No Divorce Until You Reach Puberty

An eight-year old Saudi Arabian girl who was married off by her father to a 58-year-old man has been told she cannot divorce her husband until she reaches puberty. Lawyer Abdu Jtili said the divorce petition was filed by the unnamed girl's divorced mother in August after the marriage contract was signed by her father and the groom. "The judge has dismissed the plea because she [the mother] does not have the right to file, and ordered that the plea should be filed by the girl herself when she reaches puberty," lawyer Abdullah Jtili told the AFP news agency.
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Police Are Allegedly Assaulted By A 12-Year-Old Girl

It was a little before 8 at night when the breaker went out at Emily Milburn's home in Galveston. She was busy preparing her children for school the next day, so she asked her 12-year-old daughter, Dymond, to pop outside and turn the switch back on. As Dymond headed toward the breaker, a blue van drove up and three men jumped out rushing toward her. One of them grabbed her saying, "You're a prostitute. You're coming with me." Dymond grabbed onto a tree and started screaming, "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy." One of the men covered her mouth. Two of the men beat her about the face and throat. As it turned out, the three men were plain-clothed Galveston police officers who had been called to the area regarding three white prostitutes soliciting a white man and a black drug dealer.
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Children forced into cell-like school seclusion rooms

A few weeks before 13-year-old Jonathan King killed himself, he told his parents that his teachers had put him in "time-out." "We thought that meant go sit in the corner and be quiet for a few minutes," Tina King said, tears washing her face as she remembered the child she called "our baby ... a good kid." But time-out in the boy's north Georgia special education school was spent in something akin to a prison cell -- a concrete room latched from the outside, its tiny window obscured by a piece of paper.
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Man throws shoes at Bush in Iraq

A man threw his shoes at President George W. Bush and was dragged away by security officials during the president's farewell trip to Iraq. The incident occurred as Bush was appearing Sunday with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Bush ducked and wasn't hit by either shoe. Bush joked, saying that all he can report was that it was a size 10 shoe. then calmly took questions.
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32 graves at centre of investigation into Florida reform school

AN investigation has been opened into 32 anonymous graves at a Florida reform school after claims that young orphans and tearaways were flogged and tortured to death by guards. Former residents of the Florida School for Boys in Marianna believe that the shallow graves, which date to the 1950s and 1960s, contain the crushed skulls and broken bones of fellow inmates, and that staff meted out brutal punishments to boys as young as 8 for “crimes” such as singing or eating an extra pancake at breakfast.
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Teacher Throws Fit Over Student's Linux CD

In an age where Windows and OS X reign supreme, it's no wonder that a middle school teacher became enraged after discovering one of her students distributing what she believed to be bootlegged copies of an operating system in class. While teacher "Karen" was clearly operating under the assumption that she'd scored a minor victory for the Microsofts and other downtrodden software giants of the world, the particular operating system that she ended up disciplining her student for was a freely distributable version of Linux.
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School autopsy tours canceled

For the first time in nearly a decade, the Oakland County Medical Examiner's Office isn't offering public school tours this year after a bizarre coincidence this past spring in which a high school group from Waterford watched the autopsy of a 14-year-old girl from the same district.
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Pelahatchie Students Claim Girl Possessed By Devil

Students at a Pelahatchie high school said, for three days this week, a girl there spoke in tongues and made grave predictions for her classmates. Some of those predictions included when students would die. Pelahatchie High School students called the 16 WAPT newsroom convinced that an evil spirit had taken over Lashundra Clanton. "It was disturbing to a lot of students," Pelahatchie sophomore Rob Sparks said.
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Thinking, college degrees and unschooling curriculums (forum posts)

Thinking
Alternatives to college degrees?
Unschooling "Curriculums"

School-Free: Alternative education around the world

There doesn't seem to be much easy-to-find info on school alternatives in countries that aren't the US... So we now have a wiki dedicated to this purpose. It will probably grow slowly, and mostly based on what people can tell us from personal experience. So if you know anything about education alternatives in your country (or any country), please edit the wiki and add everything you know, as well as links to further info, etc. (Ignore the fact that it still has the default theme - I'll make it pretty later. For now info is more important.)

Teachers take flight from state schools

Growing numbers of teachers are quitting state schools to work in the independent sector. About one in four (12,000) of the teachers in private schools has been "poached" from the state sector, shows research by the University of Kent. In the past year alone, 1,500 teachers quit, the highest number for at least two decades, which compares with just 400 a year making a similar decision in the mid-1990s. The figures were released by Professor Francis Green at a conference to promote state and independent school partnerships in London yesterday.
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Elementary student stabs classmate with pencil

Investigators say the suspect stabbed a 10-year-old girl with a pencil causing a puncture wound on the upper portion of her back. Detectives have charged the suspect with assault with a deadly weapon inflicting serious injury. Meanwhile, the victim did not require emergency medial assistance for her wound. She returned to school Thursday.
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Student Arrested For 'Passing Gas'

A student at a Florida school has been arrested after authorities say he was "passing gas" and turned off his classmates' computers. According to a report released Friday by the Martin County Sheriff's Office, the 13-year-old boy "continually disrupted his classroom environment" by intentionally breaking wind. He then shut off some computers other students were using.
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At vocational schools, suspensions are down

While the number of students who have been suspended from public schools over the past few years has remained relatively constant, some local districts - particularly vocational technical schools - have bucked the trend and cut their rates, sometimes sharply. Driving the change, said officials, is an effort to deal with students individually and get them involved in school, an increased emphasis on detention rather than suspension, and perhaps, in the cases of regional vocational schools, attracting more students, which allows the schools to be choosier in their admissions.
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Teachers accused of checking pupils' underwear to make they are wearing the right colour bras and pants

A row erupted today over claims that teachers were checking pupils' underwear to make sure they comply with a new school uniform policy. Parents said their children were told what colour pants and bras they can wear and teachers were doing 'spot checks' under the new rules introduced at Kings School in Winchester. Staff at the mixed 11 to 16-year-old comprehensive dismissed the claims and said they only issued guidance on what was appropriate to wear. But parents said it was 'ridiculous' and an invasion of their children's privacy.
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Schools react to 'Kick a Ginger Day' joke

For some, it's a joke. To others, though, it urges violence against a visible minority. A movement called "Kick a Ginger Day" had many people seeing red yesterday and caused some Manitoba schools to issue stern warnings to students. The Nov. 20 event was inspired by a South Park episode where one character argues gingers -- people with red hair -- are disgusting, soulless and inherently evil.
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Experts: Interrogation of boy, 8, 'out of bounds'

The third-grader's legs dangle from an overstuffed leather chair as he answers the questions of two female police officers. His manner and voice are casual, even helpful, but his words are shocking. Police say an 8-year-old boy confessed to murder. Legal analysts say the questioning crossed the line. And so, legal analysts say, were the methods police used to obtain them. By the time the boy was finished talking, say police in St. Johns, Arizona, he'd confessed to a premeditated double murder.
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Proposed school catering to gays expands mission

Organizers behind a plan to develop Chicago's first public high school catering to gay and lesbian students have changed the name and broadened the focus of the school to include all disenfranchised groups of students, according to officials. The revised plan is expected to be voted on Wednesday by the Chicago Board of Education. It comes after religious leaders, some gay rights activists and Mayor Richard Daley expressed concerns that developing the proposed School for Social Justice's Pride Campus would segregate gay youths. If the school is approved, it will be named the Social Justice Solidarity High School when it opens in 2010.
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Privacy, sheeple, fate & student unions (forum posts)

Does school shorten lifespan?
Fate vs. Free Will
Check Out This "Teen Advice" List..
Are sheeple doing anything wrong?
Privacy From Parents
Forming a student union at your school

Limit 'risky' book, couple says

Cindy and James Dacus should know by early December the outcome of their months-long fight to restrict elementary students' access to a book about two male penguins that raise a chick together. Officials at Ankeny's East Elementary School, where in late February the couple's kindergartner found the book, "And Tango Makes Three," denied the couple's request to remove the book or move it to a parents-only section. The couple's appeal to the school board is expected to be acted on next month.
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Girl, 5, beaten 'for the hell of it'

A 5-year-old girl was beaten bloody with a metal rod and had her face shoved in her own vomit before one final beating left her dead on the family's dirty basement floor, a Manitoba court heard yesterday. Samantha Kematch and her common-law husband, Karl McKay, are accused of first-degree murder in the 2005 death of Phoenix Sinclair. The couple is also accused of trying to pass off another child as Phoenix to convince welfare investigators and the RCMP that their daughter was still with the family.
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Wisdom and lots of rebellion (forum posts)

Making small changes through rebellion
Do you think this would work?
what is "wisdom"?
Another uniform rebellion

Boy slits girl's throat in Montrose High lobby

A 14-year-old boy calmly walked into the entrance of Montrose High School this morning, grabbed a girl from behind and slit her throat in front of her sister and dozens of classmates. The sophomore girl, Mallory Haulman, was taken by ambulance in serious condition to Montrose Memorial Hospital, where she underwent several hours of surgery and is now recovering, said William Woody, a family friend who also works with the girl's father at the Montrose newspaper.
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Strong Education Blunts Effects Of Alzheimer's Disease, Study Suggests

A test that reveals brain changes believed to be at the heart of Alzheimer's disease has bolstered the theory that education can delay the onset of the dementia and cognitive decline that are characteristic of the disorder. Scientists at the Alzheimer's Disease Research Center at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis found that some study participants who appeared to have the brain plaques long associated with Alzheimer's disease still received high scores on tests of their cognitive ability. Participants who did well on the tests were likely to have spent more years in school.
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Man Kills Teacher for 21-Year-Old Grudge

A 37-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of killing his high school teacher for inflicting corporal punishment 21 years ago. Police Monday sought an arrest warrant for the man, identified only as Kim, for murdering his former teacher, 58-year-old Song. Kim allegedly stabbed Song to death, who was entering his home in northern Seoul around 9:40 p.m. Saturday.
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