Looking back on tutoring and the course

These are a few excerpts from my paper:

     To be completely honest, I don’t like kids. I really don’t like kids. I have stated this in class before and I am entirely unapologetic about my opinions. I will say however, that I genuinely enjoyed my time with the kids at IHAD. At first, I was incredibly hesitant about heading into a “classroom” environment. Despite the eight hours of tutor training (which I will admit was very helpful), I still felt overwhelmed. People kept mentioning that as tutors we will be role models to the kids. To tell you the truth, I’m probably one of the worst role models a kid could have. I’m bitter, angry, and I drink too much. I am radical in my political views to the point that I’m certain that I should be on a government watch list. Also, I hate kids. But I’ll be damned if spending time with those children didn’t make my heart grow three sizes those days. I was legitimately surprised at the manner in which those kids received us. While they were slightly mischievous in attempting to avoid doing their work, they always seemed thankful for our help.

Maybe I’m projecting a bit, but I honestly think they really enjoyed our interaction with them. When Mister Jazz introduced us before tutoring each day, they thanked us in a chorus of yells. To tell you the truth, I will never be as dedicated to anything as Jazz is to those kids. It seems as though he’s basically adopted thirty plus children. His dedication to those kids’ education is inspiring. I could never make the sacrifices that he does day in and day out for those kids. Though many of my tutoring events were exercises in controlled frustration, at the end of every session, I felt great.

Now, I want to talk about one student in particular.I suppose to maintain anonymity, i should use a false name. Let's go with James. Every time I was assigned James, I smiled. He was always a pleasure to work with. He was sharp as a tack when it came to his school work and yet he still knew how to interact comfortable with people almost twice his age. I know that I only had a passing influence in his life, but it’s comforting to me to know that I assisted in pushing him in the right direction. I will never be able to see where he goes in life, but I am one hundred percent sure that he will succeed in something great.  I didn’t do much, but I’m glad that I got to interact with a kid that seemed genuinely interested in his studies and was fun to talk with as well. I was definitely not looking forward to my tutoring experience, but I will say that working with James made it all worthwhile.

Now looking back on this blog, I have written about the drug war, private prisons, the war on women. So, what do they all have in common with this course? It’s about human dignity. This course has turned me into a militantly empathetic person. I will use the example of my classmates being unsympathetic to the working class poor as an example. Seeing that kind of dismissive behavior regarding the dignity of another human being was enraging. This course has demonstrated to me that in order to be a citizen of this world, you have to recognize your personal privileges. I am a white male. I am afforded so many more rights than a white female or a black male. I don’t even have to try to receive this treatment. It’s inherent and automatic. However, recognizing this privilege is incredibly important. Something I encounter at this university, and online, is the inability for people to recognize just how lucky they are. They’re a bunch of new age Bobos toting around Mac books with zero consciousness of the world around them. They might believe that they are doing well by “raising awareness” of racism by having a bake sale on the quad, but they’ve really just turned around backwards on the moving walkway of racism.

I think that the moving walkway metaphor works for so much more than just racism. There seems to be an outright war on human dignity in this country and all anyone is doing is complaining. It seems as though people are willing to recognize that our world is a broken place, and they want to fix it, but nobody’s doing anything. Everyone has turned around on the moving walkway. Some, like those who complain about white guilt in humanities, are ignoring that by not acting, they are participating. Well I’ll be damned. We’re all human beings and it’s about time we started acting like it.  

So, what did I take from this course? I don’t think it’s about cultivating global citizenship. I don’t think it’s about learning about racism. I don’t even think that it’s been directly discussed this entire semester. I learned how to be a genuinely empathetic human being. I was awarded privileges that the kids at I Have a Dream don’t have access to. Recognizing one’s own privilege is the very first step to becoming a better person. So it’s my duty as a human being to do my best to make sure that I am actively trying to better the world by helping those less fortunate than myself. Seems pretty simple to me.

“Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies — ‘God damn it, you've got to be kind.’” – Kurt Vonnegut

The Internet: The Best/Worst Thing

     I will start this out by saying that I am in complete love with the internet. I honestly believe that the internet is the most important item that has been invented in the past 50 years. I'm completely unapologetic about as well. The concept of freely accessible information across the entire world is something right out of a sci-fi novel. Yet every single day we take it for granted. Does anybody else realize that up until 20 or so years ago, this technology wasn't widely available? Seriously, if I could travel back in time and bring one human invention with me, it would be a world-wide network of computers that allows instantaneous exchange of information. See how impressive that sounds? Although I will be the first person to readily admit that the internet is terrible in many horrific ways. But specifically, I want to talk briefly about internet misogyny. I have blogged about political misogyny in the past, but I think that casual misogyny needs to be recognized and addressed.

It's not a great photo, but at least it doesn't have a Guy Fawkes mask in it.

          It turns out that if you give the average internet user the mask of anonymity, they're going to be horrifically terrible people. If you've ever found yourself on a forum or bit of the internet with a "post as anonymous" function, i'm sure that you're readily aware that it seems that everyone is a dirty racist, homophobic, misogynistic jackass. Hell, you don't even need to be anonymous, you just need a handle that isn't directly linked to your personal identity. I'm looking at you, "BluntSmoking420HaloChief." Let me cite the following screen captures from popular websites:

     I found this particular bit of wisdom on a youtube video of a woman being injured in a magic trick mishap:

    Oh, Phatso816, you really know how to make a joke. Now this comment in itself is pretty bad, but what's worse is that 192 individual people who happened to stumble onto this video gave his comment a thumbs up. Great, fantastic, wonderful. Oh, and it gets much much worse, I promise. Take for example this thriving community on the website Reddit:

I literally had to go get a beer after putting this up here. It's a PBR and it is warm but it's better than nothing.

     A more subtle subreddit would be the fiercely active r/mensrights. Let's take a look at what they're promoting: 

     I'll just let you peruse what they've written. It speaks entirely for itself. Not only are the posts terrible, but there are over thirty four THOUSAND people who currently subscribe to that subreddit.To but that in perspective, that is approximately one half of this entire city that believes that men are actively being discriminated against. Huh.

     I suppose that in my mind, I started this post to have a message, to prove a point. But in actuality, I'm not sure what i'm supposed to do about this. I mean, I suppose at the very least I have brought your attention to the sweeping misogyny on the internet (and if i haven't, spend 30 seconds on a google search for "Make me a sandwich". It's about as common and is normally paired with, "get back in the kitchen" as a misogynistic insult. Oh wait, let me do that for you).

     That is twenty-eight million people who have said that on the internet. That is approximately three times the population of North Carolina. I mean, we can account for some of those as being non-derogatory, but I'd be willing to wager that most were not.

     So, what do we have here? We have a substantial community of people on the internet that seems to believe that misogyny is acceptable and that it is a funny joke. This is completely unacceptable. I have argued against misogyny in my past post, so I don't need to be redundant on my reasoning behind my opposition. I'm just appalled. I'm mainly concerned about the children that are growing up today with unfettered internet access. I'm concerned for the young males that seem to congregate on the sites like reddit and digg. I'm afraid that they'll unconsciously (or consciously) absorb this widespread misogyny and incorporate it into their identities. I will admit, that my previous statement is probably one of the most Lib-Arts things I have ever written, but none the less, it concerns me. Maybe I'm sensitive about misogyny, as I was raised by women. I'll admit that I might have bias about it, but I will be damned if i'm willing to let it continue without notice.  As with most of this blogs, my righteous anger and frustration has turned into a kind of sad sense of defeat. I can't personally educate every person on the internet about male privilege. So, what am I supposed to do? I honestly don't know. Beverly Tatum has an excellent analogy about institutionalized racism being a moving walkway. Those who do nothing to stop are still participating in institutionalized racism by moving forward. I want to run backwards against this socially-accepted misogyny, but I'm not at all sure how. So for now, until I find a plan to fix it, i'm just going to remain angry.

Political Misogyny and Drinking Games

I've come up with a great new drinking game. Every time a politician enacts a bill that restricts women’s reproductive rights, you take a shot. Also, every time a right wing pundit implies women are whores for wanting contraception, you take a shot.  Finally, every time Planned Parenthood gets its funding cut, you take a shot. The winner is the first person to black out and forget that we live in a society that seems to hate women.

"I can't even feel my legs, let alone shame for my nation."

In all seriousness, I’m appalled at what has been happening in this nation. Maybe I’m particularly sensitive to the issue because I was raised by women. Alternatively it could be just that I’m not a misogynistic Republican looking to undermine any and all of women’s rights. It’s a tossup.  Seriously though, it seems like every time I look at the news, there’s a new Republican campaign to restrict women’s rights. I honestly don’t understand it. I cannot even begin to fathom why we, as a country, are moving backwards. There are so many examples of political misogyny in the news that I don’t even know where to start. Luckily, MoveOn.org has put together a handy top ten list for us.

1) Republicans not only want to reduce women's access to abortion care, they're actually trying to redefine rape. After a major backlash, they promised to stop. But they haven't yet. Shocker.

2) A state legislator in Georgia wants to change the legal term for victims of rape, stalking, and domestic violence to "accuser." But victims of other less gendered crimes, like burglary, would remain "victims."

3) In South Dakota, Republicans proposed a bill that couldmake it legal to murder a doctor who provides abortion care. (Yep, for real.)

4) Republicans want to cut nearly a billion dollars of food and other aid to low-income pregnant women, mothers, babies, and kids. 

5) In Congress, Republicans have a bill that would let hospitals allow a woman to die rather than perform an abortion necessary to save her life. 

6) Maryland Republicans ended all county money for a low-income kids' preschool program. Why? No need, they said.Women should really be home with the kids, not out working. 

7) And at the federal level, Republicans want to cut that same program, Head Start, by $1 billion. That means over 200,000 kids could lose their spots in preschool.

8) Two-thirds of the elderly poor are women, and Republicans are taking aim at them too. A spending bill would cut funding for employment services, meals, and housing for senior citizens.

9) Congress just voted for a Republican amendment to cut all federal funding from Planned Parenthood health centers, one of the most trusted providers of basic health care and family planning in our country.

10) And if that wasn't enough, Republicans are pushing toeliminate all funds for the only federal family planning program. (For humans. But Republican Dan Burton has a bill to provide contraception for wild horses. You can't make this stuff up).

What kind of country are we living in? This list is so barbaric and offensive that it’s absurd. The worst part of that list is that it is barely scraping the surface of the atrocities being committed in state legislatures. Let’s take one of our friends to the south for example. Georgia recently tried passing a bill that was commonly known as the “Women are Livestock Bill.” It was aimed to prevent women from receiving an abortion after 20 weeks. The theory behind this bill, and I’m not making this up at all, is that if pigs and cattle can carry a dead fetus long enough for it to be birthed naturally, so can women.  That is an actual thought process that went through a state representative’s mind. Then that thought joined up with a bunch of other bad ideas and it became a bill. The state representative in question was Rep. Terry England (Link). Eventually, after much fighting (including an actual fist fight), legislators came to a compromise and added a clause that states a woman can receive an abortion after 20 weeks if the fetus has “profound and "irremediable" anomalies that would be "incompatible with sustaining life after birth” (Link). I’m so glad everyone can come to a compromise on a law that literally restricts what a woman can do to her body. It’s collaboration at its finest.  

North Carolina isn’t exempt from the political misogyny circus either. It was just a few months ago that a bill passed in this state that required a woman to wait 24 hours before receiving an abortion and to hear an ultrasound of the fetus’ heartbeat. The bill had no special provisions for rape, incest, or age. So that means, a victim of rape or incest has to wait and listen just like every other woman in this state. I had the misfortune of watching that bill pass live on TV. I cannot describe the emotions of everyone in that room. Luckily, Bev Perdue vetoed it shortly after its passing. The fact that it passed in the first place is astounding to me. Then again, it could be much worse. Recently Virginia tried to pass a bill that would require a woman to receive a transvaginal ultrasound prior to receiving an abortion. Luckily, a clause was added that a woman can opt for an abdominal ultrasound instead. It seems as though if lawmakers can’t outright ban abortion, they’re going to make it as difficult and traumatic as possible.

It’s not even just about reproductive rights. Here’s a handy chart describing all the ways in which the GOP is undermining women’s economic security throughout their entire lives (Link to source).

Link to Chart

There is a silver lining to all of this. Because the GOP has been actively campaigning against women’s rights, women aren’t going to vote Republican. “Democrats certainly have something to highlight after two national polls found Obama leading GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney largely on the strength of women's support” (Link). Also, all of this political misogyny has created enough noise to get people out and campaigning against these bills. “Women who previously weren't as politically active in those states have come out of the woodwork to protest, women lawmakers have introduced "message amendments" that target men's health, and legislators are personally hearing from angry women through Facebook posts, emails and phone calls to a noticeably higher degree than previous years” (Link).  At least there’s a bit of an upside to all of this.

I only mentioned a few things in this blog, there are a hundred more examples of political misogyny that I could talk about. It’s absolutely pervasive. I honestly cannot believe that I live in a nation where politicians can campaign on a plank of anti-women’s rights and be taken seriously. I’m dumbfounded and enraged. If we’re supposed to be moving towards a completely equal society, why are we attacking the rights of 53 percent of the nation? I swear to god, I’m going to rear end the next Subaru I see with a “coexist” sticker and a “Ron Paul 2012” window decal. If you vote republican, you hate women. There’s absolutely no way around that. 

Now excuse me, i've got to go find a shot glass and begin forgetting.

Private Prisons - A Dangerous Threat

America has a problem. Our Department of Justice is just too good at arresting criminals. We're packing folks into jails like they cattle. Did you know that we have the highest rate of incarceration of any other country? That's both in percentage and in sheer numbers. How about that for American Exceptionalism? Now that's something to be proud of. Other countries can't even keep their prisons open. Look at the Netherlands, they just can't keep their jails full (Link). Oh wait, that's because of progressive drugs policies that are the polar opposite of the American justice system. You might remember how terribly racist and ineffectual the United States courts are from my previous post. Oops.

That doesn't change the fact that American jails and prisons are absolutely overflowing with inmates (A large number of these inmates are serving time for non-violent crimes. In fact, only about half of the inmates in state prisons were there for violent crime). The solution seems pretty simple. We need to examine our justice system and see why the United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world. We should compare ourselves to other nations and see how they handle criminals. Then, we need to take that information and reconfigure our justice system so that it is balanced and fair. Well the states don't look at it that way. The general consensus is that we just need to build more prisons. Ah, but there's a bit of a catch. No state really has the money to fund these massive projects. The solution that some states are considering is a terrifying one.

The idea of a privately owned prison is a relatively new concept. We can trace the history of the modern private prison in the United States back to the 1980s. Essentially, a company known as Correction Corporations of America received the rights to operate a prison facility in Tennessee. From there, CCA has been growing rapidly and raking in massive amounts of money. Much of this "business" has been from the War on Drugs funneling prisoners into their facilities.Why would a state switch to a private prison? It's much cheaper. From CCA's website, we have their pitch:

The company also provides valuable economic benefits to its local community partners by paying property, sales and other taxes, and providing a stable employment base that focuses on building careers with unlimited growth and development opportunities.

If it saves the state money, well that could be good, right? Oh wait. It doesn't. In fact, there have been instances where it was more costly to the state to run a private prison than to run a normal one. Ohio recently considered selling one of their prisons to CCA. They cited that the sale would save the state 3.8 million dollars. However, a research council demonstrated that "the prison sale would cost taxpayers $11 million more over the next 20 years than if the state would have continued to own the prison." (Link)

What could be the harm of these for profit prisons and what does that have to do with the class? It comes down to the fact that these are businesses. Their main goal is to amass as much profit as possible. If they don't turn a great profit, their investors will be very upset.  Keep in mind, this is an incredibly lucrative business to get into. 

"The number of inmates in private prisons increased by roughly 1600 percent between 1990 and 2009. In 2010, the two largest private prison companies alone took in nearly $3 billion in revenue, and their top executives each received annual compensation packages worth well over $3 million." - (Link) 

 How does a prison make money? Having more prisoners. How do you get more prisoners? You get into politics. CCA has been actively involved in politics for many years. Reports from 2008 implicate that "[CCA] spent more than $2.7 million from 2006 through September 2008 on lobbying for stricter laws." (Link). Here's another great example of their lobbying, "As the immigration debate continued in 2007, CCA spent $3.25 million lobbying members of Congress to approve funding that would ultimately lead to increased spending on immigration detention." (Link). It gets even better, they have also been lobbying the Department of Homeland Security as well. It seems that CCA isn't just content making money off of American prisoners, they're looking to go global.

This is a statement from CCA regarding potential profit losses in the future: "... any changes with respect to drugs and controlled substances or illegal immigration could affect the number of persons arrested, convicted, and sentenced, thereby potentially reducing demand for correctional facilities to house them." (Link)

So, this company that makes profit incarcerating people is lobbying for tougher laws so that more people can be imprisoned so they can make a bigger profit. If you were keeping track, CCA is literally lobbying to ruin people's lives in order to make money. If that doesn't make your skin crawl, it should.

How does this tie into LS479? It's a pretty easy series of connections to make. The book Marked taught us that having a prison record drastically affects your ability to readjust to normal society. A prison record is a death sentence for future employment. Combine that with the fact that my previous blog demonstrated that the War on Drugs is racially biased beyond reason and you have a very serious issue. This company, CCA, makes money off of the imprisonment of individuals. Lobbying for stricter sentencing and an added emphasis on the War on Drugs is just proof that this company does not care about the rehabilitation of individuals, but rather they are just looking for the biggest possible profit.

Our Racist Drug War

Unfortunately, I had to miss Thursday’s class discussion on Marked, but I still wanted to be able to talk and vent about the drug war and incarceration in America. I would be willing to wager a good bit of money that most people in the honors department were proud graduates of D.A.R.E or another drug awareness program. I sure was. The fifth grade D.A.R.E. program with our School Resource Officer taught me that drug users were useless members of society whose only goal was to make money selling drugs to young kids. We were taught the merits of “Just say no” and to trust our local police officers to maintain safety and justice for all. Drug users were a detriment to our society and should be locked up for good.  Of course, now I know better. I began researching the war on drugs fairly recently (something that happens to you after attending a liberal arts college, I suppose). It was within the past two or three years. I began looking at how the current war on drugs came to exist. I was shocked. I want to examine the unequal laws and ineffective strategies employed by the United States in its war against drugs. Unfortunately, the history of the US drug war is convoluted and incredibly long, so I want to focus on the prohibition of marijuana. I hope that it won’t come off as a 1,000 word diatribe about “legalizing it.” Rather, I would like to demonstrate that the US has never had good intentions with its war on drugs.

Where does the War on Drugs start? It depends on how you look at it. President Nixon was the first President to openly call for a War on Drugs in 1971 in response to rampant heroin abuse by soldiers serving in the Vietnam War (Link). However, one can look back further into the history of different, occasionally softer, drugs to catch a glimpse of where all of this began. Opium had become a very serious problem in the US and several laws were enacted to ban the substance. Many individuals at the time –and currently it seems- believed that cannabis was a dangerous gateway drug that would coerce the nation into the death grips of opium dens. Although the actual attack on marijuana came a bit later.

In the late 1930s the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 was passed. This bill was intended to heavily tax marijuana to curb consumption. It wasn’t until 1951 that possession of marijuana was determined to be a federal crime (along with much harder drugs such as cocaine and opiates). Despite marijuana being a mostly harmless drug, the bills passed easily (Link). There are several theories as to the nature of this bill passing. First, many believe that William Randolph Hearst saw the mass production of hemp as a threat to his paper production and lobbied for its banning. Another commonly held theory is that the prohibition of marijuana was a flagrantly racist attack on Black and Mexican-American communities. This theory has a fair bit of credence. Consider the following quote from Harry J. Anslinger, the US senator that spearheaded the campaign against marijuana:

"Most marijuana smokers are Negroes, Hispanics, jazz musicians, and entertainers. Their satanic music is driven by marijuana, and marijuana smoking by white women makes them want to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers, and others. It is a drug that causes insanity, criminality, and death — the most violence-causing drug in the history of mankind." 

                                                                                                                     -WRH

            Yeah, that was said by a US senator. If you don’t believe that there were racial motivations behind the banning of cannabis in this nation, well then you’re ignoring hard facts. One might argue that the racial profiling of the Drug War is something of a distant past. They would be terribly wrong. I’m not even going to examine the effect that unequal crack cocaine sentencing affected the 1980s prison boom seen below. I will also ignore how cocaine, a predominantly white, upper-class drug is treated much more lightly than other hard drugs. Instead, to keep things in their simplest form, I’ll stick with marijuana.

            The incarceration rates of people of color compared to whites is absolutely staggering. Take this quote about incarceration rates in California from the LA Times as an example, “According to the CJCJ (Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice), half of California's marijuana possession arrestees were nonwhite in 1990 and 28% were under age 20. Last year, 62% were nonwhite and 42% were under age 20. Marijuana possession arrests of youth of color rose from about 3,100 in 1990 to about 16,300 in 2008 -- an arrest surge 300% greater than the rate of population growth in that group” (Link) 

     Here’s another startling statistic from the same article, “Blacks make up less than 7% of the state population but 22% of people arrested for all marijuana offenses and 33% of all marijuana felony arrests. More African Americans are arrested in California for marijuana felonies than are whites, even though whites are six times more represented in the state population.”  This is not just a phenomenon in California, check out the image below describing the arrest and conviction disparity in the city of Chicago. These statistics are absolutely shocking. This is hard evidence showing not only national police profiling, but an entire system designed to incarcerate minorities more than whites.

            First of all, I am vehemently opposed to the United States “War on Drugs.” I believe just in its very nature, it’s a waste of money and more has far more power than it should. It seems that every other day you can find an article about how the police or the DEA raid some house for marijuana and shoot some unarmed civilian or their dogs. Actually, how about I just list all of these links?

(Link 1)

(Link 2)

(Link 3)

(Link 4)

(Link 5)

            So, in summary, the War on Drugs is probably one of the biggest threats to minorities in the United States. I should also mention that after Portugal legalized most drugs, they saw a marked decline in overall drug use. Look forward to the next thrilling installment of my blog where I discuss the dangers of privatized prisons! America is broken. 

For-profit-colleges: An attack on the poor

                They come at night. They’re tucked unassumingly in between Taco Bell ads and Welcome Back Kotter reruns. They come in the morning. They appear between dramatic courtroom shows and Maury. We’ve all been subject to their slogans and bad acting. They are for-profit college commercials. ITT Tech and University of Phoenix are just a few of the many “colleges” that are raking in cash by using predatory schemes to lure in uninformed people.  The image above is actually one that popped up in my Facebook ads this afternoon.  They’ve become the educational version of a “get rich quick scam.” In a nutshell, these “universities” advertise that getting an education from their program is a quick and easy way to get better jobs. After all, the news is constantly talking about how one needs a 4 year degree to be competitive in the job market, right? What could be so bad about offering someone an education? Well, it turns out that these programs are nothing more than a massive scam designed to sap money out of the government and burden poor people with gigantic student loans.

                Their techniques are predatory. They advertise late at night or during working hours. They’re targeting the unemployed and uninformed. There also seems to be overwhelming evidence that these institutions are specifically targeting minorities and the poor. “More than a quarter of low-income black female students entering college for the first time attended for-profit colleges during the 2008 academic year, according to Department of Education data.”(Link). These so called colleges have dreadfully low rates of graduation and often saddle students with ludicrously high amounts of debt. “Twenty-two percent of first-time, full-time students seeking bachelors’ degrees graduate from for-profit colleges within six years, compared with a 55 percent graduation rate at public colleges and 65 percent at private nonprofit universities…” (Link). From that same article, we have a terrifying figure regarding the debt of these students: “The median debt level for bachelor’s degree recipients at for-profit colleges is $31,190, compared with $7,960 at public institutions and $17,040 at private nonprofit colleges…”

That number should terrify anyone paying attention. That’s just the student loan side of the equation. They also siphon an astounding amount of money out of the federal government too. According to research completed by the group Education Trust, for profit colleges “get up to 90 percent of their revenue from federal grants and loans and received $26.5 billion last year in U.S. student aid.” (Link). Along with the federal grants, these institutions go after soldiers. The GI bill is a program that assists soldiers with college tuition. These for profit institutions are not overlooking the US military when scavenging for new students. In fact, “Eight for-profit colleges and universities received $1 billion — or 24 percent of all G.I. Bill money in the last year…” Of course, graduation rates are just as low with returning soldiers as they are with low-income students. ““Of the eight for-profits receiving the most G.I. Bill money, five saw more than half of their students fail to graduate…” (Link)

What a well placed ad.

     Now it’s time for a personal anecdote. I don’t know many people that got sucked into these colleges, but I know two. My brother in law and his best friend got their bachelor degrees from ITT Tech in Tampa, FL. After four years of education, my brother-in-law’s friend managed to amass 76,000 dollars in student loans at an 11 percent interest rate. My brother-in-law got off much worse. His student loans are well over 100k also at 11 percent interest. Now, after shelling out that much cash (or rather, borrowing it) they must have incredible degrees and high paying jobs, right? Nope. Not at all. In fact, my brother didn’t have a degree yet (he’s in the process of getting his engineering degree), and he managed to get a position at the same business as my brother-in-law’s friend. My brother came in earning 4 to 5 dollars more an hour than the friend. The Human Resources department at that company was willing to pay him more solely because he wasn’t getting his degree from a for profit college. He ended up talking to an HR director one day and brought up ITT Tech and the like. The HR director said that it’s a massive red flag to see that on a resume. She stated that individuals from for-profit-colleges often graduate lacking any real job skills. They may have passed their courses, but they are technically unsound. She stated that she would rather hire someone working on their degree at a public four year university than hire someone who had already graduated college from a for-profit. That’s saying something right there. Even if you ignore the fact that these businesses are preying on the poor and siphoning money from the government, these institutions still aren’t properly educating students.

Even if someone realized that they were getting nowhere in a for profit school, their credits are almost entirely useless. Most colleges refuse to accept transfer credits from for-profit-schools. The reason is that these institutions are not regionally-accredited. If you listen to one of their many commercials, you will hear the spokesman proudly say that the institution is nationally-accredited.  That makes it sounds like it’s a legitimate school. But in reality, the process of national-accreditation is much more lax in comparison to regional accreditation.

I don’t believe that many people know about the dangers of for-profit schools. Considering that they target the poor and uninformed with predatory marketing practices, I believe that these institutions pose a huge danger to the working class. What’s even more terrifying is that Republican candidate Mitt Romney actively supports for-profit-colleges. He stated that the free market helps keep the price of education down and that for-profit colleges are an excellent way for the working class to get educated (Link). One more reason to be careful of who you vote for.  

EDIT: Here's a wonderful website filled with personal anecdotes from former ITT Tech students. http://myittexperience.com/ITT_Comments.htm

Here's a handy little infographic from NPR:  

Poverty and a complete lack of empathy and belief in human dignity.

I know that one of the main critiques that I received about this blog was that I talk too much about myself. I make far too many "I" statements. However, I feel as though with the subject matter at hand, this time it is warranted. We've been talking about the concept of a living wage in our class for the last week. I know that it could be a touchy subject, but I was not expecting the sheer amount of insensitivity that I would be witnessing in the class discussions and further research.

I don't like playing the emotion card when discussing things such as politics, but i'm willing to make an exception here. The reason is that when people talk about politics, they talk about taxes and budget cuts. These things are abstract monetary concepts. Inherently, they are difficult to fully understand. However, when we begin talking about living wage and welfare, we're talking about human beings. We're talking about people who need assistance. We're talking about single mothers and people who have been laid off by giant corporations. I hate to sound like such a bleeding heart liberal, but I'm actually emotionally invested this subject.

Here's where I pull the bullshit pity card. I grew up as one of those kids in the documentary. That poor kid that offered to give his mother his allowance money? Yeah, that was me. Not initially, i will admit. I was born into a perfectly normal middle class family with three kids. I was the youngest and I had everything I needed or wanted. At some point my life things drastically changed. You can cite a divorce or maybe a failing business as the cause. It doesn't really matter what was the cause. The end result was that I ended up spending a series of years living in poverty. Now that I'm in a better situation -college, 4 jobs, somewhat of a bright future-I can look back on it and appreciate the hardships. Those years helped me develop a sense of empathy and compassion that I would not have, had I led an average middle class life.

This nation is lacking in empathy, common decency, and a sense of what it means to have human decency. Because of our misconceptions regarding the "American Dream," it's relatively easy to dismiss the poor as a lazy and shiftless lot. I'll tell you the truth, I've known dirt poor people that have worked ten times harder than anyone I've met at this university. Rich Republicans often complain about the welfare queens bleeding this nation dry, but they have no idea what it's like to watch a woman drive two towns over to use her food stamps. The privileged have no clue what it's like to see your mother weep over a box of church donated food. They don't know what it's like to feel completely overwhelmed by debt. It's a constant feeling of being held under the surface of the water. The system is designed to keep the poor in poverty and shame. Drive Mitt Romney to Hillcrest Apartments in N. Asheville and let him find one damn person who's proud to need government assistance. I doubt that will make the news. Of course it won't. The poor are a blight on this country.

Don't believe me? Jon Stewart has an amazing segment on the media's war on the poor. I'll link it here. The basic gist of the segment is that the upper class has absolutely no idea what it means to be poor. The newscasters are astounded that 99 percent of the so called "poor" own a refrigerator. Really? God forbid the poor want to keep their food. This disconnect is readily evident in our class discussion Thursday. Some of my classmates were completely unwilling to believe that the poor should receive a living wage. They cited that they -as upper-middle class, white, government scholarship supported- individuals, could survive easily on minimum wage, why couldn't the lazy shiftless folk in the documentary do the same? It's nowhere near the same. First and foremost, people that are in this college have already been afforded advantages that not one of those people in the documentary have. They have a high school education, are in their final year of college education, and most likely have amazing prospects ahead of them. The poor on the other hand have a series of institutions keeping them down. Anyone that can't see this is gazing through the rose tinted glasses of middle class white privilege.

I often make the mistake of looking at my local news' facebook page. It's a disgusting mix of thinly veiled racism and anti-poverty ranting. One of the very worst that I have encountered is a frequently posting individual who i will just refer to as Paul. I will quote some of Paul's comments right now:

"One one hand, the Obama Administration buys advertising to get more people on food stamps.
On the other hand, the National Park Service warns that we shouldn't feed the animals, as they might become dependent and not learn to take care of themselves."

That comment received 9 "likes" and that bums me out. In the process of writing this blog post, I have gone from angry to enraged to disheartened. To tell you the truth, I have no idea how to fix the idea that someone needing help is somehow a terrible gutless quality. Where do we begin? This clearly isn't a political idea, it's too pervasive for that. This is a social construct built off of years of middle class privilege.

I don't know anymore. It's damn near impossible to change people's minds it seems. So, I guess the best I can do is to try to help those who need it.

"My friend Erin says it best, "we're all two or three bad decisions away
from becoming the ones we fear and pity"
and Tony says it's important to bear some witness when you can
and that’s not hard to do in the city that I live in." - AJJ

A Look at Obama and Education

Previously, I’ve lambasted the Republicans for their corporate and terrifying views and ideas about education. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the concept of privatizing education in the US is one of the more disturbing campaign trends that I have seen. I pray to god that I will never see the day that happens. The idea of corporate owned schools is too ridiculous to fathom, yet the Republican candidates are pushing for it quite hard.

            What about the Democrats? I have to show both sides of the story after all, so I started doing some research on what Obama has done during his time in office. In less than five minutes time I found myself with a browser full of tabs. I found news story after news story detailing all of the bills that he has passed to help education and educators.  I’m going to go through a few of them below.

            One of the first things that I found was Obama’s reform of the No Child Left behind act. In September of last year, Obama permitted states to ignore some of the main tenets of Bush’s No Child Left Behind act.

He commented on this decision with “We can’t let another generation of young people fall behind because we didn’t have the courage to recognize what doesn’t work, admit it and replace it with something that does. We’ve got to act now.” Now that sounds like the president I voted for.  Link

He went on to say, “Teachers too often are being forced to teach to the test.  Subjects like history and science have been squeezed out.  And in order to avoid having their schools labeled as failures, some states perversely have actually had to lower their standards in a race to the bottom, instead of race to the top.”

So, right off the bat I stumbled across something spectacular. Barack Obama undid one of the biggest failures in education from the Bush administration. So, I took an internet stroll over to one of my favorite websites “WhatTheFuckHasObamaDoneSoFar.com” It didn’t take long to stumble over this gem. (citation) When Obama passed The American Recovery and Restoration Act in during his administration, he saved the jobs of over 400,000 teachers across America. That is absolutely astounding!  The entire state of Wyoming has 568,000 people. Obama’s  work saved almost an entire state’s worth of education jobs. Why is no one shouting this information from the rooftops? But wait, there’s more. Part of the Recovery Act was providing 70.3 billion dollars for educational program. (citation) I want to demonstrate just how much 70 billion dollars is.  Egyptian president Mubarak is believed to be the richest man in the entire world. His net worth is 70 billion dollars. That’s how much 70 billion dollars is. (citation) I’m not done. A stealth bomber costs about a billion dollars to produce. It is one of the world’s most advanced planes. It would take seventy stealth bombers to equal the amount of money Obama put towards education.  At every step of the way, Obama has been supporting education in America it seems. I was absolutely astounded to find this out. It would seem like this information should be brought up any time someone discusses education funding in politics. The further I go looking into what Obama has done for this countries education system, the more I am astounded.

One just needs to mosey on over to the White House page of Education to see just how dedicated he is to this nation’s children. Here’s a great one for example, “On December 16, 2011 the Obama Administration announced that nine states -- California, Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Ohio, Rhode Island and Washington -- would receive grant awards from the $500 million Race to the Top-Early Learning Challenge fund.”   That’s just one example. The list goes on and on down the page.

This being an election year, things are beginning to heat up in the debates. I’ve mentioned that the Republican view of education terrifies me to my core. Rick Santorum, a proponent of privatizing the education system, recently made a comment that has caused quite a stir. Last week Santorum claimed that Obama was a “snob” that wanted everyone to go to college. This was meant to be pejorative, but It doesn’t seem that bad to me. What’s wrong with wanting people to go to college? Absolutely nothing! Hell, a significant portion of our country is currently unemployed. Wouldn’t helping people increase their skill sets and get a degree help fix that issue? I’m no economic theorist; I’m just a poor white college student with a keyboard. However, it seems to make sense to me that education is a good thing. Maybe I’m ranting, but I have opinions and this blog is an outlet for me to express them.

I’m actively afraid of “intellectual fear.” I went to high school in a rural small town deep in the mountains of North Carolina. Something that astounded me was the idea that a college education would turn you into an elite snob. College wasn’t pushed very hard where I’m from. I thought it was just small town intellectual fear. But now I’m hearing it from a front runner of the Republican Party? That is terrifying to me. That small Republican town that I came from is going to hear that Santorum quote and agree with him.

That is why I thank my lucky stars that today it came out that Obama holds double digits over either Romney and Santorum. (citation) Also, today Obama came out and asked the country’s governors to invest more money into education. He believes that if the United States is going to be able to compete in a global economy, we need to have a highly trained workforce. The key to this, he says, is higher education. (citation) 

I suppose that this blog became a little bit of a rant of why I’m voting Obama again, but I’ll be damned if choosing a President that supports education isn’t one of the most important things I can think of.

Autism, the amygdala, and empathy

                This week’s film discussed the topic of disability, art therapy, and education of the disabled. When I hear about educating people with disabilities, I immediately want to know exactly what causes this disability and what effects it causes. I feel like it’s incredibly important to find the root cause of a disorder first, if you wish to educate someone with it. Autism is an interesting example to look into. In fact, the documentary from class discussed autism more than any other disorder.

                Autism is actually a very common disorder and practices in education haven’t really kept up with the research being completed by institutions. In fact, autism is estimated to be found in as many as one or two in a thousand children born today. Many of the issues surrounding autism education are about overcoming the impaired social interactions that are associated with the condition. I believe that in order to overcome these issues, we need to understand their root cause.

                When it comes to autism, we need to examine the structures in the brain that are causing these specific behaviors. Currently, there are many theories that postulate the neurological origin of the disorder. However, in my opinion, the most interesting path to pursue is a structure known for its role in emotion. Currently, there are two camps of thought. The entire debate centers around the role of the amygdala. The amygdala is a small almond shaped clusters of nuclei located in the limbic system. Often times, the limbic system and its surrounding structures are referred to as the “old” or “lizard” brain because of its primitive origins.  It is responsible for a number of neural processes. The amygdala is the center of emotion based learning. When we learn to fear or become anxious of something, we learn to avoid it. This learning is because of the amygdala. However, because of this, over activation of the amygdala seems to be responsible for panic or anxiety attacks in humans.

                How does the amygdala play a role in autism? Bauman and Kemper in 1985 originally noticed that in the brains of post mortem autistic brains, there was severe abnormality in the limbic system, specifically in the amygdala.  Many neuroscientists have postulated that the amygdala is vital in social interactions. Some researchers claim that over-activation of the amygdala would is a cause (or potentially symptom) of autism. They argue that over activation in the limbic system would explain the extreme anxiety associated with social interactions. However, there is an alternative explanation proposed by other theorists stating that it is under-activation of the amygdala that would explain the behavior of social withdrawal and a limited understanding of proper social cues and reactions.

                Assuming that the amygdala is the source of these issues (which some researchers are beginning to believe that the amygdala is a victim of a much larger disorder, however the research is still coming in on that theory), how can we properly begin to instruct individuals with autism? There is a theory that understanding that social interactions may be over stimulating the amygdala is the very first step to fixing the problem. If these individuals are not naturally inclined to understand complex social interaction, and that it may cause something like anxiety attacks, it is probably best to instruct these individuals on proper emotional responses.

                The Autism Research Center, located at the University of Cambridge, has developed a program that can potentially assist children with autism.  This program focuses around fifteen fifteen-minute long CGI episodes. These shows use everyday vehicles such as trams, trains, and other rail based transportation to teach children with autism emotion recognition skills. These rail cars are called The Transporters. Each of the episodes focuses on a particular emotion in context. The programs use these rail cars with oversized and over emoted human faces on the front to demonstrate each emotion. The theory behind the rail based vehicles as characters is that many children with autism prefer motions that are structured and repetitive. These trains can only move on their tracks, therefore they are unable to make spontaneous movements.

                This program sounds like many other educational series aimed at children, however this particular series of exercises has been clinically shown to improve emotion recognition in children with autism. This research is backed by the Autism Research Center and more specifically, Dr. Simon Baron Cohen. Dr. Cohen is a well-respected figure in the autism research field.  The fact that this program has actually shown a marked improvement in emotion recognition is absolutely amazing. This could be an amazing step towards helping to integrate children with autism into the classroom. The video below introduces Dr. Cohen and explains the program.

                Now that I have rambled about the limbic system and rail cars with faces, the question still remains as to how this is going to assist educators. As I said earlier, many of the issues that educators face when working with children with autism is their inability to understand emotion. Now, considering that this short program series (fifteen minutes a day for four weeks) has shown considerable help in allowing these children to understand emotion, this seems like an absolute no brainer. More research based on emotion education needs to be completed. We should be actively searching for a way to assist educationally disabled children become as well rounded as their non-disabled peers.

                What does the amygdala have to do with autism education? I believe that now that we can pinpoint neural structures responsible for these behaviors, we can also begin to assess how to treat children with autism (be it with therapy, biofeedback, or unfortunately medication). However, I believe that this information has a much more practical application. If educators understand that their students are having reactions that are akin to panic attacks, that can help them begin to empathize with the experience that children with autism go through. We often, mistakenly, assume that because children with disabilities are different than us, we cannot possibly understand what kinds of emotions or thoughts that they are having. However, I believe that neurological research in this field can help everyone empathize with educationally disabled individuals, rather than pity them. 

Education, Gifted Students and Politics

"...the Constitution does not authorize the Department of Education, and the founders never envisioned the federal government dictating those education policies." - Ron Paul

            Ron Paul is definitely not a good man. I have mentioned many times in class that I believe a necessary step to reform education in America is to attack it politically. If we, as a nation, are going to completely reform education in this country, we absolutely need leaders who are willing to fight tooth and nail for our children and their futures. I cannot even begin to comprehend voting for an individual whose end goal was to completely abolish the Department of Education and privatize the entire institution. That’s crazy, right? Please for the love of god, tell me that I’m not the only one who finds this appalling.

            I am a product of the public school system and I am immensely proud of it. I will admit that I was lucky in a few ways. My initial years of living, I was what I would refer to as privileged. I had two supportive parents, lived in an ok neighborhood, and went to an average school. I was tested in first or second grade and scored high enough to be labeled as gifted. This label helped me excel.

            Though it is a bit off topic, I briefly want to explain how the mere term “gifted” may have affected my entire life. In 1965, Rosenthal and Jacobson performed an interesting experiment on children labeled as academically gifted. The researchers approached teachers and informed that a few students from their class had performed exceedingly well on a test known as the Harvard Test of Inflected Acquisition. The test indicated which students were most likely to be academically gifted. High scorers were most likely to succeed in the classroom. In reality, the test never existed. The children that were labeled as gifted were actually chosen at random. At the end of the year, the researchers compared the grades of the “academically gifted” children in comparison to the normal children. Surprisingly enough, these students had significantly higher grades. It seems that the simple fact that the teacher of the class believed that these students were different changed how she interacted with them and pushed them harder than their classmates. (This has study seems to also imply that it works in the opposite direction. Labeling a student as academically disadvantaged may push them in the opposite direction.)

            I support public schools and I support teachers. Who would have ever thought that would be a party dividing statement? I mean seriously, if we’re going to look at potential presidential candidates, things are going to get scary. I have mentioned that Ron Paul is out of his mind trying to dismantle the department of education. However, I have not yet spoken about the other Republicans in the presidential primaries. Let’s look at the other candidates briefly. Nobody could be nearly as terrifying as Ron Paul, right?

            Newt Gingrich just took forty percent of the presidential primaries in the state of South Carolina. That’s a great sign for his campaign, but unfortunately, it’s a terrible sign for the state of education in America should he be elected. Let’s take a short gander at his views. Gingrich has been quoted as saying "education is the number one factor in our future prosperity, it's the number one factor in national security and it's the number one factor in [our] young people having a decent future. I agree with Al Sharpton, this is the number one civil right of the 21st century." Fantastic! Finally, there’s a presidential candidate that believes in our children. Oh, wait. Gingrich wants to drastically cut funding to the department of education. He has stated that he wishes to "…dramatically shrink the federal Department of Education, get rid of virtually all of its regulations." As if that’s not bad enough, in November, Gingrich proposed a revolutionary idea to help lower class schools. He wants to fire the unionized janitors and employ the school’s children as custodial staff. Come on! This guy cannot be serious! He’s the Republican front runner and he wants to destroy education in America!

            Alright, what about the other Republican candidates? Mitt Romney came in second with twenty-seven percent of the vote. Romney has been known as the moderate Republican candidate. In 1994, Mitt Romney, during his campaign for the US Senate, stated that he wanted to abolish the Department of Education. Recently Romney has recanted this position and instead believes that the best way to fix education in the United States was to “hold down the interests of the teachers' unions.” Did you know that teacher unions are evil? They’re constantly campaigning for higher wages. How greedy is that? Did you know that if you do the math, teachers get paid $1.42 an hour per student in the United States of America? How dare they ask for more money? Also, Romney has also stated that teacher unions are using overcrowded classrooms as a ploy to hire more teachers. Not to mention that Mitt Romney is a vocal advocate of No Child Left Behind. He has stated that “[standardized testing] allows us to get better schools.” This has to be a joke.

            These are the Republican leaders of our nation. These are potential presidents. These people have the power to be in charge of our entire country. How is everyone not completely outraged? Where is the anger from the parents of school children? Republicans don’t want to educate our children properly. In fact, many of them are campaigning against the interests of education in America. I am actually shocked at the statements made by these men. I refuse to support a candidate that does not support public education and the belief that every single child in this nation has the right to a fair, equal, and comprehensive education. If one were to consider just how important out presidential election is, our nation’s future is currently in the hands or the American public. Please for the love of God, don’t choose these guys.

Examined Life, Comedy, and Absurdism

 "We'll all be dead way longer than we'll be alive. We're all just a bunch of dead people who haven't died yet." - Louis CK

Talking about philosophy has always bothered me. I am not opposed to the idea of intellectual exchange about the nature of life; I'm opposed as to how people approach it. My biggest qualm with the documentary was the inaccessibility of it. The first few philosophers that spoke were lofty and borderline pretentious with the manner that they spoke about life. Philosophy, to me, has always been a genre of speaking that employs six dollar words that often obfuscate the real point. I generally agree with Einstein’s famous quote, “If you cannot explain it simply, you don’t understand it yourself.”

I don’t mean to belittle the individuals that spoke in the film; rather I believe that they could have devoted some more time to making the content of their monologues accessible to the average individual. If philosophy is the love of knowledge, and you wish to share this knowledge, you should make sure that your audience is willing and able to absorb it. Avital Ronell stated in her segment that she wasn’t sure “…where this film is going to land, who it’s going to wake up, shake up, freak out, or bore…” That is a very important point that she seems to ignore. She is correct; she had no idea who would end up parked in front of this documentary. Therefore, she should have made her monologue accessible to just about anyone.

After finishing this documentary, I found myself to be a bit angry. I listened to award winning intellectuals speak about meaning, ecology, and life for 90 minutes, yet I don’t feel like I have gained much. Maybe it’s the culture that these individuals have immersed themselves in, the culture of high academia, but I feel as if they have very little connection to real life. It’s very easy to sit in an ivory tower and survey existence from an elevated vista. It’s too academic. It’s too lofty. If one truly wants to examine existence, you must immerse yourself in living. Waxing on about the nature of life is absolutely pointless to me. The concept of seeking out a set of human universals makes me laugh. What an exercise in futility. Kurt Vonnegut once said “Life happens too fast for you ever to think about it. If you could just persuade people of this, but they insist on amassing information.” You could spend your entire life dedicated to the study of human nature and ethics, but when it comes down to it, we’re just a bunch of hungry animals with oversized brains. God bless our grey matter!

Speaking of grey matter and evolution, I want to raise an issue that I had with Peter Singer’s section of the documentary. I am familiar with his works as an animal rights activist. I generally agreed with everything he said in the documentary with the exception of his view of animals. I have a bit of a controversial opinion on animal rights, especially living in Asheville. I believe that we are animals and there is very little reason to stop us from acting like them. We developed incredibly complex brains and climbed to the top of the food chain pretty quickly. I believe that we have earned our place there. I believe that animals should be treated well; however I will never have an issue eating one. I have an issue with people stating that animals should have identical rights to people. Animal rights activists claim that a cow or a chicken has the same right to live as I do. I disagree. I am the peak of millions of years of evolution and that puts me on top of the food chain. I’m not about to step down.

I started this post with a quote by the comedian Louis CK and a complaint about the inaccessibility of the documentary. I believe that the comedian is the layman’s philosopher. Personally, I believe that a lot of standup comedy is a form of societal self-deprecating philosophy. Comedians take a look at life, how people actually work, and the pains of living and make it bearable to examine. A lot of comedy is little more than philosophy taken a step further. It takes a truly gifted person to examine and describe the human condition in a way that is not only truthful, but also comical. Louis CK gained a fair bit of popularity after his interview with Conan O’Brien went viral on youtube (I’ve posted it above). His basic premise is that we’re all far too entitled to be happy. We should really take a look at how goddamned lucky we are to exist in a world as magnificent as ours. In an interview recently, Louis CK stated “You should act in a way that if everyone acted that way, it would be all right.” I honestly believe that humor is the everyman’s philosophy and we should listen carefully to the individuals that create it.  

In my eyes, there’s absolutely no inherent meaning to life. If you were to take a gander at how infinitesimally small we are in comparison to our universe, you could begin to see just how lucky we are to exist. We’re the product of billions of years of stars and matter colliding. Lucky is a great word to describe our existence; it was absolute chance that we came to become human beings. There are a million things that could have interrupted our evolution and wiped us off the face of the universe. People tend to panic at the thought of meaninglessness. To me, it’s incredibly comforting. There’s no big bearded guy in the sky judging me for eating bacon wrapped shrimp. There’s no overarching theme to existence. There is no predestination. We’re creatures of free will and that can be absolutely terrifying. But once again, if you establish that we’re nothing more than hungry, horny mammals with culture, things get simpler. I’ll repeat what Louis CK stated, “You should act in a way that if everyone acted that way, it would be all right.” I honestly think that there’s nothing more important than that sentence. It sums up the ideal of human interactions pretty well. We’re animals that should do our best to make life better for ourselves, those around us, and those to come.