Friday Cartoon Fun: Tax The Rich Edition

It's Passover

That means light blogging because I am busy reclining while I eat no yeast (except all the leavened stuff I will eat).

Yo-Yo Is Surely Proud Of This Guy

I just need to say that this young man is showing innovation that would get smacked down if a kid tried to pull that in school -- beat-box cello is surely not on the test.

Song Of The Day: Hava Nagila

This is a version of Hava Nagila you probably have not heard. A few years ago my second graders performed the Hora to this version. It rocked. If I can find the video I will post it.

Hava nagila, hava nagila
Hava nagila venis'mecha
(Let us rejoice, let us rejoice. Let us rejoice and be happy)

Repeat

Hava neranena, hava neranena
Hava neranena venis'mecha
(Let us sing, let us sing. Let us sing and be happy)

Uru, uru achim
Uru achim belev same'ach
(Awake, awake, brothers.  Awake with a happy heart)

"Throw Out The Money Changers"

Chris Hedges speaks in front of Bank of America. Ouch!

...

The priests in these corporate temples, in the name of profit, kill with even more ruthlessness, finesse and cunning than Raskolnikov. Corporations let 50,000 people die last year because they could not pay them for proper medical care. They have killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghanis, Palestinians and Pakistanis, and gleefully watched as the stock price of weapons contractors quadrupled. They have turned cancer into an epidemic in the coal fields of West Virginia where families breathe polluted air, drink poisoned water and watch the Appalachian Mountains blasted into a desolate wasteland while coal companies can make billions. And after looting the U.S. treasury these corporations demand, in the name of austerity, that we abolish food programs for children, heating assistance and medical care for our elderly, and good public education. They demand that we tolerate a permanent underclass that will leave one in six workers without jobs, that condemns tens of millions of Americans to poverty and tosses our mentally ill onto heating grates. Those without power, those whom these corporations deem to be ordinary, are cast aside like human refuse. It is what the god of the market demands.

...
Chris Hedges

Saturday Cartoon Fun: The Ayn Ryand Plan Edition

Stephen Krashen On Poverty's Effect On Education

Michelle Rhee Admits Teachers Are "Immeasurable" Among Other Things

In this interview Michelle Rhee admits that teachers, great teachers anyway, are immeasurable. She also says that tons of standardized tests are a great way for parents to know, bi-weekly, how their kid is doing. She never mentions that parents can actually call teachers, visit the classroom their kid is in, schedule a meeting, look through their kid's backpack and see what is going on, or any other pro-active method of caring for your own child.

Oh, and she does some spinning of the investigation of her erasures, which can only be explained as cheating.

Wednesday Cartoon Fun: Spend It Wisely Edition

Tuesday Bonus Cartoon Fun: Poker Face Edition

Tuesday Cartoon Fun: The Inscription Reads... Edition

"The sky is very dark; the Earth is bluish. Everything is seen very clearly"

Explanation: On April 12th, 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Alexseyevich Gagarin became the first human in space. His remotely controlled Vostok 1 spacecraft lofted him to an altitude of 200 miles and carried him once around planet Earth. Commenting on the first view from space he reported, "The sky is very dark; the Earth is bluish. Everything is seen very clearly".

Click on photo for linkage.

Saturday Cartoon Fun: What They Really Think Edition

"Well, you can't take the effect And make it the cause"

Representative Donna Edwards quotes The White Stripes on the House floor.  Cool.

I guess you have to have a problem

If you want to invent a contraption

First you cause a train wreck

Then you put me in traction

Well, first came an action

And then a reaction

But you can't switch around

For your own satisfaction

Well, you put my house down, then got mad

At my reaction

Well, in every complicated situation

You're the human relation

Makin' sense of it all

Take a whole lot a concentration

Well, you can blame my baby

For her pregnant ma

And if there's one of these

On the order for laws

It's that you just can't take the effect

And make it the cause

Well, you can't take the effect

And make it the cause

I didn't rob a bank

Because you made up a law

When you people robbin' Peter

Don't you blame Paul

Can't take the effect

And make it the cause

I ain't the reason that you gave me no reason to return your call

You built a house of cards and got shocked when you saw them fall

Well are you sayin' I'm innocent?

In fact the reverse

But if you're headin' to the grave

You don't blame the hearse

You're like a little girl yellin' at her brother

'Cause you lost his ball

Well you keep blamin' me for what you did

And that ain't all

The way you clean up a wreck

Is enough to get one pause

You seem to forget

Just how this song started

I'm reactin' to you because you left me broken-hearted

See, you just can't take the effect

And make it the cause

Can't take the effect

And make it the cause

I didn't rob a bank

Because you made up a law

Blame people robbin' Peter

Don't you blame Paul

Can't take the effect

And make it the cause

Education Experts: They Do Exist, And Can Tell You About Poverty

...

• There is very good evidence that our international tests scores are "low" because of poverty. Studies show that middle-class American students in well-funded schools score at the top of the world on international tests. Our overall average is less than spectacular because we have such a high percentage of children living in poverty, at least 20%, the highest among all industrialized countries (Berliner, 2011). In urban areas, where test scores are the lowest, the poverty level is much higher: 51% in Cleveland and Detroit, 37% in Miami, and 35% in Dallas and New Orleans. (These figures are based on the federal poverty level. If we consider the percentage of children eligible for free and reduced lunch, between 130 and 185% of the federal level, the figure is much higher, with 81% of children in Detroit and 68% in Miami living in poverty. According to the National Center for Children in Poverty (see e.g. here), families need an income of twice (200%) the official federal level to meet basic needs. Nearly 40% of children in the US live in families with incomes of less than 200% of the official federal level.)

• Studies show that children living in poverty suffer from conditions shown to impact educational attainment and school performance, such as "food insecurity," environmental toxins, lack of health care, and lack of access to books. The impact of these factors is enormous: No matter how good teaching is or how carefully a curriculum is put together, it will be of little value when students are hungry, malnourished, in poor health, and when they have little or no access to reading material.

• When these conditions are dealt with and alleviated, school performance improves. Providing food for hungry children has been shown to produce dramatic differences in behavior and performance in school (Berliner, 2009), having medical insurance improves school performance (Berliner, 2009), and increasing access to books as well as providing time to read for pleasure results in better literacy development (Shin and Krashen, 2009).

The obvious cure for poverty is full employment, with a living wage paid for honest work. Our society today provides neither of these, with unemployment high and with wages low: As of this writing, the average pay for a retail sales position, about $20,000 per year, is well below the federal poverty line for a family of four (Gibson, 2011).

...
via Living In Dialogue