How Will the 99% Deal with 70 Million Psychopaths? Did you know that roughly one person in a hundred is clinically a psychopath? These individuals are either born with an emotional deficiency that keeps them from feeling bad about hurting others or they are traumatized early in life in a manner that causes them to become this way. With more than 7 billion people on the planet that means there are as many as 70,000,000 psychopaths alive today. These people are more likely to be risk takers, opportunists motivated by self-interest and greed, and inclined to dominate or subjugate those around them through manipulative means. Last year, the Occupy Movement drew a distinction between the top 1% and the remaining 99% — as distinguished by measures of wealth and income. Of course, this breakdown is misleading since there are many top income earners who sympathize with the plights of others and are not part of the problem. The global economy we have today is built on a deep history of top-down hierarchies that promote domination and control.
Common-Core-repeal-has-Oklahoma-educators-worried-5636311 OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — With the Legislature's repeal of tough, new English and math standards known as Common Core, education leaders said they're concerned Oklahoma students will fall further behind their counterparts in more than 40 state which have implemented the standards. Until Oklahoma develops its own new standards — a process expected to take at least two years — districts were directed by the new law to return to the Priority Academic Student Skills, or PASS standards, that were in place in 2010. But many educators worry those standards aren't nearly enough to adequately prepare students for college or the workforce. "From the use of those PASS standards, we have a 42 percent remediation rate in college," said State Superintendent Janet Barresi, referring to the number of Oklahoma students who had to take remedial courses after graduating high school. "Those are teaching practices, and we can continue to implement those with or without the actual standards," Sparks said.
Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed (The Real Reason For The Forty-Hour ... By David Cain / raptitude.com/ Oct 23, 2013 Well I’m in the working world again. I’ve found myself a well-paying gig in the engineering industry, and life finally feels like it’s returning to normal after my nine months of traveling. Because I had been living quite a different lifestyle while I was away, this sudden transition to 9-to-5 existence has exposed something about it that I overlooked before. Since the moment I was offered the job, I’ve been markedly more careless with my money. I’m not talking about big, extravagant purchases. In hindsight I think I’ve always done this when I’ve been well-employed — spending happily during the “flush times.” I suppose I do it because I feel I’ve regained a certain stature, now that I am again an amply-paid professional, which seems to entitle me to a certain level of wastefulness. What I’m doing isn’t unusual at all. It seems I got much more for my dollar when I was traveling. A Culture of Unnecessaries You may have heard of Parkinson’s Law.
Beware of Common Core ‘Lite’ On several recent occasions you may have heard pundits or public officials claim that South Carolina has gotten rid of Common Core. The implication is that the state has retaken power from the federal government over education policy. There’s some truth in that, and it’s certainly encouraging to see some state officials moving in that direction, but to claim South Carolina has regained sovereignty over its academic standards would be — unfortunately — far from the truth. It’s true that the Legislature passed a bill that that, among other things, requires South Carolina to begin reviewing its current English and math standards — currently Common Core — by Jan. 1, 2015. All good. Unfortunately, though, the department doesn’t have sole power over academic standards in the state. Moreover, to fully understand why Common Core opponents should remain cautious, it’s important to remember why the federalized standards regime was adopted in South Carolina in the first place — money.
The Anthropocene: It’s Not All About Us Anthropocene artifacts. (Photo by Garrett, on Flickr) Time to celebrate! Woo-hoo! It’s official: we humans have started a new geological epoch – the Anthropocene. Let’s wait to stock up on party favors, though. Welcome to the Anthropocene: A world that may feature little in the way of multi-cellular ocean life other than jellyfish, and one whose continents might be dominated by a few generalist species able to quickly occupy new and temporary niches as habitats degrade (rats, crows, and cockroaches come to mind). To be sure, there are celebrants of the Anthropocene who believe we’re just getting started, and that humans can and will shape this new epoch deliberately, intelligently, and durably. Is the Anthropocene the culmination of human folly? The viability of the “we’re-in-charge-and-loving-it” version of the Anthropocene – let’s call it the Techno-Anthropocene – hinges on highly optimistic prospects for nuclear power. But the prospects for current nuclear technology are not rosy.
My view: New Common Core lawsuit fights for local control Porter Davidson of Payson gathers with Common Core opponents at the State Board of Education office in Salt Lake City on in this Friday, Aug. 2, 2013 file photo. Laura Seitz, Deseret News Enlarge photo» Two weeks ago, Gov. Herbert held a press conference to announce that he’s “listening” to Common Core critics and that he has asked the Attorney General to conduct a “thorough legal review” of these untested, yet quickly adopted, education standards. Whether or not the governor is seriously concerned about Common Core’s legal implications — given re-election pressures, it’s reasonable to suggest his inquiry may be more superficial than substantive — he’s right to seek a review. Unfortunately, Herbert and others are primarily focused on the “federal entanglement” as a result of the strings attached to federal grants sought out and obtained by the Utah State Board of Education. Most Utahns believe that local control of education is important. Connor Boyack is president of Libertas Institute.
What Shade of Green are You? | Generation Alpha Part 1: The Spectrum of a Movement The environment movement has, of late, become all but subsumed by the climate movement. I point this out not because climate doesn’t matter, but because it’s not the only thing that does. I fear that many important challenges are going unaddressed due to lack of attention. And I fear that our tactics are narrowing in scope, shunning direct action and favouring populism. The emerging trend of the environment movement is toward the centre of the bell curve, both in terms of issues addressed, and the means by which they are addressed. As the movement pulls resources toward the organizations and agendas at the centre of the bell curve the extremities get frozen out, and alternative perspectives get lost. With such intense competition for such limited resources, brand image and recruitment become powerful means for amplifying a perspective, and the movement collapses toward the populist centre, where most of the funding is applied. Bright Green Lite Green
Common Core accused of leaving special-needs students behind There are 6.5 million special-education students in the U.S. today, and most are falling further behind their peers under Common Core standards. “The latest government figures show that the dropout rate for students with disabilities is twice that for non-disabled students,” NPR’s Claudio Sanchez reported. “Two-thirds of students with disabilities are performing well below grade level in reading and math. By the eighth grade, that figure rises to 90 percent.” Secretary of Education Arne Duncan responded to the rising problem of special education failing under Common Core in a press conference, expressing his disregard for schools claiming it’s enough that they are following the standards of Common Core in their special-education classrooms. "Most states are in compliance with special-education regulations," Duncan said. "There's always been a gap — academically, socially — between what he could do and other kids could do," Rebecca Ellis told Kamenetz about her autistic son.
Radical Paganism | PAGANARCH Jason Pitzl-Waters’ recent op-ed piece in The Wild Hunt is fucking excellent. … I stayed a Pagan because it also promised me a world, a culture, remade. A world where multiplicity, diversity, was honored. A world where a singular, all-powerful, male-pronouned, deity was replaced with innumerable pantheons of powers. A world where there was Goddess. Paganism, if it isn’t radical, is worthless. The brilliance of Capitalism is this, that it’s taught us all that we cannot make our own worlds and instead must rely on what the market provides, selecting from the aisles our beliefs, our opinions, and our modes of living. Honoring gods and goddesses [and I note with pleasure that Jason does something not many Wiccan-ish writers do--too often, they talk about the Goddess and ignore the obvious question the polytheist poses: "which one?" Becoming Pagan is a radical act, and it doesn’t end at just buying a pentacle-necklace and making a wand, or setting up an altar to the gods. Like this:
To Think For Themselves, Students Must See Themselves The First Step In Teaching Students To Think For Themselves The first step in helping students think for themselves just might be to help them see who they are and where they are. If we truly want students to adapt their thinking, design their thinking, and diverge their thinking, it (the thinking) has to start and stop somewhere. Generally, this means beginning with the learning target a teacher establishes, and ending with an evaluation of how the student “did.” But thinking has nothing to do with content. Thinking is a strategy to learn content, but they are otherwise distinct. Examining A Self-Directed Learning Framework Last year, we created a framework to guide students in self-directed learning. 1. 2. These theories don’t sound outrageous, but compared to existing educational forms they really are different. By now this is a tired argument, but one theory is that modern education can be characterized by its industrial form and its managerial tone. Content Areas: All Overview 1. 2. 3.
Managing disorder: towards a global state of control? Refusing to tackle the causes of our troubles and allow public space for dissent, the neoliberal state is sliding inexorably towards authoritarianism. Image: Brazilian police demonstrated its new riot gear last month. When an Egyptian judge condemned 529 Muslim Brotherhood supporters to death this week, he underlined in one fell swoop the terrifying reality in which the world finds itself today. The revolutionary euphoria and constituent impulse that shook the global order back in 2011 have long since given way to a re-established state of control. Violent repression of protest and dissent — whether progressive or reactionary — has become the new normal. While the mass death sentence of Islamist protesters in Egypt is an exceptionally violent and lethal instance of this process, the army’s counter-revolutionary consolidation appears to be indicative of a more generalized trend that can be felt across the globe. The state in which we live now is no more a disciplinary state.
Common Core Dates Back to the Marxist-Socialist Paradigm of UN Charter [This article is co-authored by Bonnie O'Neil] The United Nations Agenda 21 has quietly changed the makeup of our cities and rural areas through highly questionable tactics, clothed in lofty adjectives such as ”smart growth” and “sustainability,” as we’ve written previously. Agenda 21 activists have quietly initiated laws that allowed the government to confiscate our land, water, private property, and wilderness areas. Their ultimate goal is to strip Americans of personal rights and freedoms, creating a socialist future and eventually a one-world government. Not a pretty picture! A necessary path to obtain those desired changes must include the indoctrination of children through education. A plan to indoctrinate our children with communist ideals has been in the works at least as far back as 1963, and probably longer. Following the absence of Christian values in classrooms, sex education classes became popular, complete with intimate graphics and condoms freely handed out to students.
Bureaucracy, Autocracy and Neoliberal Canada (Photo: Fibonacci Blue / Flickr)We must not only intervene, resist and oppose neoliberal governments and corporate capitalist hegemony; we must finally put an end to these death-dealing institutions. One cannot reflect upon the notion of human adaptability without experiencing both a sense of awe and a feeling of increasing uneasiness. We are awed when science tells us that one of the most powerful evolutionary intellectual capacities we possess is the ability to adapt to challenging and unforeseen situations and environments. We adjust to extremities of weather, the loss of loved ones, constantly changing technologies and shifting social, economic and political circumstances - not always quickly or faultlessly, but inevitably, given time. In the same moment of reflection, we can experience apprehension when we sense that we have become habituated to things that are contrary to our individual or communal interests: systemic injustices, intolerant, racist or sexist attitudes.
New York Students Opting Out of Common Core Testing Told To “Sit And Stare”… Written By : Tiffiny RuegnerApril 2, 2014 Perhaps I have lived in a box most of my life but I can attest that I had not really heard the word ‘rigor’ until Common Core Standards started to surface. Rigor is about helping students learn at higher levels. Ironically, a friend of mine met a Russian girl at the mall yesterday who said in Russia she was learning in 5th grade what American kids are learning in college. You can look at the rigor of our educational standards in the 50′s and see that American schools are soft in the rigor department just so the below average students don’t have to fail. I’m wondering if when Common Core experts use the word ‘rigor’ they are meaning ‘rigor mortis’ or death as education has been stripped of mind stretching challenging learning. I’ve found when talking to administrative persons in the educational field that they talk about the beautiful words of a ‘fairer education’.