Education thread

[billy.pilgrim]

Most moms think their child is good. Well, in your case probably not, it’s too late to reverse your @sshole mentality.

Oh, I don’t solely blame your mom for your affliction. It’s most likely that its just in your nature to be an @sshole. Condolences to your mom.

Is there a reason that you don't use an "a" in "asshole"?

If I spell your name with the @ would it be c@t or just plain c@? C@ does already have it's own t sound. C@sshole is another choice.

[neoplacebo]

Most moms think their child is good. Well, in your case probably not, it’s too late to reverse your @sshole mentality.

Oh, I don’t solely blame your mom for your affliction. It’s most likely that its just in your nature to be an @sshole. Condolences to your mom.

Is there a reason that you don't use an "a" in "asshole"?

If I spell your name with the @ would it be c@t or just plain c@? C@ does already have it's own t sound. C@sshole is another choice.

I just explained this in the president trump thread.

[neoplacebo]

I was just ignoring that neo most likely had been enjoying marijuana like billy does, you don't need it to be an idiot.

Anyone who uses marijuana and does not enjoy it is an idiot. There, I fixed it for you.

[Vrede too]

Is there a reason that you don't use an "a" in "asshole"?

If I spell your name with the @ would it be c@t or just plain c@? C@ does already have it's own t sound. C@sshole is another choice.

It makes me laugh to think of how many infantile tantrums s/he has pitched @ me that y'all don't care about and I've never opened. 1 F@ CAN sure likes playing with her/himself, nttawwt.

... you don't need it (marijuana) to be an idiot.

So true, YOU are the proof of that.

For example, only an idiot would leave themselves wide open to the obvious dig like you did. Toking won't make you smarter, but @ least you'll have an excuse.

[Vrede too]

These universities are helping to build U.S. nuclear weapons

Nearly 50 U.S. universities are involved in the research and design of U.S. nuclear weapons, largely in secret and in contradiction of their mission statements. Students and faculty must demand their universities stop helping to build weapons of mass destruction.

George Washington University, where I was born
Georgetown University, Jesuit!
Georgia Institute of Technology, where my brother works, though he's never taken a military grant
Johns Hopkins University, cure them and kill them
Stanford University, where my brother went to school
University of Colorado - Boulder, there goes its hippie image
University of Florida
University of Notre Dame, Catholic!
University of Tennessee

[neoplacebo]

Nine year old Belgian kid set to complete his three year electrical engineering degree program in ten months.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/9-old-univer ... 10865.html

[billy.pilgrim]

Our education dollars at work

in the Klan



"The monument, topped by a statue of a Confederate soldier carrying a rifle, was erected at the entrance of the University of North Carolina campus here in 1913. A manifestation of simplistic nostalgia for Southern white supremacy, it was one of scores of such monuments erected at the height of the Jim Crow era, and it was paid for by the United Daughters of the Confederacy and university benefactors. At the dedication, one speaker celebrated the Ku Klux Klan and bragged that he had “horsewhipped a Negro wench until her skirts hung in shreds.”
After years of protest, Silent Sam was pulled off its pedestal during a rally in August 2018. Since then, the university has hidden the statue in a secret location. The Daughters of the Confederacy recently handed over ownership to the North Carolina Sons of Confederate Veterans, which made clear that it intended to sue the university for control of the statue. Before it could, several members of the university system’s board, each appointed by the conservative state legislature, announced that not only would the group get the statue, but it would also get access to $2.5 million to be placed in a trust for the “care and preservation of the monument.”

I apologize for not providing a link, but lost where I read it. It appears to be a NYT Opinion piece but I can't open NYT, so not sure how I would have read it. Good piece, if you get the NYT read it and post a link.

[Vrede too]

Our education dollars at work

in the Klan

... I apologize for not providing a link, but lost where I read it. It appears to be a NYT Opinion piece but I can't open NYT, so not sure how I would have read it. Good piece, if you get the NYT read it and post a link.

I'm able to get in by clearing my 'nyt' cookies, but only one article at a time before I have to clear them again.

Opinion
Why Did U.N.C. Give Millions to a Neo-Confederate Group?
The University of North Carolina’s settlement over a controversial statue is a subsidy for white nationalism.
Dec. 3, 2019


Silent Sam being guarded after it was pulled down in 2018.Credit...Jonathan Drake/Reuters

Operating in an era of black disfranchisement, neo-Confederate groups placed their monuments in public spaces, often using public funds, to reinforce their Civil War mythologies, characterizing the Old (white) South as the victim and arguing that all fault in the “War Between the States” lay with the North.

They also insisted — and continue to do so — that the war itself was never about slavery but transgressions related to tariffs, “states’ rights” or some generic Northern wrongdoing. These groups used to be incredibly influential; their ceremonies and relics were supported by millions of public dollars.

The lessons they taught influenced entire generations who grew up with distorted histories of the antebellum South and the Civil War. One book on the Klan and the Reconstruction era, published in 1913 and endorsed by both the Daughters of the Confederacy and the Sons of Confederate Veterans, claimed:

No unbiased student of history can fail to admit that the conditions of the times called for organized effort, to take offices out of incompetent and mischievous hands, to protect the women of the South from brutal assault, and to maintain the supremacy of the white race.

Fortunately, historians in the post-Jim Crow era have worked to set the record straight. In recent years, historians of the American South, myself included, have been called on to help the public understand the meanings of these Confederate monuments that still dot our landscapes. Most academics revel at the opportunity to serve a public that is hungry for knowledge, but we lack resources, especially time, money and a critical mass of talent.

The University of North Carolina, my employer, has its own thickly threaded history with slavery, involving thousands of enslaved people whose lives and labor built and maintained several buildings on campus. Other institutions, including Harvard, William & Mary and the University of Virginia, have made multimillion-dollar commitments to study their institutions’ connections to slavery. And yet our administrators have repeatedly rejected scholarly efforts to uncover that history, claiming a shortage of funds.

So it is especially galling to see the board give $2.5 million to a neo-Confederate organization. It is the clear endorsement of a discredited and dangerous idea. The Confederacy groups are not purveyors of truth; they are promoting a narrative that pollutes contemporary American historical memory and bolsters modern-day white supremacists. Their websites still push old falsehoods about the Civil War as a fight for Southern “liberty and freedom” and slavery’s inconsequential role in the “War Between the States.”

By funneling money to neo-Confederate organizations, the university undermines decades of scholarship and the research conducted by its own experts. The Sons of Confederate Veterans is losing members and resources as its credibility continues to diminish; the university’s $2.5 million will fatten an existing endowment of less than $80,000. As the group’s leader stated in a celebratory email, this “major strategic victory” will help provide “legal and financial support for our continued and very strong actions in the future.”

Amid these costly wars over our history, where are the resources for those whose memories have actually been erased? Some of them lie buried on our campus. Three miles down the hill from where Silent Sam once stood, a university-owned conference center operates on an old plantation. Out back, just beyond the edge of the garden, sits an old cemetery filled with an estimated 100 black bodies in unmarked graves.

As people who have actually been forgotten by history lie entombed and unrecognized on our campus, it is nothing short of revolting to learn of an institution of higher learning donating $2.5 million to those who would rebuild the Confederacy.

William Sturkey (@william_sturkey), an assistant professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who specializes in the history of race in the American South, is the author of “Hattiesburg: An American City in Black and White.”

University of North Carolina Gives ‘Silent Sam’ Statue to Confederate Group
The move was part of a settlement with a group that had sued over the fate of the statue, which was toppled in 2018. The group plans to make the statue available to the public.
Nov. 27, 2019

Legal Settlement Will Keep Confederate Statue Off UNC Campus
The University of North Carolina announced Wednesday that a torn-down Confederate monument won’t return to campus under a legal agreement that hands over the “Silent Sam” statue to a group of Confederate descendants.
Nov. 27, 2019

The UNC System Office webform
https://www.northcarolina.edu/content/contact-us
I chose the “Front Desk” option, but there are other probably apt ones.

Re: Why Did U.N.C. Give Millions to a Neo-Confederate Group?
The University of North Carolina’s settlement over a controversial statue is a subsidy for white nationalism.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/03/opin ... t-sam.html

I am outraged that the University of North Carolina Board of Governors is subsidizing white supremacy and its pitiful participation trophy with my money.

Would you also subsidize pedophiles and meth labs not to come on campus?

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised given the University of North Carolina’s years-long refusal to study its own abominable history with slavery. Seems that the Board of Governors is nostalgic for slavery, treason and the KKK.

Shame on you.

(Vrede too)
Hendersonville, NC 28793

[billy.pilgrim]

Was there a document giving ownership to the Confederate group?

Real estate law, in every state where I have some familiarity, states, "if you leave your shit on someone's property for over a hundred years without having no kinda document saying you gotta give it back when you want it. It ain't yours no more.

Was there anything binding or did UNC just see an opportunity to fund hate and racism?

[Vrede too]

Was there a document giving ownership to the Confederate group?

Real estate law, in every state where I have some familiarity, states, "if you leave your shit on someone's property for over a hundred years without having no kinda document saying you gotta give it back when you want it. It ain't yours no more.

Was there anything binding or did UNC just see an opportunity to fund hate and racism?

I just skimmed the news articles, but all I saw was that it belonged to the Daughters of the Confederacy, now transferred, nothing about the legal basis for that 100-year ownership.

Here's the official Timeline:
https://exhibits.lib.unc.edu/exhibits/s ... m/timeline

1910

Sculptor John Wilson begins designing Silent Sam, using sixteen-year-old Bostonian Harold Langlois as a model for the statue. Later that year, President Venable calls for work to be stopped on the monument as funds are raised. He specifies that the UDC (United Daughters of the Confederacy) will pay one-third of the total cost and alumni donors will pay the remaining two-thirds. Venable says that the University itself will not pay for the memorial, but he is actively involved in raising money, sending letters to prominent alumni asking for their support for the memorial.

June 2, 1913

The monument is dedicated on commencement day. The unveiling features speeches by Governor Locke Craig and Julian Shakespeare Carr, a Confederate veteran, local industrialist, and trustee of the University. In his speech, Carr lauds the Confederate army's "sav[ing] the very life of the Anglo Saxon race in the South" and recalls "horse-whipp[ing] a negro wench until her skirts hung in shreds" for insulting a white woman on Franklin Street.

1914

The UDC and UNC fundraising efforts come up short, and the University covers the remaining $500 still owed on the monument.

No further discussion of ownership. If it might be a winning issue, let's hope that someone at the University of North Carolina School of Law or among the anti-racists is as astute as you.

[billy.pilgrim]

When my tree falls on your house, it becomes your tree.


But no matter the law they should fight, drag this through the courts, spend that 2.5 million on fighting and breaking these idiots.

[Vrede too]

... But no matter the law they should fight, drag this through the courts, spend that 2.5 million on fighting and breaking these idiots.

:!: :!: :!:

I have not received a reply to my e-contact. Think I ever will?

Tell Congress: Support the Students Not Profits Act



The petition to Congress reads:

"Support the Students not Profits Act of 2019 to make sure for-profit colleges don't get federal aid to exploit and undereducate students."

[billy.pilgrim]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... s-hearing/


"A majority of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents (58%) now say that colleges and universities have a negative effect on the country, up from 45% last year."

[neoplacebo]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... s-hearing/


"A majority of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents (58%) now say that colleges and universities have a negative effect on the country, up from 45% last year."

Well, that's a 13% increase during one year. So this logically means that in another three years, 97% or virtually all Republicans and wingnut leaning Independents, will consider higher education to be a threat. We are witnessing the devolution of GOP voters intelligence that started a couple of decades ago with Fox "news" and has now resulted in the trump cult of ignorance. At what point does willful ignorance reach critical mass? Or are we already there?

[Vrede too]

Well, that's a 13% increase during one year. So this logically means that in another three years, 97% or virtually all Republicans and wingnut leaning Independents, will consider higher education to be a threat. We are witnessing the devolution of GOP voters intelligence that started a couple of decades ago with Fox "news" and has now resulted in the trump cult of ignorance. At what point does willful ignorance reach critical mass? Or are we already there?

Repugs not only detest education, they also throw our money at NOT educating:

Still Asleep at the Wheel continues our investigation of the U.S. Department of Education’s Charter Schools Program (CSP) that began with our March 2019 report, which you can find here. The Charter Schools Program has spent more than $4.1 billion dollars to fund new charter schools and to expand existing charter schools. In this report, we document over a half-billion dollars that was wasted on defunct charter schools that received grants from 2006-2014 alone. There is no data for granted money from 1995-2005. That is because the Department did not require the states to report to which schools they gave over a million dollars of taxpayer funds. Given that 28% of all of the funds spent during those select years (2006-2014) were wasted, we conclude that over $1 billion has been wasted during the 25 years that the program has been in existence.

According to our analysis, 37% of the charter schools that were funded by CSP during those years either never opened (11%) or opened and then closed (26%). That figure is the result of our confirmation of the status of nearly 5000 charter schools that received funds from CSP....

[Whack9]

I was reading some comments on another forum the other day about computer literacy in younger generations. It's something I've never really thought about, but it actually makes sense.

A lot of families no longer own personal computers. Tablets are much cheaper, and you can do most of the stuff you need to do nowadays on a tablet or a phone.

A lot of kids are growing up without ever really having to use a PC.

The consequences of this are less and less computer literacy, typing skills, etc...

My niece and nephew are really good at using tablets. But they've probably rarely if ever dealt with using a PC. I've read that teachers were beginning to notice this trend.

I think tablets and smartphones are more "black boxed" and idiot proof than PCs.

Not sure what this entails. I'm not even sure if this is necessarily good or bad. Just found it interesting and wanted to share because it's not something I've really ever thought about.

[Vrede too]

This college was accredited by a DeVos-sanctioned group. We couldn’t find evidence of students or faculty.

Reagan National University was supposed to be a place of higher learning in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. But it was unclear how it awarded degrees. By all appearances, at present it has no students, no faculty and no classrooms.

An agency meant to serve as a gatekeeper for federal money gave the university approval to operate anyway.

That accrediting agency, financially troubled and losing members fast, exists mainly because it was saved by the Education Department in 2018....

The agency in question, the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges & Schools, has a history of approving questionable colleges, with devastating consequences. It accredited ITT Tech, Corinthian Colleges and Brightwood College, massive for-profit universities whose sudden closures last decade left thousands of students without degrees and undermined the value of the education of those who did graduate. Those closures led President Barack Obama’s Education Department to strip ACICS’ powers in 2016....

It is perfect that this fake school is named for Ronald Reagan. Reminds me of another fake school, Trump U. It’s also apt that it’s (not) located in rightwing South Dakota.

[neoplacebo]

RNU (Rightwing Nutjob University) specializes in BS degrees that are awarded to media dimwits or sold to the highest bidder at campus soirees.

[Vrede too]

RNU (Rightwing Nutjob University) specializes in BS degrees that are awarded to media dimwits or sold to the highest bidder at campus soirees.

Comment:

"Reagan National University was supposed to be a place of higher learning in Sioux Falls, South Dakota." This sentence is hilarious on so many levels.

[neoplacebo]

RNU (Rightwing Nutjob University) specializes in BS degrees that are awarded to media dimwits or sold to the highest bidder at campus soirees.

Comment:

"Reagan National University was supposed to be a place of higher learning in Sioux Falls, South Dakota." This sentence is hilarious on so many levels.

Shit like this makes me glad my education is over.