By MRA-UK:There are several ways in which schools can disadvantage boys’ education. One is by adopting feminised pedagogy, designed for girls but unappealing to boys. I discussed an example of this here. Another way in which boys’ education may be adversely affected is through low expectations and negative stereotyping. I give an example of this below. But a third way, upon which I wish to focus primarily in this article, is by teachers assessing boys more harshly than they assess girls. The evidence seems to be mounting that unfair teacher assessment, to the detriment of boys, is widespread. I review several sources testifying to this phenomenon. There is, of course, a fourth mechanism of male disadvantage: society’s tendency to focus only upon those areas where girls are doing less well, and ignoring areas where boys do less well. Athena SWAN is an example of this. I take the opportunity to review two recent publications: a comprehensive meta-analysis of teacher assessment data by Voyer and Voyer, from the Psychological Bulletin (2014), and the most recent OECD / PISA report (published 2015). I will have more to say about the latter in a follow-up post. This post cannot pretend to be a thorough review of all the literature. I have included only those sources with which I am familiar. There may well be other sources with contradictory findings which a comprehensive review would identify and critique.
Millions of fathers in the UK are desperate to be closely involved in their children's lives and are precluded by the Family Courts system from doing so. Not that you'd know it if you followed only the so-called mainstream media, still less if you were stuck inside the Westminster bubble. Politicians run scared of the idea that a child is entitled to both parents in their lives and remain prisoner to the notion that "mother is always right." It is a Gordian knot which needs to be unraveled, so we invited Matt O'Connor, the public face of one of the biggest civil rights campaigns in Britain, Fathers for Justice, to help us.
Submitted by Tyler Durden: Last Wednesday, Mario Draghi and ECB chief economist Peter Praet had a clear message for critics of PSPP: we’ll keep printing money forever if we have to, but in the end, this is going to work. As skepticism grows regarding not only the soundness of the philosophy that underpins QE, but about whether the structure of the ECB’s asset purchase program is even viable, the central bank remains defiant to the end and indeed Praet doubled down on the rhetoric last week, noting that the ECB would “use all tools available” to ensure that “monetary dominance prevails.”
That kind of language may be good for morale in some circles, but a growing number of critics are suggesting that perhaps the world would be better off in terms of financial stability if the powers behind “monetary dominance” would let the market prevail for once so that some semblance of price discovery could begin to reassert itself. We’re a long way from that though and in fact, the outlook for euro money markets is anything but normal as Barclays made very clear last week. Here is our summary of their take on the market:
Jeremy Clarkson the racist presenter of the most-widely watched UK
television program, Top Gear, has hinted that the time may have come for
him to leave the program.
Press TV: In his column for the Sun
newspaper, Clarkson likened himself for a dinosaur that nature had made a
mistake in inventing. He wrote:” I don’t intend to dwell here on what
happened then or what will happen in the future. I’m sure you’re as fed
up with the story as I am.” Clarkson also joked about the BBC
suspending him “following a fracas”, saying that one news report had
been wildly inaccurate in saying that he had been seen using a bus. “I
can assure you that things are bad. But they are not that bloody bad,”
he wrote. The
presenter also thanked his racist fans, saying that one of the things that had
cheered him up was the thousands of racist and ignorant people who had expressed their
support for him.
The Greek defense minister has accused German Finance
Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble of waging "psychological warfare" against
Athens amid talks between Greece and its creditors over the country’s
bailout.
Press TV: "I do not understand why he criticizes Greece every day with new statements," Panos Kammenos told the German daily Bild on Saturday, adding, "It's like psychological warfare." He added that the German finance minister was “poisoning” relations between Athens and Berlin. Speaking
in an exclusive interview with German-language Austrian public
broadcaster, ORF, on Friday, the German finance minister warned that the
possibility of Greece’s exit from the European Union (EU)’s monetary
bloc cannot be excluded.
By Raúl Ilargi Meijer: I think I should accept that I will never in my life cease to be amazed at the capacity of the human being to spin a story to his/her own preferences, rather than take it simply for what it is. Your run of the mill journalist is even better at this than the average person – which may be why (s)he became a journalist in the first place -, and financial journalists are by far the best spinners among their peers. That’s what I was thinking when I saw another Bloomberg headline that appealed to my more base instincts, which I blame on the fact that it shows a blatant lack of any and all brain activity (well, other than spin, that is). Here’s what Bloomberg’s Craig Torres and Michelle Jamrisko write: “American Mystery Story: Consumers Aren’t Spending Even In a Booming Job Market”. Yes, it is a great mystery to 95% of journalists and economists. Because they have never learned to even contemplate that perhaps people can be so deep in debt that they have nothing left to spend. Instead, their knowledge base states that if people don’t spend, they must be saving. Those are the sole two options. And so if the US government reports that 863,000 underpaid new waiters have been hired, these waiters have to go out and spend all that underpayment, they must consume. And if they don’t, that becomes The American Mystery Story. For me, the mystery lies elsewhere. I’m wondering how it ever got to this. How did the capacity for critical thinking disappear from the field of economics? And from journalism?
Me, Skeptorr, DrRandomercam, and TL;DR talking shit about the week's nonsense. If there's anything you'd like us to talk about, please let us know. 6oodfella
By Dr. Tanveer Ahmed:I have been considerably disempowered after writing about male
disempowerment. Wading into the treacherous, virulent, oestrogen laden
waters of modern feminism I have learnt that the gender wars are seen by
many as a zero sum game, much like poker or derivatives trading. After writing in the Australian last month about the limited
discussion of male disempowerment in the context of domestic violence, I
was treated to an orgy of abuse, threats and complete
mis-representation. The attacks were distributed in the convergent media
– online, mobile and television. The article was partly in response to my own experience of seeing
relatives and patients who had been violent to their partners. I
despised them as a child and adolescent, but with maturity and an
education, came to understand that they experienced the social upheaval
forced upon them through migration as a kind of humiliation. I was labeled a misogynist and a blamer of women. Threatening
messages were left at my practice. Nurses at my psychiatric hospital in
western Sydney took me aside to apply their counseling skills to the
public assaults on my character. ‘You’ve really pissed some people off,
doc. Are you OK?’ This encounter occurred while actual patients were
threatening self harm on the ward.
