"For in order to survive, those of us for whom oppression is as American as apple pie have always had to be watchers, to become familiar with the language and manners of the oppressor, even sometimes adopting them for some illusion of protection. Whenever the need for some pretense of communication arises, those who profit from our oppression call upon us to share our knowledge with them. In other words, it is the responsibility of the oppressed to teach the oppressors their mistakes. I am responsible for educating teachers who dismiss my children’s culture in school. Black and Third World people are expected to educate White people as to our humanity. Women are expected to educate men. Lesbians and gay men are expected to education the heterosexual world. The oppressors maintain their position and evade responsibility for their actions. There is a constant drain of energy which might be better used in redefining ourselves and devising realistic scenarios for altering the present and constructing the future." — Audre Lorde, “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference” in Gender Through the Prism of Difference, 239. (via femmenoire)

(via valeria2067)

"

We’ve been hearing a lot about the war on women, which is real enough. But there’s also a war on the young, which is just as real even if it’s better disguised. And it’s doing immense harm, not just to the young, but to the nation’s future.

Let’s start with some advice Mitt Romney gave to college students during an appearance last week. After denouncing President Obama’s “divisiveness,” the candidate told his audience, “Take a shot, go for it, take a risk, get the education, borrow money if you have to from your parents, start a business.”

The first thing you notice here is, of course, the Romney touch — the distinctive lack of empathy for those who weren’t born into affluent families, who can’t rely on the Bank of Mom and Dad to finance their ambitions. But the rest of the remark is just as bad in its own way.

I mean, “get the education”? And pay for it how? Tuition at public colleges and universities has soared, in part thanks to sharp reductions in state aid. Mr. Romney isn’t proposing anything that would fix that; he is, however, a strong supporter of the Ryan budget plan, which would drastically cut federal student aid, causing roughly a million students to lose their Pell grants.

So how, exactly, are young people from cash-strapped families supposed to “get the education”? Back in March Mr. Romney had the answer: Find the college “that has a little lower price where you can get a good education.” Good luck with that. But I guess it’s divisive to point out that Mr. Romney’s prescriptions are useless for Americans who weren’t born with his advantages.

… What should we do to help America’s young? Basically, the opposite of what Mr. Romney and his friends want. We should be expanding student aid, not slashing it. And we should reverse the de facto austerity policies that are holding back the U.S. economy — the unprecedented cutbacks at the state and local level, which have been hitting education especially hard.

Yes, such a policy reversal would cost money. But refusing to spend that money is foolish and shortsighted even in purely fiscal terms. Remember, the young aren’t just America’s future; they’re the future of the tax base, too.

A mind is a terrible thing to waste; wasting the minds of a whole generation is even more terrible. Let’s stop doing it.

" —

Paul Krugman, The New York Times, “Wasting Our Minds.”

Go read the whole damned thing.

(via inothernews)

(via stfuconservatives)

(via koschei-the-deathless)

karnythia:

There’s a petition to get her job back. I signed, please consider doing so too.

What the hell.

I feel so, so lucky to have gone through a public school system where something like this would never have happened, where it would have been much more likely for these kinds of initiatives to spread through schools/the county.

(via valeria2067)

Florida legislators: We don’t care if you were born here, college students. 

motherjones:

The Florida state legislature sparked controversy recently when it struck down a bill that would have allowed U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants to pay in-state tuition rate like all other Florida residents.

Lawmakers voted to kill the bill despite emotional testimonies from several college students, including 20-year-old Carla Montes. Montes described how she cried for three days after being denied in-state tuition because her undocumented parents couldn’t afford the out-of-state tuition rate, which is three times higher. Under U.S. law, children born in the country to undocumented immigrants are American citizens, called “birthright citizenship.”

Unmoved, Republican legislators interrupted Montes multiple times as she told her story, attempting to refute the notion that their ruling was unfair.

“As a U.S.-born American citizen I can vote, I pay taxes, I attended school in Florida, ” Montes told the committee.

“No, no, no, we’re talking about your parents,” barked Sen. Steve Oelrich. “That’s how we establish residency in the state of Florida, by the status of your parents.”

Montes shot back: “With all respect, the person who is sitting in the classroom, the person who’s giving back to this economy is me, not my parents.”

— Via CampusProgress

I seriously don’t understand this.

Like, aside from the rampant racism and classism, etc., I also fail to see how you could possibly arrive at the conclusion that the status of one’s parents is even relevant to one’s residency.

"Although most boys figure out how to bring themselves to orgasm by age thirteen, half of girls don’t have their first orgasms until their late teens, twenties, or beyond. Teenage girls widely agree that they get the message loud and clear that masturbation is something boys do, but girls don’t, can’t, or shouldn’t. The cultural focus on intercourse tells young women to expect they’ll begin to experience sexual pleasure once they have sex with a man (whether or not they’re even interested in sex with men). Nearly all teen boys, on the other hand, experience sexual pleasure long before they get their hands—or other body parts—into a partner’s pants. Despite the massive advances in women’s equality, young women’s sexuality is stuck in a surprising paradox. Young women are sold provocative clothes but aren’t taught where to find their own clitoris. Many girls give their boyfriends oral sex, but are too uncomfortable with their own bodies to allow the guys to return the favor. It’s still a radical act to say that women need and deserve access to information about their own sexual pleasure—not just about the risks and negative consequences of sex." —

Dorian Solot, I Love Female Orgasm: An Extraordinary Orgasm Guide. (via feministhistorian)

(Source: historicalslut, via valeria2067)

"WE PETITION THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION TO:
Ensure that every child in America has access to an effective school library program.
Every child in America deserves access to an effective school library program. We ask that the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) provide dedicated funding to help support effective school library programs. Such action will ensure more students have access to the resources and tools that constitute a 21st century learning environment. Reductions in school library programs are creating an ‘access gap’ between schools in wealthier communities versus those where there are high levels of poverty. All students should have an equal opportunity to acquire the skills necessary to learn, to participate, and to compete in today’s world." —

The librarians need 11,000 more signatures on this petition…

wh.gov/Wgd

(via neil-gaiman)

(via neil-gaiman)

SO-PAthetic. 

• United States of America: Good news, guys, we took down Megaupload. Now everyone can rest easy!
• Health Care System: 
• Hand-gun Violence: 
• Unemployment: 
• Public Education: 
• Gay Marriage: 
• Marijuana Legislation: 
• Middle East Conflict: 
• World Hunger: 
• Cancer Research: 
• Ron Weasley: You really need to sort out your priorities.

stfuconservatives:

Tucson bans school books by Chicano and Native American authors

shewalkslikethunder:

Also banned Mexican American Studies curriculum, and teachers were advised to stay away from class units where “race, ethnicity, and oppression are central themes.”

This is what our so called “post-racial” America looks like. We’re not post-racial discrimination, we’re post-racial education and discourse.

Newsflash, Arizona. Brown people will not go away nor forget their oppression just because you stop allowing teachers to talk about them.

"If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales." — Albert Einstein (via somelittlejoy)

(via lillianbassman)

mohandasgandhi:

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) says students should just get 3 jobs to pay for college instead of using Pell Grants

Tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations? That’s a-ok! Why are students complaining? Working 3 jobs to pay back student loans is the American dream.

In addition to again having one paper refer to a book about economic policy as a NOVEL, one of the papers I looked over today said something along the lines of, “Well, I disagree with telling people to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, but this redistribution, Robin Hood-esque stuff is just not fair to the poor the rich people!”

.

.

.

What the heck do they want to do, then?

(via stfuconservatives)

motherjones:

(via)

"College debt shows up a lot in these stories, actually. It’s more insistently present than housing debt, or even unemployment. That might speak to the fact that the protests tilt towards the young. But it also speaks, I think, to the fact that college debt represents a special sort of betrayal. We told you that the way to get ahead in America was to get educated. You did it. And now you find yourself in the same place, but buried under debt. You were lied to." —

“Who are the 99 percent?,” Ezra Klein, The Washington Post (via hold-a-wolfs-ears)

The school I attended is being sued by the government for fraud. This isn’t some small-time hack school. It’s the Art Institute, a chain of for-profit colleges with real accreditation and campuses all across the country. They knowingly loaned huge amounts of money to low-income students who they knew could never afford to pay it back. They kept students who they knew didn’t have the skills to get proper job placement in their chosen field. And they happily gobbled up the federal loan money and left these students to the wolves, such as Sallie Mae, who is faced with a class-action lawsuit. They make a profit when students default on their loans.

They didn’t just lie to us. They concocted a scheme to get rich off of our misery. They profit by destroying our lives.

(via amydentata)

(via stfuconservatives)

(TWarning: Rape) Despite being raped twice by the same person, a 7th grade girl was blamed, demonized and punished by school officials 

k-sarahsarah:

abaldwin360:

Heartbreaking: 7th Grade Girl Raped Twice, Blamed and Punished By School Officials Both Times

The first time she was raped, school officials told her she was lying. They even demanded she write and hand-deliver an apology letter to her attacker.  Twisting the knife a little deeper,  the school expelled her for the rest of the year. The devastating sequence of events that followed suggests that school officials may actually have wanted the girl to have been attacked, or punished for speaking-out, once more  She was raped by the same boy in the library the following year. 

According to the Springfield News-Leader, the 7th grade special education student at Republic Middle School in Springfield, MO reported her rape in the spring of 2009. School officials refused to believe her, and after suffering through “multiple intimidating interrogations,” she recanted the claim.  What’s more, a school psychologist’s report said the girl “would forego her own needs and wishes to satisfy the request of others around so that she can be accepted.” In other words, the already victimized twelve-year-old might have taken back her statement after school officials demonized her for being raped.

When she returned to school the following year, the school refused her mother’s request for extra monitoring and did not separate her from her rapist who, thanks to the apology letter, knew she had told. If the school wanted the girl to be victimized a third time, they got their wish. In February 2010, the lawsuit says her attacker “was able to hunt [her] down, drag her to the back of the school library, and again forcibly rape her.” This time, she and her mother reported the rape to the police, and a rape kit tested positive for her attacker’s semen. He plead guilty to charges in juvenile court. 

The school’s next move made it clear that it was not lack of evidence fueling officials’ accusation that she was lying, but a deep-seeded hatred for women: Incredibly, the twelve-year-old rape victim was suspended for for “Disrespectful Conduct” and “Public Display of Affection” - two absolutely disgusting ways to categorize rape. The school had victimized the girl a fourth time, slut-shaming a rape victim for an attack that happened on school property, and one her mother sought to prevent by requesting their separation.

Her lawsuit requests damages for medical expenses, emotional distress, and attorneys’ fees, in addition to “punitive damages to deter School Officials and others from similar conduct in the future.”

But the school district denied every one of the girl’s allegations, as well as responsibility for the attack,  the same way they denied her rape.

[SOURCE]

But women are equal, rapists are always prosecuted, and jokes about this shit are hilarious, huh?

I am too upset to say anything productive, but overall: how did they determine that they should do any of those things?  What made them seem like good ideas?  What ever happened to protecting the children in their care?

(via amadgirl-withablog)

(Source: xsugarcatx, via stfuconservatives)