Nigerian universities: clean up your act

Nigeria is experiencing an unimaginable horror for this academic: widespread sexual harassment of women students. It’s injust, it’s a corruption of the student-teacher relationship, and it harms their country, that half their potential leaders are abused and blocked from progress.

For years, sexual harassment has been rampant in Nigeria’s universities, but until recently very little was done about it. From Associated Press interviews with officials and 12 female college students, a pattern emerges of women being held back and denied passing grades for rebuffing teachers’ advances, and of being advised by other teachers to give in quietly.

Crippling a young person’s potential and denying them access to knowledge ought to be regarded as a serious crime—these ‘teachers’ are really just felons and rapists.

(via Salon)

Ban this course!

The indecency in public schools is out of control:

“…during school hours in a classroom with an experienced teacher present, two sixth graders completed the act of intercourse…at least ten students were witnesses. No disciplinary actions were taken against the teacher… All teachers were told to keep quiet.”

The class that incited these students to publicly engage in illicit sex acts? Shop. Those mortise and tenon joints sure are provocative, and I guess the shop teacher wasn’t named Mr Adler.

(Yes, I know this is a serious issue, but I think the school was right to avoid addressing it — although they certainly should discourage and stop such inappropriate distractions — and what they should have done, and I hope they did, was to inform the parents and let them deal with the behavior.)

Why comparative religion classes will never work in American public schools

Sometimes I think that what public education in this country really needs is a good general requirement for a course in comparative religion. I’ve thought that one obstacle, though, would be finding teachers who wouldn’t warp it to proselytize for their favorite cult. It turns out that there’s another major problem: parents will sue teachers who make their kids think about that which must be believed dogmatically.

[Read more…]

Ask a Biologist

David Hone reminds me that I’ve been remiss in mentioning this new and very useful website, Ask a Biologist. The idea is so simple, you’ll wonder why there aren’t many more like it—it’s a kind of central clearinghouse where young people can ask questions about biology and get answers from real biologists and experts. If you’re a teacher, turn your kids on to it; tell them to submit a question to the list, and somebody with some expertise will try to answer.

Blasphemy is too education!

This message came by a roundabout route—a reader sent me a link to an Italian blog (translated) that was discussing a protest petition of a ‘blasphemous’ play that is being put on at…the University of Minnesota! The petition is titled “Blasphemy is not education”:

I understand the University of Minnesota plans to stage an anti-Catholic play, “The Pope and the Witch” by Dario Fo, a communist playwright. … I believe this play is blasphemous and not a legitimate expression of academic freedom. I am deeply offended as a Catholic. Together with thousands of TFP Student Action members, I urge you to respect the Catholic Faith and cancel “The Pope and the Witch.”

I beg to differ. Blasphemy is highly educational, and I hope our university can do more of it. We are not here to reassure you that your ignorance and prejudices are alright, we’re supposed to shake up our students.

I’m also amused that all this indignant young person can say about Dario Fo is that he is a communist <gasp!> — right. Dario Fo, winner of the 1997 Nobel for literature. Religion does seem to make for a fine set of blinders, doesn’t it?

I don’t think the petition has had the slightest effect. I hadn’t heard a single word about it until it was mentioned in my email, and the play opens this week. I’m tempted to go, because it should be entertaining and being able to thumb my nose at religious bigots adds a little extra flavor to it. If only we weren’t expecting several more inches of snow later this week…

Julie Amero: Convicted? Are you kidding me?

Here’s a tragic story: a teacher convicted.

The six-person jury Friday … convicted Amero, 40, of Windham of four counts of risk of injury to a minor, or impairing the morals of a child. It took them less than two hours to decide the verdict. She faces a sentence of up to 40 years in prison.

Her crime? A computer in her classroom got caught in a porn spam pop-up loop (you know what they are, especially if you’re using that awful MS Internet Explorer—windows automatically open to spam sites as fast as you can close them). It’s easily fixed by using a decent browser or resetting the computer or even yanking the cord out of the wall, but Amero was apparently not very skilled with a computer, and was flustered as well. And for that, she may serve a few years in prison.

It is the 21st century, after all — lack of expertise with a computer is a crime, here in the future.

Oh, hang on—she isn’t being punished for computer illiteracy, it’s for impairing the morals of a child. That is, a bunch of seventh graders.

I know seventh graders. I remember being one. Middle school kids are a bunch of confused, sneaky, dirty-minded little bastards, and it would take a lot more than punching up internet porn to impair their morals; I suspect a fair number of the kids in that classroom knew more about the computer than Ms Amero, had been peeking at easily available porn before and after this event, and some of them are probably snickering about sending a teacher up the river for something they do routinely.

It takes a real prude to think flashing nude pictures at a seventh grader is going to corrupt them.

Let’s assume, though, that the entire classroom was occupied by naive little angels, perfect children with tousled curls who say their prayers at night and have been chemically neutered by their parents to suppress those burgeoning hormones. Then what? Do they get turned into sex maniacs by exposure to a bare breast or crotch? That’s an awfully low opinion of children these jurors had, or perhaps they just assumed a greater fragility than I can imagine.

This is a case of insane anti-porn hysteria, a grossly uninformed jury, and incompetence—the school district had let their filtering software lapse, and the police hadn’t even bothered to check the computer for adware. I am appalled that such a trivial error would have the consequence of sending someone to prison for years. This is not justice, this is lunacy.

I suggest that if the jurors really need a scapegoat for the uncontrolled spread of internet porn and the existence of sloppy and easily hijacked software, that it would be more appropriate (and perhaps just as injust) to send Bill Gates to jail.