Arizona has found the Tuscon Unifed School District’s Mexican American studies program in violation of a ruling that prohibits courses and classes that ‘promote the overthrow of the United States government, promote resentment toward a race or class of people, are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group or advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals.’
Along with William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, banned books include Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years, Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Brazilian educator Paolo Freire, Occupied America: A History of Chicanos’ by Rodolfo Acuña, Chicano!: The History of the Mexican Civil Rights Movement by Arturo Rosales, 500 Years of Chicano History in Pictures, by Elizabeth Martinez and Critical Race Theory a textbook by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic.
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Be wary of the Research Works Act (RWA)
Especially if you’d like your friendly, neighborhood academic library to remain a viable research center, able to help those who want or need to the help:
This is a bill to, it says, “ensure the continued publication and integrity of peer-reviewed research works by the private sector”, where the important phrase is “private sector” — it’s purpose is to guarantee that for-profit corporations retain control over the publication of scientific information.
via Elsevier = Evil
Spelling Matters
Looking over the document, however, I noticed three spelling errors on the first page, one of which was in the candidate’s field of expertise, which she had described as “complimentary medicine.” I glanced at my colleagues. Would anyone else mention it? If not, should I?
I hesitated for two reasons: First, I was the only humanist on a committee of psychologists, and I didn’t want to seem like a nit-picker; and second, I was a newcomer to the institution and unfamiliar with protocol. Still, when everyone else expressed approval of the candidate, I couldn’t stop myself. In my experience, I said, egregious misspellings in a résumé are grounds for instant rejection. When asked for examples, I pointed to the phrase “complimentary medicine.” Two members of the committee still did not see a problem, compelling me to explain the difference between “complimentary” and “complementary.”
Spelling Matters – The Chronicle Review – The Chronicle of Higher Education.
New Bill Would Put Taxpayer-Funded Science Behind Pay Walls
Right now, if you want to read the published results of the biomedical research that your own tax dollars paid for, all you have to do is visit the digital archive of the National Institutes of Health. There you’ll find thousands of articles on the latest discoveries in medicine and disease, all free of charge.
A new bill in Congress wants to make you pay for that, thank you very much. The Research Works Act would prohibit the NIH from requiring scientists to submit their articles to the online database. Taxpayers would have to shell out $15 to $35 to get behind a publisher’s paid site to read the full research results.
Real-Life Examples Of How Google’s “Search Plus” Pushes Google+ Over Relevancy
Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land says:
The new Google “Search Plus Your World†feature — which I’m now simply calling “Search Plus†— has just gone live for me. Huge debate erupted yesterday over whether it somehow favors Google+. I can see now that it clearly does, even more than I thought.
So be very aware, please.
Real-Life Examples Of How Google’s “Search Plus” Pushes Google+ Over Relevancy.