News you can use.

[elfs]

First, Doonesbury this past Sunday was pulled from several newspapers. Apparently, despite everything else Trudeau has mentioned, masturbation was too much for some editors. One editor went so far as to refuse to use the word in an interview, referring only to "that m-word."

Secondly, this Monday Doonesbury sent out the largest flash mob notice in history. And it's happening Saturday. In Seattle. "Flash Mobs For Howard Dean." Enjoy.

The Guardian has a story about the Bush "Abstinence Only" education policy and the way it's working, or not working, depending upon to whom you speak.

And finally, the "other shoes drop" in Connecticut for the "No Child Left Behind" act. Apparently, the Bush plan is to "fail" schools that don't meet the act's requirements-- but because there's no money to bus the kids to better schools, and no room at other schools, they stay at those schools, which are punished by being denied federal funds. Those schools are then closed because of their failure to improve. Because there's no money provided in the act, those schools will then reopen with new administrations and teachers, but the same system that made them fail in the first place. Finally, the act provides that parents, as a "last ditch" effort to help their kids, are provided with vouchers, which cannot possibly cover the cost of secular private schools, but can cover parochial schools. The writer claims that the No Child Left Behind act is a grand plan to de-fund public education and funnel money to religious institutions.

It should come as no surprise that, of the eleven "most endangered historic places," six are houses of worship. While I have no doubt that such places do have a historic significance, I can't help but cynically observe that naming such places will get the attention of an administration willing to pander all it can to the religious instincts of Americans.

Comments

No Child Granted Advantage

[woggie.livejournal.com]

What I'm really apalled by is the No Child Left Behind standard demands you meet their standards to pass. What my brother is finding is if you surpass those standards, you are not meeting those standards, and you therefore fail. It's the worst kind of idiocy imaginable, and yet this is what's being carried out in the name of scholastic progress.