5 Jun 2018

I Had A Really Lovely Experience Today

By : I had a really lovely experience today:
I’m doing my first placement as part of my teaching degree and they’ve put me in a boys school. I had my first lesson with the year eight students today. They’re loud, rambunctious and fidgitty, but there’s no malice in any of them.
For the first few minutes I was advised to let them get to know me – I gave them some selected work history and education and asked if they had any questions. They asked where I was born, if I knew my IQ, where to go to get your IQ tested and then a boy at the back asked:

What do you think about feminism?

I thought quickly and decided to be honest.

I think it’s cancer.

The room erupted. They were applauding. Some were on their feet. One Italian boy was pointing at me yelling to his friends “I love him, I love him! He’s my guy!”

US Federal Aviation Authority Ditched Merit For Diversity

"Someone determined the workforce was
too male and too white."

Ubiquitous Educational Gynocentrism: Teachers ‘Give Higher Marks To Girls’

Via Bryn, J4MB: It’s been known for decades that teachers award girls higher marks than boys for the same quality of work, indeed that knowledge was the driver of the replacement of O Levels by GCSEs in 1987/8, because then teachers’ pro-girl bias could be reflected in higher marks for girls. The significant education gender gap started that year – the gap had been minuscule previously – and has been with us ever since. It’s an issue well explored by William Collins here. Extracts from the BBC piece:
Teachers are more lenient in their marking of girls’ schoolwork, according to an international study.
An OECD report on gender in education, across more than 60 countries, found that girls receive higher marks compared with boys of the same ability.
Researchers suggest girls are better behaved in class and this influences how teachers perceive their work.
Differences in school results can sometimes “have little to do with ability”, says the study.

Intersectional Feminism: What’s Up With That?

By : 10 years ago, my red pill journey started when I read Malcolm Gladwell’s best selling book The Outliers.
Gladwell is a writer with very liberal views, but his 4 books are well researched, well written and based on actual scientific research.
The basic premise of The Outliers, is that success relates to being at the right place, at the right time, in the right part of your life, with the right amount of practical experience (10,000 hours according to Gladwell).
It starts with an explanation of how a disproportionate number of professional ice hockey players are born in January, and ends with a story about Gladwell’s own African roots.
In the final chapter (A Jamaican story), Gladwell tells the story of his own slave roots, as a way of introducing the idea that the consequences of multi generational oppression can take up to 400 years for any oppressed group to fully recover from.
Gladwell is a great storyteller, and his use of statistics and expert testimony, make a compelling argument that the descendants of enslaved Africans not only experience a lasting social legacy, but a resilient genetic memory, that will take another 200 years to fully disappear.

Preach Less, Live Your Values More

The employees who are resigning in protest, several of whom discussed their decision to leave with Gizmodo, say that executives have become less transparent with their workforce about controversial business decisions and seem less interested in listening to workers’ objections than they once did. In the case of Maven, Google is helping the Defense Department implement machine learning to classify images gathered by drones. But some employees believe humans, not algorithms, should be responsible for this sensitive and potentially lethal work—and that Google shouldn’t be involved in military work at all.
Historically, Google has promoted an open culture that encourages employees to challenge and debate product decisions. But some employees feel that their leadership no longer as attentive to their concerns, leaving them to face the fallout. “Over the last couple of months, I’ve been less and less impressed with the response and the way people’s concerns are being treated and listened to,” one employee who resigned said. 

Whoever Controls The Narrative Controls The World

It is not difficult to find someone to read from a teleprompter for large amounts of money. What absolutely is difficult is finding someone who is willing to deceive and manipulate to advance the agendas of the privileged few day after day.
Authored by Caitlin Johnstone: MSNBC host Joy Reid still has a job. Despite blatantly lying about time-traveling hackers bearing responsibility for bigoted posts a decade ago in her then-barely-known blog, despite her reportedly sparking an FBI investigation on false pretenses, despite her colleagues at MSNBC being completely fed up with how the network is handling the controversy surrounding her, her career just keeps trundling forward like a bullet-riddled zombie. 
To be clear, I do not particularly care that Joy Reid has done any of these things. I write about war, nuclear escalations and the sociopathy of US government agencies which kill millions of people; I don't care that Joy Reid is or was a homophobe, and I don't care that she lied to cover it up. The war agendas that MSNBC itself promotes on a daily basis are infinitely worse than either of these things, and if that isn't obvious to you it's because military propaganda has caused you to compartmentalizeyourself out of an intellectually honest understanding of what war is.

UK School Forces Boys To Wear "Gender-Neutral" Skirts Instead Of Shorts

SkirtsBy Tyler Durden: A private secondary school in Oxfordshire, England is banning its male students from wearing shorts during the summer months, and is instead requesting that they wear a more "gender neutral" ensemble that includes that staple of men's athletic wear: The skirt.
According to the Daily Mail, Chiltern Edge Secondary School's rule change comes after an unfavorable ruling by a government agency tasked with overseeing educational standards.
School leaders said the skirts were a "more formal" alternative to shorts, regardless of how uncomfortable they might make male students at the school.
Unsurprisingly, parents are complaining about the bizarre school dress code, which is part of a larger trend of schools adopting "gender neutral" uniforms to make transgender students feel more at home.
Of course, parents of straight students can rest assured that their children will also feel comfortable: Because if they don't want to wear the "gender neutral" skirt ensembles, they can simply wear blazers and trousers in the sweltering heat.

Race And Class In The Ruins Of Empire + Wild Style

Ash Sarkar Meets Akala