sacred bird » education

they’ve got a logo and everything

630 — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 09:32:59 +0000

if you’re milling about with nothing to do this summer, you might want to check out new online learning venture, beck university. exclusive content available only with the insider extreme subscription to glenn beck’s website, “professors” for the university include david barton of wall builders, a “pro-family organization”, david l. buckner, the president of a consulting and training company and james r. stoner, jr a political science profession at Louisiana state university. “Through captivating lectures and interactive online discussions, these experts will explore the concepts of Faith, Hope and Charity and show you how they influence America’s past, her present and most importantly her future.” first session, faith 101 starts today.

[glennbeck.com]

at least she apologized

180 — Wed, 26 May 2010 02:47:25 +0000

reporter ann curry screwed-up big time when she gave the commencement speech at wheaton college in massachusetts over the weekend. during her speech at the fomer women’s college curry recognized the schools esteemed graduates reverand billy graham, film director wes craven, and politician dennis hastert. problem was, these dudes graduated before 1988 when it was a women’s college and they attended another wheaton college — the one in illinois.

refreshingly, curry followed the path of her former today show colleague campbell brown who lost her contract at cnn last week and said “I am mortified by my mistake, and can only hope the purity of my motive, to find a way to connect with the graduates and to encourage them to a life of service, will allow you to forgive me.”

i bet brad and angelina will still keep her as their go-to interviewer.

[time]

well, people think the president walks on water

180 — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 05:40:34 +0000

a study of british school children revealed some pretty interesting things about what they know and their sense of scientific history. in addition to thinking that queen elizabeth invented the telephone they thought that luke skywalker and richard branson have been on the moon (one of these guys is working on it) and finally; sir isaac newton discovered fire, the internet, and /or america.

the good news is, these same kids indicated that they’d rather be famous for winning a nobel prize in science than for winning on the tv show x factor. maybe that’s because the president won the nobel prize a coupla months ago.

photo via the new york daily news

standard issue

180 — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 05:45:37 +0000

by now you may have heard that states have eased education standards so that kids can graduate from high school–the tests were deemed too hard so they made them easier to pass “The real pattern in states has been that the standards are lowered so much that the exams end up not benefiting students who pass them while still hurting the students who fail them,” according to john robert warren an exam expert and at the university of minnesota-twin cities. warren goes on to say that “The exams are just challenging enough to reduce the graduation rate…but not challenging enough to have measurable consequences for how much students learn or for how prepared they are for life after high school.”

in a related story, the state of texas is in the process of updating their academic standards to bring them into the 21st century and the process has not been easy. here are some of the battles that have erupted over what to or not to cover in history and social studies:

how much prominence to give civil rights activist and supreme court justice thurgood marshall
whether or not to cover christmas
highlighting the christian beliefs of the founding fathers
the fact that mary kay ash of mary kay cosmetics is mentioned more times than christopher colombus

given what we’ve featured before about some people in texas, i’m thinking they should focus on other subjects like spelling.

photo courtesy of the suss-man

it’s rough in 6th grade

630 — Wed, 27 May 2009 21:21:24 +0000

a group of 11 and 12 year old girls from elk plain school of choice in washington made a video of ways to kill a classmate and posted it to youtube. titled top six ways to kill piper, the video shows various ways piper (the victim) is killed including being shot by the other girls, being poisoned and being pushed off a cliff. the video, since taken off youtube, was set to the hannah montana song “true friend”. the school district won’t disclose how the girls were disciplined but the spokesperson has said the girls “have expressed their remorse about this incident.” if you ask me, this is where the younger generation’s quick adoption of technology is a problem. in the old days, the bully girls wouldn’t just stuffed piper in a locker or laughed about her behind her back. there wouldn’t have been all this hoopla with a video.

a real renaissance man.

180 — Wed, 06 May 2009 14:48:17 +0000

first it was his art, now it’s his book, mein kampf. business students in india consider hitler’s manifesto a ”success story where one man can have a vision, work out a plan on how to implement it and then successfully complete it.”* the book has come into favor because of “the mutual influence of india and hitler’s nazis on one another. mahatma gandhi corresponded with the fuhrer, pro-independence leader subhas chandra bose’s indian national army allied with hitler’s germany and japan during the second world war, and the nazis drew on hindu symbolism for their swastika motif and ideas of aryan supremacy.”

india isn’t the only place where the book is selling like hot cakes. it sells in croatia, russia, and turkey too. in germany, the book is banned until 2015–until he’s been dead 70 years.

* i guess they skip over the part where dude killed himself when his plan went to hell in a hand-basket.

and maybe it’s cause they’re just dumb

630 — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 21:33:36 +0000

a new study of undergrad and grad students found that students who used facebook typically have gpas a grade lower than their counter part who don’t use facebook. not surprisingly, 79% of the facebook users don’t believe there’s a link between their gpa and their use of the site.

aryn karpinski, one of the authors of the study, is quick to stay that the study only shows that there’s a relationship between grades and facebook but not that facebook is the direct cause. she offers the suggestion “Maybe [Facebook users] are just prone to distraction. Maybe they are just procrastinators.”

i hope christian isn’t a stickler for grammar

180 — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 14:10:38 +0000

not sure if you heard about christian bales tirade against some poor man who dared to check out the lights during a scene he was shooting for terminator 19 (or whatever version it is). apparently, christian isn’t the only human to get his panties in a bunch because of seemingly small but annoying infraction.

it seems that due to the onslaught of stressful events (failing job market, financial implosion, election 08, war) grammarians are ratcheting up the battle to save the english language. clinical psychologist pauline wallin says that “stress can affect how forgiving people are of spelling and punctuation errors…when people are under stress, they have less tolerance for minor frustrations.” here’s are some ways that grammarians are acting out:

grammar vandal kate mcculley uses her sharpie to correct offenses in her native boston and posts them on her website. she calls out bill cosby (who i think lately has seemed all there), and i’m not sure he’ll like that.
there’s a group on facebook called “i judge you because you use poor grammar” that has over 350,000 people.
two people were charged with conspiracy to vandalize government property after they fixed punctuation errors on a historic hand-painted sign in Grand Canyon National Park. they got a year’s probation, were banned from national parks, and were prohibited from making any more corrections to public signs, and were ordered to pay more than $3,000 to fix the problem.
many people refuse to patronize stores like “krispy kreme” and flip out when the takeout menu lands on their doorstep rife with errors (e.g., plate of chicken finger).

as i said, i just hope christian bale isn’t a stickler for grammar, though by now we know he isn’t bothered by profanity. can you imagine the tirade at toys “r” us.

WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?
ARE YOU PROFESSIONAL OR NOT?
DO I WALK AROUND YOUR STORE AND MOVE LETTERS AROUND?
WHAT DON’T YOU F*&^% UNDERSTAND?
IT’S F&*(#@ DISTRACTING!

ex-’jasper’-ating!

180 — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 07:03:23 +0000

president obama may be in the white house but things for the ‘intellectual elites’ continue to get worse. brandeis university announced that it would be closing the world famous rose art gallery and selling off the world renowned art collection of over 6,000 pieces to cover increasing budget gaps caused by a faltering economy and investments with ponzi scheme artist bernard madoff. the collection includes works from art giants like robert rauschenberg, jasper johns, and roy lichtenstein, and is believed to be worth close to $400M.

when asked for his reaction to the planned sale, johns said “i find it astonishing. i’ve never heard anything like it.” the gallery’s director, michael rush, found about about the sale on monday and said “i was shocked. i’m still shocked. i feel horrible. it’s a sad time for art and for the art world.”

photo courtesy of cliff1066

tracy morgan wasn’t kidding*

180 — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 05:07:42 +0000

oh the times they are a changing.

former florida state univesity safety myron rolle did the unthinkable and decided to get his mind kicked next year instead of his butt. rather than enter the 2009 n.f.l. draft with some of his fellow classmmates, rolle confirmed today that he has decided to head to england’s oxford university to complete a rhodes scholarship studying medical anthropology. in 2010 he plans to put the cleats back on and enter the nfl draft. when he’s done with football, he’ll go to med school and open a clinic in the bahamas.

oh, and, he finished his undergrad degree in pre-med in under 3 years. sounds like that guy needs a vacation.

click here to see what tracy morgan said.