I finally had a chance to get a copy of the short documentary, "The Songs They sing". It is about the political songs the blacks in S.Africa sing. I watched it a few times and listened carefully and now I'm happy that the translations are correct.
For example, I was able to pick up words which I knew the meaning of (like "blala" for example), and I could compare that with the text. And yes, they are singing about killing whites. Then there are some songs sung in english, and there the words are clear. For example, one song goes "Kill the Boers, kill the racists".
The acting of the blacks, which goes along with the songs is also clear. They sing "i-soldier", and they pretend to march like soldiers, etc.
In another song, called "the axe song" (which has many variations), they sing about "chopping us down". They sing about chopping down "De Klerk" our former president.
Any songs about necklacing?
In another song they sing in english "We hate you to death Botha" and "We hate you to death Malan".
The documentary is very short, only 12 minutes. I'd like to put it up on my site. I must just get it into an appropriate format, plus it will be a good one to do a photo story on.
One of the scenes is quite staggering... you see a crowd... a HUGE CROWD... just running down an avenue singing that chopping song. It is awe inspiring... imagine that same crowd coming to kill us... It is quite scary stuff.
One of the best moments ever, caught on film, shows Nelson Mandela. I have said in the past that the communists taught the blacks to talk like Liberal Democrats in English, but in the black languages to be honest and direct. Well, in one scene, Nelson Mandela is at a funeral singing a song, the Xhosa words are, "kill the ama bhulu (whites)". Then, after this, a journalist asks him for his thoughts and he then talks about the desire for peace! It is brilliant, caught on tape. But just seconds before, he was standing there singing about killing the whites!!
I was suggesting to Cliff Saunders that I would have liked to see a full-length documentary done on these political songs which the blacks in S.Africa sing. Talk about HATE SPEECH... You've never seen anything like it. A massive crowd, just singing their hearts out, and the song is all about killing, chopping or destroying us whites. I think that alone would make for a fascinating topic which should be taken to the constitutional court of this country. Those songs should actually be banned. The problem is, 70% of this country's population sing these songs - even today!
#2
They didn't do anything but kill their economy. When I was growing up S.Africa was one of the world's premier economies. Now they are reduced to begging for scraps at the U.N. even going so far as to call themselves a developing country. And I can only think of one thing that has changed since they were on top.
#3
least they're working on reducing that population growth, hmmmm?
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/15/2006 12:41 Comments ||
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#4
Old news. Anyone who isn't a sycophant of the left already knows that Mandela is a Marxist, former terrorist, and says Bin Laden isn't responsible for 9/11. zzzzzzzzz
Not even at the height of the feminist movementwhen women were openly scorned for wasting their brains if they chose childrearing over careerdid anyone suggest that mothers should be punished for taking care of their children instead of earning a paycheck. But in Holland, thats exactly what a member of parliament is proposing.
MP Sharon Dijksma, a leading parliamentarian of the Dutch Labor Party, wants to impose a fine on women who waste their education on children instead of holding down a paying job. A highly educated woman who chooses to stay at home and not to workthat is destruction of capital, Dijksma wrote in Forum magazine. If you receive the benefit of an expensive education at the cost of society, you should not be allowed to throw away that knowledge unpunished.
Remind us all again why it is that the birthrate is falling in the Y'urp-peon countries? At least in the non-Muslim population?
Outraged Dutch mothers and their allies were swift in their condemnationand in their counterattacks. More than one critic has pointed out that Dijksma herself twice attempted and failed a college course, and that her grades were poor. It didnt matter, because by age 23, Dijksma was a well-paid MP. Let the fat cow repay her own scholarships first, because that was a real waste of public money, wrote one blogger.
Sign that commenter up for Rantburg!
Of course, if the Dutch government really did impose fines on moms, many would have to get outside jobs in order to pay them. But wait a minute. If mothers return to paid employment, that means theyre no longer wasting their education. Does this mean they dont have to pay the fine after all?
Don't confuse MP Dijksma with logic, it's clearly not her strong point.
Some Dutch moms say its not worth working full time because daycare costs so muchthe equivalent of around $1,000 a month, according to one mother. But isnt the high cost of daycare evidence that caring for children all day is actually a worthwhile use of ones time?
Whether Dijksma thinks so or not, Dutch mothersmany of whom prefer part-time work when their children are youngclearly do. Put aside for a moment the fact that these mothers never agreed to an ROTC-style repayment of their college educations. While Dijksma evidently has a purely utilitarian view of education, anyone who ever took a college class for the joy of learning knows theres more to an education than preparing for a paycheck. As well, mothers know they can put their educations to work every day as they rear their children. But if women are now going to be required to pay back the state for their educations, those who hope to have children one day may decide that the cost of attending college is too high. Does Dijksma want only uneducated women to have children? How will that help Holland?
This assumes that Holland can be helped.
Dijksma is arrogant in assuming that what society wants and needs is more mothers earning paychecks while their children grow up in daycare (and 77 percent of Americas working moms say theyd prefer to be at home with their kids). The money that funds all of those college educations doesnt come from a big box in the basement of the parliament building marked state funds. Its paid through taxes by relatives of those kidsincluding fathers and grandparents who just might want their children and grandchildren reared at home, by their mothersnot dumped in daycare. Its paid by mothers who have dropped out of the paid workforce, and who will likely re-enter it when their children are older. Did Dijksma ask them if they considered their capital wasted if an educated woman chooses to labor at home instead of in an office?
Perhaps Hollands mothers ought to be asking Dijksma some hard questionssuch as who will be asked to bear the cost to society of children brought up away from home by indifferent strangerspeople who may dislike children, but who took the job because it was the only one they could find. Studies reveal that children who attend daycare suffer from more illnesses and are more aggressive than children cared for by their mothers. And the first generation of children brought up in daycare are now saying they plan to raise their own kids. Why? Because they hated daycare.
Why don't they just ask her if she still wants to be an MP? That might focus Sharon's tiny brain just fine.
One of Dijksmas blogger critics agreed to see at-home mothers fined for not joining the paid workforcebut only if they also fine women who never contribute any human capitalotherwise known as childrento their societies. Indeed, given Hollands plummeting birthrates, its leaders might want to consider paying mothers to bear children. Joseph DAgostino, a vice president with the Population Research Institute, points out that Dutch birth rates are below replacement level. Given that at-home mothers are more likely to bear additional children than are employed mothers, DAgostino believes the Dutch would be wise to consider finding ways to encourage mothers to care for their own children.
Thats not likely to happen as long as MPs like Dijksma are in charge. When Dijksma speaks of women throwing away their education on children, when she attacks at-homes mothers for not working (as though at-home mothers spent their time lying in hammocks, eating bon bons and reading romance novels), she is revealing a deep animosity towards traditional family life. Her views are ultimately not so much anti-woman as anti-child.
It's anti-woman, anti-child, anti-family, and anti-society as society currently is constructed. Ms. Dijksma is one of the hard-line progressives who believes all goodness must come from the state, and that 'citizens' (I use the term loosely in her case) exist to serve the state. That is Leninism, pure and simple.
Nowhere in Dijksmas Punish Mommy proposal do we find any concern for the children whose lives she would disrupt. In fact, if Dijksma succeeds in forcing mothers to pay back their educations, children will suffer the consequences: Some will be forced into daycare while mom works off her debt. The lucky ones will keep their moms, but will hear, We cant afford it, Honey, much more often.
Mothers Day, which Americans celebrate this Sunday, was initiated as a day to express appreciation for mothers. In recent years, its become a day in which many motherstrying to balance career and childrenguiltily wondered if they were doing right by their kids. If we do not take care who we choose as our leadersif we do not pick leaders who appreciate the work involved in giving children a happy, healthy childhood, and of instilling character in the next generation, we may eventually find ourselveslike our Dutch sistersunder threat of punishment for choosing our children over our careers.
#1
No big deal, just stop making children, and everything's fine... I mean, the migrants will pay for our retirement, social services, etc, etc, right?
#2
I agree with her. If you receive the benefit of an expensive education at the cost of society, you should not be allowed to throw away that knowledge unpunished. Who's paying for all those educations? Who ever is paying gets to call the tune. The Yuropean idea that deserves to be condemned is that people should get government services for free but the government can get nothing in return. It doesn't work that way. If they want to live off the government teat they do what the government says. If they want to be free get off the teat.
#3
MP Sharon, just because you're a "fat cow" (dutch description, not mine) who has NO CHANCE of ever having kids of your own, you lash out in anger and jealousy. F*ck you and the horse you rode in on.
#4
More than one critic has pointed out that Dijksma herself twice attempted and failed a college course, and that her grades were poor. It didnt matter, because by age 23, Dijksma was a well-paid MP.
The voters who chose a dim-witted, uneducated, immature child for an MP get what they deserve. Next time vote for someone with a brain - not just a big udder.
Assuming that Michael Hayden is confirmed as CIA director, the agency will be in strong hands--especially if, as rumored, Stephen Kappes is appointed his deputy. General Hayden is the nation's senior intelligence officer (his current boss, John Negroponte, the director of national intelligence, is a career diplomat rather than an intelligence professional). Mr. Kappes, a former director of the operations (human intelligence) division of the CIA, is highly respected throughout the intelligence community. These appointments will not "recenter" the beleaguered Central Intelligence Agency, which is being squeezed from three sides: The Defense Department, the FBI and the director of national intelligence are all encroaching on functions once securely within the CIA's domain. But with luck, Messrs. Hayden and Kappes can prevent a further erosion of the agency's standing, restore morale and take care that the CIA performs its core functions competently.
The picture may be brightening as far as foreign intelligence is concerned, but it remains dark with respect to domestic intelligence. In my forthcoming book, I explain why burying our principal assets for detecting terrorist plots that unfold within the U.S. in a criminal-investigation agency--the FBI--is unsound. We are the only major country that does this. The U.K.'s domestic intelligence agency, MI5, works closely with Scotland Yard, Britain's counterpart to the FBI. But it is not part of Scotland Yard.
The British understand that a criminal-investigation culture and an intelligence culture don't mix. A crime occurs at a definite time and place, enabling a focused investigation likely to culminate in an arrest and conviction. Intelligence seeks to identify enemies and their plans before any crime occurs. It searches for terrorist sleeper cells in the U.S. with no assurance of finding any. Hunting needles in a haystack is uncongenial work for FBI special agents. And so at the same time that the attorney general was testifying before Congress that the National Security Agency's intercepting some communications of U.S. citizens is essential to national security, leaks from inside the FBI revealed that special agents are disgruntled at having to chase down the leads furnished to them by NSA. FBI special agents--the bureau's only operations officers--want to make arrests, and so they zero in on animal-rights terrorists and ecoterrorists--people known to be committing crimes and therefore relatively easy to nail. These people are criminals and should be prosecuted, but as they do not endanger national security, prosecuting them should not be an intelligence priority.
Changing an institutional culture is difficult at best; in this case it may be impossible. Almost five years after 9/11, the horses of change at the FBI have left the paddock but are still short of the starting gate. At least $100 million spent on trying to equip the bureau with modern information technology adequate to its intelligence tasks has been squandered. Just eight months after the president forced a fiercely recalcitrant bureau to combine its intelligence-related divisions into a single unit (the "National Security Branch"), the unit's first and only director has resigned to become the security director of a cruise-ship line. The FBI's primary mission is and will remain fighting crime; and just as crime-fighters don't make good intelligence operatives, intelligence operatives don't make good crime-fighters. The FBI fears compromising its main mission by embracing its secondary one.
The objections to creating a U.S. counterpart to MI5 are shallow. The FBI notes that Britain has only about 50 police forces and the U.S. 18,000: How could a U.S. domestic intelligence agency staff 18,000 field offices? It couldn't, of course. But neither can the FBI, which has only 56 field offices and an attitude of hauteur toward local police. Some fear that a domestic intelligence agency would be a secret police, spying on Americans. But like MI5 (and its Canadian counterpart, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service), such an agency would have no powers of arrest, and no greater authority to "spy on Americans" than the FBI now does.
Domestic intelligence is vital because of the danger of terrorist attacks from inside the U.S., such as the 9/11 attacks, and controversial because it entails surveillance of Americans, and not just of foreigners abroad--hence the current controversies over domestic surveillance by the NSA and over the Defense Department's expanding role in domestic intelligence. Before the fifth anniversary of 9/11 rolls around, we need an agency (which the president could create by executive order, as he did the National Counterterrorism Center in August 2004) that, unhampered by either military or law-enforcement responsibilities, can begin to plug a gaping hole in our defense against terrorism.
Mr. Posner, a federal circuit judge and a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School, is the author of "Uncertain Shield: The U.S. Intelligence System in the Throes of Reform," which will be published next week by Rowman & Littlefield.
#1
Actually we have two. The first was the FBI, which was reasonably effective as a counterintelligence internal security organization until the US Congress overloaded them with policing federal crimes redundant with State and even local offenses, for political brownie points.
By making them police crimes that are not even vaguely in Constitutional federal jurisdiction, much of the assets of the FBI are utterly wasted on petty crap and publicity stunts.
The second and far more recent is the Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive, which even as a new organization has to rate as being the most unloved and unwanted thing next to a large dead raccoon hidden beneath the floorboards.
#2
If we had a Domestic CIA, they could spend their time trying to overthrow the evil BusHitler(tm) regime while the Grown-Up CIA was busy trying to protect the country.
Interesting point about the FBI. The Commerce clause of the Constitution has been used as justification for meddling in far too many things.
FYI - good points here for an MI-5 type agency. But severe "firewalls" would need to be emplaced on such an agency to restict damage in the event its is misused.
But very good point that we have 2 different functions. The first is investigation, deterrence and prosecution after the fact. That's the FBI. the second (and newer) is intelligence, detection and prevention before the fact. Thats sort-of DHS, and sort-of FBI.
FBI bungled this pre-9/11 because their primary training and intenit is for Item 1 above. They simply didn't have the training aptitude and attitude to do the second job, nor did they have the tools and laws.
#4
So we need an MI-5 that will ignore tapes of terrorists planning bomb attacks?
No thanks. Let's just have the freaking law enforcement we already have actually enforce the law for a change.
Posted by: Rob Crawford ||
05/15/2006 13:02 Comments ||
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#5
I was confused by the article. What is the stick this organization wields? It doesn't sound like it gets to prosecute anybody because it won't follow all the constitutional Ps and Qs the constitution is interpreted to require. And you can't tell me they'll be allowed to practice wetworks. So what can they do? Identify that the Superbowl will be bombed tomorrow and get the game cancelled?
#7
And who is giving up an ESSENTIAL liberty? name it please.
If youare talking about call records, you already give up far more than that every time you dial a phone call - its not an essential liberty, per the Supreme Court, in that you have no privacy expectation of your phone records because you willingly give up that info in exchange for a service with a commercial third party. To get that data doesnt even require a warrant.
And what TEMPORARY and LITTLE safety are we buying?
I'd say preventing another large scale mass-csaulaty attack is neither temporary nor small. The consequences of failing to do so are quite olarge and permanent: see the holes in the groundin NY about "little"and talk to the relatives of the dead about "temporary". The damage was large, and the dead are that way quite permanently.
OK - here's a correction - and this shows you how BADLY out of touch the MSM is. They list a bunch of Intelligence agencies including this one:
"the National Imagery and Mapping Agency"
Problem is that one (NIMA) hasnt existed for about a year. Its the NGA - National Geospatial-inteliigence Agency, or NGA.
A quick google would ahve been enough.
And recall the NY Times publishing a story of a wounded vet getting a "Purple Star", captioning a picture of an SFC as an "Officer".
Distrust EVERYTHING you read in the MSM about the military and intelligence of the US, they are simply ignorant and grossly derelict when it comes to reporting on those items.
#2
Distrust EVERYTHING you read in the MSM about the military and intelligence of the US, they are simply ignorant and grossly derelict when it comes to reporting on those items.
Hell, distrust EVERYTHING you read from them (period). I forget where I first heard this, but think about the last news report you saw or heard on a topic you have some high- or expert-level knowledge of. Then think about how many mistakes you caught. Why assume it's any different for other topics?
#3
Maybe they don't have the background to handle "rocket science" stuff; but still ... Serving on a grand jury was eye-opening--I could compare the published news story with eyewitness accounts and marvel at the differences.
I recall one science article in the NYT online where the reporter got the facts mostly straight, but a headline writer "punched up" a line from the story and got the story backwards as a result.
Posted by: James ||
05/15/2006 15:54 Comments ||
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Moonbatpornographer loses it.
An open letter to William P. Leahy, SJ, president of Boston College.
DEAR Father Leahy,
I am writing to resign my post as an adjunct professor of English at Boston College.
I am doing so -- after five years at BC, and with tremendous regret -- as a direct result of your decision to invite Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to be the commencement speaker at this year's graduation.
Many members of the faculty and student body already have voiced their objection to the invitation, arguing that Rice's actions as secretary of state are inconsistent with the broader humanistic values of the university and the Catholic and Jesuit traditions from which those values derive.
But I am not writing this letter simply because of an objection to the war against Iraq. My concern is more fundamental. Simply put, Rice is a liar.
She has lied to the American people knowingly, repeatedly, often extravagantly over the past five years, in an effort to justify a pathologically misguided foreign policy.
The public record of her deceits is extensive. During the ramp-up to the Iraq war, she made 29 false or misleading public statements concerning Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and links to Al Qaeda, according to a congressional investigation by the House Committee on Government Reform.
To cite one example:
In an effort to build the case for war, then-National Security Adviser Rice repeatedly asserted that Iraq was pursuing a nuclear weapon, and specifically seeking uranium in Africa.
In July of 2003, after these claims were disproved, Rice said: ''Now if there were doubts about the underlying intelligence . . . those doubts were not communicated to the president, the vice president, or to me."
Rice's own deputy, Stephen Hadley, later admitted that the CIA had sent her a memo eight months earlier warning against the use of this claim.
In the three years since the war began, Rice has continued to misrepresent or simply ignore the truth about our deadly adventure in Iraq.
Like the president whom she serves so faithfully, she refuses to recognize her errors or the tragic consequences of those errors to the young soldiers and civilians dying in Iraq. She is a diplomat whose central allegiance is not to the democratic cause of this nation, but absolute power.
This is the woman to whom you will be bestowing an honorary degree, along with the privilege of addressing the graduating class of 2006.
It is this last notion I find most reprehensible: that Boston College would entrust to Rice the role of moral exemplar.
To be clear: I am not questioning her intellectual gifts or academic accomplishments. Nor her potentially inspiring role as a powerful woman of color.
But these are not the factors by which a commencement speaker should be judged. It is the content of one's character that matters here -- the reverence for truth and knowledge that Boston College purports to champion.
Rice does not personify these values; she repudiates them. Whatever inspiring rhetoric she might present to the graduating class, her actions as a citizen and politician tell a different story.
Honestly, Father Leahy, what lessons do you expect her to impart to impressionable seniors?
That hard work in the corporate sector might gain them a spot on the board of Chevron? That they, too, might someday have an oil tanker named after them? That it is acceptable to lie to the American people for political gain?
Given the widespread objection to inviting Rice, I would like to think you will rescind the offer. But that is clearly not going to happen.
Like the administration in Washington, you appear too proud to admit to your mistake. Instead, you will mouth a bunch of platitudes, all of which boil down to: You don't want to lose face.
In this sense, you leave me no choice.
I cannot, in good conscience, exhort my students to pursue truth and knowledge, then collect a paycheck from an institution that displays such flagrant disregard for both.
I would like to apologize to my students and prospective students. I would also urge them to investigate the words and actions of Rice, and to exercise their own First Amendment rights at her speech.
Steve Almond is the author of the story collections ''The Evil B. B. Chow" and ''My Life in Heavy Metal."
#1
Cool. Now BC can shift your slot to a useful major.
Posted by: ed ||
05/15/2006 8:14 Comments ||
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#2
"I cannot, in good conscience, exhort my students to pursue truth and knowledge..."
Personally, I'd rather not have people like you exhorting America's youth about anything; in fact, I'd be perfectly happy to see your kind evicted from our universities at gunpoint.
Bye bye, Parasite. Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out-- and good luck with that new job flipping burgers!
Posted by: Dave D. ||
05/15/2006 8:28 Comments ||
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Steve Almond was raised in Palo Alto, California, aka The Town Where God Will Retire. He spent seven years as a newspaper reporter, mostly in El Paso and Miami. He has been writing fiction for the last eight years. His work can be found in a whole bunch of literary magazines, along with the occasional porn outlet. He lives in Somerville, MA, and teaches creative writing at Boston College.
Note: Dr. Rice has a PhD.
Steve here doesn't have any educational accomplishments (at least on his resume) outside of a bunch of fictional writings.
When Leahy gets to this line, he's going to bust a gut laughing.
"No! Not that! Anything but that! Hee hee. Better send someone down to the corner where the migrant workers hang out, and have them pick up another adjunct."
#8
Well, he's a self important boob, but ya gotta give the guy credit. At least he put his money where his mouth is.
Now let's see how many tenured faculty making six figure salaries who are so pissed off about Rice being there follow his lead?
My guess? The big doughnut...
#9
This asshat was on John Depetro's morning show on Friday, calling for (among other things) the immediate redistribution of all wealth in the US (which has nothing to do w/ Dr. Rice, I know, but...). He came off as incredibly arrogant and impervious to every single argument presented to him, even calling Depetro a 'Bush lackey' (yes, KCNA apparently outsources their speechwriting).
#11
bigjim-ky, the 'professor' actually said something very close to that, now that I think about it a bit more (the standard 'that was just about sex' line).
#15
Many members of the faculty and student body already have voiced their objection to the invitation. Translation: We have been whining why havent you heard us? Good example to the students that will soon be competing in the job market. Anyone want to hire anyone from Boston College that objected to Condi?
#20
I took a look at his website, 2b. The former adjunct professor may have been a newspaper reporter in the past, but now he earns his bread and butter as, according to his answers to one of the letters, "merely a sex columnist who smokes a pipe in the nude," telling people why they oughtn't tell brother about the sex dream, or the bar mitzvah tutor about thoughts of man/pre-pubescent girl love affairs. What I saw didn't merit a red pencil, and he is probably well-suited to teach an introductory class in creative writing. What his website, his chosen subject matter (erotica or porn, I suppose), and his letter to the College president reveal is a certain unsuitability for thinking on weightier topics.
MUCH of the education debate in these pages in the past year has focused on how subjects such as English and history have been dumbed down at the school and tertiary levels. Theory, political correctness, outcomes-based education: take your pick. At the school level, outcomes-based education is attacked as drowning teachers in hundreds of vague and faddish learning outcomes that are impossible to teach and report on to parents. Outcomes-based education's anti-academic and anti-competitive ethos is also condemned.
The impact of theory -- ranging from critical theory, where Shakespeare is on the same footing as Australian Idol, to postmodernism, feminism, Marxism and constructivism -- has also been criticised as ideological and misdirected.
Although the debate has focused on the humanities, it is equally important to know that the hard sciences have also fallen victim to the weird and the wacky represented by theory and outcomes-based education. It's not difficult to find evidence that chemistry, physics, mathematics and, at the tertiary level, medicine are being watered down and made politically correct.
The Australian Doctors Fund submission on Australian medical education to the federal Government provides a comprehensive account of the way medicine is being transformed. Not only have core areas such as anatomy been downgraded as prospective doctors are taught to be culturally sensitive, but students complain that lecturers "facilitate" instead of teaching and there is too much emphasis on problem-based learning.
As the ADF paper concludes: "There is sufficient evidence for a major rethink of the move away from basic sciences in medical undergraduate curriculum. The criticism of the application of 'problem-based learning' cannot be ignored. While self-directed learning is highly desirable, abandonment of a duty to teach is not."
Science at the school level has also fallen victim to theory and outcomes-based education. In the same way that English has been taken over by critical literacy, with its emphasis on politically correct values, so too have subjects such as physics and chemistry been subverted.
In Western Australia, the draft Year12 physics paper asks students to comment on the "ethics of making airbags compulsory" and in the chemistry paper students are asked to analyse "the relationship between attitudes, values, beliefs and chemical knowledge to account for the development of the cosmetics industry over time". As noted by several teachers on the WA anti-outcomes-based education website PLATO, such questions have more to do with sociology than science and they take valuable time away from teaching the core elements of the relevant subjects.
A further concern about the way science is now taught, as noted by Adelaide academic Tony Gibbons in his book On Reflection, is that school curriculum documents argue there is nothing objective about science and that Western science can no longer be privileged.
The South Australian curriculum states: "Every culture has its own ways of thinking and its own world views to inform its science. Western science is the most dominant form of science but it is only one form among the sciences of the world." The Northern Territory science curriculum adopts a similar approach; it speaks of a "social-constructivist perspective" and one where "science as a way of knowing is constructed in a socio-cultural context".
While some, such as the chairman of the Australian Institute of Physics, Igor Bray, believe that in science there are right and wrong answers on the basis that "if we don't get the mathematics right, bridges fall down and aeroplanes fall out of the sky", the WA curriculum argues that our understanding of the world is culturally determined: "People from different backgrounds and cultures have different ways of experiencing and interpreting their environment, so there is a diversity of world views associated with science and scientific knowledge which should be welcomed, valued and respected. They [students] recognise that aspects of scientific knowledge are constructed from a particular gender or cultural perspective."
The contradictions in arguing that science is relative and subjective are manifold. One of the defining characteristics of Western science, as opposed to witchcraft, is the belief that it is possible to test different versions of the truth as some more closely approximate reality.
It is also the case that if, after suffering a heart attack, you visit your local doctor, no amount of cultural sensitivity will help you if your doctor does not know the rudiments of human anatomy.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/15/2006 00:00 ||
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#1
No wonder there has been a mass exodus from public to private schools here in Oz.
think it may take more than a 12 pak and a tree stand, bubba
Posted by: bk ||
05/15/2006 12:12 Comments ||
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#5
Relflects the madrassing of schools. Soon it will be all theory and piousness of correct thought and recitation of "interpretations". Just like the madrassas.
#7
Think tanks have become the new universities. The internet, including places such as rantburg U provide the basis for the pursuit of truth.
Universities have become nothing more than tax funded nursing homes for the liberals of the 20th century and extended day care centers for their children.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Not even at the height of the feminist movementwhen women were openly scorned for wasting their brains if they chose childrearing over careerdid anyone suggest that mothers should be punished for taking care of their children instead of earning a paycheck. But in Holland, thats exactly what a member of parliament is proposing.
MUCH of the education debate in these pages in the past year has focused on how subjects such as English and history have been dumbed down at the school and tertiary levels. Theory, political correctness, outcomes-based education: take your pick. At the school level, outcomes-based education is attacked as drowning teachers in hundreds of vague and faddish learning outcomes that are impossible to teach and report on to parents. Outcomes-based education's anti-academic and anti-competitive ethos is also condemned. 
