Links to some interesting posts

The so-called boy mystery  …Yes, there are numerous potential explanations for the under-representation of men in higher education–and in particular the growing female advantage in terms of bachelor’s degree completion.

Feminizing women’s sports teams  …Female athletes, and women’s sports teams, thus often feel a lot of pressure to prove their heterosexuality to quell homophobic fears and to make women’s sports appealing to a broad audience.

A message to wold leaders from global youth …Following the failure and collapse of the 2009 Copenhagen UN climate summit, the international youth climate movement has the following message for world leaders: “You’re not done yet. And neither are we.”

How to Otherize your friends for Christmas …But what a minute! Your friend is Latina! Surely, that’s a hook to get her the perfect Christmas present!

Dances with Discrimination: On “Avatar,” Racism, Misogyny, and Disabled Prejudice …To begin with, Cameron might as well be paying Kevin Costner royalties, because this movie strides in the path previously carved by “Dances with Wolves 2.” 

LAPD drops ties with Boy Scouts...discrimination does not pay the bills.

From the soap box on the topic of autism…Autism is not a childhood disorder.    Autistic kids do not grow out of it.

Carry on!

Abstinence-Only Sex Ed and the Health Care Reform Bill

Just caught this little nugget of political game playing over at Slate

Conservatives are not, as a rule, terribly excited about health care reform. But one subset has high hopes for reform: proponents of abstinence-only sex education, who were pleasantly surprised to see an amendment that would provide $50 million in federal funding for their programs survive in the final Senate legislation.

 Has to make you wonder just how well has abstinence-only sex education been working over the past eight years… Go ahead and take a look for yourself.  A program failing to effectively educate our children according to three federally funded studies in a row, but hey it’s a bipartisan bill right?

Oregon schools are failing to teach English as a second language

After five or more years learning English as their second language in Oregon schools, 75 percent of those students still are not proficient in English according to a report out today.

Read more in this article from the Oregonian.

One key point in the report that stood out to me, ODE took a page from the No Child Left Behind playbook and has withheld funding from programs for the very students who are already not getting an adequate education. 

Gender Identity and the Bathroom Game

Here is a tragic trivia question:  Whom are among the most ‘at risk’ adolescents in our society today?
Answer:  Transgender individuals living in America today have a one in 12 chance of being murdered.  In contrast, the average person has about a one in 18,000 chance of being murdered.

None the less, every time a transgender student becomes visible to mainstream society it isn’t more than a matter of seconds before the bathroom worries are flying all over the place.  And I don’t mean anyone is worried about the safety of the transgendered student.

Surveillance cameras to be installed…

Chicago Public School’s pervasive violences gets national recognition following the fatal beating of 16-year-old honor student Derrion Albert.

• 90 Surveillance cameras to be installed – to stop what Mayor Daley called the ugly “epidemic of children killing children.”

Philadelphia Public School’s pervasive violence  gets national recognition following the waylaying of at least 26 immigrant Asian students, sending seven students to the hospital.

• In response, the district installed dozens more security cameras

West Coast Contra School District’s pervasive violence gets a double dose of national attention following this fall’s homecoming dance gang rape and more recently the rape of a 12-year-old student during the school day.

• At Richmond High: “The lighting was increased over the weekend,” Superintendent Bruce Harter said. “Tomorrow we will be receiving bids for security cameras … the fencing project is under way.”
• And at El Cerrito middle school: we are moving aggressively to add fencing, lighting and security cameras where needed.

There is plenty of documentation that each of these communities was begging for more security measures long before any of  these incidents occurred.