In Defense Of Teachers

Another one of the reasons I despise conservafools and the GOP is because as a proud card carrying TK (teacher's kid) I despise the decades long attacks on the teaching profession and teacher's unions by the conservafool movement.

Had to post this video which is probably the most vigorous defense of teachers you'll hear this year.

DISD Discussing Anti-Bullying Policy

Seeing how well the Dallas Independent School District's early 90's era sexual orientation only non-discrimination policy worked to keep Andy Moreno from being discriminated against last week when she ran for North Dallas High's homecoming queen,  methinks the Dallas area trans community probably needs to be making it voice heard at DISD headquarters not only about that issue, but the Board of Trustee discussions on revising the anti-bullying policy. .

The DISD board according to the Dallas Voice Instant Tea blog met October 14 to discuss the anti-bullying policy, and the Dallas trans community probably needs to be speaking loudly to ensure that gender identity or expression is included in it before a final vote is taken on it at the end of the month.

Resource Center Dallas Strategic Communications and Programs director Rafael McDonald stated in a press release:

“We are pleased that DISD is revisiting its approach to bullying. Unfortunately, the proposed policy does not define which students are to be protected by it. As a result, it does not provide specific protections for LGBT students. It is vital for this board to specifically articulate who this policy is designed to protect, rather than simply stating a broad definition of bullying. Absent any specific protections, it could be inferred that it would be okay to bully students based on their real or perceived sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression. Given the rash of LGBT bullying-related suicides in recent weeks—including one in the greater Houston area—specifically articulated protections are not formalities; they are essential.

“Resource Center Dallas encourages the North Texas LGBT community to contact the nine members of the DISD board. Encourage them to modify the proposed anti-bullying policy to specifically include LGBT students. Board members still have time to improve the protections for the youngest members of our community. Contact information, including phone numbers and e-mail, can be found at http://www.dallasisd.org/about/boardcontact.htm.

Okay Dallas area TBLG people, time to get busy being agents of your own, and our kids matriculating in DISD schools.

Just Because A Campus Claims It's GLBT Friendly Doesn't Mean It Is

As transpeople continue to transition as early as age six, it means that some access issues and battles are now being fought out at the middle school, high school and college level.

A comprehensive survey of  LGBT students, faculty and staff at America’s colleges campuses was recently done and unveiled at at September 23 briefing hosted by the openly gay members of Congress on Capitol Hill.

What the survey does is blow up some myths about 'GLBT friendly' campuses.

The 2010 State of Higher Education for LGBT People reports on the experiences of nearly 6,000 students, faculty, staff and administrators in all 50 states. It shows significant harassment of students and a lack of safety and inclusiveness, even among those supposedly "welcoming" institutions.

And on the very day this survey was being unveiled, after a series of anti-gay incidents, students belonging to the University of Rhode Island's Gay Straight Alliance and GLBT Center staged a sit in to demand that the URI administration take immediate steps to protect LGBT students, employees and faculty on campus.

Here were the survey’s key findings:
• A quarter of respondents reported experiencing harassment. More than 80 percent of those said sexual orientation was the reason.
• Just under 40 percent of transgender respondents reported harassment and 87 percent of them blamed their gender identity or expression.
• A third of those surveyed have seriously considered leaving their institution because of the challenging climate.
• More than half said they hide their sexual or gender identity to avoid intimidation.
• More than a third reported they fear for their physical safety.

Not surprisingly, TBLG/SGL students and LBGT student of color felt even less safe because of the double whammy of racism and homophobia/transphobia.

Campus Pride's executive directer Shane Windemeyer noted in an interview with edge Boston that less than 600 colleges and universities have non discrimination policies hat include sexual orientation, and that number dwindles to less than 200 that have non discrimination policies that include gender identity and expression.

So this survey tells us that we have much work to do in order to make our college campuses safe and comfortable learning environments for GLBT students.

That needed to happen on HBCU campuses for LGBT/SGL students yesterday, but that's another post..

The reality is haters, TBLG people aren't going away or back into the closet.   Deal with the reality that we exist and the fact that TBLG students want the same things out of our college experience that you do. 

All we want is the ability to enjoy our college experience in as stress free a manner as possible, live our on campus lives without being harassed or assaulted and walk off the campus with our heads held high and a degree in hand.
. 

President Obama's Second Education Speech

Just like last year, the racist Republicans have intimidated or bamboozled many school districts into not broadcasting President Obama's back to school speech.

Here's the speech that conservafools and their sheeple didn't want kids to hear.



In another interesting note, Jim Greer, the former Florida GOP head who is facing corruption charges, charged his party with racism in a statement to the Miami Herald.

"In the year since I issued a prepared statement regarding President Obama speaking to the nation's schoolchildren, I have learned a great deal about the party I so deeply loved and served."

"Unfortunately, I found that many within the GOP have racist views and I apologize to the President for my opposition to his speech last year and my efforts to placate the extremists who dominate our party today. My children and I look forward to the president's speech."

The Propaganda We'll Teach Y'all

TransGriot Note: It's song rewrite time. I'm so disgusted over the TX State Board of Education's 'Conservatism Uber Education' whitewashing of social studies curriculum that when I heard this song while flipping through various radio stations, another rewrite was born.

So fire up the iPod and sing to the remixed lyrics.



The Propaganda We'll Teach Y'all
sung to the tune of 'Another Brick in the Wall Part 2 by Pink Floyd

We need right wing education
We need conservative thought control
No Black or Brown history in Texas classrooms
Liberals leave them kids alone
Hey! Liberals! Leave them kids alone!
All in all it's just the propaganda we'll teach y'all.
All in all it's just the propaganda we'll teach y'all.

We need right wing education
We need conservative thought control
No Black or Brown history in Texas classrooms
Liberals leave them kids alone
Hey! Liberals! Leave them kids alone!
All in all it's just the propaganda we'll teach y'all.
All in all it's just the propaganda we'll teach y'all.

"Wrong, say it again!"
"If you don't learn this, you won't vote Republican.
How can you love Texas if what we teach you don't repeat?"
"You! Yes, you behind the protest sign, stand still liberal!"

The Texas Education Massacre

There are probably those of you who read this blog and wonder or even possibly get sick of me railing about voting.

I will consistently say it until I'm placed six feet below my beloved Texas soil that it matters that you vote in every election cycle.

It is never a option for a minority group to sit out an election. You must pay attention to every race on the ballot as well, not just the big congressional, state legislative, city and presidential races.

This week's disgusting shenanigans in Austin are a prime example why I continue to rant about how important elections are.

The Texas State Board of Education had a contentious meeting in our state capital of Austin concerning the once a decade overhaul of the Texas public school social studies curriculum standards.

The hearing rooms were not only been packed with parents and educators who don't want conservadoctrine shoved down their kids throats, the protests outside the building have been just as lively. It also brought the leaders of the NAACP and LULAC to speak before the board as well.



While I have one of my high school classmates representing us on the SBOE in Lawrence Allen, Jr., unfortunately he, Mavis Knight of Dallas, Mary Helen Berlanga, Rene Nunez, and Rick Agosto are outgunned by a 10-5 all white Republican majority.

To make it even more unfortunate, five of the Republicans have a far right wing agenda that has nothing to do with promoting the education of 4.7 million Texas schoolchildren, but everything to do with conservative indoctrination of them. Many of that 'Gang of Five' aren't even educators.

It was a point that Republican Rod Paige, the former U.S. Secretary of Education under President George W. Bush, made when he ripped the new curriculum on Wednesday.

"We have allowed ideology to drive and define the standards of our curriculum in Texas."

The 'Gang of Five' have ignored education experts in cramming through a curriculum that is a naked attempt to whitewash minorities out of history.

They want to commit crimes against history such as excising Founding Father Thomas Jefferson, rename the triangular slave trade 'the Atlantic trade', downplay the Civil Rights Movement, the existence and history of Latinos and women's suffrage moments while elevating Phyllis Schafly and the rise of conservatism.

“We might as well say Hispanics don’t exist,” said board member Mary Helen Berlanga (D). “We have hidden information, we have tried to cover up a lot of information. I guess there are people that have a difficult time with the truth.”

"I feel that I have let down the students in our state.”

Fortunately there are educators and other persons in the Lone Star State pissed off enough to where they decided to run for the SBOE and unseat the 'Gang of Five'. Don McLeroy, the most outspoken conservafool on the SBOE has already gone down to defeat to a more moderate person in the March GOP primary.

The various Democratic SBOE candidates have already pledged they will revisit the issue should they be successful in the upcoming November elections in getting on the board.

The misguided standards will be effective for the 2013-2014 school year. If you're a parent of a Black or Brown child, better plan on teaching your child a lot of Black and Latino history this summer and throughout the school year to counteract the conservalies they'll be fed.

The partisan hijinks have gotten the attention of state legislators, who may move to rein in the power of the SBOE when the Lege opens for 'bidness' in January 2011.

"They have ignored historians and teachers, allowing ideological activists to push the culture war further into our classrooms." said Rep. Mike Villareal, (D-San Antonio) "They fail to understand that we don't want liberal textbooks or conservative textbooks. We want excellent textbooks, written by historians instead of activists."

May I add, Rep. Villareal, we Texas of all ideological stripes want historically accurate textbooks as well.

Katie Washington Makes Notre Dame And Black History!

Too many times people focus on the worst my people produce. In addition, sisters don't get much love for doing something positive.

Today I get to proudly pop my collar on behalf on my people and a lovely young woman for a historic achievement.

21 year old Gary, IN native Katie Washington is a senior at Notre Dame University and has bee accepted to Harvard and four other schools for post graduate studies.

Thanks to her 4.0 GPA in biology major and Catholic social teaching minor, Katie will become the first African-American in the 168 year history of Notre Dame to be crowned as the school's valedictorian.

University officials said they couldn’t recall ever having a black valedictorian, and don’t keep record of their race.

Katie will give that valedictory address on May 16.

'I am humbled,' Katie said to the Northwest Indiana Times. “I am in a mode of gratitude and thanksgiving right now.”

'Katie works so hard,' Washington’s mother Jean Tomlin told the newspaper. 'I told her when she went to Notre Dame, ‘You are representing your family, your church and the city of Gary. Make us proud.’

Katie done more than make her family and the city of Gary proud. She made the entire Black community proud.

She'll be heading to Baltimore's Johns Hopkins University in the fall and plans to pursue a joint M.D./Ph.D.

You may want to file the name Katie Washington away in your memory banks. She's a young scholar who may be on the track of making more history.

Congratulations, Katie on the historic achievement! You're also proof along with our spacefaring sistah Stephanie Wilson that sistahs can and do excel in math and science.


H/T The Field Negro

Network of Transgender Women of Thailand Calls For End To Transphobic Education Uniform Regulations

TransGriot Note: Yep, even in the ostensibly transgender friendly 'Land Of Smiles' we have to fight tooth and nail for our basic human rights. An interesting December 11 story from The Nation.

The Network of Transgender Women of Thailand has urged the Education Ministry and universities to cancel regulations forcing transgender persons to wear male uniforms to classrooms, exams and graduation ceremonies.

Network chairperson Yollada Suanyot said yesterday they had received complaints from transgender students, alumni and lecturers about the regulations, which she believes stem from society's misunderstanding of transgender, identified medically as transsexuฌalism.

She claimed people with transgender inclination needed therapy before undergoing a gender change and to dress and live according to their sexual inclinations.

She said the universities' dress code violated their rights and obstructed the treatment of transsexualism. As a result, she said, many transgender youths did not want to study further.

Yollada said the network had submitted an appeal to Education Minister Jurin Laksanawisit on Wednesday. However, Jurin said he hadn't yet received it and would look into the issue today.

She added that the network had asked the Royal Household Bureau if transgender people could wear female uniforms in a graduation ceremony. They were told the bureau did not limit people's rights and that they should contact the Education Ministry and universities about the matter, she said.

Thammasat University (TU) vice president Parinya Thewanaruemitkul said his institution didn't object to transgender students wearing female uniforms - but those who hadn't undergone a gender change could not stay in girls' dorms or use women's toilets.

Parinya said universities would be willing to comply with a request by the Royal Household Bureau or Education Ministry.

Arlington ISD Cancels Jerrydome Trip

There were several school districts in Texas and at least five other states didn't show President Obama's education speech to schoolchildren last week.

Arlington ISD was among the North Texas school districts who opted out. They cited not wanting to disrupt already prepared teacher lesson plans as their excuse for not doing so.

So when word leaked out the AISD was planning to bus approximately 600 fifth graders on September 21 to a 2011 Super Bowl kickoff event at Cowboys Stadium featuring George W. Bush, the reaction in the Metroplex and nationally was swift and immediate.

In the wake of the developing media firestorm, the AISD canceled the field trip to see former President George W. Bush.

"In retrospect, I can see how the district’s decisions concerning these two events could be seen as favoring one event over another," AISD Superintendent McCullough said. "I sincerely regret that this chain of events has occurred and brought negative attention to our district. I apologize that my decisions on behalf of the district have disappointed or hurt people."

We native Texans all know that North Texas is mostly right wing territory.

The initial action of not showing the Obama speech was wrapped in the foul stench of partisan GOP politics. Then you prepare to bus AISD kids to another event for the previous (white) president.

It not only appears hypocritical, but injects the problematic element of race into the situation. It also smacks of unfairness in addition to giving the impression that AISD was politically partisan.

An urban school district such as AISD, especially one with significant POC enrollment can't afford that perception,

Glad Superintendent McCullough recognized the PR mess and corrected the mistakes.

Arlington Independent School District Hypocrisy

I love my birth state, but hate the right wing yahoos that seem hell bent on giving it a bad name.

Like Mansfield and other North Texas school districts such as Aledo, Grapevine-Colleyville and Eagle Mountain-Saginaw,, the Arlington Independent School District after complaints from right wing parents declined to broadcast President Obama's Tuesday live back to school message.

Students who wanted to hear it had to not only get permission slips for excused absences, but go to off site locations to hear the speech.

The AISD cited it didn't want to disrupt already prepared teacher lesson plans their excuse to opt out of the Obama speech, but is firing up the school buses to take kids off AISD campuses to the Jerrydome on September 21 to hear that paragon of educational excellence, George W. Bush.

Can you say hypocrisy boys and girls? Thought you could.

Can Bushie boy spell it? Probably not.

It's not surprising since the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex was Republican decades before the rest of the Lone Star State succumbed to the conservamadness.

AISD officials said it's part of a Cowboys Stadium field trip that the North Texas Super Bowl Host Committee invited 28 fifth-grade classes to attend several months ago.

It's the kickoff event for their youth education program.

Those students who have permission from their parents to go to the Jerrydome will be hearing from Junior and former first lady Laura Bush, legendary Dallas Cowboys players and North Texas business and community leaders.

Cornerstone Baptist Church senior pastor Dwight McKissic, Sr. asked the question that many inquiring progressive minds around the Metroplex, the stare and the country want to know.

In a press release from his church, he asked, "I do not understand the duplicity in this situation. I believe the students and the public deserve and need to have these differences explained."

I can do that in one word for you, Pastor McKissic. It's spelled R-A-C-I-S-M.

President Obama's Back To School Speech

TransGriot Note: Since the conservafools have pulled their kids out of school today, here's the text of the so-called 'controversial' education speech that they've been trippin' about.

Well, at least the teachers will know after today which kids need extra help.



Prepared Remarks of President Barack Obama
Back to School Event

Arlington, Virginia
September 8, 2009

The President: Hello everyone – how’s everybody doing today? I’m here with students at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia. And we’ve got students tuning in from all across America, kindergarten through twelfth grade. I’m glad you all could join us today.

I know that for many of you, today is the first day of school. And for those of you in kindergarten, or starting middle or high school, it’s your first day in a new school, so it’s understandable if you’re a little nervous. I imagine there are some seniors out there who are feeling pretty good right now, with just one more year to go. And no matter what grade you’re in, some of you are probably wishing it were still summer, and you could’ve stayed in bed just a little longer this morning.

I know that feeling. When I was young, my family lived in Indonesia for a few years, and my mother didn’t have the money to send me where all the American kids went to school. So she decided to teach me extra lessons herself, Monday through Friday – at 4:30 in the morning.

Now I wasn’t too happy about getting up that early. A lot of times, I’d fall asleep right there at the kitchen table. But whenever I’d complain, my mother would just give me one of those looks and say, "This is no picnic for me either, buster."

So I know some of you are still adjusting to being back at school. But I’m here today because I have something important to discuss with you. I’m here because I want to talk with you about your education and what’s expected of all of you in this new school year.

Now I’ve given a lot of speeches about education. And I’ve talked a lot about responsibility. I’ve talked about your teachers’ responsibility for inspiring you, and pushing you to learn. I’ve talked about your parents’ responsibility for making sure you stay on track, and get your homework done, and don’t spend every waking hour in front of the TV or with that Xbox. I’ve talked a lot about your government’s responsibility for setting high standards, supporting teachers and principals, and turning around schools that aren’t working where students aren’t getting the opportunities they deserve.

But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world – and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities. Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed.

And that’s what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has for your education. I want to start with the responsibility you have to yourself.
Every single one of you has something you’re good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That’s the opportunity an education can provide.

Maybe you could be a good writer – maybe even good enough to write a book or articles in a newspaper – but you might not know it until you write a paper for your English class. Maybe you could be an innovator or an inventor – maybe even good enough to come up with the next iPhone or a new medicine or vaccine – but you might not know it until you do a project for your science class. Maybe you could be a mayor or a Senator or a Supreme Court Justice, but you might not know that until you join student government or the debate team.

And no matter what you want to do with your life – I guarantee that you’ll need an education to do it. You want to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a police officer? You want to be a nurse or an architect, a lawyer or a member of our military? You’re going to need a good education for every single one of those careers. You can’t drop out of school and just drop into a good job. You’ve got to work for it and train for it and learn for it.

And this isn’t just important for your own life and your own future. What you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country. What you’re learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future.

You’ll need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn in science and math to cure diseases like cancer and AIDS, and to develop new energy technologies and protect our environment. You’ll need the insights and critical thinking skills you gain in history and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free. You’ll need the creativity and ingenuity you develop in all your classes to build new companies that will create new jobs and boost our economy.

We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems. If you don’t do that – if you quit on school – you’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country.

Now I know it’s not always easy to do well in school. I know a lot of you have challenges in your lives right now that can make it hard to focus on your schoolwork.


I get it. I know what that’s like. My father left my family when I was two years old, and I was raised by a single mother who struggled at times to pay the bills and wasn’t always able to give us things the other kids had. There were times when I missed having a father in my life. There were times when I was lonely and felt like I didn’t fit in.

So I wasn’t always as focused as I should have been. I did some things I’m not proud of, and got in more trouble than I should have. And my life could have easily taken a turn for the worse.

But I was fortunate. I got a lot of second chances and had the opportunity to go to college, and law school, and follow my dreams.

My wife, our First Lady Michelle Obama, has a similar story. Neither of her parents had gone to college, and they didn’t have much. But they worked hard, and she worked hard, so that she could go to the best schools in this country.

Some of you might not have those advantages. Maybe you don’t have adults in your life who give you the support that you need. Maybe someone in your family has lost their job, and there’s not enough money to go around. Maybe you live in a neighborhood where you don’t feel safe, or have friends who are pressuring you to do things you know aren’t right.

But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life – what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you’ve got going on at home – that’s no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude. That’s no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. That’s no excuse for not trying.

Where you are right now doesn’t have to determine where you’ll end up. No one’s written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future.

That’s what young people like you are doing every day, all across America.
Young people like Jazmin Perez, from Roma, Texas. Jazmin didn’t speak English when she first started school. Hardly anyone in her hometown went to college, and neither of her parents had gone either. But she worked hard, earned good grades, got a scholarship to Brown University, and is now in graduate school, studying public health, on her way to being Dr. Jazmin Perez.

I’m thinking about Andoni Schultz, from Los Altos, California, who’s fought brain cancer since he was three. He’s endured all sorts of treatments and surgeries, one of which affected his memory, so it took him much longer – hundreds of extra hours – to do his schoolwork. But he never fell behind, and he’s headed to college this fall.

And then there’s Shantell Steve, from my hometown of Chicago, Illinois. Even when bouncing from foster home to foster home in the toughest neighborhoods, she managed to get a job at a local health center; start a program to keep young people out of gangs; and she’s on track to graduate high school with honors and go on to college.

Jazmin, Andoni and Shantell aren’t any different from any of you. They faced challenges in their lives just like you do. But they refused to give up. They chose to take responsibility for their education and set goals for themselves. And I expect all of you to do the same.

That’s why today, I’m calling on each of you to set your own goals for your education – and to do everything you can to meet them. Your goal can be something as simple as doing all your homework, paying attention in class, or spending time each day reading a book. Maybe you’ll decide to get involved in an extracurricular activity, or volunteer in your community. Maybe you’ll decide to stand up for kids who are being teased or bullied because of who they are or how they look, because you believe, like I do, that all kids deserve a safe environment to study and learn. Maybe you’ll decide to take better care of yourself so you can be more ready to learn. And along those lines, I hope you’ll all wash your hands a lot, and stay home from school when you don’t feel well, so we can keep people from getting the flu this fall and winter. Whatever you resolve to do, I want you to commit to it. I want you to really work at it.

I know that sometimes, you get the sense from TV that you can be rich and successful without any hard work -- that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star, when chances are, you’re not going to be any of those things. But the truth is, being successful is hard. You won’t love every subject you study. You won’t click with every teacher. Not every homework assignment will seem completely relevant to your life right this minute. And you won’t necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try.

That’s OK. Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who’ve had the most failures. JK Rowling’s first Harry Potter book was rejected twelve times before it was finally published. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, and he lost hundreds of games and missed thousands of shots during his career. But he once said, "I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."

These people succeeded because they understand that you can’t let your failures define you – you have to let them teach you. You have to let them show you what to do differently next time. If you get in trouble, that doesn’t mean you’re a troublemaker, it means you need to try harder to behave. If you get a bad grade, that doesn’t mean you’re stupid, it just means you need to spend more time studying.

No one’s born being good at things, you become good at things through hard work. You’re not a varsity athlete the first time you play a new sport. You don’t hit every note the first time you sing a song. You’ve got to practice. It’s the same with your schoolwork. You might have to do a math problem a few times before you get it right, or read something a few times before you understand it, or do a few drafts of a paper before it’s good enough to hand in.

Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it. I do that every day. Asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of strength. It shows you have the courage to admit when you don’t know something, and to learn something new. So find an adult you trust – a parent, grandparent or teacher; a coach or counselor – and ask them to help you stay on track to meet your goals.

And even when you’re struggling, even when you’re discouraged, and you feel like other people have given up on you – don’t ever give up on yourself. Because when you give up on yourself, you give up on your country.

The story of America isn’t about people who quit when things got tough. It’s about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best.

It’s the story of students who sat where you sit 250 years ago, and went on to wage a revolution and found this nation. Students who sat where you sit 75 years ago who overcame a Depression and won a world war; who fought for civil rights and put a man on the moon. Students who sat where you sit 20 years ago who founded Google, Twitter and Facebook and changed the way we communicate with each other.

So today, I want to ask you, what’s your contribution going to be? What problems are you going to solve? What discoveries will you make? What will a president who comes here in twenty or fifty or one hundred years say about what all of you did for this country?

Your families, your teachers, and I are doing everything we can to make sure you have the education you need to answer these questions. I’m working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books, equipment and computers you need to learn. But you’ve got to do your part too. So I expect you to get serious this year. I expect you to put your best effort into everything you do. I expect great things from each of you. So don’t let us down – don’t let your family or your country or yourself down. Make us all proud. I know you can do it.

Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.

Just Because You're Younger Doesn't Mean I Can't Learn Something From You

One lesson I was taught by my parents growing up was even though I possessed off the charts intelligence, in order to keep me from developing the arrogance that can sometimes accompany that level of intelligence, I was told and have observed that there's always someone on the planet who is smarter than you.

I like surrounding myself in my circle of friends with people of not only diverse backgrounds that I can have intelligent, thought provoking conversations with, but of different ages who can teach me something as well.

Sometimes those people are younger than me.

Just because I've lived longer on Planet Earth doesn't necessarily mean I'm automatically more intelligent than a twenty or thirtysomething. I have a life experience advantage on them, but if I sit down and have a conversation with a young brother or sister who has some profound insightful knowledge to impart to me, I'm in shut up and listen mode.

We must remember that the twenty and thirtysomethings grew up being immersed in information and are far more tech savvy than those of us whose first computer was a Radio Shack TRS-80.

I take time to listen to the younglings. They may have a fresh way of looking at a problem or have come up with new tactics to achieve an old goal.

If you're too busy dismissing their idea simply because the person proposing it doesn't have more birthdays under their belt, then you run the risk of driving them away and you and the cause you're championing never having the benefit of their wisdom again.

One of my goals has always been that I want to continue to grow and evolve as a person throughout my lifespan. Sometimes the people that will help you achieve that goal happen to be part of Generations X, Y and Z and not the Pepsi or Greatest Generation.

When they wish to speak to me, they'll have my undivided attention.

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Susan R. Rankin, Ph.D.
Center for the Study of Higher Education
The Pennsylvania State University
814-863-2655
sxr2@psu.edu

Warren Blumenfeld, Ed..D.
Department of Curriculum and Instruction
Iowa State University
515-294-5931
wblumen@iastate.edu

Shane L. Windmeyer, M.S., Ed.
Executive Director & Founder
Campus Pride
704-277-6710
shane@campuspride.org

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PO Box 240473
Charlotte, NC 28224
704-277-6710

Stuck On Stupid

One of the things that I have been frustrated as hell to watch over the last two decades is the GOP attack on intelligence for political reasons.

As someone who is a proud TK (teacher's kid), graduated from a gifted and talented high school and went on to college, I'm cognizant of and place high importance on education and my leaders being intelligent enough to handle the challenges of governing our country at the federal, state and local levels.

But one thing that has irritated me is this anti-intellectual strain that has been a cornerstone of the GOP rise to power over the last 20 years.

The Right Wing Noise Machine has convinced some Americans in their typical Orwellian way that being smart is bad and that being stupid qualifies you to occupy the highest office in the land. If anything, the last eight years have proven the folly of that pretzel logic.

George W. Bush brags about being a thank you lawdy C student at Yale. Sen. John McCain, who wishes to succeed him, graduated 894 out of 898 people in his 1958 Naval Academy class. Sarah Palin went to five colleges before getting her degree. Not only did she admit not knowing what the vice president does, she doesn't know much about geography, is ignorant about Supreme Court decisions, believes that dinosaurs walked the earth with humans and blames the 'liberal media' for making her look bad in her interviews.

And y'all want to know why our country and our economy is so jacked up?

That's why I'm ecstatic about having Barack Obama, a grad of Columbia, a summa cum laude graduate from Harvard Law and a constitutional law professor running for president.

I'm looking forward to seeing an Obama administration chock full of the best and brightest people our country has produced working to solve our nation's problems that have been allowed to fester and have gotten worse under GOP misleadership.

I'm looking forward to having a reality based foreign policy, reality-based information and reality based scientific research coming out of government agencies not dominated by neo-Luddites or GOP Know-Nothings.

If the last eight years have proven anything, it's that the 'there's no difference between the two parties' red herring has been thoroughly debunked. It has proven the value of having people in governmental positions based on knowledge and merit, not loyalty.

As the old saying goes, with great power comes great responsibility. As a superpower, we should have been focusing more attention when it comes to electing a president about how smart they are, not whether we can drink a beer with them.

Frankly, instead of trashing people who run for public office, we need to go back to the old school way of defining it as the highest, most honorable calling for public service. Perhaps if we started paying more attention to peeps records instead of how telegenic they look, who ran the most negative campaign commercials or other superficial BS, then we'll get more intelligent folks to consider running for office

It's past time that we started encouraging our best and brightest people to get involved in government service. We need the 'A' students to start running thangs in the United States once again instead of people like the McPalin's of the world who are stuck on stupid.

'Creation Science' Gets Another Legal Smackdown

As the child of an educator I abhor and despise ignorance no matter where it comes from.

I have a special distaste for the Religious Reich not only because of their faith-based hatred of GLBT people or the twisting of Biblical scripture for their nefarious political purposes, but because of their decades long Talibanesque push to destroy public schools. They wish to force their interpretations of science on the rest of us who don't turn off our brains when we enter a church sanctuary or have no problem reconciling scientific reason and logic with our Christian beliefs. In fact, Dr. Martin Luther King is my role model to be just that type of Christian.

I'm bringing this issue up because the University of California recently won a federal lawsuit brought by a Christian school in Southern California, an association of Christian schools, and several students in 2005. They were arguing that the University of California's refusal to honor courses that reject evolution or declare the Bible infallible violated their rights to freedom of speech and religion.

S. James Otero of the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles ruled that when considering applicants from Christian high schools, the University of California system does not have to recognize or give credit to those courses.

Judge Otero said the UC's review committees had a valid reason for rejecting the courses. It wasn't because they contained religious viewpoints; it was because they failed to meet the university's legitimate academic standards.

In a written statement UC provost and executive vice president for academic and health affairs Wyatt R. Hume praised the judge’s ruling. “As we have said all along,” he said, “the question the university addresses in reviewing courses is not whether they have religious content, but whether they provide adequate instruction in the subject matter.”

As you probably guessed, the Reichers are already appealing the case, which is winding it's way through the Ninth Circuit.

Hallelujah!

I'm sick of right-wingers pimping creation science, intelligent design or whatever name du jour they call creationism as legitimate science.

If they despise having their kids sit next to African-American, Latino/a, Asian and GLBT kids in a classroom so much that they willingly pay thousands of dollars to send their kids to private 'christian' schools and stuff their heads full of Flintstones cartoons, so be it.

It's on y'all if you want to pay for the privilege of dumbing down your kids. We have in northern Kentucky a $27 million dollar monument to that ignorance in Petersburg called the Creation Museum.

Just don't expect the rest of the science, logic and reason based world to play along with your faith-based fantasy that you are the majority or use our tax dollars to pay for that BS.

Neither should you expect a competitive academic institution such as the University of California or any other public university that require fact-based science classes as a prerequisite for entrance to factor non-science based courses into that entrance decision. If y'all won't allow diversity as a reason to admit historically denied people who qualify to enter Cal, then y'all don't get any sympathy or slack from me.

Merit arguments cut both ways. Thanks to your decision to isolate them from a diverse world, your kids failed to meet the fact-based science credits requirement standard necessary to enter an elite institution. Besides, this country is already lagging far enough behind in math and science thanks to your hate on public education hijinks.

On the University of California logo it has the words 'Let there be light' on it. There needed to be light shone on the Religious Reich's ongoing attempts to force creationism down people's throats as they just did in Louisiana. Thank you University of California and Judge Otero for calling them on it

The Reichers would do well to remember the words of a man far smarter than many of us, Albert Einstein.

“Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”

And the fundies have been blind for a long time when it comes to science education.