I was in rare form today, as far as hearing random statements from all over the classroom. The one that really got me (and the girls who were discussing it had NO idea what to say when they realized I had heard it) was:
“What if your boyfriend turned into a girl?”
I think this post on LGF is the most concise and profound thing anyone has yet written about Google’s giving in to pressure from Communist China.
There’s an interesting report here about Chinese citizens renouncing the Chinese Communist Party. This is even more interesting when you look at the official line from Beijing discussing unrest in China. There seem to be hints that things aren’t quite the perfect socialist utopia in this particular communist paradise. Then again, when has it ever been?
Newsweek has two very good articles on education. What they say about how boys are treated in relation to girls strikes me as being very accurate. Too often, boys don’t get the same treatment as girls: the other day, one of my students was asking me if I had ever noticed how “girls can get away with more” than guys. “The other day [a particular girl] swore right in front of [a certain teacher] and they said nothing. If it had been a guy, he would have been sent right to the office.”
Too often, boys are seen as being intentionally disruptive and are disciplined harshly in response. While a bit of discipline is probably a good thing for them, it is imperative that they see the discipline as being fair to them as compared to those around them. Discipline applied unequally is regarded (rightly, in my mind) as tyranny and favoritism, and elicits a naturally negative response.
Another thing that I have noticed with my students is that many of them are more than willing to latch onto a male authority figure. I honestly believe that it is easier to be a teacher as a male — not only is there less of a will among both sexes to challenge authority (high school girls will challenge a female teacher almost like a peer for dominance, and boys will challenge a woman as seeming more weak and vulnerable to overthrow), but many of the students of both sexes that I have had so far have seemed eager for the attention and approval of an (arguably) mature male. As if teaching were not a big enough responsibility to start out with, a male teacher also takes on a status as a sort of part-time father figure.
Boys from stable two-parent homes are not exempt from the desire for adult male affirmation either. Quite often they will be more direct in seeking attention from a seemingly receptive man (possibly because they are already comfortable with male role models). In any event, boys need intentional understanding in classes in the same way that girls do.
UPDATE 1/26/06 12.20 PM: There is an interesting lawsuit here about this very topic. Definitely worth a look, if only for the innovative solutions the student has come up with for the problems. While some of them may not work, it’s time for some out-of-the-box thinking.
Google may not be directly doing evil with its new censored search engine for China, but they’re certainly not doing anything particularly good. This blog is still accessible (for the moment), but it would be interesting to see how quickly it would get dropped if I would start regularly criticizing, say, China’s abysmal human rights record, their oppressive government, their policies towards the de facto independent Taiwan, etc. So far this month, I have had 34 hits from China (which is proportionally about the same as the 42 I had for last month). While I’m not going to pretend that I am or ever will be capable of righting the wrongs that I see perpetrated by the Chinese government, but I try to do what is in my power to at least make my feelings known on the subject.
Google, however, obviously does not.
Google may not be directly doing evil with its new censored search engine for China, but they’re certainly not doing anything particularly good. This blog is still accessible (for the moment), but it would be interesting to see how quickly it would get dropped if I would start regularly criticizing, say, China’s abysmal human rights record, their oppressive government, their policies towards the de facto independent Taiwan, etc. So far this month, I have had 34 hits from China (which is proportionally about the same as the 42 I had for last month). While I’m not going to pretend that I am or ever will be capable of righting the wrongs that I see perpetrated by the Chinese government, but I try to do what is in my power to at least make my feelings known on the subject.
Google, however, obviously does not.
I was subbing in a ninth grade English class yeterday morning and this morning. I must say, ninth graders can be quite a handfull, but they can also be quite entertaining. We were doing an exercise where the students were making up and writing on the board a sentence that had two possible words to fit in a blank, and they were supposed to figure out as a class which was the proper word to go into the blank. One student’s example:
“Bob am/are going to the peep show.”
I said, “There is no correct answer to that question. Neither one is proper English.”
He said, “Yeah, the correct answer is ‘are’!”
I said, “‘Bob are going to the peep show?’ No. That doesn’t make sense.”
He said, “Yes it does! Bob IS are going to the peep show!”
I gave up at that point.
Well, politics lately has been a lot of repeats of what came before. The Alito hearings have gone remarkably well, and Europe is pissed off at Iran, but not actually willing to do anything concrete towards stopping them. China has continued doing whatever it is that China does, Washington is being passive at the moment (focused mainly on Alito), and various loonies continue being crazy, mostly in the field of thinking that we care about what they think. (Whatever happened to old people limiting their complaining to “kids these days”?)
There are still interesting articles out there (this one via Power Line), but I figure you’re smart enough to find them on your own. I’m a bit busy right now with starting out doing subbing in schools around here, but I’ll continue to post stuff that strikes my fancy.
It seems that one of the dumb things that DVD players do (most likely as an evil scheme by the MPAA to stop copying or make people buy multiple copies of their movies) has come back to bite a member of the ruling elite of the movie world. Not only is the stupid ‘region’ thing involved, but evil DVD players that “don’t allow copying” of screener movies are as well! Delicious irony!
I think the movie companies just need to start making their stupid movies accessible to everybody, everywhere. I went to a great deal of trouble to buy a Russian movie that I liked, and can only play it on computers because it’s “region 7″ instead of “region 1.” Jerks.
It seems that an American soldier has finally gotten to publicly rebut Moran and Murtha. Needless to say, they weren’t impressed and didn’t have much to say about it. Michelle Malkin has more, and a video to boot.
I can’t say I’ve heard much about Moran (he’s from Virginia), but I must say that I’m glad somebody finally called Murtha and his behavior “reprehensible” to their faces.