“Remember when Planned Parenthood & NPR crashed the market, wiped out half our 401Ks and took TARP money? Me neither.”
Saturday, April 23, 2011
“We shouldn’t be surprised that Bristol believes self-promotion...
“We shouldn’t be surprised that Bristol believes self-promotion is a worthy cause for which she should be well compensated. The villains here are those who enabled her: The Candies Foundation, Dancing With the Stars, The Secret Life of The American Teenager, where she appeared in a cameo last summer. The problem isn’t just that the abstinence, which Palin promotes, is ineffective. It’s also that Palin is a walking advertisement for teen motherhood. After declining for more than a decade, recent studies have shown that teen pregnancy is on the rise, with 7 percent of teenage girls becoming pregnant in 2006, the last year for which we have figures. For many girls, it’s because they don’t have access to sex education or contraception; as the Guttmacher Institute has pointed out, the increase in teen pregnancy rates coincides with the growth of abstinence-only education programs in public schools. But the problem goes beyond birth control. A U.S. government report from last year found that a fifth of sexually active girls actually welcomed a pregnancy. Some girls, seeking love and a purpose in life, are getting pregnant on purpose.”
“A nation that destroys its systems of education...
“A nation that destroys its systems of education, degrades its public information, guts its public libraries and turns its airwaves into vehicles for cheap, mindless amusement becomes deaf, dumb and blind. It prizes test scores above critical thinking and literacy. It celebrates rote vocational training and the singular, amoral skill of making money. It churns out stunted human products, lacking the capacity and vocabulary to challenge the assumptions and structures of the corporate state. It funnels them into a caste system of drones and systems managers. It transforms a democratic state into a feudal system of corporate masters and serfs.
Teachers, their unions under attack, are becoming as replaceable as minimum-wage employees at Burger King. We spurn real teachers—those with the capacity to inspire children to think, those who help the young discover their gifts and potential—and replace them with instructors who teach to narrow, standardized tests. These instructors obey. They teach children to obey. And that is the point. The No Child Left Behind program, modeled on the “Texas Miracle,” is a fraud. It worked no better than our deregulated financial system. But when you shut out debate these dead ideas are self-perpetuating.”
- Chris Hedges, “Why the United States Is Destroying Its Education System”
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