Posts by GrreatTeacher

32

Jehovah's Witnesses: shame and domination

by john.prestor in

i want to suggest something that i've been ruminating on for a while now.

that involves the possibility that when jehovah's witnesses look for "sheep-like ones" what they're actually looking for is this: those who will allow themselves to be dominated (get rid of things that god "hates," accept the movement's beliefs without protest, not check into the movement's history) and those who are willing to be shamed (letting jehovah's witnesses into their homes when doing so is looked down upon in secular society, talking with them on the street when everyone else avoids them).. i say this because from what i observed at the kingdom halls i attended in the course of gathering data for my research i saw:.

-frequent shaming: jehovah's witnesses must do more to be acceptable to god, they are "good for nothing slaves," they are spared through armageddon by jehovah's "undeserved kindness," etc.

GrreatTeacher

Ah, I think I get it.

So, therefore there could be no grass roots calls for change?

In other words, this ensures that any change must come from the top?

32

Jehovah's Witnesses: shame and domination

by john.prestor in

i want to suggest something that i've been ruminating on for a while now.

that involves the possibility that when jehovah's witnesses look for "sheep-like ones" what they're actually looking for is this: those who will allow themselves to be dominated (get rid of things that god "hates," accept the movement's beliefs without protest, not check into the movement's history) and those who are willing to be shamed (letting jehovah's witnesses into their homes when doing so is looked down upon in secular society, talking with them on the street when everyone else avoids them).. i say this because from what i observed at the kingdom halls i attended in the course of gathering data for my research i saw:.

-frequent shaming: jehovah's witnesses must do more to be acceptable to god, they are "good for nothing slaves," they are spared through armageddon by jehovah's "undeserved kindness," etc.

GrreatTeacher

What do you mean by "legitimacy," if you don't mind my asking?

14

The elephant on the street

by Normalfulla in

as a contractor i travel around for my job, i was stopped this morning to buy some milk at a store in a small village i guess and as i turned a corner i saw 2 elders i know personally manning a cart in the cold outside the store with not a soul in sight and an unlikely place for much traffic even though it was outside a country store.

1 elder is my brother in laws father and the other was in my old cong when i left, i said hello, talked about the weather and general chit chat and was my usual self, they were pleasant also but nothing was mentioned to me about anything spiritual etc.

i know they will be aware of some of my reasons for leaving (the few that i talked about initially before shutting my trap) but they were unwilling to engage in saving my life with their work!

GrreatTeacher

Dang it, let me finish enjoying my Sunday first!

Yes, shunning doesn't look good in public, so they don't do it.

Which means they know it's wrong!

12

How the Watchtower and Big Tobacco conspired to propaganda techniques to survive the exposure of their dangers

by TerryWalstrom in

the tobacco industry held in thrall millions of addicted smokers for decades with an almost endless litany of false claims reinforced by propaganda and bad science.it is informative and eye-opening to examine this brilliant but insidious strategy.1.

exploiting controversy the tobacco team focused on "conflicts of interest" to create a distraction and exploit mistrust so nicotine addicts own confirmation bias would work in their favor.

this strategy of producing scientific uncertainty undercut public health efforts and regulatory interventions designed to reduce the harms of smoking.the watchtower easily did the same thing by exploiting the confusing doctrine of the trinity and pointing to the corrupt history of the catholic church.

GrreatTeacher

Terry, I love the way your mind works.

"Get 'em addicted young." Works for both scenarios, too.

70

Do you think that race is a factor in education in the U.S.

by recovering in

i was wondering if racial bias is a factor in u.s. education?.

would you be concerned if it was?

why would you be concerned?.

GrreatTeacher

The not getting paid/getting paid for the summer is a red herring.

Teacher salaries are all based on 10 months. Whether they get paid only over those ten months or have a little of each paycheck witheld for summer pay matters not an iota.

Some teachers get to pick which arrangement they prefer, some districts make that choice for you. I know of several local districts that mandate salary distribution in exactly opposite ways.

Never assume that teachers get paid over the summer. That may or may not be true.

More importantly, never assume that teachers get paid FOR the summer because that is patently untrue.

Unless you teach summer school, in which case you are paid in accordance with your salary scale.

70

Do you think that race is a factor in education in the U.S.

by recovering in

i was wondering if racial bias is a factor in u.s. education?.

would you be concerned if it was?

why would you be concerned?.

GrreatTeacher

My teacher's union is for teachers only. I will gladly pay my dues for every paycheck for the collective bargaining over salary alone. For some reason people think teachers are grossly overpaid. We have Bachelor's degrees and Master's degrees. We have student loans for those degrees!

We only get paid for 7.5 hours a day, yet routinely work much more. Our hourly rate sounds okay, but we don't work only those few hours, and late days are routine so our actual hourly rate is much lower! Our district and the public definitely get their money out of us!

Administrators have their own union. Food service workers have their own union, so I can't speak to those.

I don't necessarily agree that my district is top heavy. In fact, they've laid off a lot of people, especially curriculum writers, at the same time that they've decided to drop commercial programs/ textbooks in favor of writing their own curriculum!

That crap flows directly downhill! They've created these guidelines for their new, inhouse curriculum, yet taken away textbooks/ commercial programs and then laid off curriculum writers! Guess who now gets to do the actual hard work of creating this inhouse curriculum? The teachers!

I often have 4 novels that I read on weekends and have to create lessons for. Two years ago, there were small group reading books with resources galore for teachers. Nope, all gone! Now we have students reading novels and we have to create the lessons (which must follow strict, micromanaged guidelines) ourselves.

Guess what I'm doing this summer? Reading novels and creating lessons for next school year because I physically and mentally can't handle another school year where I'm working hours after school and on weekends.

70

Do you think that race is a factor in education in the U.S.

by recovering in

i was wondering if racial bias is a factor in u.s. education?.

would you be concerned if it was?

why would you be concerned?.

GrreatTeacher

Simon, it's worse than communities that don't support education; it's communities that think they support education because they've registered their kid and they get there most of the time. But, they have no idea what supportive parenting is. They think it's okay to put sugar water in bottles, they don't realize that young kids need 10 hours of sleep, they think it's okay to scream at and slap small babies for crying, they see no need for regular bed times, no need for regular baths, no need for a clean unhoarded home so their child doesn't go to school reeking of cat urine, see no need to take a young girl to the doctor who is having yeast infection symptoms, no need to make sure of clean, nonbinding pants, no need to warn their daughter about menstruation before it starts, leaving the shocked girl, teacher, nurse and guidance counselor to deal with her education about that, no need to buy sanitary products because the school will, so their child has to ask to go to the nurse multiple times a day. They see no need to hold good grades up ad an expectation, therefore no need to follow them, no need to teach children to be tidy, hang up coats, put clean clothes in dressers, and organize important papers where they can be eadily reached. They don't know that aftet their child was found bullying another child over social media, that they should take that phone away as consequence. They don't realize that they should keep their kid from running around the neighborhood while gangs were present. And they certainly don't know that after being threatened with violence, the wrong thing to do is to get up in somebody's face and hit them. They don't even know that they should take time to communicate with their children and build a relationship, read to them at bedtime, have their children read to them, help them work on remembering multiplication facts, help them work on school projects.

Some of them don't even find it important enough to wake up and get their kid to school. Yeah, what do you do about that one? The ten year old then steps up to get hetself and her younger sistet to school while Mommy snoozes on.

Good lord it's amazing what they don't know. And terrifying.

70

Do you think that race is a factor in education in the U.S.

by recovering in

i was wondering if racial bias is a factor in u.s. education?.

would you be concerned if it was?

why would you be concerned?.

GrreatTeacher

Recovering, I don't know! And that's the frustrating part!

The only thing that keeps these schools functioning at all is the extra Title I money that provides for some equalizing and stabilizing. It provides breakfast for students. It provides extra staff for things like alternate learning areas for students who are disturbed so they don't affect the rest of the classroom. It provides extra teachers for smaller class sizes so the teacher has more time for personal (read remedial) help for each individual student. It can provide money for things like security cameras for safety. It can provide after school programs for homework help and mentoring. It can buy only what money can buy, which is a lot, but it's not enough!

If my students could go home to a stable family, with parents not in jail, with dinner and bedtime on a schedule, with a bath every night, with parents reading to them nightly, with help with homework and monitoring of grades, with supervision that doesn't allow for involvement in gangs or neighborhood feuds, and with modeling of problem solving achieved without use of fists or other violence, achievement would shoot straight up!

Do you also know how many of the parents from my school don't know this recipe for success? Is it our job to teach them? Would they listen? Could they? Or are they too mired in their own problems to be able to respond?

What they will do is show up for the Halloween parade, even if they won't for parent conferences. They will find money for school pictures, but not for field trips. They will buy the class birthday cupcakes, but not school supplies for their child. Those are their values, those things are worth the time, money and effort to them.

It's so frustrating!

70

Do you think that race is a factor in education in the U.S.

by recovering in

i was wondering if racial bias is a factor in u.s. education?.

would you be concerned if it was?

why would you be concerned?.

GrreatTeacher

To the extent that minorities are more likely to be of lower socioeconomic status, and that society largely self-sorts itself into neighborhoods based on socioeconomic status, and that public schools are largely funded locally in the US, and that lower funding in more needy schools leads to poorer outcomes, then, yes, maybe...

A bigger problem is that my students in a (violent) big city come to school less often (high absentee rates), come to school tired (less parental oversight to enforce bedtimes), come to school preoccupied with parents being in jail, come to school with less parental involvement in the education process and parents who sometimes don't care about grades at all, come to school and fight or throw gang signs or do other violent activities that undermine the educational environment.

None of these things I can change. We call this being " unavailable for learning."

What I could do was move out of that area and into a nice suburban area and send my child to a school with children who are rarely absent, have parents that enforce bedtimes so students are alert, parents who volunteer in the classrooms, care about grades and make sure their kids are not out on the streets joining gangs, and are most assuredly not in jail. Unsurprisingly, these schools have a better educational environment and higher achievement.

People self-segregate by socioeconomic status. People tend to live in the nicest neighborhood that they can afford. Public schools are community schools, so they reflect the surrounding community. In fact, great public schools can increase real estate values, self-reinforcing the trend.

What I wish people knew about teaching is that teachers in good schools work half as hard as teachers in poor schools. I work 10 hour days to try to make up for the conditions I described at the outset. Some students I connect with and they are success stories. I feel good that I've made a difference. But, I can't follow students home, make them do their homework, put them in bed at a reasonable hour and make sure they stay off the streets. I only have these students for 6 hours out of 24. It's no surprise, then, that their achievement is lower! It's frustrating to work twice as hard for lesser results, and this is, in fact, why there is such turnover, especially in lower-performing schools. My district micromanages the exact lessons that teachers use, almost down to the words to say. Achievement is fine with those lessons in relatively prosperous schools, but in poor "bad" schools, those same lessons do not produce the same results. Surprise! It's not the lessons!

15

The Forgery of an Antique God

by TerryWalstrom in

in the world of antiquities, especially that of bronze art, specifically heads, would you be surprised or alarmed to discover that experts estimate about half of all the art sold at auction and donated to museums around the world.... consists of forgeries?while you're digesting the news of corrupt practice, let me raise a rather vexatious collateral issue for your consideration:.

auction houses keep silent about this fraud.in fact, it has been asserted by investigators specializing in such fraud, it is largely the auction houses submitting these works at auction under fake identities so they cannot be directly held liable for illicit transactions.

proving they've knowingly done so is too problematic to pass muster.one expert who exposed such a fraud was sued by the auction house and forced toward financial settlement out of court under the libel laws.now why mention all the above in the first place?for one reason only, the same thing occurs in the religious transactions of jehovah's witnesses.the auction house (watchtower corporation) represents its salvific theology as authentic and transacts with potential converts so's they pay for such art (ful fraud) by giving their lives, honor, and sacred service in exchange.when flaws are found, instead of owning up to the illicit enterprise, they seek legal redress or prosecute the accuser through coercive threats of disfellowship.now here is another insidious parallel.

GrreatTeacher

Thanks for posting. I love when folks post interesting videos that I can get lost watching on lazy weekend afternoons!

The value of these artworks are predicated by the belief in their value by others, not necessarily by the experts who can actually determine their intrinsic value...

...kind of like the stock market...

( In that case, then, are they really a bad investment if you buy them and flip them? )