Classes start today, and this promises to be a very busy year.  As you read this, I’ll be meeting my new group of kids and diving head-first into a whole new curriculum and dealing with a long list of stuff that’s already making this school term “interesting.”  WAY too much so!

I have a lot to do to get this year off the ground successfully, and something’s got to go.  I still have a lot to say, but there are a lot of other folks out there who can say it much better than I can, or ever will.  Check to your right on the blogroll..

This will be it for me for blogging.  I am now officially retired.

Keep in touch.  You know where to find me.

Namaste, friends.

And thanks.

Elbow: “One Day Like This”

Happy music is good to find.  H/t to Rowena for this.

I Hear America Singing 

I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,
    Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe
              and strong,
    The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,
    The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off
              work,
    The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deck-
              hand singing on the steamboat deck,
    The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing
              as he stands,
    The woodcutter’s song, the ploughboy’s on his way in the morn-
              ing, or at noon intermission or at sundown,
    The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work,
              or of the girl sewing or washing,
    Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else,
    The day what belongs to the day—at night the party of young
              fellows, robust, friendly,
    Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.

- Walt Whitman

As the kids return to school, a couple of interesting articles dealing with the subject of military recruiting on campus:

A Few Good Kids?

(Mother Jones) Sept/Oct 2009 - John Travers was striding purposefully into the Westfield mall in Wheaton, Maryland, for some back-to-school shopping before starting his junior year at Bowling Green State University. When I asked him whether he’d ever talked to a military recruiter, Travers, a 19-year-old African American with a buzz cut, a crisp white T-shirt, and a diamond stud in his left ear, smiled wryly. “To get to lunch in my high school, you had to pass recruiters,” he said. “It was overwhelming.” Then he added, “I thought the recruiters had too much information about me. They called me, but I never gave them my phone number.”

Nor did he give the recruiters his email address, Social Security number, or details about his ethnicity, shopping habits, or college plans. Yet they probably knew all that, too. In the past few years, the military has mounted a virtual invasion into the lives of young Americans. Using data mining, stealth websites, career tests, and sophisticated marketing software, the Pentagon is harvesting and analyzing information on everything from high school students’ GPAs and SAT scores to which video games they play. Before an Army recruiter even picks up the phone to call a prospect like Travers, the soldier may know more about the kid’s habits than do his own parents.

The military has long struggled to find more effective ways to reach potential enlistees; for every new GI it signed up last year, the Army spent $24,500 on recruitment. (In contrast, four-year colleges spend an average of $2,000 per incoming student.) Recruiters hit pay dirt in 2002, when then-Rep. (now Sen.) David Vitter (R-La.) slipped a provision into the No Child Left Behind Act that requires high schools to give recruiters the names and contact details of all juniors and seniors. Schools that fail to comply risk losing their NCLB funding. This little-known regulation effectively transformed President George W. Bush’s signature education bill into the most aggressive military recruitment tool since the draft. Students may sign an opt-out form—but not all school districts let them know about it.

Yet NCLB is just the tip of the data iceberg. In 2005, privacy advocates discovered that the Pentagon had spent the past two years quietly amassing records from Selective Service, state DMVs, and data brokers to create a database of tens of millions of young adults and teens, some as young as 15. The massive data-mining project is overseen by the Joint Advertising Market Research & Studies program, whose website has described the database, which now holds 34 million names, as “arguably the largest repository of 16-25-year-old youth data in the country.” The JAMRS database is in turn run by Equifax, the credit reporting giant.

Marc Rotenberg, head of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, says the Pentagon’s initial failure to disclose the collection of the information likely violated the Privacy Act. In 2007, the Pentagon settled a lawsuit (filed by the New York Civil Liberties Union) by agreeing to stop collecting the names and Social Security numbers of anyone younger than 17 and promising not to share its database records with other government agencies. Students may opt out of having their JAMRS database information sent to recruiters, but only 8,700 have invoked this obscure safeguard…

The rest here.

The Science Fiction of Military Marketing

by David Sirota

(OregonLive.com) 28 August - I’m a video game geek, so as I sat through movie previews a few weeks ago, I was sure I was watching Nintendo ads.

There on the cinema’s screen was a super-sleek plane flying over a moonscape while communicating with an orbiting satellite. In the next moment, a multicolored topographical map, orders being barked — and in my own mind, memories of “Call of Duty” graphics. And then, finally, two guys in front of a computer console, and the jarring punch line: “It’s not science fiction; it’s what we do every day,” said the bold type, followed by a U.S. Air Force symbol.

Before giving the audience a chance to digest the slogan, it was onto another montage, this one of helicopters and explosions with 1970s music playing in the background. A preview for a Steve McQueen-themed game, I thought. Then, though, the familiar kicker: “The drones fight terrorism and protect America, and in the process, they keep the front lines unmanned,” said the voiceover, adding, “This isn’t science fiction; this is life in the United States Navy.”

The ads preceded “The Hurt Locker” – a dramatized movie about soldiers who defuse roadside bombs in the midst of Iraq’s horrifying carnage. And even with its fictionalized dialogue, the film was far more honest than the U.S. military’s fantastical sales pitch. Join the armed forces, the ads suggest, and you don’t have to experience the blood-and-guts consequences of combat. Instead, thanks to drone technology, you get to hang out stateside and entertain yourself with a glorified PlayStation.

During this, one of the bloodiest months in the Afghanistan war, the spots promote a somewhat comforting, if disturbingly misleading, message — and it is aimed not just at potential soldiers, but also at the public at large.

For the former, the goal is reassurance. As Bush-era attempts to conflate bellicosity and patriotism were undermined by persistent body bags, military recruitment has become more challenging. In response, the Pentagon hopes to make prospective volunteers believe their tours of duty will be as safe as a night on the couch.

For the general public, the objective is sedation. New polls show the country strongly opposes the Afghanistan and Iraq wars — but military officials want to preserve the possibility of an escalation in Afghanistan and a permanent deployment in Iraq. So along with persuading President Barack Obama to withhold photos documenting fog-of-war brutalities at Afghanistan and Iraq prisons, the Pentagon is seeking an opiate to placate the war-averse populace. What better anodyne than a marketing campaign implying wars are fun video games?

Certainly, the ads aren’t pure “science fiction.” As the armed forces build more unmanned drones, Popular Science magazine reports that recruiters are indeed looking to add new remote pilots. The “science fiction” is the specific assertion that “the front lines are unmanned.” Claims like that are deeply destructive, beyond their obvious insult to the thousands killed, wounded and/or currently stationed on those very front lines.

For instance, it’s a good bet more than a few enlistees will expect their service to be happy video game tournaments, only to find themselves dodging real bullets in a Baghdad shooting gallery.

More broadly, the American psyche’s slow progress toward an increasingly peaceful disposition could be stunted by the propaganda’s powerful paradox: While sanitizing ads play to the country’s growing disgust with militarism, they could ultimately lead us to be more supportive of militarism. How? By convincing us that violence can be just another innocuous expression of adolescent technophilia.

If we end up thinking that, we will have once again forgotten what all wars, even the justifiable ones, always are: lamentable human tragedies.

When Second-Born Son comes home after his first day next week, he’ll have with him the usual huge stack of forms for us to fill out.  One of these forms has a place where we can opt him OUT of the information gathering program discussed in the first article linked here.

Does YOUR school district allow parents to do this?  Just wondering.

Rewriting the History of August 29th: A Prayer

Thank you for letting me understand
homelessness, living without power,
without television , without cool air in the heat.

Thank you for letting me understand
hunger, the pleasure of dry clean clothes and
the relief of place to sleep.

Thank you for letting me understand
the deep and overwhelming sadness
when forces, beyond our personal control,
take the loved, the familiar, the usual.

Thank you for my needfulness and
Thank you for my newfound empathy
for those were homeless before the storm
and homeless now, for those hungry
anywhere, for those in need everywhere.

Thank you for the opportunity you provided
to help my neighbor, to be my brother’s keeper,
to serve food, to patch roofs, to clear yards,
and to start mending that which was broken.

Thank you for the chance to change ourselves,
from a reprieve from the normal commercial day,
for teaching us to make do, to get by, to improvise,
for drowning our conceit, complacency, callousness
for silencing the noise , for stopping the clock,
and for the chance to act our best when the worst occurred.

Thank you for the people who reached in
pulled out the living, cradled the dead,
comforted the broken and torn apart,
wept for the splintered and uprooted.

Thank you for the people who didn’t wait
who came right away, who opened their homes,
who emptied their shelves, their closets,
who cleaned, fed , healed, held us,
who told us our spirit was amazing,
and who keep on coming.

Thank you for people who measure
their faith by their actions, and measure
their action by its consistency with their faith.

Thank you for all the people we have met,
who are new friends, new loved ones,
new brothers and sisters, new neighbors.

Thank you Katrina. Not for wind,
not for water, but for the appreciation
of the things no storm can shatter,
no water can wash away,
no wind can move.

- by Thomas Wright Teel and Reilly Morse

Terence Blanchard: “Funeral Dirge” (live)

From A Tale of God’s Will: A Requiem for Katrina

A sampling of the stuff that’s floating around my brain right now:

- There’s a huge amount of fuss and bother in the media right now about the upcoming swine flu pandemic that’s apparently going to destroy the universe or something, and I’m sure there’s good reason for concern.  Not panic, not even major worry, but yeah, concern.  I have an elderly mom-in-law whom I love dearly and I worry about her, and both my kids are in one of the major demographic groups that’s at risk for this bug.  Both attend large institutions of learning and poor hygiene, and both have the personal hygenic skills and habits of your typical large primate.  There’s already a lot of this flu about, and of course, it’s supposed to get worse.  I work in a building that is full of kids who cough and sneeze without benefit of coverage, who pick their noses, who don’t wash their hands regularly, and who come to school when they are sick so they can share their germs with all of us.

But I am not getting a flu shot.

I actually, for some stupid reason I still don’t understand, got a regular flu shot a few years ago, and it made me sick.  No, I did not have an allergic reaction: I got the flu.  I got injected and within minutes, my head was spinning and within a few hours, I had a fever and flu symptoms.  I missed three days of school, with a weekend in between.  The shot was intended to keep me from getting the flu that winter.  Instead, it made me ill.  My family physician did confirm that yes, in spite of the common knowledge that’s put out there, some folks do get the flu from the vaccine.

I also just don’t trust the new vaccine.  No, I am not talking conspiracy theories.  I just am not sure I want to be shot full of something that was rushed so quickly onto the market, not with my history of bad reactions to even the most benign-seeming medications.

Nope, I’ll wash my hands and use hand sanitizer and I’ll spray my classroom surfaces with Lysol and I’ll do everything else I can, including getting myself in shape and taking my vitamins and praying to the good Lord every day that s/he keeps me well.

But no shots.

- Speaking of school, we head back to school next week, and the kids return the week after, right after Labor Day.  That’s kind of ironic, because, you know, we teachers and staff return back without the benefit of a new contract.  We’re at the stage of the process now which is called “impasse,” which means no progress is being made and  which means a mediator will be hired, and then the process will continue.  This has many of us are on pins and needles, with people worried about “what’s going to happen to us.” 

Stock answer: Nothing bad, if we stick together.

- I start my new position as a social studies teacher this fall, and I am really excited.  Nervous, too.  I’ve been able to fly on auto-pilot for the last few years, and the change will do me good in terms of invigorating my inner and outer teacher.  But all the new lesson planning, the pacing, the assessing, that will take a while, probably the whole year, to get used to.  Wish me luck on my latest adventure, okay?  It’s going to be a challenge.

- The world is a lesser place today without Ted Kennedy.  While I was never a fan of the way he conducted his personal life, there’s no way I’m picking up that first stone, especially not now.  The totality of a man’s life is what’s important, and from that perspective, Ted Kennedy was a giant.  And those who are using today as an occasion to dance on his grave, with their cruel jokes and snide remarks, are not fit to wipe their crap from the soles of  his very big shoes.  The man did a lot of good for the people of this country, and that’s a legacy no one can touch.

- Glenn Beck continues to prove that he is a racist and a buffoon, and the list of advertisers that have jumped his garbage scow now number nearly 50.  Which is good news for thinking people everywhere.

If you haven’t yet signed the petition that’s helping to make this happen, you can still go here.

- Few things in life are as nice as afternoon coffee and a Clif Bar.  Just saying.

You can tell it’s time for the kids to head back to school.  You can tell by the amount of stupid the parents are sending out there…

“Devil” shirts send kids home

GAINESVILLE, Fl (Gainesville.com) 26 August - More children from the Dove World Outreach Center arrived Tuesday at area public schools with shirts bearing the message “Islam is of the Devil” and were sent home for violation of the school district’s dress code when they declined to change clothes or cover the anti-Muslim statement on their clothing.

School district staff attorney Tom Wittmer said the shirts violated a district ban on clothing that may “disrupt the learning process” or cause other students to be “offended or distracted.”

“Students have a right of free speech, and we have allowed students to come to school wearing clothes with messages,” Wittmer said. “But this message is a divisive message that is likely to offend students. Principals, I feel reasonably, have deemed that a violation of the dress code.”

Wittmer said the school district allows students to express their religious beliefs but also must protect other students, such as members of the Muslim faith, from discrimination based on their religious beliefs.

He said there also has to be equal treatment of different faiths.

“The next kid might show up with a shirt saying ‘Christianity is of the Devil,’” Wittmer said.

First Amendment scholars said the school district’s policy is likely legal and constitutional. Ron Collins, a scholar with the nonprofit First Amendment Center in Washington D.C., said courts give public school officials a “significant amount of latitude” in regulating student dress that could disrupt the classroom or a school function.

“Here, it’s not only a religious expression,” Collins said. “It’s a religious expression that is hostile to other forms of religious expression.” [Emphasis mine.]

Collins did note that student speech is afforded more protection at the college or university level.

Catherine Cameron, a faculty member at the Stetson College of Law, said the school district “likely has a good leg to stand on from a First Amendment standpoint” because the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in several cases that public schools may quash speech deemed disruptive “even if it steps on the other child’s free speech rights.”

On their front, the T-shirts had a verse from the Gospel of John: “Jesus answered I am the way and the truth and the life; no one goes to the Father except through me,” and this statement, “I stand in trust with Dove Outreach Center.” The message “Islam is of the Devil” is on the back of the shirt.

On Monday, a 10-year-old fifth-grader at Talbot Elementary was sent home because of the shirt. On Tuesday, two Eastside High students and one Gainesville High student were sent home and a student at Westwood Middle had to change clothes because of the shirt, according to members of the Dove congregation.

Dove Senior Pastor Terry Jones said no local company “had the guts” to print the shirts. [Or maybe they just had, you know, ethics and morals.  Just sayin'...] Dove member Wayne Sapp said he then ordered the shirts over the Internet from a company that allows individuals to design their own shirts. His daughter, Faith Sapp , 10, was the Talbot Elementary student sent home Monday. She said she was allowed to wear the shirt to school on Tuesday – with the Gospel message on the front visible but the anti-Islam message on the back covered.

Wayne Sapp’s daughter, Emily Sapp, 15, was the student sent home from Gainesville High on Tuesday. Both Faith and Emily Sapp said it was their decision, not that of their parents, to wear the shirts to school in order to promote their Christian beliefs. Emily Sapp said the “Islam is of the Devil” statement was aimed at the religion’s beliefs, not its members.

“The people are fine,” she said. “The people are people. They can be saved like anyone else”…

The rest here. (There’s video there, too.)

I sincerely hope that the intolerant, bigoted, misguided people who are abusing their own offspring by sending them to a public school wearing shirts like this will get a lawyer and sue the district for violating the ‘free speech rights” of their children.

Because they will lose.  And that will send a message.

The 1969 Supreme Court decision known as Tinker v. Des Moines School District  that came out of the Vietnam War era and which gave students the right to political speech on campus doesn’t come into play here.  In addition to giving students the right to express their political views, that decision also gave school administrators the right to determine whether student expressions of free speech might disrupt the ability of the school to conduct its daily business, to be able to avoid disruptions in the learning process, as the person says above.

It’s also about not having kids feel threatened.  Imagine, if you can, that you are a parent who also happens to be a Muslim, and you find out your daughter or son has a classmate who is wearing a shirt like this to class.

Imagine if you can that you are that kid.  You’re now “of the devil”?  In fifth grade?

The pastor of this church is quoted in the article as saying that, “to him, spreading the church’s message was ‘even more important than education itself.’”  No, sir, not in a public school.  Doesn’t work that way.  In a public school, the job is to educate all God’s children, whether you like (or hate) them or not.

And, I mean, seriously, why not “Judaism is of the Devil”?  Or “Catholicism is of the Devil”?  Why stop at Muslims?  Why not spread the “love” around here?  I mean, as the man from this congregation says, it’s not “about the people,” whatever the heck THAT is supposed to mean.  So why not attack everybody and anybody who doesn’t go to their church?

You know why.  Of course you do.

This is exactly “about the people.”  People who aren’t exactly like him.

That’s what makes this hate speech. Children have the right to go to school without being abused for their faith.  Or for any other reason.

All children have the right to go to school without having to be afraid.

Kudos to the school officials for making the right move here.  If those shirts show up again, send them home, again. Stick to doing what is right, for ALL of the kids in those schools.

(Photo: Gainesville.com)

CHICAGO (AP) 25 August – Kaleb Drew went to first grade on Tuesday tethered to his Labrador retriever, over the school’s objections, but his family is optimistic they’ll win a court battle to keep the dog in class.

Chewey the Lab, trained to help the autistic boy deal with his disabilities, did “just as he’s supposed to” in keeping Kaleb safe and calm during his first full day back at school, said the boy’s mom, Nichelle Drew.

A Douglas County judge allowed the dog to accompany Kaleb until the family’s lawsuit against Villa Grove Elementary School in east-central Illinois goes to trial in November.

Kaleb’s case and a separate lawsuit involving an autistic boy near St. Louis are the first challenges to an Illinois law allowing service animals in schools, according to an attorney for the Villa Grove school and a spokeswoman for the Illinois Board of Education.

“I hope as time goes by that maybe they’ll see that it’s not causing a problem, and they’ll let the fight go,” Nichelle Drew said. Regardless, she added, “We’re in it for the long haul.”

Officials at both schools maintain that the dogs aren’t true “service” animals and provide only comfort care. They say the autistic boys’ needs have to be balanced against other children who have allergies or fear the dogs.

At Kaleb’s school, officials say they already provide him with adequate services for his autism, a developmental disorder that often involves poor communication and social skills.

His difficulty transitioning from home to school and occasional outbursts are classic autism symptoms — and his mother says the dog’s calming presence helps with both.

Nichelle Drew said the dog caused no problems at school on Tuesday, or on Friday, when Kaleb spent a few hours in class. Monday was the district’s first full day but Kaleb stayed home with flu symptoms.

Marke Hatfield, principal of Villa Grove Elementary School, declined to comment Tuesday. School attorney Brandon Wright said, “We are implementing the judge’s order and we’ll see how it goes” until the trial.

Equip for Equality, a Chicago-based advocacy group that is suing on the Drew family’s behalf, said Villa Grove is clearly violating Illinois law.

“We’re confident, but we can’t say it’s a foregone conclusion that we’ll prevail,” said their attorney, Margie Wakelin.

In the other Illinois case, a Monroe County judge issued a preliminary injunction last week allowing Carter Kalbfleisch to have his dog with him when he attends special education pre-kindergarten in Columbia. On Monday, that judge ordered that the ruling take effect Sept. 14, meaning Carter could attend classes before then but without his dog.

But the district is asking an appellate court to throw out the injunction, or at least put it on hold until it weighs the district’s claims that the lower court misinterpreted the statute.

“Our position is that the dog is not necessary for any educational purpose and that in bringing in the dog we actually are putting many other students at health risk,” Christi Flaherty, an attorney for Carter’s district, Columbia Community Schools Unit 4, said Tuesday.

Carter’s mother, Melissa Kalbfleisch, said the school’s position is hard to swallow.

“It’s just amazing to me that they’re going to fight this,” she said. “Anybody can read the law and see how clear it is. The money we’re wasting on this could be going to Carter’s benefit, school and getting him more therapy.”

Okay.  I get the part about the allergies and the fear of dogs.

But.  Really now.  C’mon.

I have a rather long resume as a teacher.  This is not entirely by choice, as I was RIF’ed twice early in my career and I bounced around a bit after that.  But for one ten year stretch, while I was doing the stay-at-home dad thing, I taught at our local community college as an adjunct professor.  And I am very proud of that.  I used to buy Camden County College t-shirts in the student store to advertise that fact that I worked there.  I enjoyed teaching there for too many reasons to list here.  But one of the things that made me so proud was the fact that Camden County College went out of its way to be the most accessible college campus in the state.  Yeah, I know some of it was because of federal and state mandates to assist students with challenges, but CCC went above and beyond that, in my view.

Just being on that campus taught me a lot about dealing with students who have physical challenges. And I had students in my classes, and with whom I interacted, who had working dogs.  Most were either visually challenged or were in wheelchairs.  The dogs who worked with students in chairs were really impressive to the other students.  These pooches could jump up and bop the buttons that would open the electric doors or to bring down an elevator.  And they had those cool little saddle bags with the signs that said, “I’M WORKING!”  And they became just another facet of life on campus.  No big deal, just like having classmates in motorized chairs or who used sign language to communicate.

My current job (Year Ten begins in two weeks!) has taught me a lot about kids with autism.  So has my niece, who is high-functioning autistic.  So have my internet friends who are dealing with this situation in their families on a daily basis.

And one of the things that frustrates me is the amount of ignorance that is still out there.  I don’t mean “ignorance” as in “stupid.”  Ignornace here means you just don’t know ’cause nobdy’s taught you or you haven’t been exposed to it yet.  Yes, we are making lots of new discoveries about autism all the time.  Yes, there are new studies and books coming out almost weekly, and yes, it is almost impossible to sort through it all. 

But at some point, the supposed grown-ups in the room need to step up and make the right call for the kids.  Like here.  Use it as a “teachable moment,” as our President is so fond of saying.

But step up.

(Photo: AP)