Schools and Religion
In How Appealing on Wednesday, there was a reference to this article in Reuters. Key quotes:
"A California teacher has been barred by his school from giving students documents from American history that refer to God -- including the Declaration of Independence. Steven Williams, a fifth-grade teacher at Stevens Creek School in the San Francisco Bay area suburb of Cupertino, sued for discrimination on Monday, claiming he had been singled out for censorship by principal Patricia Vidmar because he is a Christian. . . .
Williams asserts in the lawsuit that since May he has been required to submit all of his lesson plans and supplemental handouts to Vidmar for approval, and that the principal will not permit him to use any that contain references to God or Christianity.
Among the materials she has rejected, according to Williams, are excerpts from the Declaration of Independence, George Washington's journal, John Adams' diary, Samuel Adams' ‘The Rights of the Colonists’ and William Penn's ‘The Frame of Government of Pennsylvania.’"
My perspective:
On the one hand, not allowing the Declaration of Independence to be given to students, or redacting the phrase “our Creator” from it, is patently ridiculous. It is a historical document and we can’t ‘white out’ sections of history to comport with modern sensibilities. Yes, we’ve done so in the past: ignoring the viewpoints of other races and cultures in teaching our own. But haven’t we all learned that’s a silly thing to do? How can we learn from history if we don't explore it in all it's messy, un-politically-correct color? We can acknowledge that a belief in God was important to our founding fathers without entering into the realm of preaching why you should believe in that God, or any god, too.
On the other hand, the article doesn’t say he wanted to hand the children a copy of the Declaration of Independence. It says he wanted to hand them “excerpts” from it. What if the excerpts read something like this:
"When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them . . . that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. . . .
We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions . . .
And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor."
And what if the context of these excerpts was a lesson entitled something like: "How God founded the United States Government and Why We are Wrong Not to Pray Thankfully to Jesus every day for our Freedom"? So when the school says he can't give the lesson he files suit and calls it ridiculous he can't teach the Declaration of Independence.
There is little background material beyond a copy of the original complaint, posted on The Smoking Gun.
That copy indicates Mr. Williams was required to run his educational materials past school censors when a parent complained after he used George W. Bush's Proclamation on the National Day of Prayer as an example of a presidential proclamation.
Again, what was the context of this lesson - a historical example of a presidential proclamation, or an hour long lesson on "Why I Pray to Jesus and You Should Too"? An interesting side note: according to the complaint, one of the other materials that was censored by the school was a handout entitled: "What Great Leaders Have Said About the Bible." That leads me to suspect that the materials might not have been confined to the historical context, but entered into the preaching/prostheletyzing hypothetical.
There's not enough information here to make the judgment calls that the school 'banned the declaration of independence.' They have banned a handout that included excerpts from the Declaration. Until we know the context and what precisely that handout said, we've got little to judge the case on.
Iowa Geek points out that the California Code requires that the Declaration be taught.
Stupid Suits
Then there's this woman, who tried to pass herself off as a member of the Saudi royal family, a model for the Bergdorf Goodman catalogue, a divorcée awaiting a windfall, after her ex-husband finally sold their $7 million Nantucket home, a convert to Judaism, and courted invitations to Seders, and a triplet with two loving sisters. According to Overlawyered, she's seeking $2 million in damages from American Express for "for daring to seek to recover the $951,000 she charged without paying, claiming they "should have known that [she] was acting impulsively and irrationally" because of "anorexia, depression, panic attacks, [and] head tumors" and shouldn't have been given credit in the first place."
Yep.
Computer Analysis
This article in Wired News indicates that Dartmouth College has a developed a statistical analysis algorithm that allows a computer to tell the identity of a work's true artist. I hope it works better than the Gender Genie, another test based on a scientific algorithm, which when fed excerpts from my blog back in September, decided I was male:
Female Score: 2363
Male Score: 4600
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: male!
Am I right? The author of this passage is actually:
male
female
Hmm - twice as male as I am female?? I politely correct the genie, and receive this comment:
That is one butch chick.
According to Koppel and Argamon, the algorithm should predict the gender of the author approximately 80% of the time.
Stay Tuned on this Legal Issue
According to Slashdot, at least one federal judge believes that logging the strokes on a keyboard isn't wiretapping because it's not done over a network but at the computer itself. Disclaimer: I don't recall much about wiretapping law, and I've not seen the actual ruling. But presuming for a moment that the article's accurate, wouldn't that be like saying that so long as you put a bug right inside the telephone, rather than outside on the pole, you're fine?
The New Minority
This post at the Volokh Conspiracy indicates that colleges are lowering admissions standards in order to establish parity in admissions - for men. The statistics are what's interesting:
National college enrollment--
Females: 56%
Males: 44%
U.S. high school students who... Maintained an A average--
Females: 62%
Males: 38%
I won't comment, in case I'm accused of picking on an intellectually disadvantaged segment of the population.
Funny
Iowa Hawk's "It's a Dan-derful Life" made me giggle.
On to new stuff later. . .
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