Monday, June 1, 2015

IS HOMOEROTIC PORNOGRAPHY GOOD FOR HIGH SCHOOLERS TO SOFTEN UP YOUNG MINDS? SOME BELIEVE SO.

Back in March, 2015, local news TV WTNH-TV News 8 carried a story about David Olio, an ex-English teacher in South Windsor, Connecticut, after Olio aired a restricted content YouTube video of Allen Ginsberg reciting a poem of homoeroticism, undoubtedly a work of pornography, that Ginsberg himself wrote titled Please Master. Slate picked up the story as well as CNN.

According to a report published by the Hartfort Courant on the story, South Windor school superintendent Superintendent Kate Carter stated, "The content of the poem is wholly inappropriate for a high school classroom, and it was irresponsible for you to present this poem to children under your charge. Some of your students are minors, and you gave neither the students nor their parents any choice whether they wished to be subjected to the sexual and violent content of this poem."

So the debate comes to whether or not anyone believes that it is fine that 17-year olds get exposed to homoerotic pornography. More over, should exposing minors to homoerotic pornography transcend Connecticut law?

Reading a salacious poem before a class of young, impressionable minds seems to be little more than an act of corruption and quite likely against the criminal code of the Connecticut General Assembly. The Connecticut General Assemply has defined obscenity in their penal code, Chapter 952, Title XX. Some of the key passages are these:

(1) Any material or performance is “obscene” if, (A) taken as a whole, it predominantly appeals to the prurient interest, (B) it depicts or describes in a patently offensive way a prohibited sexual act, and (C) taken as a whole, it lacks serious literary, artistic, educational, political or scientific value. Predominant appeal shall be judged with reference to ordinary adults unless it appears from the character of the material or performance or the circumstances of its dissemination to be designed for some other specially susceptible audience. Whether a material or performance is obscene shall be judged by ordinary adults applying contemporary community standards. In applying contemporary community standards, the state of Connecticut is deemed to be the community.
(3) “Prohibited sexual act” means erotic fondling, nude performance, sexual excitement, sado-masochistic abuse, masturbation or sexual intercourse.
(10) “Material” means anything tangible which is capable of being used or adapted to arouse prurient, shameful or morbid interest, whether through the medium of reading, observation, sound or in any other manner. Undeveloped photographs, molds, printing plates, and the like, may be deemed obscene notwithstanding that processing or other acts may be required to make the obscenity patent or to disseminate it.
(11) “Performance” means any play, motion picture, dance or other exhibition performed before an audience.
(12) “Promote” means to manufacture, issue, sell, give, provide, lend, mail, deliver, transfer, transmit, publish, distribute, circulate, disseminate, present, exhibit, advertise, produce, direct or participate in.
Connecticut criminal code has a law, which prohibits obscenity with respect to minors. Those guilty of that law are guilty of a Class D felony. Section 53a-196. Obscenity as to minors:

(a) A person is guilty of obscenity as to minors when he knowingly promotes to a minor, for monetary consideration, any material or performance which is obscene as to minors.
(b) For purposes of this section, “knowingly” means having general knowledge of or reason to know or a belief or ground for belief which warrants further inspection or inquiry as to (1) the character and content of any material or performance which is reasonably susceptible of examination by such person and (2) the age of the minor.
Olio is lucky he has gotten off by merely resigning. Olio could have faced criminal prosecution.

Of course, in any criminal action, the prosecution would need to show that Ginsberg's poem lacked educational merit. While the poem might have educational merit at a university for a class on homoerotic literature, it's unlikely such a poem has educational merit for 17-year olds.

The  act of ex-teacher Olio seems much like an act of someone with a political agenda masquerading as an act of education.

Comically, some are trying to frame this situation as a free speech issue. By accepting employment, Olio agreed to abide by the requirements of his job put forth by his employer.

According to a report by CNN, Cary Nelson, a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign said, "Either education is a place where you can talk about bigger issues and challenge students or it isn't, and certainly students on their way to college  need to know that sometimes, sure, things can be uncomfortable. That's what education is about."

Is education supposed to be about indoctrinating young minds into preferred sexual preferences held by some?

If an adult sharing homoerotic pornography with minors is appropriate in the classroom, then it must be appropriate for any adult to do the same misdeed outside of the classroom. For the hypocrites who say the former is appropriate and the latter not, they can only fall back on an argument of politics and indoctrination.


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Tuesday, February 11, 2014

"FREE COLLEGE FOR EVERYONE!" SAYS BILLHASLAM





Bill Haslam, governor of Tennessee and brother of the owner of the Cleveland Browns, has proposed that Tennessee taxpayers ought to pick up the tab for any graduating high school senior to attend a two-year community college or a college of applied technology free of tuition and fees.


Few reformers ever touch on reality. Reality starts with knowing one's purpose. What ought to be the purpose of education for strangers living in a society of property, where property always means the right of ownership and never the things owned? 
Education should support progress. One word sums up all of progress — autonomy. Autonomy is self-government of anyone in society of property.
Haslam touches on what needs to happen — real reform. Yet, his approach would fail to do the job if implemented.
Here is what real reform that leads to successes would look like:
Elementary schooling should emphasize expression — learning musical instrumentation, learning 2-d and 3-d perspective drawing, learning all kinds of athletics. Of course, reading proficiency and arithmetic proficiency ought to be concurrent with the foregoing.
All indoctrination of young minds in elementary education should stop forthwith. There is no need to pollute minds with phony versions of history nor is there good cause to subject young minds to support contemporary political factions seeking extra privileges.
High school needs to end at 16. Middle school and high school ought to be combined. The end point of high school should be an understanding of jurisprudence and civics so that young adults can become engaged citizens.
During these years, students ought to learn an authentic history of what it means to be American. Thus, such a history should begin in-depth around the English Civil War and culminate around the eve of World War 1. Next students should learn about the control for power of America through the various wars and schemes and why the USA as ended up where it is today.
Along the way, students should gain proficiency in algebra, odds-making, risk-assessment, rhetoric, persuasion and bookkeeping.
What is now the first two years of an undergrad education or the full two years of community college ought to become two tracks — (1) three years of foundation preparation with the curricula the same everywhere — calculus, statistics, finance, business law, physics, chemistry — which gets completed by 19; and (2) production trades for mechanics, technicians completed by 18. Either way, both would lead to skilled Americans for actual work.
The bachelor's degree ought to be done away. Instead, universities ought to begin with conferring master's degrees built from the foundation preparation above. So by the time an American is 21, she or he is a master in a field such as business or engineering or law. The JD ought to be eliminated.
The advantage to the foregoing is that when occupational demands change, anyone needs but a quick two years to change his or her master vocation.
With an additional year, for those seeking to become medical doctors and dentists, instead of the two years master's degree, such persons should gain a medical degree readying them to gain licenses straight away.
However, too many vested interests have want to keep schooling extended for years upon years. There are too many academicians with bogus Ph.Ds pursuing personal hobbies as research, which ought to be privately funded as charity. Whole fields need to be eliminated such as sociology, Chicano studies, Afro-American studies, women's studies, and all other such political fields of pseudo-science.
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Thursday, September 19, 2013

KELLY PHILLIPS ERB AND HER SILLY BELIEFS ABOUT PUBLIC EDUCATION



The foregoing comes from Kelly Phillips Erb, over at Forbes.

There is no such thing as “society.” Saying so is a cheap rhetorical ploy. There are only individuals. If society exists, it consists of all the individuals as there are only individuals. Society doesn’t exist apart from the individuals who comprise it. So Ms. Erb must show that each adult individual in America enjoys a rise in purchasing power above the sum of money taken through force from each to fund public education. If Ms. Erb can not do so, her boastful claim that a benefit exists to each adult individual (aka “society”) at once becomes false. After all, Ms. Erb made the boastful claim a benefit exists, which must be a benefit to each individual. If some individuals benefit while others do not, then no one can claim “society benefits.” Regardless of her wishful thinking, Ms. Erb can not escape the choke-hold grasp of logic. Specifically with respect to Mr. Fernandes, unless his income goes up each year by something greater than $7,143.54, to cover his compliance expense as well as to yield a return, Fernandes loses. Likely, that is the case of for all adult Americans who get forced to pay to the public school district mafias. Public education benefits unionized government workers engaging in make-work as all government work is little more than overpaid welfare make-work. Also note, that public educators who pay taxes to fund public education, in effect, do not pay any taxes as they pay themselves. Thus, public educators are receiving an extra benefit that none else are. The indoctrinated and the shills parrot the same lines — "School tax is cheap insurance. Without public education, there shall be many on food stamps and other welfare who have a dozen kids each. If children become well educated they are less likely to rob me or cause my neighborhood to deteriorate. Without a public education system, a country will experience a lack of prosperity." Never do these indoctrinated ones and these shills cite peer-reviewed studies that shows by statistical significance the lack of education is causal for crime rather than coincident or causal for why all becoming a food stamp recipients or other welfare. Never do these jokers show that public education is causal for prosperity. If the lack of education were causal for crime, then why not mandate everyone earn PhD.s? Why not require persons pay taxes for everyone to attend universities through PhD.s, gratis? Educating everyone to the max would eradicate crime according to your beliefs. Right now, 1 in 6 Americans receive SNAP (food stamps). Some of them have PhD.s. How is it that some having earned PhD.s need food stamps, the same as those who might be high school drop outs? The current owner of Dole, David H. Murdock, dropped out of high school in the 9th grade. He is the 190th-richest person on earth according to Forbes with a net worth of US$2.4 billion. Why hasn’t Mr. Murdock led a life of crime? If it were so that public education were causal in prosperity, then public education must also be causal in time of pauperism and economic depression. Likely, in the history of the USA, there has never been a time with more Americans having been educated through public education and to the degree of that public education. Yet, Americans have experienced more than five years of bleak employed precisely because of the lack of prosperity. These indoctrinated and shill jokers are cowards who are are quite comfortable to have agents of the political establishment use force against some so that their preferences get provided by others, preferences which support their crazed false beliefs about Utopia.  
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