Catastrophic Catechism

Photo credit: jgraham

Here we go again.

Ontario is trying to create new anti-bullying laws that will attempt to prevent bullying in the province's public schools. Such a move should be welcomed, supported, and applauded by almost everyone; very few people believe that bullying is a good thing or that nothing should be done to prevent it.

But it should come as no surprise that religious fundamentalists do not like the new law. Why don't they like it? Simple: the new law includes strategies for dealing with issues surrounding gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender students. As these students receive additional bullying that other students don't have to deal with, it only makes sense to provide specific help for these students. But these right-wing religious groups object to anything that paints LGBT individuals in a positive light. They also object to the fact that the provincial government is requiring that all of Ontario's public Catholic schools have gay-straight alliances. Of course, the provincial government is only taking matters into its own hands because the province's publicly funded Catholic schools were ignoring LGBT issues in their schools.

UAE tries to increase GPAs by paying students

In an effort to increase student motivation, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is going to try an ingenious new strategy: they are going to pay the university students who have higher GPAs. According to the New York Times, the UAE Scholarship System will pay a monthly stipend to students who major in certain programs (like medicine or engineering) and achieve a grade point average of 3.6 or above.

Send Your Kid to School, Go Directly to Jail

The funding of American public schools is completely broken.

Nearly 50% of the funding of American public schools is tied to local taxes, which, as you can imagine, leads to some great disparities between school districts. School districts that are found in wealthy areas -- areas that pay more taxes -- receive substantially more than school districts found in poorer areas -- areas that pay very few taxes. How large of a disparity? In excess of $10 000 per student per year, which is right around the amount that the Canadian province of Ontario provides to its students (for the 2011-12 school year, Ontario's average per-student funding is $11 207). Predictably, this arrangement also exacerbates poverty and increases the income disparity between whites and everyone else.

Mumurations

A murmuration of starlings (image courtesy of http://pyramidbeach.com/tag/murmuration/)

On Sunday, educator Rodd Lucier posted about one of the many mumuration videos that have been making the rounds across the internet lately. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the term, a murmuration is the collective noun for a group of starlings -- a flock of starlings, to put it more simply.

"Matt’s Safe School Law"

Recently there has been a lot of media attention devoted to bullying and suicide in schools. While I certainly have a lot to say on the matter, I will keep this brief. Take a look at the following quote, taken from this article and written by Amy Sullivan, that talks about how politicians in Michigan decided to tackle the issue:

This year, Republicans only agreed to consider an anti-bullying measure that did not require school districts to report bullying incidents, did not include any provisions for enforcement or teacher training, and did not hold administrators accountable if they fail to act. 

In response to several recent suicides, the politicians in charge decided to pass a bill against bullying that didn't actually do anything. Under this bill, teachers, administrators, and school boards don't actually have to prevent bullying, discourage bullying, or even report bullying, which is the lowest level of ethical action that one can take. While that should be deplorable in and of itself, it gets far, far worse:

On Wednesday, the Republican-controlled state senate passed an anti-bullying bill that manages to protect school bullies instead of those they victimize. It accomplishes this impressive feat by allowing students, teachers, and other school employees to claim that “a sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction” justifies their harassment.

Good work, Michigan Republicans. You're responsible for changing a bill that would have prevented bullying into a bill that will encourage bullying.

Thank goodness the system is in such capable hands.