Another boring, bureaucratic day at the school. I’ve recently complained about being very busy and teaching for many hours during immersion and I wanna say that I like teaching, but I would also like to have some 15 minutes between classes to go to the bathroom or have some water as opposed to spending five consecutive hours with one student. I started tabulating the student’s responses to the programme and the results look pretty good. And this week I’ll have two more assessments to prepare, kind of a preparation for July, I guess. And, well, I gotta confess that putting the student’s feedback together is being stalled to the last possible day. I don’t know what’s worse: having to write some 20 texts about their performance or putting up with that duchebag, piece of shit neighbour of mine. Well, this is a subject for another post.
Well, Arizona just couldn’t stand being out of the news for some other wacko piece of legislation. This time, the bill that was signed into law put an end to ethnic studies, on the premises that these classes could segregate Latinos, teaching them that they are an oppressed ethnic group and as a result this could cause them to distance themselves from whites. The superintendent of public instruction, Tom Horne, was on AC360 and said that he believes in equality and he is a supporter of all races coming together and attending the same classes, but he went on to say that the schools shouldn’t be teaching “the downers” of history and I just went, “wait a minute, buddy.”
So, according to him, a person that believes the downers of history shouldn’t be taught, World Wars I and II should be out of the history books, right?, you know, all the death and persecution. Maybe they shouldn’t teach the Inquisition anymore as well, because that just makes the Catholic church look bad… Or, maybe, they could scratch out all the soldiers that have been killed in the two ongoing wars and focus only on the “removal of a brutal dictator”, quoting Bill O’Reilly. This is insane. From what I gather, anyone could attend these classes, if the majority happens to be Latino, so be it. Is there anything wrong in learning about their heritage which would help them understand where they came from, what their ancestors have been through and how they have contributed to the building of the country they live in? And if I may take this a little further, myself, as a Brazilian, should only learn that Princess Isabel signed the end of slavery and not that the Portuguese started the whole slavery thing and also devastated millions of miles of our forests for wood, correct?
This whole thing reminded me of this Jon Stewart piece on a committee deciding, in Texas, what should be included and banned from textbooks. Unbelievable stuff, but I guess Arizona managed to crank it up a notch. And absurd things just have a massive chain reaction, such as cities boycotting the state.
Well, enough with the downers, right? One more TEDTalk translation available — we’re on fire!!! This time, I translated this fascinating talk by Jeremy Jackson, a coral reef ecologist that explains how we have destroyed our oceans within the past 100 to 150 years. Data is alarming and the future isn’t looking any good. The reviewer that helped this eye-opening talk be published fast was Giuliano Giordano. There are three more talks lined up but I’m still waiting for the final “OK” from the translators to have them published.
-- Never too many beers -- 