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Study links personal TVs with lower test scores
Students with televisions in their bedrooms scored significantly lower on standardized tests than their classmates with TV-free bedrooms, according to a major new study conducted by researchers at Stanford and Johns Hopkins universities. A study of 350 third-graders in San Mateo County found that students with bedroom TVs scored 8 to 10 percent lower on standardized tests than youngsters without bedroom TVs.
War is Fun as Hell
Years of writing about public relations and propaganda has probably made me a bit jaded, but I was amazed nevertheless when I visited America's Army, an online video game website sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD). In its quest to find recruits, the military has literally turned war into entertainment. Military officials have also developed an elaborate PR strategy for outreach to schools. In Fall 2004, the army published a guidebook for high school recruiters. Under a little-publicized aspect of Bush's "No Child Left Behind" education program, the military has gained what the Chicago Tribune described as "unprecedented access to all high school directories of upperclassmen-a mother lode of information used for mass-mailing recruiting appeals and telephone solicitations."
Leave My Child Alone!
Tucked away in the No Child Left Behind Act is a provision that requires school districts to provide military recruiters with juniors' and seniors' contact information. Here's what you can do to discourage the increasingly aggressive recruiters from abusing the privilege.
Letting in the Draft?
An overstretched military? You bet. Things going terribly in Iraq? No kidding. Why only yesterday, Jill Carroll and Dan Murphy of the Christian Science Monitor reminded us that, with 140,000 troops (and untold numbers of mercenaries) in Iraq, the Americans can't defend a crucial six-mile stretch of highway between the two lodestars of the American occupation -- Baghdad International Airport, a vast, fortified military encampment, and the Green Zone in the heart of the capital, another vast, fortified encampment.
The Draft: Between Iraq and a Hard Place
After two years of intensive fighting in Iraq, the Pentagon is feeling the strain in every military muscle and has been looking for relief in just about every direction but one -- the draft. All across the United States today, young people are wondering whether, sooner or later, in its increasingly airless military universe, the Bush administration will open the window a crack and let the draft in.
Students Move To Ban Military Recruiters
A public high school is considering banning military recruiters from campus.
Justices take on military recruiting case
The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to decide whether Congress can withhold federal funds from universities that refuse to allow military recruiters full access to their students.
The Return of the Draft
With the army desperate for recruits, should college students be packing their bags for Canada? According to an internal Selective Service memo made public under the Freedom of Information Act, the agency's acting director met with two of Rumsfeld's undersecretaries in February 2003 precisely to debate, discuss and ponder a return to the draft. This new draft, it suggests, could be invoked to meet the needs of both the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security. The memo then proposes, in detail, that the Selective Service be "re-engineered" to cover all Americans -- "men and (for the first time) women" -- ages eighteen to thirty-four. In addition to name, date of birth and Social Security number, young adults would have to provide the agency with details of their specialized skills on an ongoing basis until they passed out of draft jeopardy at age thirty-five.
Opt Out
Under Bush's No Child Left Behind
Act, if you attend a public high school, your school system is required to
turn over YOUR private information
to the US military unless you... Opt Out! (click here to download form)
The Return of the Draft
With the army desperate for recruits, should college students be packing their bags for Canada? The Army needs more soldiers. "What you've got now is a real shortage of grunts -- guys who can actually carry bayonets." A wholesale draft may be necessary to deal with the situation we've got ourselves into. We've got to have a bigger Army.
Virginity Pledge Does Not Ensure Avoidance of STDs
It sounds good on paper, at least -- teenagers who pledge to remain virgins until they are married, but, despite the positive press this movement has garnered, a new study indicates that even though these teens aren't 'going all the way,' they are going far enough to contract the most common venereal diseases.
High School students win victory over military recruiters
For weeks our club at Kennedy High School, Youth Against War and Racism, had planned to set up an anti-war information table at lunch on Wednesday, February 23. This was the day military recruiters were scheduled to visit the school.
Careful Not to Get Too Much Education...Or You Could Turn Liberal
I've been giving a lot of thought lately to a conversation I overheard at a Starbucks last winter. "But you do have to be careful about one thing," ... coming closer and speaking in hushed tones, "My professor-I have this great professor-told me that you have to be careful not to get too much education, because you could lose your foundation, your core values." "If you get a bachelors, you'll probably be okay. But my professor said that when you get a master's, and definitely if you go beyond that, you can lose your values. He said that college students have to be watchful because if you get too much education, you could turn LIBERAL. He's seen it happen to a lot of good Christians."
Stop the Draft before it starts
On March 31, the Selective Service System will report to President Bush that it is ready to implement a draft within 75 days. The U.S. military is in a quagmire in Iraq, facing a national popular uprising against the occupation. Soldiers are dying every day. A report issued in January 2004 by Jeffrey Record, a visiting professor at the Air War College, said the Army is "near the breaking point." The Pentagon has been forced to issue repeated "stop loss" orders and recall soldiers who had retired or otherwise returned to civilian life.
How To Stay Out of the Military: A Primer On Draft Resistance
The legal requirement to register for the draft demands a decision: give up your freedom and your conscience, or conscientiously resist. All the good reasons that would prevent a free man from volunteering for military service, also apply to resisting the draft. How in a "free country" can the first requirement of a young man, when he comes of age, be to sign up to accept orders to kill for the state in an organized way" There is never a need to compel a free man to take up a cause that is both necessary and just; but a man who is drafted is never free, and thus his cause can never be assumed to be either necessary or just.
Court lets colleges ban military recruiters
A divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled Monday that the government does not have the right to make federal funds for schools of higher education contingent on allowing military recruiters equal access to campus facilities.
Families Plan to Skip Military Draft
Opposed to the Iraq war, some Ashland and Talent teens and their parents are getting their ducks in a row, fearing a revival of the military draft. They are creating conscientious objector files and searching out safe-haven countries, all in case what they consider likely or even inevitable comes to pass, regardless of who is elected president. "I'm very concerned and scared about it and so are my kids," said Elgin. "The lives of our children are more valuable than any reasons we're at war. "... I'll do whatever I have to do to not to let this happen. If it takes hiding them, I will."
Poll: 1 in 20 high school students is gay
About 5 percent of America's high school students identify as lesbian or gay, according to a new national poll
Shift
Key, Copy CD
In an abrupt reversal, SunnComm Technologies
said Friday that it would not sue a Princeton University graduate
student
who
had published a paper that describes how to bypass CD copy protection
technology simply by pressing the Shift key.
Aids becoming 'a teenage disease'
Aids has become a disease of teenagers and young adults, with
half of all new infections occurring in 15 to 24-year-olds, according
to a United Nations report released today.
Spying
On Your Teens (And you thought curfew was a problem)
The latest in spy gadgets available in Australia are
being marketed to anxious parents.They include a computer device
and software that can record email and chatroom conversations and
a clothing spray that can tell if teens are having sex. Australian
company Internav's mobile phone-sized Global Positioning System
(GPS) tracking device has emergency alarm button and software so
parents can zoom in on a child's whereabouts using a home computer.
ACLU
takes aim at record labels
The Recording Industry Association of America is facing a legal challenge to
its antipiracy tactics
Microsoft
auto-updates bug in Xbox software "without permission"
The particular bug that this update will correct for the user is the ability
to run Linux. Once the update is in place you will not be able to install Linux
on your Xbox any more. To install Linux on your Xbox using the Dashboard bug
you need only a special memory stick (which you can borrow or make on a modern
Mac or any other computer with both Unix-a-like and USB) plus the Microsoft game
MechAssault. You put a specially crafted file on the memory stick that looks
like a saved MechAssault game, but is, in fact a bundle of devious Linux-installing
cleverness. Load the 'saved game' and suddenly your Xbox will accept a Linux
CD despite the lack of a signature.
No
Illusion Left Behind
I can't figure out why educators all over the United States aren't screaming
and yelling about the federal No Child Left Behind law. It's hard to tell whether
this law is more a product of arrogance or ignorance, but either way it's shaping
up to be a spectacular train wreck of a collision between bureaucracy and reality.
Study Finds Zero Tolerance Policies Put Thousands of Children
On Schoolhouse to Jailhouse Track
The Schoolhouse to Jailhouse
Track, a first-of-its-kind report that looks at how zero-tolerance
policies are derailing
students from an academic track in schools to a future in the
juvenile justice system.
"Conscientious
Objection in America: Primary Sources for Research"
In order to meet the growing demand from scholars and other researchers for information
about conscientious objection to war, Swarthmore College Peace Collection archivist,
Anne Yoder, has created a web site filled with information that will provide
basic facts on the subject as well as point to opportunities for in-depth research.
June
27-29
Stopping War Where it Begins
For students, parents, teachers, community organizers
and all those who believe that schools should be about education,
opportunity, building social justice and teaching peace. Friends
Center, Philadelphia
This
letter is necessary if you do not wish to provide student
information to military recruiters
A new law now requires school systems to provide identifying
student information including home address, and phone numbers
to military
recruiters,
unless the school has an 'Opt Out' letter signed by a parent,
or legal guardian, on file. [A
sample letter in Microsoft Word format]
Teachers cover new territory
With bombs dropping during school
hours in the most-televised war ever, teachers find themselves
thrust into
the unfamiliar role of war analyst, historian and comforter.
Many teachers are turning off classroom televisions.
Censorship
Reaches Ridiculous Extremes
A host of recent actions by government agencies, school boards and other institutions
attempts to limit what we read, see and hear -- sometimes with debilitating effects.
Students walk out in antiwar protests
Students
streamed out of classes at metro area high schools this morning,
headed for a day of protest and antiwar activities
Campus
Antiwar Network
We are a united, democratic, grassroots network of campus/school
based antiwar committees.
Students across USA drop books to protest a war
Several thousand high school and college students
from New York to California took to the streets Wednesday, walking
out of classes to protest a possible war with Iraq.
Anti-War
Walkouts Set Today Worry High School Principals
Many
educators are thrilled to see young students show an interest
in foreign affairs. But potential class walkouts bring up concerns
as well. Schools can face liability issues if students leave
campus
The
War on Schools
There's something surreal about the fact that the United States of America, the
richest, most powerful nation in history, can't provide a basic public school
education for all of its children. Actually, that's wrong. Strike the word "can't." The
correct word is more damning, more reflective of the motives of the people in
power. The correct word is "won't."
Kids quit classrooms for anti-war marches
Hundreds of school pupils across the UK have put down their pens
and walked out of school to join anti-war marches.
Nationwide walk out taking place today
Students will be walking out of their classes and dorms today
to kick-off a day of anti-war events.
Peace
Rally Speech
When people think about bombing Iraq, they see a picture in their heads of Saddam
Hussein in a military uniform, or maybe soldiers with big black mustaches carrying
guns, or the mosaic of George Bush Sr. on the lobby floor of the Al-Rashid Hotel
with the word “criminal”. But guess what? More than half of Iraq’s
24 million people are children under the age of 15. That’s 12 million kids.
Kids like me. Well, I’m almost 13, so some are a little older, and some
a lot younger, some boys instead of girls, some with brown hair, not red. But
kids who are pretty much like me just the same. So take a look at me—a
good long look. Because I am what you should see in your head when you think
about bombing Iraq. I am what you are going to destroy.
Anti-Bush T-Shirt Banned at Michigan School
School officials
ordered a 16-year-old student to either take off a T-shirt emblazoned
with the words "International
Terrorist" and a picture of President Bush and or go home
... the student chose to go home.
Spaceship
Columbia
The loss of the space shuttle Columbia on February 1 drives home a simple truth:
space travel is never routine, no matter how many shuttles launch and land.
States
Worry New Law Sets Schools Up to Fail
State education officials are warning that a new federal education law's requirement
that each racial and demographic subgroup in a school show annual improvement
on standardized tests will result in the majority of the nation's schools being
deemed failing.
A Punk Rock Leader Dies
Joe Strummer, a founding member of the Clash, died on Sunday.
A
MIRACLE?
The school used to be out of control. Kids packed weapons. Discipline
problems swamped the principal’s office. But not since 1997.
What happened?
Students
and health care industry take sides on Prop 4
Though both supporters and opponents are uncomfortable with the
characterization, Proposal 4 pits education vs. health care.
