argument but merely contradiction and asserts that “argument’s an intellectual process. Contradiction is just the automatic gain-saying of anything the other person says.” Cleese asserts that, to have an argument, he must “take up a contrary position.” Palin is frustrated until he realises that Cleese is actually engaging him in a sort of meta-argument about what constitutes an argument.
But it’s not so funny when television and real life become one big intellectually bankrupt contradiction clinic 24-7.
I think of “good argumentation” much like, ahem, other forms of healthy human intercourse.
It is meant as a creative force to uplift, connect and sustain virtues rather than do harm to anyone directly or indirectly through vice and self-indulgence. It is “good” intercourse and fun to share with the right person for the right reasons, when it’s Read the rest of this entry »
What comes out when a Mormon and a Jew raise a kid?
. .You are a body spun from ancient dust and ancient water; you are the glorious hope of legions of ancestors who lived poor and died ugly; you are a soul realized in the temple of my hipbones. You are what we all are: composite, recycled. You are what we all become someday: the sum of a series of accidents and choices. A lovely mess, that’s you. Sanctify yourself with righteous words and deeds, and you will have nothing to worry about.
The academic performance analyses indicate that home school graduates are as ready for college as traditional high school graduates and that they perform as well on national college assessment tests as traditional high school graduates.
The results of this study are also consistent with other studies on the academic performance of home school students compared to traditional high school graduates (Galloway 1995, Gray 1998, Jenkins 1998, Mexcur 1993). These results also suggest that a parent-guided K-12 education does not have a negative effect on a student’s college success.
For those of you needing traditional research to show an uneasy spouse, mother-in-law or the FSM forbid, a custody judge, keep this handy. I don’t need it though. I am my own case study, from a unique perspective as a school professional who unschools, also Mensa mom of Mensa kids including one proving the conclusion as we speak, on campus.
The conversation among Spunky readers is from a different angle than what I tend to see, so I thought I’d open it up here too. I’m not sure what any of this means (the study or the reactions to it) or what to think is smart or stupid or self-validating, except that being really intelligent is understanding that “what we know” — at any age — isn’t as important as “how we think.”
And that, as some of you already know, in 2000 when Favorite Daughter was nine-turning-ten, Mensa referred us to a mainstream but stupid “reality” show to find “the smartest kid in America.” (Since reality shows and kids are in the news this week, y’all might find it particularly interesting.)
UPDATE 1:55 pm EDT – just heard the entire sheriff’s news conference on CNN live, extraordinary. All three boys are said to have had “100% involvement” in the hoax, and what the sheriff called “guilty knowledge” — so one of the felonies with which the the parent/s will be charged is “contributing to the delinquency of minors.”
I don’t judge whether your sons swear, pick their noses, fart, burp or jump over banisters. I have two little boys. Glass houses. . .
That said, Mayumi, get a clue.
As of press time Saturday it seems you have either been dragged or agreed to participate in a stunt by a husband who is a child and a women- bashing gasbag. What’s more, he apparently wants your boys to be raging, women-hating gasbags. . .
These are your real live children with their own humiliations and their own storms to chase. Hold on tightly to them. They need at least one parent to keep them from flying too close to the sun.
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Speak Up When Pro-Child Politics Are Attacked as Anti-Parent
12 11 2009Here we go again. Families, child-rearing and home education publicly
stereotyped as conservative extremism and anti-human rights, sigh. If
you parent and/or educate children and don’t fit this stereotype, make
your voice heard too. Don’t let this define your principles.
For more of JJ’s thoughts on the UN and this political meme setting up “parental rights” in opposition to child and human rights, start with:
Homeschool freedom fighting: It’s so not about the UN
Parental Rights and responsibilities: Parenting sex and parenthood
Latest Homeschool Freak-out from World Net Daily
Tough case: Church v State for the life of Daniel Hauser
Comments : 43 Comments »
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