L.A. Science Teacher Suspended Over Student Science Fair Projects 253
An anonymous reader writes "A high school science teacher at Grand Arts High School in Los Angeles was suspended from the classroom in February, after two of his science fair students turned in projects deemed dangerous by the administrators. "One project was a marshmallow shooter — which uses air pressure to launch projectiles. The other was an AA battery-powered coil gun — which uses electromagnetism to launch small objects. Similar projects have been honored in past LA County Science Fairs and even demonstrated at the White House."
Sudden outbreak of common sense (Score:5, Funny)
Imagine if these things fell into the hands of tairsts, or pediofiddlers? Someone could lose an eye.
Re:Sudden outbreak of common sense (Score:5, Interesting)
tairsts
For a minute I read that as "tsarists", which was arguably more interesting.
tsarists (Score:2)
Tsar Vladimir has a couple million soldiers with automatic weapons firing 5.45x39 rounds, I think those would be more effective than marshmallows.
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Tarsiers [wikipedia.org]?
That would be adorable.
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http://anongallery.org/5278/oh... [anongallery.org]
Its not about saftey (Score:5, Insightful)
Schiller, 43, also was the teachers union representative on the campus and had been dealing with disagreements with administrators over updating the employment agreement under which the faculty works. His suspension, with pay, removed him from those discussions.
cite [latimes.com]
Its not about safety, its about removing the union rep from negotiations at the expensive of his students who are preparing for their AP exams.
Re:Its not about saftey (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Its not about saftey (Score:5, Informative)
If you agree this is a dirty underhanded tactic, please sign the petition to get him reinstated.
https://www.change.org/petitio... [change.org]
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Paper mache vulcanos are the only science high school students will ever need to know. That and intelligent design.
Also; nukular.
Sick Society (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sick Society (Score:5, Insightful)
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I looked at this as the administrator was fine combing and looking for a reason to fire him/her.
It is hard to fire tenured teachers and many have resorted to doing things like complaining on their credential to professional boards as an example to find something to fire them etc.
Get rid of tenure and the problem goes away and they do not have to make up excuses. My exwife was a teacher and you wouldn't believe the crap they tried to pull to make her quit. Of course she is very opinion oriented which didn't
Re:Sick Society (Score:5, Insightful)
So you think that schools would be better if it was easy to fire teachers who had opinions that differed from the administrations, leaving only the mindlessly obedient ones to teach the nations children how to also be mindlessly obedient?
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So you think that schools would be better if it was easy to fire teachers who had opinions that differed from the administrations, leaving only the mindlessly obedient ones to teach the nations children how to also be mindlessly obedient?
Lets turn the tables?
Do you and I have the right to piss off management and our bosses? What makes them so special? Do we need to be mindlessly obedient at work? Yes. Do not like the door is right there etc!
Yes this sucks in life, however it is setup that way for a reason. Shit needs to get done and bosses need to discipline and control their employees to make sure things are running smoothly. If not then their jobs are on the line. Sucks worse for them than it does for us if you think about it?
There are ba
Re:Sick Society (Score:5, Interesting)
Do you and I have the right to piss off management and our bosses? What makes them so special?
You don't seem to understand what tenure is. Tenure doesn't protect teachers from being fired if they act irresponsibly or do not do their job. Tenure only protects the teacher from being fired without just cause.
The case here is really the question of whether allowing a student to build a marshmallow gun powered by compressed air represents just cause. The administration says it is, but they have an axe to grind with the teacher in question because he's also a union representative, etc. (as detailed in other comments)
The suggest that the solution is to just give the administrators the right to fire all teachers without any justification for the firing is idiotic.
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Do you and I have the right to piss off management and our bosses? What makes them so special?
You don't seem to understand what tenure is. Tenure doesn't protect teachers from being fired if they act irresponsibly or do not do their job. Tenure only protects the teacher from being fired without just cause.
The case here is really the question of whether allowing a student to build a marshmallow gun powered by compressed air represents just cause. The administration says it is, but they have an axe to grind with the teacher in question because he's also a union representative, etc. (as detailed in other comments)
The suggest that the solution is to just give the administrators the right to fire all teachers without any justification for the firing is idiotic.
My exwife and I worked at school districts. Trust me if administrators want a 1 and 1 they get a stiff rebuke email from the union rep threatening job termination without the union there! What the hell?
Do I get this at my job? No. I am employed at will. So you are stumpy. It is in good taste and for fear of liability that we have an HR representative due the threatening and a humiliating letter 3 times in a row and then a box and boot out the door after time# 3.
Yes some may want to mod me down after reading
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And which side does society stand on? Polls show they are agaisn't the teachers for failing our children.
It is why they call it work. You may have a passion to help kids but in the end only your results matter no different than any other job out there.
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Do you and I have the right to piss off management and our bosses?
Yep.
Do we need to be mindlessly obedient at work?
You seriously need to pull your head out of your ass ASAP. Even soldiers who can be sent to prison for NOT following orders are not required to mindlessly following orders. In fact they're required not to follow illegal orders.
The rest of life is no different. Apart from in your rather odd fantasy world, bosses are not absolute rulers. There are whole piles of law in fact about what they canno
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You miss the point. You fire a teacher if he is not doing his job, teaching. You don't fire a teacher because he disagrees with your bullshit. Competent teachers don't need administrators to tell them how or what to teach, they need them to provide support (like functioning printers and paper) and disciplining students, if needed. Thin-skinned administrators who mistake themselves for "bosses" are always a problem. Dealing with classrooms full of children is more than enough work--who wants to have to worry about constantly kissing some insecure fool's ass.
Stop right there.
Yes, a boss has a right to complain if you do not perform your job a. what b, when and c. how it is done to his or her specifications. Do not like then go get another job. Dealing with a classroom full of children is part of the job and yes a teacher needs to worry about kissing ass because it is part of the job. The teacher agreed to it right?
This is no different than any other position out there. Doesn't matter if you feel the job sucks, easy, hard, whatever. You agree agree and a boss wa
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Yes, a boss has a right to complain if you do not perform your job a. what b, when and c. how it is done to his or her specifications.
The problem comes when the school administrators micromanage said specifications in a political way that interferes with education.
Re:Sick Society (Score:5, Insightful)
The administrator wasn't doing the teacher's job by disciplining the kids because the kids did nothing wrong. It was completely correct what they did. But the administrator disagreed. And that kind of disagreement is *exactly* why we have tenure: to protect teachers who actually teach something controversial.
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Got it in one. He was the union negotiator in an ongoing dispute. Now he's not.
Re:Sick Society (Score:5, Interesting)
There are a number of them by the locals involved with that school.
It looks like this is a not uncommon tactic variation certain higher ups use to punish those they don't like, as well as those peoples supporters.
All very questionable and completely unethical. Hopefully this time it backfires in a big way.
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Grand Arts High School was formerly known as Ramon C. Cortines School for Visual and Performing Arts . . . apparently, lowly science is not a "Grand Art". It doesn't sound like the place you would send your kid to prepare to study Physics at Princeton or Electrical Engineering at MIT. I pity the poor teacher of science or math in a school full of kids from "pushy" parents, determined that their offspring is destined for stardom.
Kinda weird . . . normally we expect the anti-science crowd to come from the
Sick government schools (Score:2)
It's not society this time. The sickness here is all in the government schools.
But remember this: even though government schools do a bad job of teaching children in poor neighborhoods, we can't have non-government schools. Because poor kids wouldn't get a good education with non-government schools.
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Or teaching them Physics! They may -gasp- figure out that rocks can be thrown!
Re:Sick Society (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not about science, it is about tje progressive anti-gun stance.
Seriously - stop spreading their propaganda. They explicitly want those in power to have all the guns they need. They just want the People to be disarmed and figure their friends will be in power.
This is not at all an anti-gun stance, it's a central-control stance. This gives them a sense of security, like those living under Mao or Pol Pot.
Re:Sick Society (Score:5, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Sick Society (Score:5, Insightful)
It is a people problem. Studies have shown that the vast majority of first time murders already had extensive violent criminal records. Clearly the justice system is not doing these people or society justice, since there were ample opportunities to intervene before they took a human life.
15% of murders are committed by a domestic partner. 56% of murders are committed by friends or acquaintances. The notion that murders are committed against random people by some set of hardened, life-long criminals is not supported by data. Perhaps all the more so, given that convicted felons are generally prohibited from owning firearms.
Likewise, given that 65% of gun deaths (as distinguished from murders) are suicides, I have to say I consider it highly unlikely that the vast majority of gun violence is committed by people with extensive criminal records
There is data collected by the FBI and local state agencies if you'd like to check. For starters not all homicides are gun-related. Secondly, the question is not whether it is strangers murdering strangers, but whether 1) poverty and drug-related crimes/drug-related environments are fueling the bulk of homicides (and gun-related homicides in particular) and 2) the typical perpetrator has already a crime record.
The data I alluded, collected by various law enforcement agencies and 3rd party organizations/analysts points into that direction. African Americans and Hispanics (my community) are dis-proportionally represented in gun-related homicides. When you break down gun-related homicide by race, we find that among non-Hispanic Whites, the murder rates are comparable (slightly higher but still comparable) to those in Western Europe.
Furthermore, 80% of gun-related homicides are committed by hand guns, not the ZOMG assault weapons politicians like to ban. I cannot find the link to the FBI study where it showed the type of handguns used the most in homicides, but it clearly mentioned the majority of them were on the cheap end, 2nd-hand saturday night special type of hand guns, not the $500+ firearms the typical law-abiding gun-owner possess.
So, clearly, race and income are a factor. Since race and income are (still) tightly correlated in the US, we can generalize this by simply saying it is a class-related phenomenon. Add to the fact that drug-related crimes significantly affect African Americans (where there has been a marked breakdown in families and an increase in single-parent families), Hispanics and to a lesser extend Caucasians in the South due to the "meth" belt, we see a strong correlation with the war on drugs.
Now, I'm not saying we should not have tighter controls with firearms. I own firearms, and I conceal carry wherever it is legal. But I also acknowledge we should have much better ways to track who buys or sells what. Illegally acquired firearms and straw sales are a major factor in gun-related crime. So we have to deal with it.
But the primordial factors here are race/economics, poverty, even health ([a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2013/01/03/how-lead-caused-americas-violent-crime-epidemic/" target="new"]refer to lead poisoning as a possible cause in the spike of crime from the late 60's to the 80s[/a]). Most importantly, it is culture.
Fins and Swiss have significant %s of gun-ownership, and the Swiss can open carry, and yet you do not see the significant murder rates as in the US (though there are rates of spousal murder where alcohol is involved, but that is a universal.)
Honduras is the capital murder of the world, and although gun laws are flexible, most people simply do not own a piece legally (prices are out of reach to most - ownership is for the well-to-do). Poverty is rampant, the police is ill-equipped to deal with gang/drug related violence, and the country lacks institutions to deal with recidivism.
Nicaragua, adjacent to Honduras is the poorer of the two, with gun laws and legal private own
Bras (Score:4, Funny)
Actually, the correct analogy is that there are over a trillion bras.
Clearly, there is a link between bras and breast cancer.
We should outlaw Bras! Mod up to outlaw Bras!
Re:Sick Society (Score:5, Insightful)
"The US is tops of the list of gun violence for any country with a stable government."
Yes, we all have heard this statistic. Basically, it is cherry-picking by various ambiguous qualifiers: "stable", "developed", etc. Usually these are just keywords for "..as compared primarily to the UK, Western Europe, and Canada.."
Russia and Mexico both have stable governments. They also have strict gun control (at least according to the written laws.) Guess what, both have a much higher gun homicide rate compared to the USA.
Don't get me wrong, the homicide rate in the USA is embarrassingly high. There are many honest discussions to be had. But for now, both sides continue to dig in and not look for any real solutions that would fit with the culture and political setting of the USA.
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Correction: there do not appear to be published numbers for gun homicide rate in Russia, just total homicide rate in Russia (which is still higher than USA total homicide rate.)
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Russia has strict gun laws? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O... [wikipedia.org]
As far as Mexico is concerned the gun homicide is not independent of US. In fact lax gun laws and huge drug demand in the US coupled with extreme economic disparity is creates this gun-toting criminal network in Mexico responsible for all the killings.
Other stable and developed countries like England and Australia have unfortunately had mass shootings like the US, and result was stricted gun laws and less gun deaths. As far as sound public polic
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Mexico and russia ? (Score:4, Insightful)
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If you "fend for yourself" with a gun, you're more likely to be murdered by it than to save the life of you or someone you love.
completely untrue, but keep spreading brady lies like they're truths and eventually some retards will believe you.
Re:Sick Society (Score:5, Insightful)
Nonsense. If that's the case, they should be going after actual guns
there are over 100,000,000 gun owners in the united states, owning more than 300,000,000 guns.
you cannot "go after guns" and expect to accompish anything in one year or even ten years. you have to play the long game, and that includes any number of tactics, including conditioning kids into being so scared of even talking about anything remotely related to firearms, so that 50-100 years from now, gun owners are a tiny minority, at which point there's no real opposition to your idiotic control schemes, because really, gun control is people control.
british history lesson: http://www.guncite.com/journals/okslip.html
Re:Sick Society (Score:4, Funny)
Take a four year old to the range with his/her first bb gun during a protest and watch how they react.
Bonus points if the kid tells them 'they'll get his gun from his cold dead fingers'. I can still see the reaction from the fuckers.
Progressives are *not* anti-gun ... (Score:4, Interesting)
... it is about tje progressive anti-gun stance ...
Progressives are *not* anti-gun, neither are environmentalists, etc. Ex. Teddy Roosevelt was known to be a fan of target shooting and hunting.
Call it what it is, the radical left. Don't let the radical left redefine and despoil the term "progressive" and they did "liberal".
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Ship has sailed.
The radical left is going through labels like MTD mowers. Junk is junk.
Re:Sick Society (Score:4, Informative)
Give up. This is not about science, it is about tje progressive anti-gun stance.
In your haste to construct an anti-liberal, pro-gun narrative, you missed the real reason for his suspension, which somebody mentioned above.
http://articles.latimes.com/20... [latimes.com]
Schiller, 43, also was the teachers union representative on the campus and had been dealing with disagreements with administrators over updating the employment agreement under which the faculty works. His suspension, with pay, removed him from those discussions.
Re:Sick Society (Score:4, Funny)
Imagine what they'd have thought of a chemistry set from the 50's! Oh man, they'd shit bricks.
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Dammit, why must you oppose my project to feed members of oppressed communities to endangered species? Surely we must have some common ground.
First they get rid of shop (Score:5, Interesting)
Then Chemistry labs.
Now this. Sigh.
Lets burn the lawyers offices down. Everyone is so freaking terrified of a lawsuit that nothing happens. We have to give everyone a medal for participating, not discipline kids who tell teachers to go f**ck themselves, can't teach controversial subjects requiring critical thinking skills, can't flunk them, etc.
We are not doing them any favors when they get out in the real world afraid to take risks or wonder why their boss fired them instead of giving a raise for participation?
Its the anti-gun agenda, seriously, read article (Score:5, Insightful)
Lets burn the lawyers offices down. Everyone is so freaking terrified of a lawsuit that nothing happens.
Its not fear of lawyers, its an anti-gun agenda. I'm not kidding, from the article:
... nerf ... airsoft ... a .22.
“supervising the building, research and development of imitation weapons.”
Things that look or function remotely similarly to a gun are not to be tolerated. If you let kids shoot marshmallows at stacked plastic cups they might have fun, take pride in their mastery of ballistic trajectories, and you never know where that might lead
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imitation weapons ... again fear of a lawsuit from a disgruntled ambulance parent.
Anything that can use force can be a weapon. Ban pencils next!
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Pens and pencils should be banned, replaced with keyboards and swipe screens.
Are you nuts? Have you seen what someone can do with a keyboard? http://youtu.be/XH7CXtxOflI?t=... [youtu.be]
At least with swipe screens their arms will be too tired to hit anyone with!
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> Things that look or function remotely similarly to a gun are not to be tolerated. If you let kids shoot marshmallows at stacked plastic cups they might have fun, take pride in their mastery of ballistic trajectories, and you never know where that might lead ... nerf ... airsoft ... a .22.
Clearly it is the result of too many people watching Ghostbusters in the 80s.
We need to ban dangerous marshmellow-based violence from our television and movie-screens.
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No, it's not anti gun propaganda. I'm from a country where guns are banned and people are wholeheartedly against guns, but we aren't fucking stupid! We enjoy science and experiments like these are allowed; but under proper supervision.
This smells a lot like someone wanting an excuse for firing this particular teacher.
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Better not let them play any ball games either, just to be sure. And no contact sports either.
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Sigh do not bring politics in this.
As someone who has worked in the school district I can tell you administrators need to make up good reasons to get rid of bad teachers and this is one of them and yes lawsuits prevent both administrators and staff from doing their jobs.
If the teacher said you can use this as a weapon. Then yes that would be very bad and inappropriate. If it is used to teach expansion of gas in a chemical reaction then that is a different matter.
I guess we will find out. Administrators have
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Re:Its the anti-gun agenda, seriously, read articl (Score:4, Insightful)
... it's a stupid policy created by people that don't own guns ...
There is nothing wrong with not owning guns. Its a personal choice, OK for some, not for others.
However creating policy and regulations when you are completely ignorant and misinformed about firearms, that is something else. Some non-owners are quite well informed and not hysterical. Some owners are quite ignorant and in dire need of instructions and education.
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The article mentioned he was a head of the union who prevented the firings of several teachers.
It was a political ploy
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That's another arm of the anti-gun agenda: make it a 'health' issue (because that presumes a zero-tolerance for acceptable risk.) It should be an evaluation of risk issue just like owning a swimming-pool, trampoline, or automobile. Honestly, I would prefer getting the anti-gun lecture from my life insurance agent since he is trained to make those evaluations of risk.
I completely agree that leaving kids ignorant will not help. Hollywood teaches kids every incorrect way to handle a weapon as long as it lo
Re:First they get rid of shop (Score:4, Insightful)
Lets burn the lawyers offices down.
The lawyers are powerless without the courts. It's the Court orders, backed by ... wait for it ... men with guns that make this environment possible.
Do you know why everybody is so jumpy and the cops are doing summary executions [csmonitor.com] now? Because everybody is a criminal [amazon.com], everybody is a suspect, and the cops and the courts enforce these absurd laws rather than than defend the Constitution [cato.org] as a co-equal branch.
Hell, the Constitution didn't even make it past 1803 [wikipedia.org] intact in design, and FDR accepted the Supreme Court's final surrender in 1937 from Chief Justice Hughes as a settlement to his plan to expand the Court with its cronies. Overnight, SCOTUS began finding all of Roosevelt's programs suddenly Constitutional even concluding that growing wheat for your family farm [wikipedia.org] is part of "Interstate Commerce" and suddenly of Federal providence.
The problem now is that it's impossible for the People to know what the Constitution says because (supposedly) it doesn't mean anything until SCOTUS tells us what it means, which might well be the opposite of what we "think" it means (that is, the plain English meaning). The catch is that the Constitution is what authorizes the government in the first place. If the People aren't competent to understand their agreement with that government, then they weren't competent to create it in the first place and the grant of power is void.
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The courts typically back the schools. My exwife was a teacher and took education law class.
The problem is it costs money to prove you are innocent. Schools included spent as much money paying off bad parents and lawyers as budgets for freaking books in a given year! How is that for fair?
All to prove that the judge says, well gee the school has a right to create a learning environment based on such and such in 1934 bla bla. NEXT ... oh the lawyer bill will be $380,000 etc.
Re:First they get rid of shop (Score:4, Interesting)
My 8th grade elective (in 1998) was rocketry. We spent the semester building and launching model rockets. Something tells me that elective is no longer being offered.
You can still find sanity in a few holdouts. My high school (a magnet program, not a regular public school) had a well-stocked research lab and all students performed research. Mine involved cellulolysis and a strain of bacteria that I forget the name of now. The lab (and the research) is still ongoing, though I suspect the program's status gives it more freedom than a regular school would have. They even still had shop courses, or at least they did when I was there. No dodgeball, though, that was forbidden.
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Lets burn the lawyers offices down
can't. don't know how.
they canceled arson shop, too.
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We have to give everyone a medal for participating
Should we really be giving students metal? It could be ferrous, and people are already in trouble for experimenting with magnetic acceleration!
Oh, wait .. you said ... nevermind.
Yeah, sure. (Score:5, Insightful)
I am lucky I grew up in the 80s I guess.
Re:Yeah, sure. (Score:5, Informative)
Schiller, 43, also was the teachers union representative on the campus and had been dealing with disagreements with administrators over updating the employment agreement under which the faculty works. His suspension, with pay, removed him from those discussions.
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Mod parent up.
I mentioned this already and as someone who worked at a school district I can vouch. If they get rid of tenure and go to what regular folks have a 3 write up and you are out this wouldn't happen.
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Wait. Did you just admit that he's being targeted improperly because he is the union rep . . . and then say that if we got rid of tenure and let them fire whoever they want for whatever reason it wouldn't be a problem anymore?
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Wait. Did you just admit that he's being targeted improperly because he is the union rep . . . and then say that if we got rid of tenure and let them fire whoever they want for whatever reason it wouldn't be a problem anymore?
I sure did.
This guy prevented bad teachers from being fired. I know call the lawyers bla bla. But if he is the problem why LA school districts are failing he needs to have some leighway and let the administrators do the write ups and terminations. Yes some is political. Welcome to work. Most though needs to be documented and finished.
Walmart does this all the time to keep prices low.
The American Teachers Association needs to go back to it's roots to advance the career just like the state bar does with lawye
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Based on all the supposedly really dangerous crap we did in the 80s I think we should be lucky we grew up at all. When I was a kid our Chemistry set had chemicals in it. Could you imagine? Nothing like today's "safer" alternatives. [slashdot.org]
And remember if you every feel like questioning anything or applying logic, just stop and think of the children.
Marshmallow shooters can be quite dangerous (Score:5, Funny)
if you cross the streams.
Losing good men to the war on pretend violence (Score:2, Insightful)
This is part of the war on pretend violence which is really a war on boys who enjoy war and fighting fiction. It shouldn't surprise any man that if we give an assignment of write anything you want. That young men might write about what it would be like to be a sniper or hunt down a fish. But yet if they do that their must be something wrong with them. [whitehouseboysmen.org]
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What really got them on my case was the stick figure flip porn on the edges of classroom copy text books. I figured everybody was a bored as me.
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What gets me is the blowback issue. The schools are starting from a small age forbidding anything gun related... and we all know that the harder stuff gets forbidden, the more it gets in demand.
As some one who grew up as the friend of a preacher's daughter (both literally and figuratively, her dad was a preacher and had very strict rules regarding boys) I can very enthusiastically confirm this concept.
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A marshmallow shooter isn't the start of the slippery slope to gun violence any more than the pervasive availability of knives contributes to stabbings. It used to be normal and accepted practice in western society to teach boys to hunt game to help supplement the family's food supply.
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Nobody in schools kills their own game
I know quite a few people that hunted when they were in high school, and probably hunted since they were at least in middle school. And I live in a large suburban area, not even out in the country.
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God forbid we teach them reason & respect for others in the mean time.
Administrative politics (Score:5, Insightful)
This is about office politics. The administration at his school has decided to make an example out of him, and they're using these science experiments as an excuse to make his life miserable. That's what this is really about. He doesn't toe the line, so someone with power has decided to exert their authority.
To make this about gun politics is as equally absurd as to say that we should stop kids from eating any food because there's an obesity epidemic. These science projects are no more related to actual firearms than the gas stove in your kitchen is related to a nuclear bomb. The only plausible explanation for this situation is that Schiller dared to butt heads with some administrator, and this is payback.
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Exactly. Even though the administration said the science experiments were the reason for the suspension, it is likely the true reason was something else.
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This pretty much sums up what I was thinking too. This guy is a union rep and somebody in charge at the school has butted heads with him.
Plus, you get extra point for not saying "tow the line."
Electricity (Score:4, Funny)
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Electricity is nothing compared to the dangers of Dihydrogen Monoxide! http://www.dhmo.org/facts.html
High School (Score:2)
Fire the administrators immediately and vote the school board out of office.
what is next basic computer skills = hacking (Score:2)
what is next basic computer skills = hacking
time to suspended the tech teaches
I was lucky to grow up in a saner environment (Score:4, Interesting)
Another school shooting averted. (Score:5, Funny)
I approve of this decision. Someone finally thought of the children; just think how many lives were saved! Science is dangerous, and definitely has no place in our schools. Clearly, the children that built these have some severe mental problems, and all right-thinking people know their parents must be fat, conservative tea-baggers. The kind of violence exhibited by these devices cannot be tolerated. This is exactly why children should not be allowed to think for themselves in school; they are too unpredictable.
I'm glad we were able to stop these domestic terrorists before they killed anyone.
It's a good start. (Score:2)
After shutting down all science projects that involve projectiles, we need to move against other deadly militaristic skills.
1) stop all activities that train for grenade throwing.
For example, one so-called sport has a group of five taking turns attempting to throw a projectile through a 'hoop', where it should be obvious to anyone that this is training terrorists to hurl molotov cocktails through the windows of our leaders homes as well as elementary schools.
2) stop all activities that train for Hoplite sty
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You misunderstand, they want kids taught the transferable skills. So athleticism and mindless team-patriotism that can be steered towards being a good foot-soldier. Debate to identify useful propagandists for recruitment. ("Oh, since you're good at debate, have you considered doing Pol.Sci or Law?" "Oh, you're doing Law with a minor in Pol.Sci, have you considered doing an internship with Senator Snot's office?" "Oh, you interned with the Senator? Here at Snot, Booger and Loogie we do a lot of work for clie
related: Teacher suspended for bring weapons (Score:2)
"An Illinois federal court has ruled that Chicago school officials did not violate the rights of a second-grade teacher who was charged with possessing weapons on school grounds after he displayed garden-variety tools such as wrenches, pliers and screwdrivers in his classroom as part of his second grade teaching curriculum that required a “tool discussion.”"
http://www.prisonplanet.com/fe... [prisonplanet.com]
To err is human, to minless enforce a rule isn't. (Score:2)
"We will always err on the side of protecting students."
Emphasis on "err".
Re:Maybe anti-gun measures are good? (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps teaching kids that use of guns and violence in schools will not be tolerated is a good thing? Do we want to teach out kids how to use fake guns now, then careless use of real guns once in the real world? Schools need to keep zero tolerance on anything gun related if we want to see our crime rate go down (hint: Only a few countries have worse gun violence than the US... and they either have unstable governments, or no governments.)
The better thing is to actually educate children about the dangers of firearms, and how to tell the difference between real guns and toys/replicas/marshmellow shooters. I grew up playing with toy guns, but my grandfather had several real firearms that he kept in a wood and glass gun cabinet. I was taught that they were dangerous and to only touch them with my grandfather or father. Keeping children from getting exposure to guns other than in video games or on TV means that if they are over at their friend Timmy's house and find his dad's gun they start playing with it and blow little Timmy's head off. If the child knows what to do when they find a gun (don't touch it, leave the area, and find and tell the nearest adult) little Timmy gets to go to school the next day. Abolition won't stop gun violence or even get rid of guns (out of the 6 guns that I own only 3 have any documentation of me purchasing them, and one of those is a hunting rifle). But education will reduce gun deaths significantly.
Re:Maybe anti-gun measures are good? (Score:4, Insightful)
Gun safety is something every parent owes their children. Along with power tools, basic electrical wiring, plumbing, plant a grape vine, how to build a computer, tune an engine, build a computer and compile a Linux kernel.
Re: (Score:2)
I feel like a survivalist stating this, but I think it is good to teach kids some skills that are not dependent on electricity, if only how not to be completely helpless during a power outage or a disaster:
One example is basic usage and care of a generator. It is surprising how few people don't get that there is a difference between a Harbor Freight special (which is an ET800 clone of a Yamaha model made in the early 19702), versus a Honda, Yamaha, or other quality generator with an inverter (or at the mi
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
The zero-tolerance stance used in school administration is the bigger concern. It deadens the entire concept of teaching common sense in kids, and enforces robotic black and white thinking if it disagrees with the ideologues in charge of the school. IMHO the exact opposite reason we send our kids to school.
Whatever happened to "hey billy, this isn't the right place for playing cops and robbers on the school playground, please save that for when you go home." Instead kids are suspended for minor mistakes
Re: (Score:2)
Buying assault weapons without background checks: YES.
You mean assualt rifles? Sure, you can buy them illegally without a background check from the local gunrunner/gang member for a couple grand. Or spend about $20k on the gun and a couple k on the tax stamp and Class III license. Oh, wait, you meant the scary black guns with the pistol grips and plastic furniture. Because something like this [world.guns.ru] is perfectly fine, but add a Tapco stock [tapco.com] to it and you might as well be carry the next cloest thing to a nuke the way some poeple act.
Re: (Score:2)
Comments as rude, insulting and assholish as yours are why we are afraid that people like you own guns.