Do you know who Carmen Ashurst is? She’s the former president of Def Jam Recordings and Rush Communications, and is the author of the forthcoming book, Selling My Brothers: The Movement, The Media and Me. Ashurst also appeared in the documentary, Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes.
The ideas/points/questions/answers the conference[link] aimed to cover:
Music has long served social movements as a sound track, as a means of communication, and as its own arena for activism. While multiple generations of feminists have used music in these ways, it has played especially vital roles for those born since the 1970s. This conference will explore the ways in which young feminists have defined and expressed politics through music and musical cultures and communities. Among the questions we will ponder are: How does music reflect sites of agreement and conflict among different groups of feminists? How have movements like Riot Grrrl and Hip Hop feminism attracted young women to feminist activism? How do young feminists’ uses of music compare with those of earlier generations?
I’ve told you people this over and over: kids need to run around during the school day. It’s good for their bodies, it’s good for their brains. Exercise gets their energy out so they can sit still long enough to learn. They learn better when their bodies are less amped. Do you all overstand yet? Stop decreasing recess and budget-cutting PE and athletic programs.
More scientific research to back me up on that comes from the British Medical Journal. A recent study shows that kids are miraculously more fit and trim when they are allowed to exercise during the school day. So. Dang. Weird.
One in three to five children in the Western world is overweight or obese. This epidemic is rapidly and constantly growing and affects all socioeconomic levels and ethnicities. Excessive weight is associated with increased cardiovascular risk, orthopaedic problems, and psychosocial constraints even before adulthood is reached. Life expectancy may be reduced by several years, as is work productivity, while costs are increasing enormously. A focus on early prevention is thus urgently needed.
The increase in physical inactivity over the past decades is one of the main causes of the increase in obesity. In adults, physical inactivity and low aerobic fitness are associated with higher mortality and a higher prevalence of chronic disease. In children, physical inactivity and lack of fitness are associated with increasing prevalence of cardiovascular risk factors, even independent of body weight.
While we’re on the topic of student loans and the lifetime of debt college grads will face, here are some informative articles and resources to peruse (find a paper bag and try to remember to breathe slowly and evenly).
U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan explains why direct student loans are better for everyone but the banks, and why the banks are pissed about losing all those government subsidies. I’m siding with college students and direct loans, and will be far*ing in the general direction of the banks and their elderberry-scented mothers.
Under current law, taxpayers provide as much as $9 billion each year to subsidize guaranteed student loans issued by banks. The banks earn profits on the interest; if students default, taxpayers take the loss, not the banks. In other words, working Americans pay while bankers get rich.
Meanwhile, educators, engineers and computer scientists — the backbone of the new economy — face crushing debt from six-figure college tuitions. A study of national postsecondary student aid found that in 2008, two-thirds of college seniors graduated with debt averaging more than $23,000. That number will rise as public and private college tuition costs escalate.
…The Education Department has issued more than $187 billion in student loans since the Direct Loan Program was created in 1993. The number of universities participating in the program has more than doubled, to 2,300, in just the past three years. There is no justification to continue wasteful subsidies to banks. It is time to complete the shift to direct lending.
The president’s proposal, which has passed the House and awaits Senate consideration, represents the ideal hybrid of public investment and market-based management. Through direct lending, we get a bigger bang for taxpayer bucks while using competition and private-sector expertise to improve customer service.
Obama is upgrading the higher education system in this country (we hope), starting with an increase in Pell Grant award amounts. What does that mean for Pell Grant applicants? Who qualifies and for how much? Basically, the results of the FAFSA number-crunching are what determine a student’s eligibility.
…there is no “one size fits all” recipient.
Keep in mind, the Pell Grant is awarded to undergraduates with a high degree of unmet financial need; most Pell money goes to students with a total family income around or below $20,000. But, students whose families have a total income of up to $50,000 may be eligible too. In 2005-2006, students with family incomes of less than $20,000 accounted for 57% of Pell Grant recipients.
…Pell Grant qualifications can be affected by a student’s enrollment status as well as income earned through employment, too. Think about it – if you are enrolled half-time, your tuition is less and therefore you will require less aid. Undergraduates who work while they are enrolled are more likely to have incomes that decrease their eligibility for federal need-based aid (ahh, didn’t think of that, did you?). Some low-income students may even find themselves ineligible for Pell Grants because they are enrolled part time at very low cost colleges, or they work while they are enrolled, or do both. More…
Below is an excerpt from President Obama’s State of the Union Address 2010. I’m not on board with his primary and secondary education reform plans, which may be smarter than Bush’s NCLB Act, but are also more evil.
However, so far his plans for higher education look to be an improvement. I’m especially liking the Pell Grant increases, the lessening of student loan malevolence, and the attempt to have colleges and universities knock it the hell off already with the insane tuition increases.
Still, in this economy, a high school diploma no longer guarantees a good job. That’s why I urge the Senate to follow the House and pass a bill that will revitalize our community colleges, which are a career pathway to the children of so many working families. (Applause.)
To make college more affordable, this bill will finally end the unwarranted taxpayer subsidies that go to banks for student loans. (Applause.) Instead, let’s take that money and give families a $10,000 tax credit for four years of college and increase Pell Grants. (Applause.) And let’s tell another one million students that when they graduate, they will be required to pay only 10 percent of their income on student loans, and all of their debt will be forgiven after 20 years — and forgiven after 10 years if they choose a career in public service, because in the United States of America, no one should go broke because they chose to go to college. (Applause.)
And by the way, it’s time for colleges and universities to get serious about cutting their own costs — (applause) — because they, too, have a responsibility to help solve this problem.
There will be no condoning of violence from this girl. But I did get a sick little twist of satisfaction when I read the NY Times article about UC students protesting tuition rates. Students from UC Davis and UC Berkeley broke some windows and threw some flaming items at the home of UC Berkeley’s chancellor, Robert J. Birgeneau.
President of the UC system, Mark G. Yudof, also lives in Berkeley and had a run-in with irate students in August ’09 when the first wave of tuition-rate-increase sh*t was hitting the fan. I’ve already said what I had to say about that. (Not to ruin the ending for you, but none of it was nice.)
President Yudof said in a statement that he found the most recent attack “appalling” and “far beyond the boundaries of public dissent.” Really? I’m pretty sure the students who, until now, believed that they had the right to an affordable education are finding the 32% increase in tuition both appalling and far beyond the boundaries of public dissent.
I think we all know how I feel about standardized testing and the No Child Left Behind profanation. If there remains any confusion as to my opinion regarding those particular atrocities (and if my hints haven’t been overt enough), there will be an opportunity to catch up on your reading below.
Standardized testing, while possibly necessary in that there currently exists no practical way to collect student-achievement data from every public school in America, is still evil and has crushed an already handicapped education system into a non-functioning machine that has time and money only for teaching to the test. It has failed utterly and I work at maintaining some level of optimism that my kiddos will somehow manage to escape its evil clutches.
Bad news for me and my innocent progeny: New and exciting standards in science and math for public school kids are being implemented now, with the new assessments to begin in 2011 for math, and 2012 for science. The fabulous-er dog and pony show requires that students pass the exams in order to graduate. Were educators not teaching to the test enough already?
On the bright side, State Superintendent Randy Dorn is trying to convince the powers that be that the time between implementation and assessment is too speedy for the first wave of kids to be tested. People should pay attention when a politician uses the word “fair.”
Dorn said students and schools will need more time with new math and science learning standards that are now being implemented around the state. The new standards won’t be assessed until 2011 for math and 2012 for science. That doesn’t provide ample opportunity for the class of 2013, current ninth graders and the first class required to pass four state exams, to learn the standards, or teachers and schools to align curriculum and materials to them, he added.
“It doesn’t take a mathematician to see that we have a big problem in our state. Less than 50 percent of our 10th graders are passing the math and science exams,” said Dorn, who noted 10th graders’ passing rate on the reading and writing exams is more than 80 percent. “We need to be fair to our students and give them time to learn the new standards. It’s simply a matter of doing what’s right.”
This fiasco is happening in several other states as well. The only choices eye-rolling, head-shaking, utterances-of-disgust-making parents have are (a) suck it up and hope for the best, (b) private school, (c) home school, or (d) give the offspring a handbasket each and wish them well on their subterranean journey.
Andrew Careaga over at Higher Ed Marketing has a piece up listing his opinion as to which moments have been the decade’s most significant events in the realm of higher education. He very democratically states at the end of the post that he’s open to comments and suggestions regarding event placement on his Top Ten list, as well as which incidents should or should not have been included.
Careaga has Virginia Tech in the #1 spot. It’s not where I would have placed it as far as higher-education-changing events go (the implications of digital media in higher ed and 32% tuition increases seem pretty important), but it should certainly be included on the list. That the tragedy should not be forgotten is a given. But when looking beyond what happened to the victims, there is still the raft of new questions about safety, the illusion of control, and the high-tech emergency-response policies that were subsequently brought up.
First of all, the idea that someone could just lose it and open-fire on his fellow students is a fairly recent development in mankind’s history. The fact that it happened at all reinforces the theory that mankind has turned a new and very dark corner. The aftermath of Virginia Tech illustrated how in control and safe everyone had assumed they were, especially on idyllic college campuses.
Secondly, the technology humans have at their disposal is completely different now than it was 20 years ago. A campus-wide alert in the 1980s would have involved disconnect-able phones, and maybe a PA system that would probably have ended up alerting the attacker and just pissing him off even more. These days, 9.9 out of 10 college students, staff and faculty are wired to the hilt with digital technology. It’s possible to alert an entire campus all at once that unless the gunman is within firing range of your person, it would be prudent to get the hell out of there.
I’ll admit to the full-on fascination I felt a few weeks after the incident while witnessing the frenzy initiated by students, parents and administrators to figure out a way to have in place such formidable emergency alert systems that no college student would ever again lose their life while matriculating (excepting idiotic drinking game-related deaths, which involves a whole argument about evolution that I don’t have time to get into right now).
Watching the parents and the administrators battle it out and overcompensate served to illustrated a few key points I think everyone needed to realize:
(1) Most Americans do not exist in a state of constant mortal danger;
(2) While the odds of meeting one’s maker after a run-in with a gunman who has lost his sh*t have noticeably increased as of late, they’re still incredibly low;
(3) There is only one way to be completely in control of when and where you meet your maker, and I am unwilling to spell it out for a slew of higher-ed types during finals;
(4) It turns out that it’s possible to over-do it when designing and implementing a emergency response system, thereby creating a false sense of security;
In the interest of furthering understanding between Americans and everyone else who inhabits this planet, I’m happy to have read the transcript of Obama’s comments regarding his hope to increase exchange student opportunities between China and the U.S. He spoke this week to university students at the Museum of Science and Technology in Shanghai, China.
Any effort made to help Americans see that we’re only one of the many cultures/countries/peoples in this world is forward movement. There’s probably some big bad political money machine behind the plan that no one’s talking about, but some of those exchange students are bound to have their eyes and minds opened a crack or two.
I’ve said many times that I believe that our world is now fundamentally interconnected. The jobs we do, the prosperity we build, the environment we protect, the security that we seek — all of these things are shared. And given that interconnection, power in the 21st century is no longer a zero-sum game; one country’s success need not come at the expense of another. And that is why the United States insists we do not seek to contain China’s rise. On the contrary, we welcome China as a strong and prosperous and successful member of the community of nations — a China that draws on the rights, strengths, and creativity of individual Chinese like you.
…That’s why I’m pleased to announce that the United States will dramatically expand the number of our students who study in China to 100,000. And these exchanges mark a clear commitment to build ties among our people, as surely as you will help determine the destiny of the 21st century. And I’m absolutely confident that America has no better ambassadors to offer than our young people. For they, just like you, are filled with talent and energy and optimism about the history that is yet to be written.
