Hello Hello Hello ol Webslingers and webslingerettes!!!?!?!?!?! What is a happening? Well, there was kinda a bright ending to yesterday, i recieved me first assignment back from my Sociology of Education class and i scored an 80%...only worth 10% of the overall term, but i was just glad to score some sort of decent mark from yesterday. I am sitting in Huggins of all places today, just a little change of pace i guess, something to get the ol' creative juices going i guess. Well, since all is well at home and stuff for now the next big event is me birthday!!! Well...i am rather old and stuff now..but i thinks i may be asking for a bus ticket to go see the boys up at Harper for me b-day, that would not be until...well...April Fools Day...of all the darned days eh? I chatted with me ol buddy Grover and he said the boys miss me..awwwwww... but also he has yet to tell them of any prospective visits, now that i know Dad is feeling ok, i think that is what i shall pursue as a present. I actually have an additional math assignment to do for Quanitative Methods as i am sitting in on a spare Quanitative class tomorrow, i thinks when i pick Richie up at 4:30 today i shall be asking for some additional mathmatic help as well, he is a math wiz.. (So he says) In addition, me Sociology of Education midterm is on Monday of next week...wait a second dudes and foxy ladies...its March? Holy s***!!!! I didn't even realize it!!! Our prof was good in that she gave us the questions for the midterm, there is no multiple choice, which is maybe not a bad thing overall... Then after the exam we are doing a class debate, last night she let us go early to go work on the debate at 8:50 and lo and behold, not one person from our group showed up at the danged library!!!! People people! Anyways it looks like it shall be ok, last night we talked more about learning in the school system in North America and we defined words like Streaming- where students are placed into different programs, based on their perceived aptitude and their ability of needs. Justification for streaming- it is not a hidden process, students of different backgrounds can be taught more efficiently and effectively when separated from children with different (unequal) learning abilities. Actually streaming labels alot of students- streaming is also based on race, class and gender- plus silencing- the quieting down of particular issues in the classroom- the age old curriculum- A) The lives, interests and experiences of particular students are ignored by the schooling content and process. Women and minorities are made out to be secondary characters as well....also there was a word that is popping up in all of me classes this semister- Hegemony, as coined by Antonio Gramsci, an Italian revolutionary Marxist, this Gramsci argued that members of the powerful (owning) class use ideological/ cultural domination to engineer/ manufacture a consensus of the massesSchools are hegemonic, in that they promote these dominant cultural forms, but they never encourage any critical thinking. Now with university, we can have alot of critical thinking and imaginative thought, but at what price? This fella from the University of Colorado- this Ward Churchill fella- has he been fired? Someone told me yesterday that he had been canned, however i cannot find anything at all on the Intenet about it. Who is Ward Churchill? Well, around January this professor of Ethnic Studies became noteworthy after stating that the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks were justified and those who died in the World Trade Center were not innocent victims.. then this Churchill went on to describe the World Trade Center victims as "little Eichmanns," a reference to Adolph Eichmann, who carried out Hitler's plan to exterminate Europe's Jews during World War II, Eichmann was caught and brought to trial in 1961, it was weird cause he was stationed during the trial in a bulletproof glass booth. To borrow a little piece from the article published on February 9, 2005 by the Denver Post, "On Tuesday night, Churchill again emphasized that he was not blaming everyone in the towers for U.S. policies.
"No I did not call a bunch of food service workers, janitors, children, firefighters and random passers-by little Eichmanns," he said. "The reference is to a technical core of empire - the technicians of empire ... obviously I was not talking about these people."............yeah buddy... however the damage is already done and now they are appealing this guy's tenure- this tenure system- it has been said by many before, mostly in hushed tones, once someone has their darned foot in the door, awarded tenure, they now have the right to become lazy, even useless and there is not a darned thing anyone can do about it...i have always dreamed of becoming a professor- i guess my math skills will probably put the stomp to that...but even if i did possess these skills, what would i become? There are many out there (Darth Vader) who do not even deserve this tenure, yet they get it- it harkens back to the day of the dinosaur, wake up and drink your Kool-Aid people! Guys like this Churchill give academia a bad name and there is much in the way of recent litigation that is raising eyebrows everywhere, if he has been canned over these comments, then there is going to be one hell of a messy courtbattle with CNN coverage like you will not believe... ahh, whatta rant eh? Anywho i have to get back to work, pick up Richie from work, pick his brain for some math help and then do ummmmmm...whatever...Lates!!!
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