Wednesday, May 06, 2015



Being pregnant doesn't feel good either!' 14-year-old girl's brutally-honest sex education quiz answers earn her a suspension

If every teenager shared the knowledge imparted by one confident 14-year-old girl during her sex ed class, unplanned teen pregnancy would practically be a non-issue.

A newly-surfaced image shows a series of brutally-honest and hilarious answers given by a young girl in response to a series of suggestions for explanations a sexual partner may give in order to get out of wearing a condom, such as 'I'm clean' or 'they cost too much'. The teenager pulled no punches on her responses, to say the least.

The post turned up last week on Imgur and has since gained fast internet fame after being posted to Reddit. 'Two years ago today, my then 14-year-old sister got suspended for submitting these answers for her sex-ed class,' wrote the original poster on Imgur. 'I'm so proud of her.'

The questionnaire, called 'Objections to Condoms' asks the writer to consider the possible objections one might hear from a potential sexual partner on the subject of condoms, and instructs he or she to match the phrases with the preprepared answers on a separate sheet. However, clearly unhappy with the pre-written suggestions, this girl decided to provide her own answers instead - and the results are both funny and wise.

Some of the gems include answering the objection 'Condoms don't feel good. It won't be natural,' with: 'Being pregnant doesn't feel good either', or answering the plead 'Just this once; we hardly ever have sex', with 'Now you know why'.

In another example, the condom objector claims that 'By the time you put a condom on, you've lost the mood,' to which the girl responds that if you don't put one on, 'you get a little baby and AIDS!'

On the issue of the cost of condoms being too high, the 14-year-old points out that 'STD treatments and babies cost more'.

The quiz is also littered with clever and sarcastic responses such as her answer to the excuse of 'I don't have a condom with me', to which she replies: 'I don't have my vagina with me.’

The original poster, who claims that she and her sibling are from Montreal in Canada, says that her sister was suspended for the explicit language contained in the responses.

SOURCE






Another West Virginia County Cracks Down on Testing Opt Outs

Freedom and Independence? Ha! Nice one, Harrison.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about a county in West Virginia was trying to intimidate students who wanted to opt out of the standardized testing mandated under Common Core standards. Despite assurances from the State Superintendent of Education that there were no consequences to students for opting out, schools were fearing a loss of funding, and therefore overreacting to parents exercising their rights by singling out and pressuring students to comply.

Unfortunately, it seems the situation has gotten worse. The Superintendent in Harrison County, one Mark Manchin, has gone public with his anti-opt out position.

“We simply cannot allow them to opt out,” he said on the Mike Queen Show, “or decide that they don’t want to participate in the statewide assessment.” Manchin went on to say that he had given school principals the authority to discipline students at their discretion for failing to take the test, which, it should be repeated, the State Superintendent said they were allowed to refuse.

The county is classifying the decision to opt out as “insubordination” and applying appropriate disciplinary measures, although Manchin stopped short of detailing exactly what these might be.

This kind of county-by-county tyranny further underscores the need for more school choice in West Virginia. If a school denies the student’s right to opt out of a test, the student should be able to opt out of that school and pursue education in a county that values parental choice more highly. As things stand, students are forced into schools based on where they live, and depending on the county, are forced into tests that neither they nor their parents think are beneficial to their educations.

Superintendent Manchin attempted to underscore his point with a powerful, albeit misguided hypothetical:

“What if a parent doesn’t like another decision that we make here? They’re going to, unilaterally, to allow their student to opt out of disciplinary issues, or other issues that we have at the school system and [the administration] allow that to take place?”

What if, indeed? Maybe people would get the education they actually want instead of that which the government decides to ram down their throats. Education should not be a battle of teachers against parents, but rather should be a collaborative search to find the best, most effective methods for each individual child. The adversarial relationship these centralized standards are creating is one of the most potent objections to Common Core and the Smarter Balanced Assessments.

SOURCE






Obama While Trying to Kill School Choice in D.C.: We Need to Make Sure ‘All Children’ Get 'Great Education'

After having presented a budget to Congress that would phase out a school-choice program that allows a limited number of children to escape Washington, D.C.'s public schools, President Barack Obama delivered a weekly address today that said all Americans have a responsibility to make sure all children—not just their own—get a great education.

Obama’s two daughters go to Sidwell Friends, one of the most expensive private schools in Washington, D.C.

“All of us have a responsibility to not only make sure our own children have pathways to success but that all children do,” Obama said, while sitting in a public library in the Anacostia neighborhood of D.C. “And a great education is the ticket to a better life like never before.

“Making sure all our kids receive one is the surest way to show them that their lives matter. And it’s the smartest way to prove to them that in communities like this, and in a country like ours, we believe in opportunity for all.”

Obama's address was titled: "Ensuring Every Child Gets a Great Education."

In 2003, Congress enacted a program for “opportunity scholarships” in Washington, D.C. These allowed some students in public schools to get a voucher to help offset the cost of attending a private school. When President Barack Obama came to office in 2009, he tried to kill the program, then settled on a plan that would allow then-current recipients of the vouchers to continue, but would not allow new people into the program. When Republicans took back control of the U.S. House of Representatives, they renewed the program and extended it through 2016.

However, Obama’s latest budget proposal calls for phasing it out again—and preventing children in D.C. public schools from escaping to private ones.

“The Obama administration has tried for years to sunset the program, and the president's fiscal 2013 budget request zeroed out funding for the program, though the proposal was never carried out,” Education Week reported last month.

“The fiscal 2016 budget request includes $43.2 million, down from $45 million last year, and $3.2 million of that must be used to carry out an evaluation of the program,” reported Education Week. “In addition, the proposal specifically states that the money will be made available until it's all used up, an attempt to sunset the program once again and block new enrollees.”

Stephen Moore of the Heritage Foundation has noted that more families in D.C. would like to participate in the program than currently have the opportunity to do so.

“Nearly 6,000 kids from lower-income families have benefited from these scholarships–which reach more than $8,300 a year for primary school and more than $12,500 a year for high school,” writes Moore. “That’s still about one-third lower overall than what it costs per pupil to educate students in Washington, D.C.’s public schools.”

“Almost all – 97.4 percent--of the D.C. students who get the scholarship money are blacks and Latinos,” says Moore. “Even more would like to take advantage of the program: Every year four times as many D.C. minority children sign up for the voucher program as there are funded slots available.”

The price this year for attending Sidwell Friends, where President Obama’s children are enrolled, is $37,750 per student.

SOURCE


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