Category Archives: rights

YGTBSM, Again

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The Teachers College Record is pushing this with a straight face.

Resisting Compliance: Learning to Teach for Social Justice in a Neoliberal Context

by Bree Picower — 2011
Background/Context: This study examines education in the context of neoliberalism and how current educational policies such as high-stakes testing and mandated curriculum create schooling environments hostile to social justice education. Relying on education for liberation literature, teacher education for social justice scholarship, and work on critical pedagogy, this study explores how new teachers who teach from a social justice perspective navigate the challenges of their first year in teaching.

Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: This study asks, What strategies do new teachers use to stay true to their vision of teaching for social justice despite the challenges they face in their school environments?

Population/Participants/Subjects: During the course of the study, 4 of the 6 participants were full-time classroom teachers. The 2 other participants were still taking education classes while student- and assistant teaching. All worked in a variety of urban elementary schools.

Intervention/Program/Practice: The participants were all members of a social justice critical inquiry project (CIP) group that met at the university from which they graduated.

Research Design: This was a qualitative study that used design-based research.

Data Collection and Analysis: Data were collected from three sources: transcripts from audio and videotaped CIP sessions, ethnographic interviews with participants, and participants’ written reflections. Data were analyzed using grounded theory method.

Findings/Results: The teachers developed four strategies for teaching for social justice. First, by participating in a critical inquiry project, the teachers supported each other by building a safe haven that protected their vision. Second, the participants camouflaged their critical pedagogy by integrating it with the mandated curriculum, which allowed them to teach from a social justice perspective without rousing the concerns of their administration. The third strategy was to develop their students as agents of change. Finally, in a few instances, the teachers went public with their work by rejecting or speaking against policies that they felt were not in the best interests of their students.

Conclusions/Recommendations: Although these four strategies allowed participants to successfully create critical classrooms, they did not impact the larger neoliberal forces that maintain unjust schooling experiences. This has implications for teacher education, and the author suggests recommendations for schools of education.

The article itself is behind TCR‘s pay wall, should you wish to wade through it.  For my money, it wasn’t worth it.   The sample size says a lot about the laziness of the “scholarship” involved.  One of the strategies—”the participants camouflaged their critical pedagogy by integrating it with the mandated curriculum, which allowed them to teach from a social justice perspective without rousing the concerns of their administration”—says all there is to say about the level of integrity of this “scholarship.”

Their logo includes the slogan “The Voice of Scholarship in Education.”  Yet they haven’t a clue of what scholarship consists.  Are we really teaching our teachers this one-sidedness?

 

h/t National Review Online‘s “Phi Beta Cons“

President Obama’s Fiscal Cliff and 401(k)s

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Are our 401(k)s at risk from the Obama Fiscal Cliff?  To the extent that they are (and I don’t know that they are), consider some ramifications.  Here’s one way such a risk might unroll:

The Bipartisan Policy Center’s Debt Reduction Task Force has one way to help fix the deficit: reduce 401(k) contributions by 64% using a 20/20 Cap.  Under the 20/20 Cap, contributions would be limited to the lesser of 20% of pay or $20,000 a year.  All those pretax dollars designated for retirement will now be taxable income and Treasury will fill with additional tax revenues.

I’ll leave aside BPC‘s cynical assumption that our money actually belongs to the government, that they’re somehow entitled to it (now there’s an entitlement program…).  Here are a couple of those ramifications.

A single employee who earns $60,000 per year can contribute $17,500 to a 401(k) in 2013.

After taking the personal exemption and the standard deduction, the single employee would be in the 15% federal tax bracket. Under the 20/20 Cap, assuming the 401(k) has a 4% match, the same single employee earning $60,000 per year would be limited to a $9,600 401(k) contribution and will now be in the 25% federal tax bracket paying $1,700 more in taxes.

It’s true that those $17.5k represent 29% of his income, but with disciplined budgeting (he’s single, recall) it’s not so far-fetched.  He will be stretched, but getting hit with an additional $1,700 in taxes will hurt—possibly to the point of blowing up his retirement plans.

With a 64% reduction in contributions, many small businesses may terminate their plans–forcing employees to save money on their own.  After all, why pay plan fees and other administrative costs if the amount of income that can be deferred is reduced to basically the amount of an IRA contribution?

Indeed.  I was chairman of my employer’s 401(k) Plan Board of Trustees a number of years ago.  For our 25-employee company, the typical fee for that sized plan ran to $20,000.  Which is why we had a Board of Trustees and ran our own Plan.  Have the fees changed all that much since?

There’s one more, though, with serious long-range implications.  Reduced contributions to our (private) 401(k) plans while we’re working means a smaller nest egg when we retire.  Which means greater dependence on a Social Security System that will be bankrupt by that day.  Which means both we’re being a greater burden on our fellows in our retirement and we’re living much more poorly than we would have had we been able to accumulate a larger nest egg.

Here’s an example, of just 10 years’ duration.  My wife, being older than 50, is able to contribute, presently, $23,000 per year beginning in 2013.  With the 20/20 cap, that would drop to $20,000 per year.  Note that I’m assuming no changes over the 10 years—including in tax treatment and limit increases.  I’m also assuming a 4% real (after inflation) return on 401(k) investments.

After 10 years, that higher contribution rate will have produced a nest egg of a bit over $276,000, while the limited contribution rate will have grown only to a skosh (that’s the technical term) over $240,000.  That’s a 13% reduction in the value of our nest eggs from such a cap.  Blow that up over 20 years—yes, this contribution rate is possible; you’re in your mid-40s and entering your peak earning years at 20 years prior to retirement.  That nearly 13% annual shortfall only expands the deficiency of the capped 401(k)’s outcome—now it’s nearly $89,500, some 150% greater, short by more than four years’ worth of capped contributions.

NLMSM Strikes Again

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Just two days before Christmas last week, The Journal News kindly advised all readers of the locations of gun owners, and of the locations of their unarmed neighbors, in the two New York counties of Westchester and Rockland.  The JN‘s Putnam County outing is pending.

They write, with an absolutely straight face, in justification of this invasion of privacy:

Anyone can find out the names and addresses of handgun owners in any county with a simple Freedom of Information Law request….

So they thought they’d do the home robbers, second-story men, and leftist anti-gun kooks a civic favor by outing these private citizens themselves, and save those others the trouble.

The good citizens of New York know better, and they object to this arrogant abuse of journalistic”…practice.

One objected:

Do you fools realize that you also made a map for criminals to use to find homes to rob that have no guns in them to protect themselves?

Another

You have just destroyed the privacy of these law abiding citizens and by releasing this list, you have equated them to that of sex offenders and murders.

And another:

These are law abiding gun owners, they are no danger to anyone except for criminals.  And with this information you have made them targets for both criminals and anti gun lobbyist who i am sure are going to treat them like monsters.

And another:

Tom King, president of the New York Rifle & Pistol Association, said the release of additional pistol-permit information [beyond the currently releasable name and address] would endanger gun owners, some of whom have valuable collections of weapons.

You’re giving a shopping list to criminals.  Does it matter if you own 47 guns or you own one gun?  Everybody likes to think that someone who has all of these guns is evil, that there’s some nefarious reason they have all these guns.  There are collectors.

And another:

Paul Piperato, the Rockland county clerk, said he’s always uneasy providing it.

You have judges, policemen, retired policemen, FBI agents—they have permits.  Once you allow the public to see where they live, that puts them in harm’s way.

Only a fool thinks judges and law enforcement personnel don’t have a plethora of enemies.

And there’s the hysteria and illogic of the anti-gun folks.  Jackie Hilly, New Yorkers Against Gun Violence Executive Director, insists

You don’t have more success with more guns.  You certainly don’t want our schools turned into armed camps.

Never mind that armed guards, or teachers or school staff trained and armed, don’t make the schools “armed camps.”  This is just an hysterical exaggeration.

Never mind that, presently, we give more protection to our banks and the money therein than we do our children.

Never mind that when the bad man comes and seconds count, the police will be only minutes away.  Absent an armed presence at the scene of the murders, the killing just goes on until the police can, finally, get there.

Never mind, even, that guns are not involved at all in one-third of mass killings.

The Journal News, though, in all of its wide-eyed innocence, is careful to point out that their reporter

Dwight R. Worley owns a Smith & Wesson 686 .357 Magnum and has had a residence permit in New York City for that weapon since February 2011.

But his dot isn’t on the map of gun owners and of unarmed homes that the NJ so kindly published.  Oh, wait—Worley isn’t in the counties he outed; he’s in NYC.  How convenient.

Merry Christmas

Another Fiscal Cliff

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From Fox News:

[A] potential strike by thousands of dock workers from Boston to Houston threatens to shock the economy as early as this weekend.  …it could cost billions, citing estimates that a 10-day port lockout in 2002 cost $1 billion a day—and caused a major backlog in shipments.

[The present] port strike would affect more than the East and Gulf coasts, where all these ports are located.  It could choke supply chains across the country.  Groups ranging from the automobile industry to the National Retail Federation to the US Chamber of Commerce to the Cheese Importers Association of America are warning of dire consequences.

The primary beef?  Management wants to cap the current container fee royalties, rather than letting them continue to rise according to International Longshoremen’s Association schedules.

It’s important to note that those royalty fees are little more than featherbedding on the docks.  As The United States Maritime Alliance, Ltd (USMX), notes,

[C]ontainer royalties were established in 1960 as a way to protect members of the International Longshoremen’s Association, AFL-CIO (ILA) in New York from job losses created by containerization and its introduction of automated cargo.

Because shippers are job welfare programs for the ILA, after all.  Keep those buggy whip workers employed, no matter the costs to Americans.  Never mind that there aren’t any buggy whip workers anymore, anyway.

[O]nly 136 of the 3,281 ILA workers at the Port of New York and New Jersey today were working at the port in 1968….

The Port of New York and New Jersey was the original and only port at which the ILA was active during the transition to container shipping.  The rest of the ports up and down the east and Gulf coasts through Florida began life with containerized cargo.

Moreover, containerization has been beneficial to labor.  ILA workers at ports like Savannah, Charleston, and the rest saw their job opportunities grow specifically because of containerization.

On top of this, the royalty payments don’t all make it into the pockets of the ones being featherbedded.  Ten per cent—which ran to $21 million in 2011—were raked off the top by the workers’ union management, as the union’s vig.

In the end, the union doesn’t care about the economic damage done by the strike they’re threatening, nor do they care that their strike has so little economic purpose.  This isn’t even about protecting a featherbedding perk—USMX is willing to keep paying the “royalty;” they just want an upper bound on a payment that has nothing to do with the work being done.

No, this is about union power and the unions’ decision to use extortionate-type actions to maintain/increase it.  It’s a legal version of the violence they threatened in Wisconsin and Michigan, and of the dishonesty shown by the Wisconsin Teachers’ Union a year ago.

Update: Michelle Malkin provides one:

A deal has been struck that for now averts a strike by 14,500 longshoremen at major ports on the East Coast and Gulf of Mexico, including PortMiami and Port Everglades.

A federal mediator announced Friday that an expired contract for workers in the International Association of Longshoremen would be extended for another 30 days while negotiations continue.

Anthropogenic Climate Change

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…and dishonesty.  More is beginning to leak out, this time from of all places the UN.  That august body’s IPCC has had leaked a draft of its latest “study” on the man-caused disaster in climate, and it isn’t a pretty example of the outcome of climate “scientist” incestuousness.

High points on the leak are from Matt Ridley, in The Wall Street Journal, and they concern a “pollutant” that our present administration is going after, and damn the economy—and damn the

poor people whose lives are being ruined by high food and energy prices caused by the diversion of corn to biofuel and the subsidizing of renewable energy driven by carboncrats[.]

The question at hand:

How much warming will a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide actually produce?

Ridley’s information comes from Nic Lewis.

A semiretired successful financier from Bath, England, with a strong mathematics and physics background, Mr Lewis has made significant contributions to the subject of climate change.

Per Lewis [emphasis added]:

[T]he latest observational estimates of the effect of aerosols (such as sulfurous particles from coal smoke) find that they have much less cooling effect than thought when the last IPCC report was written.  The rate at which the ocean is absorbing greenhouse-gas-induced warming is also now known to be fairly modest.  In other words, the two excuses used to explain away the slow, mild warming we have actually experienced—culminating in a standstill in which global temperatures are no higher than they were 16 years ago—no longer work.

Thus [again, emphasis added],

We can now estimate, based on observations, how sensitive the temperature is to carbon dioxide.  We do not need to rely heavily on unproven models.  Comparing the trend in global temperature over the past 100-150 years with the change in “radiative forcing” (heating or cooling power) from carbon dioxide, aerosols and other sources, minus ocean heat uptake, can now give a good estimate of climate sensitivity.

The conclusion—taking the best observational estimates of the change in decadal-average global temperature between 1871-80 and 2002-11, and of the corresponding changes in forcing and ocean heat uptake—is this: A doubling of CO2 will lead to a warming of 1.6°-1.7°C (2.9°-3.1°F).

This is much lower than the IPCC’s current best estimate, 3°C (5.4°F).

In the end,

A cumulative change of less than 2°C by the end of this century will do no net harm.  It will actually do net good—that much the IPCC scientists have already agreed upon in the last IPCC report.  Rainfall will increase slightly, growing seasons will lengthen, Greenland’s ice cap will melt only very slowly, and so on.

There’s more to this climate pseudo-science failure, and it flows from the CO2 interactions via alleged feedback loops [emphasis added]:

A little warming (from whatever cause [including atmospheric CO2]) heats up the sea, which makes the air more humid—and water vapor itself is a greenhouse gas.  The resulting model-simulated changes in clouds generally increase warming further, so the warming is doubled, trebled or more.

[The problem is,] water vapor may not be increasing.   A recent paper from Colorado State University concluded that “we can neither prove nor disprove a robust trend in the global water vapor data.”  [On top of that], as one Nobel Prize-winning physicist with a senior role in combating climate change admitted to me the other day: “We don’t even know the sign” of water vapor’s effect—in other words, whether it speeds up or slows down a warming of the atmosphere.

One reason for the uncertainty of the sign is that atmospheric water vapor means more clouds, and clouds reflect inbound sunlight while trapping outbound heat.  Which has the greater effect—reducing the inbound inputs or holding onto the outbound outputs?  Only a climate pseudo-scientist claims to know at this point in the data collection and analysis.  Especially given the…quality…of their data and of their models.

There’s a whole lot more at the Watts Up With That? site, both on the present topic and on anthropogenic climate change, generally.