Texsox

QUOTE(southsideirish71 @ Nov 13, 2007 -> 12:36 PM) I was born in Ireland, came over when I was one years old, I am the first generation immigrant. We are the first to come here, the rest of my family is still there. I used to go there at least once a year, when I was little for 2 months in the summer. Now with a family of my own, we go about once every few years. We are going back this summer, it will be the first time my kids are going. This was a point in one of my classes last week. Looking at the immigrant stories of Ellis Island and Angel Island, are so different. Then you compare it with immigrants from our southern border who can be "back in the old country" with a 2 hour drive for weekends. Or, were here when the border changed and suddenly had the choice of moving and staying Mexican or staying and becoming American. You are one of the lucky ones, at least in my opinion. You could retain some sense of knowing your ancestral roots.

QUOTE(BigEdWalsh @ Nov 13, 2007 -> 09:54 AM) Jaws. The movie was much better than the book. The book had a ridiculous affair between Hooper and Brody's wife. The scene where Quint talks about the USS Indianapolis, which I liked, was not in the book. Jaws sequels were horrendous, but no matter, the original was a real good movie. The book, for me anyway, was disappointing. Bingo, that was the first one I thought of. Did you see the making of Jaws extra? Spielberg wanted a scene where the harbor master was washing out a coffee mug at the dock. As they pan away you see one by one, sails starting to rocking until all of them are rocking. It was decided the scene would have been too expensive to shoot so they went with the guys fishing with the huge beef roast instead.

QUOTE(southsideirish71 @ Nov 13, 2007 -> 12:17 PM) Chickens are not people, The slaughter of chickens cannot be put in the same context as the execution of 6 million people. Peta uses that analogy of the slaughter of chickens as the same as people. Old Ingrid and her ""A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy." mentality doesn't wash with the mainstream. My very poor family in Ireland has been raising sheep and yes eating them for lot longer than this century, my family has been farming and raising sheep for a very long long time. If you were a farmer, or were on a farm most likely you had animals that were used as a food source. How often does your family get back to Ireland? Any first generation immigrants still around?

Prince of Tides and the omnipotent teacher in one corner vs. the citizens of the US in the other. Like YAS mentioned, if you are paying for the truck, you aught to have some input on what it carries. No one should be above scrutiny who cashes a public paycheck.

While we are taking some jumps, I had a funny thought. If this teacher was accused of murdering someone, we would have no problem accepting the assembly of eight citizens, taken at random, to decide if she/he would live or die. But questions their choice of a book!? Noooooooooooooooooooooo!!! Ordinary citizens could not possibly be entrusted with something that important. You know, just saying.

share the play list . . .

QUOTE(FlaSoxxJim @ Nov 12, 2007 -> 04:38 PM) Of course, that's why the apparent handful of intelligent people in Kansas have to put up with the semi-annual attack on the teaching of evolution. So let's just go with it and let the locals call the shots. We won't bother teaching evolution in Kansas and we'll cut all the civil rights chapters room civics classes in the deep south. There's no place for national oversight from the likes of competent trained scientists like those at NSF. If enough mouthbreathers manage to get themselves on the Kansas school board this year then Kansas can be the state that shows us just what local control at local schools can do for the students who might otherwise have been forced to suffer an education that would have prepared them to compete favorably with a global workforce. Edit: I used that mouthbreathers dig on purpose just so y'all could haul off on me. I, of course, have the utmost respect for anybody who thinks that we should toss out 150 years of scientific progress because the Bible clearly says we didn't come from no gawd-damn monkeys. Nice jump there. Clearly all those thousands of teachers not using Prince of Tides should also be held to the same scorn and ridicule? This is about the tool that is used to teach AP English. That is different than not teaching AP English at all. If the Board of Education upholds their decision to remove the work, the only thing that will not be taught is anal sex. Perhaps that it a terrible injustice in your book. Tell me, if the book was removed from a national list, you would be OK with that? And since this book is so important, what would you do with a 16 year old who is eligible to take AP English? The movie, which was fairly close to the book is R-Rated. A 16 year old could not see the movie, should he be allowed to read the book?

QUOTE(Rex Kicka** @ Nov 12, 2007 -> 09:53 AM) So if you are so concerned about what school your High School senior will be attending the next year, and want to challenge them to be a successful student and learn to think critically, why on earth would you challenge a curriculum based on one scene in one book that the class is required to read? What changes between someone's senior year in high school and freshman year in college that makes "The Prince of Tides" so heinous? What happens when all of a sudden, the college professor requires your kid to read Tropic of Cancer? I think we have to define challenging and how different works become "challenging". If Prince of Tides is only challenging because of these scenes, then that is a problem. If a book can be circumvented by watching a movie, that is a problem. What difference does 16 to 17 make in what movies they can watch? Society sets rules, has thresholds. Can some kids drive well at 14? Should some kids wait until 18? We set the legal age at 16. Same with drinking, voting, you name it. One rational is kids hear this or worse in the hallways. Shouldn't education raise them up, not sink to their level? Imagine a teacher telling a student, hey n****, your answers were so ghey. It's absurd of course, but if a teacher hands them a book that is similarly "challenging", what are we teaching? But the central issue is this, the Board of Education stepped in and removed the book. Their process is continuing. I would be on the side of the teacher in assigning this work, but I would also be supporting the process, not calling the other parents attention whoring, ignorant, hardon, rubes. And if their process does result in the teacher assigning other works, I do not think the students will be any less challenged by the work. Plenty of other school districts have managed to teach AP English without Prince of Tides. Parents and students that feel that strongly about the value of reading that book can still go to the library and check it out, but it at Amazon, or borrow it from a friend. Local control at local schools.

QUOTE(NUKE @ Nov 11, 2007 -> 10:08 AM) All is well. Too well for my taste as my latest entry indicates, but I've just been having trouble finding stuff to write about these days. That's a good thing.

I think remaining unbeaten is a bigger feat than the 18 > 17 argument. The argument is all about loses, not wins. Now lesser teams can accomplish more, there are over achievers. Comparing those two and I'd take the Bears, but I'm bias and was obviously older when the Bears made their run. With both the Dolphins and the Bears their team the next year were arguably better than the team that won the Super Bowl. Plus, many football fans begin thinking when a team hit 10-0 or better, maybe this team can go upbeaten like the Dolphins, not many are thinking, I wonder if they can win 18 like the Bears. So give the Dolphins their due. It was a big accomplishment at the time and I would cut those guys some slack. Imagine Shula, all he did in his career and 30 years later, the only thing anyone wants to talk about is that one team. He has probably answered that question a thousand times.

QUOTE(YASNY @ Nov 12, 2007 -> 12:32 AM) Everybody knows that the good guys lost Beaten by the Queen of Hearts every time. Don't you draw the Queen of Diamonds, she'll break you every time. You know you know the Deuce is still wild. Revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night. And I've got such a long way to go, to make it to the border of Mexico Like a bat out of hell I'll be gone when the morning comes Come spend the night inside my sugar walls And the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls. I've built walls, a fortress deep and mighty. Yet I swear I see my reflection some place so high above this wall. Way up in the air in my beautiful balloon Gonna get high as a kite by then She don't lie, she don't lie, she don't lie, cocaine

I think overall you are correct, but you are undervaluing how difficult it was for Kennedy. In the 1950s Catholics were very different from the other faiths. Masses were in Latin, no meat on Fridays, Non Catholics could not receive Communion (still today) very strict. They were the odd balls of the time. It was one of the central debates regarding his campaign. Perhaps that was what made it easier, people were very willing to talk out against him, and at least that got it out on the table.

Vandy is correct, the kids are told that colleges want to see a challenging schedule when deciding on admissions. The class is only optional for those kids not interested in attending a top tier University. And I fail to see much of a difference. Would those that think the teacher should be the only decision maker in electives, supporting public review over the core subjects? And if you are concerned about challenging, wouldn't you be against a book that was recently made into a movie and could be rented at Blockbuster? Remember, thousands of teachers are not using these books and their courses are just as challenging. It's like saying we can't teach Shakespeare because no one gets screwed in the ass.

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Nov 11, 2007 -> 04:05 PM) I just don't see the comparison as being nearly on the same scale. Easier being the first Catholic in 1960 or easier being the first Mormon in 2008?

QUOTE(LowerCaseRepublican @ Nov 11, 2007 -> 04:03 PM) Tex, how many teachers have used this book and not had any parents come out in the media about it? I'd be it'd be more than this 1 parent that was offended. And I came to decide that they were on an attention crusade because nowhere in there does it talk about them going through the traditional protocols of complaining in a sane fashion to a district. Since it is the Board of Education that removed the works, I would assume they did follow some protocol. I do not know how many have used this text without a complaint, nor do I know how many have not used it and people complained that it should have been used. Are you suggesting that the first complaint isn't valid? Doesn't someone have to be the first person to say "this isn't right". Using your logic, that first person should have shut up because it would give free publicity and they can't be right because no one else has complained. I also am not in favor of national standards, so the it's used everywhere else logic doesn't work for me. It would seem you are in favor. Frankly, I am very surprised by that. You would be only the second educator that I know that agreed with national standards. Again with the banned stuff. If a teacher was using this in a 6th grade health class to teach about safe sex, would anyone have a problem telling it was inappropriate? Would they be screaming banning? Banning is stopping everyone from ever reading the book. This is an issue of deciding if the book the best vehicle to teach AP History at this school. The hubris of his last statement is just amazing.

What gets overlooked Rex, is how many of those animals are for the restaurant, and especially the fast food, industry. Pl,us we import so much meat, I shudder to think how those McDonald's burgers wound up on my paper table mat.

We can look at physiology, anatomy, anthropology, and come up with a lot of facts. Bottom line is in 2007, we can choose not to eat meat. I've read some persuasive arguments about the health benefits of reducing and even eliminating meat. The vegitarians I know, as a group, are healthier than the hard core meat eaters. Now, I would not claim that A causes B, clearly there could be a lot of other factors.

QUOTE(LowerCaseRepublican @ Nov 11, 2007 -> 03:44 PM) Nice gloss over Tex and a very well constructed straw man. You took what I actually wrote, ignored the clarifications and continued to attack the straw man that you were so deftly able to knock down. Perhaps you should read a bit more clearly in what I wrote. Here it is again. I wouldn't use that terminology for all parents -- just the ones who are clearly on an attention whoring crusade by obviously being so angered by the images in this book that they are not only telling them what they are to the kids at school but also to the school board, the local media and the national media. If you honestly believe that they are worried about children, then why give so much free pub and free press to this supposedly "dangerous" book? Now the minds of millions of children will be irrevocably warped beyond recognition by the demon inspired violence and sexual depictions of this book. There is a protocol for these situations and these parents clearly went over the teacher's head to try to get themselves some attention rather than actually solve the situation. There is a substantial difference between being responsible about what happens in a classroom and going deliberately over the teacher's head to create some attention for one's self in a political hackery campaign. And how did you come to decide that these parents are on an attention crusade? Why are kids going to be warped by NOT reading this book? Talk about straw argument? Free pub and free press? That's like attacking any drug education. If you honestly believe that they are worried about this supposedly dangerous crack, why give it so much free pub? And I don't think all teachers are wrong. Just the ones that attack parents by calling them attention whores, ignorant, hardone rubes for making the same decision that thousands of English teachers have made.

Shula usually is pretty level headed. I think the Pats getting caught actually makes their accomplishment even greater, how could it diminish it?

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Nov 11, 2007 -> 12:52 PM) I understand a parallel of sorts, but I think its on a very different scale. Could be either way. I think selling Catholicism overall would be easier than LDS. I also think we accept the differences easier today than in 1959.

QUOTE(YASNY @ Nov 11, 2007 -> 10:16 AM) LMAO ... I know exactly what you are refering to. You may be right, I may be crazy, But it just may be some tuna fish you're lookin for...

QUOTE(jackie hayes @ Nov 11, 2007 -> 01:45 PM) Oh, well, it's celestialhealing.net, that certainly sounds like a reputable source... Better fact list in support of not eating meat Alpha Dog eats meat Soxy doesn't Who would you rather have dinner with?

There is a criteria used in selecting the works that are used in a course. Thousands of English teachers chose different works than this one. They decide that other works are better suited for teaching AP History. Yet, if parents hold that exact same opinion, you believe they are ignorant, book-banning, hardon rubes. I believe public schools are owned by the public, and the public has a right and responsibility for what occurs in the school. No other public servant has complete and absolute power. If the teacher finds scrutiny that upsetting and stressful, there are plenty of private schools where they can teach whatever they want. But be forewarned, the scrutiny in private schools is 100 times greater.

QUOTE(LowerCaseRepublican @ Nov 11, 2007 -> 12:32 PM) I'd rather trust the teacher, the administration who put the teacher in the classroom, the superintendent who hired the teacher, the school board who approved the teacher being in the classroom as a competent teacher much, much, much, much, much more than some ignorant, book-banning hardon rube of a parent who is "offended" at an act in a book. Would you call every teacher that didn't use Prince of Tides as an ignorant, book-banning hardon rube? Perhaps there would not be so many parents like that if there were not so many "f*** parent's opinions, they are ignorant rubes" teachers like you. If this is your attitude with parents no wonder you have all those problems.