Longer schooling 'cuts dementia'

The raising of the school leaving age to 15 over 50 years ago could go some way to reducing dementia rates in the elderly, a study has suggested. A Cambridge University team compared the mental abilities of elderly people, and found those born after the change fared better. They say that further changes to the school leaving age could improve mental abilities and curb dementia rates more. (Hint: Using your brain to think keeps the braincells alive longer. As soon as most people leave school, they're overjoyed at the prospect of never having to think ever again. You can see where this is going, right?)
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Texas: From saved to doomed in just 6 hours!

Texas Board of Education creationist Barbara Cargill today proposed an amendment to the science standards saying that teachers have to tell their students there are different estimates for the age of the Universe. So Ms. Cargill is right, if she means that "different estimates" range from 13.58 to 13.82 (given one standard deviation) billion years old. But she doesn’t mean that at all, does she? If you read her website, you’ll see she’s an out-and-out creationist. She has a large number of, um, factual errors on her site that are clearly right out of the Creationist Obscurational Handbook.
Read More: Texas: From saved to doomed in just 6 hours!

Strip-Search of Girl Tests Limit of School Policy

Savana Redding still remembers the clothes she had on the day school officials here forced her to strip six years ago. She was 13 and in eighth grade. An assistant principal, enforcing the school’s antidrug policies, suspected her of having brought prescription-strength ibuprofen pills to school. One of the pills is as strong as two Advils. The search by two female school employees was methodical and humiliating, Ms. Redding said. Ms. Redding, an honors student, had no pills. But she had a furious mother and a lawyer, and now her case has reached the Supreme Court, which will hear arguments on April 21.
Read More: Strip-Search of Girl Tests Limit of School Policy
Forum Post: U.S. Supreme Court Case Regarding Strip-searching of Student

Texas could allow creationists to grant Masters of Science degrees

If a private college doesn't receive funds from any governmental organization, should they have to be held to any standards or requirements when they award degrees? No, one Texan lawmaker is insisting. Texas State Representative Leo Berman has proposed House Bill 2800, which would exempt any private non-profit institution that requires students to complete “substantive course work” from having to acquire a certificate of authority from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board(THECB). “If you don’t take any federal funds, if you don’t take any state funds, you can do a lot more than some business that does take state funding or federal funding,” Berman says. “Why should you be regulated if you don’t take any state or federal funding?” Because creationism isn't science, critics argue.
Read more: Texas could allow creationists to grant Masters of Science degrees

Parents of Dead Girl receive Truancy letter

The parents of a girl who died suddenly have received a school letter demanding she improve her attendance. Megan Gillan, 15, was found dead in the bedroom of her home in Macclesfield, Cheshire, two months ago. Her parents say they were "floored" by a Macclesfield High School letter, which threatened to ban Megan from the end of year prom.
Read more: Parents of Dead Girl receive Truancy letter

Five-year-old hosts cooking show

Five-year-old Julian Kreusser is the product of unschooling , a style of home-schooling in which kids direct their own learning toward their particular interests. Julian's interests have included cooking since he was 3 years old , and a mere two years later he's the host of his own cooking show.
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An unschooler goes to school for the first time...

Education From the Free Eye, by Kevin Snavley
Snippet: "I always wondered in the back of my head what it was like to be there, in a school building all day. How horrible it was to sit there for hours on end being lectured by crazy teachers and doing hours of homework. For a while, around age 12, I always wanted to be on-track with the kids at school. It was probably because I felt stupid or less intelligent than them, which really wasn't the case. They just knew more meaningless facts than I did. It took me until last year to finally realize that, and to truly understand the reasons and joys of unschooling. Why it really is so much better than public school."
Forum Post: An unschooler goes to school for the first time...

Dangerous beliefs, Gods, Silent Generation (forum posts)

Dangerous Beliefs Planted by School That Needs Abolishing? - I am writing an article with the idea of "Things Teenagers Should Know" and I'm addressing to every stupid belief school has planted to our minds.
This is an interesting quote. - What if we, at one point, had gods that have now left us?
The New Silent Generation  - Is this what we have become? The silent generation? The people who will not stand up, and take control of their lives?

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.
Read full article (or comment)  |  Book's page on Amazon

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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