Blog Stage 4

The Transgender Straw Broke the Camel’s Back: It’s Time to Declare Independence from Public Schools

This…..this is amazing. I have never realized how reading an opposing view could bring me so much joy. I never knew about this website, and my mind had been blown today. I shall now proceed to critique this commentary. Strap in y’all.

Here ye! Here ye!

“You may not have realized it yet, but the Obama administration just destroyed the traditional American public school.”

What an opening statement. I read that line, and then I pictured Obama as like a skinny Godzilla smashing up all the public schools. He DESTROYED our schools. Literally.

Then I think David gets really sad for a minute. (David French, the author of this post) Not sad like tears in his eyes kind of sad, but like when you’re 13 and you're just pissy/sad about everything. And you get really short with people, and act like everything that didn’t go your way is the end of the world.

He says, “That principal you love? He’s not in control of your school. The great school board you just elected? They’re puppets. The teacher your child bonds with? She doesn’t run her own classroom.”

I got sad too, cause then I realized he believed that it wasn’t that way before Obama issued this letter. He really believed that there was control in our public school systems and that the school board made the decisions that they made out of the goodness of their heart, and their love for our teachers. Oh poor David, it’s always been this way sweetums. Yes, always. You’re second grade teacher didn’t love you any more than she loved her recess cigarettes breaks.

His intended audience is clear, people who relate to this - “It’s time to create and sustain excellent, accessible, and fiercely independent alternatives to the government’s schools. If we don’t, we lose.” Religious folks who I guess are not cool with people being transgender??? As for his credibility, it's not like he doesn’t make good points and back them up. BUT they are super prejudice, and he is encouraging his readers to be discriminatory. I pray he doesn’t have children that ever want to question their sexual identity. Don’t worry kiddos, it’ll be okay. Come hang out with me if you get kicked out and need a place to crash where we won’t burn you on a cross or whatever they threaten to do to you if you don’t go to the camp where they beat you into submission. I don’t know how all that works, ANYWAYS…

I obviously don’t agree with the author. I am super excited about all this! And am super supportive of the transgender community, and I praise all efforts to help their be less prejudice and discriminatory acts against them.

Blog Stage 6

This is my comment on my fellow classmates blog, Freedom....

I completely respect and understand your religious beliefs and values. I come from a very religious and conservative family. So I do not have any interest in downplaying what you believe. But since we are not able to incorporate any religion into our national government...that can’t be a useful argument.  Now, it may be a totally valid one in your eyes, and it feels right in your heart. But again, we just can’t use that as a substantial opposing argument. So, my question would be - is there any reason that you have against same sex marriage that is not associated with your religious beliefs? Also you say that you’re not homophobic, and that you wouldn’t want your children to be around “something like that” (I’m assuming you mean gay or lesbian couples?), does this mean you would be afraid of exposing your children to same sex couples? Homophobia is a fear or hatred of homosexuals. I am in no way claiming that you hate homosexuals. BUT, usually when we want to shelter our children from things, it is because it scares us. I wouldn’t use the word homophobic, but prejudice might be close.

The Supreme Court said that the right to marry is fundamental. A fundamental right. This falls under the same list as a the right to freedom of religion…. So you have the freedom to express yourself and practice any religious acts you would like. Just like we all have the right to marry, to liberty, to self determination. We used to deny entire races the right to vote and speak for themselves. When you say that we should not have same-sex marriage be legal in our country, you are saying your values are more important than someone else’s. We cannot deny fundamental rights to ANYONE, even if we disagree to the core.

Blog Stage Eight

In my classmate Myriam Cisse's blog, Government Today, she wrote a commentary on Proposition 1

This is my comment :

I hear you too girl!

I feel bad saying this, but let's not waste our time arguing about the quality or customer service benefits of Uber/Lyft and Taxis. That is so far from what this is about... 

Uber and Lyft are great innovations of technology, we enjoy them, we rely on them, they are providing a crazy awesome amount of jobs. Lots of goodies right? So what are the negatives? They don't have an "official city provided background and fingerprint check"?? Just like Suzannah said, there are folks failing the Uber background check and then our city council is issuing them chauffeurs licenses… super crazy. 

We all know that this is just Taxis vs Rideshare companies. Uber is evil. Taxis are evil. They don’t care about what would be best for us, so just leave the emotions behind. Who is paying whoever more is what this will ALWAYS boil down to. 

My least favorite part about this whole thing - when we were encouraged to vote against this proposition, the main thing was that they aren’t doing these background checks on their drives, they aren’t safe, we can’t let them do this to our city. And this may sound like a really uneducated response to that. But I was always confused - if that’s our main concern… How about this, if you don't feel safe taking an Uber…..maybe….uhh….don’t? 

I now understand it is a lot more complex than that. But my hope is that Uber and lyft will come back soon because I really miss them :( 

Blog Stage Five

Why are the majority of the people in our jails poor? This is a question I felt that I probably knew the answer to, but I when I thought about if someone would have asked me to explain why, I would just blubber out something that I didn’t really believe. Poor people aren’t genetically coded to be “bad”. They aren’t born to be criminals. Are they even criminals? Aren’t we all? I can almost guarantee you that no one I have ever met has NEVER broken ANY law. Hell, I broke the law on my way to school this morning because I was late, and I didn’t see any traffic cops behind me. We all do. So why isn’t everyone in jail evenly spaced out in terms of income?

Our criminal justice system grows every day. And our jails aren’t funded federally..(should they be?) .our local community funds our local jail. And I would say that Austin in general is doing quite alright for ourselves. But wayyyyyy off in all the little towns that this vast state has, those county jails are nothing but a cardboard box.

So many people that are in jail are there for REALLY dumb things. Like a broken tail light, or a suspended license. Once you’re in jail, you have to pay for any drug or lab testing, and then there is the issue of paying bail. Nancy Fishman said something really interesting to me in a NPR interview about our jail systems. She said, “The irony of bail is that its initial purpose was to make it possible for people to get out of jail, right? You couldn't be held in jail without a finding of guilt, or prior to a finding of guilt, without having an opportunity to get out. But the irony is that now bail really functions to hold people in. .... This means that if you have money to pay bail, you can get out no matter how dangerous you are, whereas if you are poor and all you've committed is a traffic violation, which is one of biggest drivers, frankly, of jail admissions in most places, you are going to sit in jail because $500 is a lot of money to you.”

So we are keeping in the poor people who really aren’t harshly damaging our daily lives. But rich people could commit some super dangerous crime and just be like “Here, money money money money….BYE!” Somehow that just doesn’t feel right.

I guess I’m not sure how we can solve this. Should the federal government be more involved with local jails?? Should bail be based on both your crime and your income?? Should everyone just be nice to each other and stop doing mean things?! :(

Blog Post Seven

I was having trouble with this post. I simply couldn't think of what I wanted to write about. Then I started to ask myself, "What do I know about the US government?". Well I've learned about the sociodemographics of Congress, what a filibuster is, and how political polling works. But what do I know? I know all these things, because they're up in my brain. I studied them and was tested over them. But what do I have to comment about? What have I experienced as a part of this population? What do I really know?? Honestly not much. I kind of get how elections work, and I know that we have different people doing different jobs in DC. But what do I know about the government that has affected my daily life? Most of my life has been in the public school system. 65% of it. And if there was one thing that I remember wishing I could change, it was standardized tests.

The lovely George W. Bush had this to say,

"If you don't test, you have a system that just shuffles the kids through, and that's unacceptable. It's unacceptable to quit on a kid early and just say, 'Move through, and hope you learn.' What you've got to do is measure to determine where they are, and then you can compare districts and compare States. And as a result of strong accountability measures and good teachers and more funding, the results are positive."

Now if I am remembering correctly, it felt exactly the opposite. “"If you don't test, you have a system that just shuffles the kids through”... Sorry bud, I think you mean if you DO test.

“Hillary Rodham Clinton, JD, US Secretary of State, stated while US Senator (D-NY) during her address to the National Education Association (NEA) June-July 2007 Annual Meeting and Representative Assembly

“the test is becoming the curriculum, when it should be the other way around. And the curriculum is being narrowed….How much learning is exactly going on? Our children are getting good at filling in those little bubbles, but how much creativity is being left behind? How much passion for learning is being left behind? And what about those children who we know are bright and successful in the classroom but simply don't perform well on tests?.....They have tremendous talents, maybe musical or artistic talents. They're made to feel like failures because the curriculum doesn't reward what it is they are good at."

(YES! I agree with that statement so much.)

I do understand why politicians need to have this kind of control over our country’s education, but holy moly this is not the way. Christopher Paslay wrote this in this article in the Philadelphia Daily News in February of 2012,

"Standardized tests may be lucrative for educational publishers and useful for politicians who want to control school resources, but they seldom improve learning. No Child Left Behind has promoted empty lessons geared toward such tests. As a result, teacher spontaneity is compromised, leaving students uninspired."

I felt so much of this. The stress of those tests was horrible. It's only been two years since I was last drilled to have that information in my brain, and I can guarantee you that none of it has been useful (maybe a little math - but you get my point). I felt that it was all my teachers cared about, was what we got on those tests. But when you didn’t do well, you felt so stupid!

One day I will have children, and if we are still testing the life out of our kiddos, I will get to tell mine that I fought against this. I do not believe that standardized testing is a way to measure the quality of our teachers or students. I believe it can be degrading to students, and unrightfully closes schools due to poor test scores. We need to teach our future generations how they can fall in love with learning, not how to fear filling in a bubble incorrectly.

"Is the Use of Standardized Tests Improving Education in America? - Standardized Tests - ProCon.org." ProConorg Headlines. 14 June 2012. Web. 29 Apr. 2016.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/donald-trump-and-the-politics-of-the-middle-finger/2016/02/18/6124ad50-d664-11e5-b195-2e29a4e13425_story.html?tid=a_inl

In this article called "Donald Trump and the politics of the middle finger", author and opinion writer for The Washington Post - Michael Gerson, takes a stab at Donald Trump. For one of my favorite and h so obvious reasons, he is kind of in general just a terrible person?

"The political philosophy of the middle finger — captured by Trump in all its vulgar, taunting, divisive glory — requires an ethical leap"

That is basically the gist of Gerson's article. I think that the intended audience for this article is someone who believes these four statements... "We give our neighbor the benefit of the doubt. We stand up for the little guy. We are grateful for our flawed and wonderful country. And we know our flag stands for shared ideals, not someone’s idea of shared bloodlines." He is saying these things as examples as to what Trump is not. And I believe that lots of people who don't like him, like to read stuff about why he is not a good fit. He causes drama, he is brash, he is RUDE, and the man knows how to get attention...Whether that's because he is "ridiculing a war hero, employing misogynist humor, mocking a disabled reporter, displaying ignorance on basic policy matters [or] slandering the last Republican president" (those are links y'all....links).

      I feel differently than the author on some statements he makes outside of Trump, like when he writes, "Many Trump supporters believe that Obama has changed the country in destructive ways — which I believe is true". This shows me that the writer might not have been a full on Obama supporter, or is at least not excited about his presidency.

Even though I do not agree with everything the writer says, I feel like he is credible. He has written many other articles that I have sifted through, 8 even just this month. He seems to try to get multiple sides of an argument. These are opinion pieces too, so it is really easy to just take one side of it and go. But when writers at least attempt to go outside their comfort zone and see different angles and view points, there is a higher level of trust that we tend to give them. Just because someone who is so far one wing or the other, is usually pretty bias, and doesn't like to be persuaded with good evidence. 

He is pointing out so many things about Trump in this article that I feel are important and that people should know. He is a character, and he is a bussiness man and reality star. People are drawn to him, but they aren't looking very closely at him as a human being. A human being who has lied and cheated and been so damn rude...it is easy for people like Gerson and I to take note of these things because we are not particularly attached to this candidate. 

      He points out as many incidences as you would like (with these lists containing links to other articles that he has written about the specific events), so it is clear he passes the test of evidence on his claim. I think that the political significance of this article is actually huge. This is someone telling us that if he wins, “He would (he says) build a Mexican-funded wall across the continent, expel 11 million undocumented immigrants, blow up the global trading order, send Syrian refugees back into a war zone, ban the immigration of Muslims to the United States and consider a Muslim registry.” This is someone people are voting for! To be the president!!! How much more important could this be.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter is looking to tech companies for help in attracting more women to the Pentagon. This podcast segment from 'All Things Considered' on the National Public Radio talks about just that..."Carter says the Pentagon will also help active-duty troops who want to delay having a family. The military will pay the cost of freezing sperm or eggs." Some say this will be hard to say if it will actually help in enticing more women to come into the force. But, it is a step in the right direction (in my opinion of course). He would also like to add 3,600 lactation rooms around the country for military women, and 12 weeks paid maternity leave (double what it is right now). "Here's why the Pentagon wants more women. They tend to score higher than men on aptitude tests and have fewer brushes with the law." Its true. When you have any group, whether that is the military or a banking company, or a class room, there are things missing when you are lopsided on your gender percentages. I am obviously not saying that men or women are better than one or the other, but there are just different things being brought to the table. We are wired slightly different, and those differences can add many helpful things. I think this article is worth reading because people need to be aware that there are still major differences for military women. Yes, it was very exciting that we were finally able to reach all ground combat positions. But, there are things like maternity leave that have been left aside. If we can pay closer attention to the needs of our protectors, it will only benefit us that much more.