Dallas school accused of staging fights

The Dallas school system was rocked by allegations Thursday that staff members at an inner-city high school made students settle their differences by fighting bare-knuckle brawls inside a steel cage. The principal and other employees at South Oak Cliff High knew about the cage fights and allowed the practice to continue, according to a 2008 report by school system investigators. The report, first obtained by The Dallas Morning News, describes two instances of fighting in an equipment cage in a boys' locker room between 2003 and 2005. It was not clear from the report whether there were other fights.
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Mom forces daughters abortion, throws baby in trash

A Miramar woman is accused of forcing her 16-year-old daughter to have an abortion and then throwing the baby out with the trash, according to court documents obtained by The Miami Herald. Miramar police say that on March 5, Rainey forced her daughter, whom The Miami Herald is not naming, to swallow pills that caused her to give birth to a 24-week-old fetus. Rainey then allegedly gathered the fetus and placenta into a garbage bag and put it out with the rest of the household's waste for curbside pickup.
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The Anarchist Professor: Interview with Denis Rancourt

How does a tenured, full professor lose his job? First, he throws out the grading system by deciding that every student gets an A+. Next, he tells students to rebel by showing how they, collectively, have more power and authority than any of the administration. Then, he gets arrested and taken away in handcuffs by the police just for showing up for a film club on campus.
Forum Post: The Anarchist Professor: Interview with Denis Rancourt
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IPhone Could Soon Help Parents Track Kids' Health From Afar

Parents could soon be using their iPhones to monitor a child's blood glucose levels throughout the day, whether that child is at school or at the beach. Of course, there are already dozens of iPhone apps available for tracking exercise, diet, and blood pressure—things where you type in the information yourself. But this new tool, unveiled yesterday by LifeScan Inc. of Milpitas, Calif., would be the first to monitor health information remotely, then share it with family members or doctors.
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Purpose, student manifesto, and the treatment of youth (forum posts)

A problem with today's society
Forgetting about the stupididy of the treatment of youth
Creationsim and Evolution... In ONE!
Manifesto of a Student

Obama on education

Snippets from Obama's recent speech on education reform: "Good teachers will be rewarded with more money for improved student achievement, and asked to accept more responsibilities for lifting up their schools." "If a teacher is given a chance or two chances or three chances but still does not improve, there's no excuse for that person to continue teaching. I reject a system that rewards failure and protects a person from its consequences." "One of the places where much of that innovation occurs is in our most effective charter schools. And these are public schools founded by parents, teachers, and civic or community organizations with broad leeway to innovate" "dropping out is quitting on yourself, it's quitting on your country, and it's not an option -- not anymore."
Forum Post:  Obama on Education
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Terminally ill boy given truancy warning

A SHEPSHED school has apologised for sending a letter about truancy to the mother of a boy suffering from leukaemia after she asked to take him out of classes to meet the Pope. Louise Yates, of Cumbrian Way, wants to take her six-year-old son Travis on a two-day trip to the Vatican in June for a blessing with the Pope. But when she asked for permission from St Botolph’s School she was sent a letter about truancy and a copy of his attendance record.
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'Scared Straight' program scares truants back into class

(Old news, but still important) To Joel, the choice was simple: Go to school and be ridiculed because he had a hard time reading or stay home and smoke pot with his friends. So the 16-year-old Santa Ana boy skipped hundreds of days in his first two years of high school, until ditching caught up with him and an Orange County judge gave him another simple choice -- school or jail. "I didn't want to get locked up," Joel said after a recent court appearance to check on his progress. "Being scared about that made me get over being embarrassed about how I couldn't keep up in school."
Forum Post: Fuck the 'Scared Straight' program!
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German school gunman 'kills 15'

Fifteen people have been killed after a teenage gunman went on a rampage in south-west Germany, officials say. Most of the dead are thought to have been pupils at the Albertville secondary school in Winnenden, north of Stuttgart. The gunman, a 17-year-old former pupil, is also dead, police say. The teenager, who was said to have been wearing black combat gear, was chased by police after fleeing the school into the centre of town. It is unclear whether the gunman was shot by police or killed himself. Earlier reports said he had been arrested.
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Parents face court action for removing children from gay history lessons

Parents face possible court action for withdrawing their children from lessons on gay and lesbian history. More than 30 pupils were pulled out of a week of teaching at a primary school which included books about homosexual partnerships. The controversial content was worked into the curriculum at George Tomlinson School in Waltham Forest, East London.The council has declared that children who missed the lessons will be viewed as truants.
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Court Issues Arrest Warrant for Sudan's Leader

Judges at the International Criminal Court ordered the arrest Wednesday of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan for atrocities committed in Darfur, but Sudanese officials swiftly retaliated, ordering Western aid groups that provide for millions of people to shut down their operations and leave. Demonstrations in support of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir began in Khartoum, Sudan, after the International Criminal Court issued a warrant for his arrest.
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Love, youth rights and utopia (forum posts)

PLUR
What is love?
Single greatest rant ever
there is no such thing as a utopia

5th Graders Against Homework

Benjamin Berrafato, a fifth grade student from Seldon, New York, is fed up with homework and he's not going to take it anymore. In an open letter to his peers, Berrafato urges his fellow fifth graders to "unite against homework" and makes a case for why it should be abolished. Berrafato argues that homework is "cruel, inhumane, stressful, unhealthy," and ultimately, illegal: "Homework is assigned to students like me, without our permission. Teachers expect us to do homework, even though we'd rather not. It can be hard sometimes. We get punished if we don't do it. If we do it, we get no reward; we just don't get punished. Simply put, if we don't, we get punished, and if we do, our reward is ... nothing.
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Weapons of Mass Instruction: John Taylor Gatto's New Book

A Schoolteacher's Journey Through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling: John Taylor Gatto's Weapons of Mass Instruction focuses on mechanisms of familiar schooling that cripple imagination, discourage critical thinking, and create a false view of learning as a by-product of rote-memorization drills. Gatto's earlier book, Dumbing Us Down, put that now-famous expression of the title into common use worldwide. Weapons of Mass Instruction promises to add another chilling metaphor to the brief against schooling.
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Why kids hate school: sociologists explore issue in new book

University of Texas at Arlington Sociology Professors Ben Agger and Beth Anne Shelton, say the problem of ineffective education cannot be remedied by more math courses and rounds of educational testing. Agger and Shelton, co-authors of a book titled, “I Hate School: Why American Kids are Turned Off Learning,” contend that by the time American students are in junior high and high school, they hate school and cannot wait to finish an acceptable terminal level of education and establish careers and families, mimicking the suburban lifestyles of their parents.
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How to convince your parents to let you drop out of school

New article (by Oni-Chiisu): How to convince your parents to allow you to drop out of school, and/or to get a GED. Dropping out to get your GED is a tedious process because a lot of parents remain blissfully ignorant of what exactly dropping out means for the drop out and what you can accomplish with a GED. I’m going to cover that subject. (Read full article)

17-yr-old catches typo in standardized test

"...while taking his state writing test last week, the East High junior saw something that didn't make sense: The word "emission" -- as in "the emission of greenhouse gases" -- was spelled "omission." "I thought, 'Surely they're not talking about leaving out carbon dioxide altogether.' It just didn't make sense," said Stanford, 17. "It had to be a mistake." It was. Stanford, a linebacker and International Baccalaureate student, alerted English teacher Jennifer Fry, who alerted the district test coordinator, who alerted state education officials, who were, as you might imagine, embarrassed.
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Boy becomes father at 13

Baby-faced Alfie, who is 13 but looks more like eight, became a father four days ago when his girlfriend Chantelle Steadman gave birth to 7lb 3oz Maisie Roxanne. He told how he and Chantelle, 15, decided against an abortion after discovering she was pregnant. The shy lad, whose voice has not yet broken, said: “I thought it would be good to have a baby. “I didn’t think about how we would afford it. I don’t really get pocket money. My dad sometimes gives me £10.”
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North Carolina boy shot on a school bus

A middle school student who was showing off a handgun brought from home shot a friend in the leg aboard a school bus Wednesday, and the wounded boy is recovering, authorities said. Lawrence Lavon Muzzon, the father of the boy who was suspected of bringing the gun on the bus, was arrested and charged in warrants with failing to store a firearm to protect a minor, authorities said.
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Judges accused of jailing kids for cash

For years, the juvenile court system in Wilkes-Barre operated like a conveyor belt: Youngsters were brought before judges without a lawyer, given hearings that lasted only a minute or two, and then sent off to juvenile prison for months for minor offenses. The explanation, prosecutors say, was corruption on the bench. In one of the most shocking cases of courtroom graft on record, two Pennsylvania judges have been charged with taking millions of dollars in kickbacks to send teenagers to two privately run youth detention centers.
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Nine-Year-Old Creates iPhone Applications

He's only nine years old, and he's already done something most of us could never do: create an iPhone application. Lim Ding Wen, a Singapore native, created a new app for the iPhone called Doodle Kids, according to Fox News. The program lets users draw pictures with their fingers right onto the iPhone's touchscreen. To clear the screen, you just shake the phone.
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10 year old hangs himself at school

A 10-year-old boy found hanging in an Evanston school restroom had threatened to take his life, sources said today, underscoring experts' warnings to take cries for help seriously even from the very young. Scolded by a teacher, Aquan Lewis responded with a threat to kill himself the same day his body was discovered, said sources familiar with the investigation. The 5th grader hanged himself Tuesday afternoon by his shirt collar on a hook in an Oakton Elementary School restroom stall where a footprint was found on a toilet, a source said.
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Woman rapes man in Colorado

A 53-year-old Longmont woman was arrested Wednesday on suspicion that she drugged a male friend during a backyard barbecue and then raped him, police said. Janice Lynette McCarl was booked into the Boulder County Jail at 7:40 p.m. Wednesday on suspicion of sexual assault, a class-three felony. “She allegedly took unwanted advantage of this friend in a manner he did not want or approve of,” Lewis said. The man told detectives the incident happened on Nov. 9 at his Longmont house and involved “unwanted penetration.”
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Tranquility Bay Closed

Widely hated torture camp Tranquility Bay has closed down. Jamaican government officials have confirmed that the last inmate left the country on 5 January, 2009. All equipment from Tranquility Bay is being sold. It is believed that the closure is due to new passport requirements and illegal loans.
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Learning outside classes, civilization and animal souls (forum posts)

Saving Civilization
Concerning Animal Spirituality
On Men of learning
A suggestion on learning things outside of classes