Scrapbook
Scrapbook From the Folks Who Brought Us Ebonics Over the last several years, we have become accustomed to all manner of pedagogical malpractice from the Oakland Unified School District. In 1996,...
...Indeed, many of them are doing exactly the kinds of things Murray found so laudable in Osama bin Laden...
...To pick just one relevant example, look at her assertion that "we have not done that...
...Why they want to bring more police in the town / Just for them to attack the black and the brown," went one child's effort...
...At about the same time as the Lott brouhaha, Washington senator Patty Murray took to a local high school to praise Osama bin Laden...
...Woodrow's boss, James craig, noted of this dispatch, "Not bad but he goes just a little too far"—which, mild as it is, is more disapprobation than either could summon up for the killers...
...Year of the Ditz It took Republicans about three weeks to rid themselves of Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott after he made his foolish and obnoxious comments about Strom Thurmond...
...Her colleagues were silent...
...The Palestinians in particular have seen their land taken away from them by a group of mainly European invaders equipped with superior armed force and modern technology...
...Having a challenging and thoughtful discussion about America's future reflects the best values of a free democracy...
...Osama bin Laden has been very, very effective being— we've got to ask, why is this man so popular around the world...
...Here's the September 12, 1972, cable to London from Gayford Woodrow, British consul general in Jerusalem, less than a week after the terrorists had murdered 11 Israeli Olympians during a shootout at a NATO airbase outside Munich between the PLO terrorists and German police: "Before we reproach the Arabs too much, perhaps we might try to put ourselves in their shoes...
...In science, students are taught about the periodic table by writing a letter to President Bush, pretending they are kidnappers holding an element for ransom, and then listing its chemical and physical properties—along with their demands...
...In a clarification issued after her initial remarks, she allowed that bin Laden is "evil" but couldn't find any good words for the Americans doing good deeds abroad— many of whom are doing humanitarian work in parts of the world where they are daily threatened with murder by followers of bin Laden...
...government in the 1950s, when Afghanistan was a major recipient—a showcase even—of U.S...
...But consider the Democrats...
...In their political stupidity and general offensiveness, Murray's comments are at least in the same league as Lott's...
...According to the Times, in a culture and resistance class taught by rapper Boots Riley (who penned the memorable "5 Million Ways to Kill a CEO," not to mention "Me and Jesus the Pimp in a '79 Granada Last Night"), students are given the assignment of composing raps about the city's addition of 100 police to their force...
...For the most part, elected Republicans were initially tepid in their criticism of Lott and willing to excuse the stupidity of their colleague...
...Instead, she attacked those who criticized her...
...We haven't been out in many of these countries helping them build infrastructure...
...It will surprise no one familiar with the prejudices of the Foreign Office to learn that it was quite blase about the massacre...
...The same refrain is sung, too, whenever there is an outbreak of terrorism in need of excusing...
...Why are people so supportive of him in many countries...
...Oakland has launched a School of Social Justice and Community Development...
...Last week, the London Telegraph published the recently declassified 1972 cable traffic among British diplomats following the massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics by the PLO's Black September movement...
...Now OpinionJournal.com s James Taranto directs our attention to a Contra Costa Times report that gives us new reason for dismay—as if we needed more reasons beyond the 25 percent dropout rate...
...And while Lott was eventually contrite, Murray was not...
...The following year, a single parent who was an amputee and widower living on disability was forced to sue the district when he found out that, unbeknownst to him, his 5-year-old son had been enrolled in a bilingual education class conducted almost entirely in Cantonese (neither father nor son was Chinese...
...The Contra Costa Times reports that what students like best—better even than the "systems of oppression" lesson plan on capitalism and white supremacy—is the average class size of 20 students per room...
...In 1996, they introduced the world to Ebonics, angering white and black parents alike who didn't want their children sounding as if they'd learned the queen's English from an episode of Good Times...
...And it's nothing new...
...School director Kali Akuno-Williams says, "We're trying to engage them with education that's relevant to their direct lives...
...In English class, students discuss patriarchy and sexism...
...He has been in many countries that are riddled with poverty...
...Murder and Other 'Human Failings' In his article elsewhere in this issue, Max Boot notes, "Whenever the serious issues of the Middle East are raised, from oppression in Saudi Arabia to nuclear weapons development in Iran, the answer one hears from Europeans, Arabs, United Nations functionaries, all sorts of supposedly serious people, is invariably the same: The real issue is the Palestinians...
...It is said that lives were really lost because of Israel and West German bungling incompetence...
...Consider the U.S...
...But comparisons aside, Murray claimed to be imparting facts, and on those she was dead wrong about nearly everything...
...Whatever one's moral criticism, it must be agreed that the Munich operation was well planned and that the Arabs there carried it out to the bitter end...
...Ah, yes: Have to doff our hats to those expert Black September planners—real craftsmen...
...Virtually everyone in-country today is engaged in some form of infrastructure-building...
...How would they look at us today if we had been there helping them with some of that rather than just being the people who are going to bomb in Iraq and go to Afghanistan...
...troops in Afghanistan...
...No matter...
...We'll leave it to Scrapbook readers to decide who's sensationalizing and distorting...
...People don't have phones, no sewers, no roads, no schools, no health care, no facilities just to make sure their daily lives are OK...
...But we won't look to Patty Murray or her silent Democratic colleagues for a "thoughtful" discussion of terrorism...
...We have not done that...
...He's been out in these countries for decades building roads, building schools, building infrastructure, building day care facilities, building health care facilities, and the people are extremely grateful...
...They are, after all, human beings with normal human failings...
...to sensationalize and distort in an attempt to divide does not...
...Operating under the district's new autonomous school policy, the social justice school's 124-member student body is largely drawn from group homes, juvenile halls, and dropouts from other public schools...
...It made their lives better...
...It's also worth noting that many of our troops are headquartered at an airport in Kandahar financed largely by the U.S...
...Until we resolve their horrible plight, peace will never come to the Middle East...
...development aid...
...indeed, that it found a way to blame Israel for the murder of its athletes...
...If the faculty really want to teach the students something relevant to their lives, how about a seminar in how to get the hell out of the Oakland Unified School District...
Vol. 8 • January 2003 • No. 17
