In our school district, they are talking about cutting art and music in elementary school due to lack of funds. However, they are hiring 4 administrators whose job it will be to teach teachers how to implement Common Core the "right way." The "right way" in New York being EngageNY which is literally a script that teachers must read to their students. They are told what to say, how to say it, when to say it and how long to stay on each topic - broken down into 10 - 15 minute segments. They are not allowed to deviate from the script (though some teachers still do, risking getting in trouble in favor of educating their students). All students, meanwhile, are required to learn in exactly the same way at exactly the same pace. Because we all know that all kids are exactly alike, right?
"Terrorists" has become almost like a bad Jedi mind trick.
Public: "Why do you need to read all of our e-mails?!!! We're going to vote you out of office!!!" Politician *waving hand*: "Terrorists use e-mail." Public *robotically repeating*: "Terrorists use e-mail." Politician *waving hand*: "Terrorists do bad things." Public *robotically repeating*: "Terrorists do bad things." Politician *waving hand*: "We must stop the terrorists by any means necessary." Public *robotically repeating*: "We must stop the terrorists by any means necessary."
yeah, but its a similar situations with politicians.
So true. How can you tell a politician is lying?
Trick question, they are never not lying.
What if a politician says: "I am lying."
A politician is always lying which means he can't be lying like he says he is. He's telling the truth. But if he's telling the truth, then saying "I'm lying" is a lie. So he's lying. But if he's lying about lying then he's telling the truth. But.... *brain explodes*
Re:I had to stop using it because it missed calls
on
Goodbye, Google Voice
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· Score: 1
We get that too. However, when I look up the numbers of the missed calls, they are invariably reported as numbers that telemarketers or scammers use. I think that's happening is that Google Voice allows you to mark a number as spam. Someone calls you and tells you that you won a prize and just need to come down and listen to a presentation to get it. You mark it as spam. So do a bunch of other people. Google notices this and does what anti-spam filters do for e-mail: sends the call to the "spam folder" In Google Voice's case, this means you see that 555-1212 called, but it doesn't take a message.
Re: Horrible Headline: google voice still around
on
Goodbye, Google Voice
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· Score: 1
As someone who is personally dealing with autism (my son), I can tell you that "being smart" and "being autistic" are completely different things. Yes, one group of people - those with Asperger's Syndrome like my son - can be highly intelligent, but most people with autism have normal intelligence levels. They just don't understand the "social rules" that the rest of the world seems to instinctively know and their senses can be overwhelmed by sights/sounds/smells/etc.
Imagine that you crash landed on an alien world that was a lot like Earth except that the sun appeared five times as bright in the sky, everyone talked in a shout at every moment, walls were made of a material which emitted a foul odor (which nobody but you seemed to smell), and the rules of social etiquette were completely different from any country on Earth. You'd live each day being bombarded by sights, sounds, smells, while trying to figure out the right things to say to people so as not to insult them and to fit in. You might get somewhat good at it, but it would be a hard effort to keep up and you'd need time to decompress. You'd have good days where you'd almost fit in and bad days where you just want to run screaming and hide from the world.
This is the life of someone with autism.
(Thanks to the kids' show Arthur for that "alien world" description. They did a great job in staying accurate while simplifying it down to something kids could understand.)
Re: Horrible Headline: google voice still around
on
Goodbye, Google Voice
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· Score: 1
As someone with a son with Autism (High Functioning Autism/Asperger's Syndrome) and someone who is likely autistic himself (though not diagnosed because it just wasn't done when I was a kid), I confess that I am a bit annoyed that the AC would use "autistic" as an insult. Then again, I've also learned over the years that there are just some people whose opinions and actions aren't worth being outraged over. This AC is clearly one of those people.
Re:Horrible Headline: google voice still around
on
Goodbye, Google Voice
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· Score: 1
Exactly. I read this and was horrified thinking that Google was shutting down Google Voice.
Awhile back, we switched our landline phone number to an extra mobile phone to save money (the $10 extra a month was cheap compared to a wired landline). We had been using Google Voice since the GrandCentral days and decided to port our "home phone" number to it. It cost $40 in one-time fees. ($20 to port the number and another $20 to keep our old Google Voice number.) Now, if someone calls our "home phone", it rings my wife's cell and my cell at the same time. We can take the call or let it go to voice mail. We can block telemarketers (mark as spam and they get a "this number no longer in service" message next time they call), but Google Voice tends to do that automagically already. (We see a number as having called us but our phones don't ring.) New features would be nice, but we're really happy with Google Voice and would hate to see it go away.
Not just tourists, but pretty much anyone. I take my kids to the playground and go to take a photo of them. I line it up just right with nobody else but then a kid runs into the shot. Do I a) Delete the photo? b) Approach the kids' mother to ask permission to keep the photo? or c) Don't care because the kid is in the background? (Hint: My answer would be c.)
What if I get home before realizing that the kid was in the shot? What if the kid was too blurry to be recognizable? Is it only the kids' face that counts? What if there's part of his arm or the back of his head? What if someone photobombs every picture I take and then refuses to give permission?
So, in your view, Typhoid Mary should have been allowed to continue working as a cook and making people sick because working was her right and who cares if she gets anyone sick/kills anyone? This is essentially what you are advocating. In fact, you are essentially committing your own "self-infecting with Bubonic Plague then strolling through an airport coughing on people" example. By not vaccinating, you are making yourself a potential infection vector. You are reducing herd immunity and making people get sick and die. This isn't just hypothetical. There are outbreaks of diseases that were all but wiped out in the United States and other countries because groups of people (who didn't grow up with them - thanks to vaccines - and thus don't know about the horrors of those diseases) are allowing themselves to be infected. People are dying. If you refuse vaccination, you aren't just making a decision about your own body, but are making a decision about dozens of other people whom you will come into contact with. You are deciding that people will get sick or die because of some misplaced fear of "toxins" and bad risk assessment.
The only thing that gets through to people who run their lives based entirely on emotions is....wait for it.... emotions.
For some reason, this made me think of Yoda and then it hit me: "Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hatred leads to suffering!"
People feared autism/toxins/etc in vaccines. They listened to McCarthy and company and got angry with "Big Pharma." Their hatred of "Big Pharma" has led to suffering! Anti-vaxxers have fallen to the Dark Side!!!
If not vaccinating only harmed the children of the anti-vaxxers, I'd be right alongside you. I'd still encourage everyone to vaccinate, but I'd be against making it mandatory.
It doesn't work that way, though. If your child isn't vaccinated, they can infect someone who is too young to be vaccinated or someone who is immuno-compromised and so couldn't be vaccinated. Not vaccinating your child is putting others at risk of illness, injury, and death. At that point, it stops becoming a "personal choice" issue and becomes a public health one. You don't have the right to swing your fist if my face (or my child's face) is along that path.
Do you even know how vaccines work? They present the body with a "pseudo-virus" (either a dead one or proteins that the real virus would have). The body sees the invading "virus" and figures out how to kill it. Then, when confronted with the real thing, the body will know how to respond. Dealing with a real virus is the same thing except that the body actually has to fight off the infection while dealing with the virus AND there's a much greater risk of injury or death. Plus, your children can spread their diseases to other people (especially those too young to be vaccinated or those with medical reasons not to vaccinate like compromised immune systems). In your quest for some mythical "real immunity", you are putting other people's lives at risk.
And it wouldn't surprise me that much if those people, in their grief, actually blame everyone else for their bad decision.
They already do this. Anti-vaxxers often claim that they are more than willing to vaccinate when vaccines are 100% safe. "Your new vaccine is 99.9999999999% safe? Sorry, but that's not 100% and it's your fault if my child dies from a disease the vaccine would have prevented." (Obviously speaking as a hypothetical anti-vaxxer and NOT as myself there!) This way they attempt to deflect any responsibility for outbreaks from themselves (for breaking herd immunity by refusing to vaccinate over imagined or minimal risks) to the doctors/"Big Pharma" (who they like blaming anyway for various imagined slights/conspiracies/crimes).
As a parent of a child with autism (as well as someone who is likely on the spectrum as well, albeit not diagnosed), I feel qualified to clarify some of this:
Now a spectrum, not a syndrome or disease. This has enlarged the affected population, enhancing the power of their advocates and increasing the urgency of finding a solution;
Autism is a developmental disorder. (It was never a "disease" as that implies being contagious. You'll never "catch" autism from me or my son.) The term "spectrum" is used because autism can describe individuals with vastly different levels of developmental delays. My son is very high functioning, you might not know from a casual observance that he even has autism, until he can't cope any more and melts down because his schedule changed slightly. Other kids with autism around my son's age might be non-verbal or have other, more severe, issues that their parents deal with.
Being blamed (root cause) on vaccines, diet, environmental effects, technology, with a de-emphasis on genetics and prenatal care.
This is only true for the anti-vaxxers and other such groups. Scientists actually investigating the cause of autism are focused on genetics as the primary cause. There might be environmental factors as well, but it looks like those only trigger existing genetic markers. I often liken it to diabetes. You can get diabetes from environmental factors (eating too much high sugar food), but your risk for it is determined by your genes.
Used to describe many more behaviors, hence becoming a 'spectrum', not a syndrome or disease or even a process.
See my first answer as to why it is a spectrum.
Described as a growing treat, capable of potentially impacting a majority of the population, being caused by a multitude of toxins, exposures, and behaviors, hence the urgency to find 'a cure'.
Again, this is just those anti-vaxxer/etc groups. Personally, I don't want to be cured. My brain is just fine as it is. In fact, I credit my autism with helping me program computers. (One of the traits of people with Asperger's Syndrome/High Functioning Autism is thinking in If-Then terms. Horrible for social situations, but fantastic for working with computers which operate - at a basic level - on an if-then system.)
The "growing threat" is just due to better detection. Were I my son's age now, I'd likely get diagnosed, but back when I was a kid that didn't happen. I was just termed as "shy" and perhaps "weird." I took things too literally ("take off your coat" => I take it off and put it on the floor) and didn't understand why people seemed to "get" this socialization thing where I didn't. It was almost like everyone got some How To Socialize instruction book and they forgot to give one to me. (I could get a diagnosis now, but that would spend money we don't have and wouldn't really help me or my son.)
The best thing for kids with autism is early intervention. Detect it early and give them therapy and other resources to help them deal with the neurotypical world. (That'd be the rest of you who aren't autistic. Never use the term "normal" to someone dealing with autism unless you want an angry diatribe directed at you.)
What about unvaccinated kids with a legitimate medical excuse? Where do you put them?
Also, what happens when Unvaccinated child coughs during lunch, touches the table, and then vaccinated-but-it-didn't-take or unvaccinated-for-valid-medical-reasons child touches the table next period? Unless you resort to full-on quarantine, you'll never separate them enough to prevent the anti-vax kids from infecting the non-anti-vax group.
Except that anti-vaxxers can (and are) causing people to get sick who can't vaccinate due to valid reasons such as illness/allergies or age (i.e. babies too young for the vaccine). Some of these cases result in death. If person A doesn't vaccinate and that kills person B's 6 month old baby, how is that evolution in action?
Herd immunity isn't rubbish. The reason we're worried is because of three things:
1) People who can't be vaccinated due to medical conditions. If you have an immune system disorder or are allergic to the vaccine, you won't be able to be vaccinated. In this case, you need to rely on herd immunity.
2) People who are too young to be vaccinated. Suppose you have an 8 month old baby and plan on vaccinating her. However, the MMR is given at 12 months. So your baby is still susceptible until then.
3) Vaccines aren't 100% effective. Nothing is. However, they are around 99.9% effective. Of course, with millions being vaccinated, this still means that thousands will still be susceptible.
If everyone was vaccinated who could be, herd immunity would protect these other people. When anti-vaxxers first started out, they relied on herd immunity also. Skip the measles vaccine and nothing happens! Because of herd immunity. As the numbers of anti-vaxxers grow, though, herd immunity breaks down and the diseases spread.
If anti-vaxxers were only affecting themselves/their children, I'd take a "it's a personal choice, albeit one I disagree with" stance. Since their choice affects (and kills) other people, though, I don't see this as a right of theirs. You don't have the right to kill someone else's baby because you want to listen to Andrew Wakefield and Jenny McCarthy.
Pi + Einstein + Life, The Universe, and Everything
on
Happy Pi Day
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· Score: 5, Interesting
Not only is today Pi day, but it is Albert Einstein's birthday also (he would've been 135 today). Also, 3 * 14 = 42 so today is also the answer to Life, The Universe, and Everything!
Here's an example of Common Core math. Someone tried to calculate their tip based on Common Core: https://twitter.com/BooyahSuckaFoo/status/435506648774230016/photo/1
And, yes, this is how my boys are learning to do math.
In our school district, we fell into the Common Core trap. We got some federal money but then the unfunded mandates meant we had to spend much, MUCH more. And we get told we can't back out without repaying that federal money... which is, of course, gone now.
So now we're making drastic cuts to pay for the Common Core stuff and our kids' education is taking a nose dive. But at least Pearson will get paid for their tests!
They've actually come up with standardized tests for PE now. I wish this were a joke. I really do.
http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2012/06/standardized_tests_for_the_arts_is_that_a_good_idea_.html === Just the first reference I was able to find.
As a parent of a kid who's doing "Common Core math", I can tell you that "Common Core math" is horrible. They're not being taught to work with numbers but to estimate answers (652 X 7? Well, that's kind of like 650 x 10 which is 6,500. Problem solved!) and to draw diagrams (1.8 - 0.5 => [OOOOO] OOOOOOOO => 13 O's => 1.3!). Working with numbers is now the "wrong way" and gets marked incorrect even if you get the answer right with that method.
This is purely politicians and corporations working together to "improve" education without any educators having input whatsoever. It would be like having a group of PHB's designing a program without any programmers having input and then having them claim it's so much better because programmers were the source of all of the previous versions' bugs.
The standardized tests are being used to rank teachers and can be used against them in job performance reviews. This means that teachers will do what they can to improve their kids' standardized test scores. This, in turn, means not teaching anything that isn't on the test. Teaching non-test materials means risking your job.
Right now, my son (5th grade) is doing a ton of test preparation materials because the teachers are told to do that to increase the test scores. (We're actually refusing the tests, but he still falls victim to "teach to the test.")
Not in New York State, they aren't. In New York, teachers are told to use the EngageNY materials and ONLY those. Though, when pressured, the Department of Education weasels out and claims it's up to the local school districts to decide. Then the local school districts say they were told by Department of Ed that they NEED to use these.
For those who don't know, EngageNY is literally a script. They tell the teacher what to say (exact words), when to say it, in what manner (excited, happy, etc) and how long to spend on each item, down to a 10-15 minute interval. Does one kid learn differently than another kid who learns differently than a third? Too bad. They all need to be taught the same materials in the same way and that's that.
Furthermore, EngageNY is horrible when it comes to math. They aren't teaching the kids to work with numbers anymore, but to draw pictures. For example, if you tell a kid to subtract 0.5 from 1.8, EngageNY says to draw a series of boxes like this: (Using O's to avoid/.'s "junk filter.")
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Now you circle 5 of these boxes and count the ones left. There are 13 left so your answer is 1.3.
If you actually do 1.8 - 0.5 = 1.3, then you've done the problem the wrong way and are counted as if you have the wrong answer. In addition, this method doesn't scale at all. Try doing it with 1,034.56 - 52.31. Your hands will cramp before you've drawn and circled all of the boxes!
My wife and I have been fighting this all year. My kids have gone from loving school to dreading it and everything has refocused onto the standardized tests instead of actually teaching the kids. We're refusing the tests. Every parent can, though sometimes the school will try to bully you out of it. Common Core wasn't designed with educators, it was designed by a group of politicians and big business folks the latter of which seem to get dollar signs in their eyes when they look at schools/students.
Slashdot Mirror
^^^^ Wish I had mod points to mod this up.
In our school district, they are talking about cutting art and music in elementary school due to lack of funds. However, they are hiring 4 administrators whose job it will be to teach teachers how to implement Common Core the "right way." The "right way" in New York being EngageNY which is literally a script that teachers must read to their students. They are told what to say, how to say it, when to say it and how long to stay on each topic - broken down into 10 - 15 minute segments. They are not allowed to deviate from the script (though some teachers still do, risking getting in trouble in favor of educating their students). All students, meanwhile, are required to learn in exactly the same way at exactly the same pace. Because we all know that all kids are exactly alike, right?
"Terrorists" has become almost like a bad Jedi mind trick.
Public: "Why do you need to read all of our e-mails?!!! We're going to vote you out of office!!!"
Politician *waving hand*: "Terrorists use e-mail."
Public *robotically repeating*: "Terrorists use e-mail."
Politician *waving hand*: "Terrorists do bad things."
Public *robotically repeating*: "Terrorists do bad things."
Politician *waving hand*: "We must stop the terrorists by any means necessary."
Public *robotically repeating*: "We must stop the terrorists by any means necessary."
yeah, but its a similar situations with politicians.
So true. How can you tell a politician is lying?
Trick question, they are never not lying.
What if a politician says: "I am lying."
A politician is always lying which means he can't be lying like he says he is. He's telling the truth. But if he's telling the truth, then saying "I'm lying" is a lie. So he's lying. But if he's lying about lying then he's telling the truth. But.... *brain explodes*
We get that too. However, when I look up the numbers of the missed calls, they are invariably reported as numbers that telemarketers or scammers use. I think that's happening is that Google Voice allows you to mark a number as spam. Someone calls you and tells you that you won a prize and just need to come down and listen to a presentation to get it. You mark it as spam. So do a bunch of other people. Google notices this and does what anti-spam filters do for e-mail: sends the call to the "spam folder" In Google Voice's case, this means you see that 555-1212 called, but it doesn't take a message.
As someone who is personally dealing with autism (my son), I can tell you that "being smart" and "being autistic" are completely different things. Yes, one group of people - those with Asperger's Syndrome like my son - can be highly intelligent, but most people with autism have normal intelligence levels. They just don't understand the "social rules" that the rest of the world seems to instinctively know and their senses can be overwhelmed by sights/sounds/smells/etc.
Imagine that you crash landed on an alien world that was a lot like Earth except that the sun appeared five times as bright in the sky, everyone talked in a shout at every moment, walls were made of a material which emitted a foul odor (which nobody but you seemed to smell), and the rules of social etiquette were completely different from any country on Earth. You'd live each day being bombarded by sights, sounds, smells, while trying to figure out the right things to say to people so as not to insult them and to fit in. You might get somewhat good at it, but it would be a hard effort to keep up and you'd need time to decompress. You'd have good days where you'd almost fit in and bad days where you just want to run screaming and hide from the world.
This is the life of someone with autism.
(Thanks to the kids' show Arthur for that "alien world" description. They did a great job in staying accurate while simplifying it down to something kids could understand.)
As someone with a son with Autism (High Functioning Autism/Asperger's Syndrome) and someone who is likely autistic himself (though not diagnosed because it just wasn't done when I was a kid), I confess that I am a bit annoyed that the AC would use "autistic" as an insult. Then again, I've also learned over the years that there are just some people whose opinions and actions aren't worth being outraged over. This AC is clearly one of those people.
Exactly. I read this and was horrified thinking that Google was shutting down Google Voice.
Awhile back, we switched our landline phone number to an extra mobile phone to save money (the $10 extra a month was cheap compared to a wired landline). We had been using Google Voice since the GrandCentral days and decided to port our "home phone" number to it. It cost $40 in one-time fees. ($20 to port the number and another $20 to keep our old Google Voice number.) Now, if someone calls our "home phone", it rings my wife's cell and my cell at the same time. We can take the call or let it go to voice mail. We can block telemarketers (mark as spam and they get a "this number no longer in service" message next time they call), but Google Voice tends to do that automagically already. (We see a number as having called us but our phones don't ring.) New features would be nice, but we're really happy with Google Voice and would hate to see it go away.
Not just tourists, but pretty much anyone. I take my kids to the playground and go to take a photo of them. I line it up just right with nobody else but then a kid runs into the shot. Do I a) Delete the photo? b) Approach the kids' mother to ask permission to keep the photo? or c) Don't care because the kid is in the background? (Hint: My answer would be c.)
What if I get home before realizing that the kid was in the shot? What if the kid was too blurry to be recognizable? Is it only the kids' face that counts? What if there's part of his arm or the back of his head? What if someone photobombs every picture I take and then refuses to give permission?
This law sounds horrible.
So, in your view, Typhoid Mary should have been allowed to continue working as a cook and making people sick because working was her right and who cares if she gets anyone sick/kills anyone? This is essentially what you are advocating. In fact, you are essentially committing your own "self-infecting with Bubonic Plague then strolling through an airport coughing on people" example. By not vaccinating, you are making yourself a potential infection vector. You are reducing herd immunity and making people get sick and die. This isn't just hypothetical. There are outbreaks of diseases that were all but wiped out in the United States and other countries because groups of people (who didn't grow up with them - thanks to vaccines - and thus don't know about the horrors of those diseases) are allowing themselves to be infected. People are dying. If you refuse vaccination, you aren't just making a decision about your own body, but are making a decision about dozens of other people whom you will come into contact with. You are deciding that people will get sick or die because of some misplaced fear of "toxins" and bad risk assessment.
For some reason, this made me think of Yoda and then it hit me: "Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hatred leads to suffering!"
People feared autism/toxins/etc in vaccines. They listened to McCarthy and company and got angry with "Big Pharma." Their hatred of "Big Pharma" has led to suffering! Anti-vaxxers have fallen to the Dark Side!!!
If not vaccinating only harmed the children of the anti-vaxxers, I'd be right alongside you. I'd still encourage everyone to vaccinate, but I'd be against making it mandatory.
It doesn't work that way, though. If your child isn't vaccinated, they can infect someone who is too young to be vaccinated or someone who is immuno-compromised and so couldn't be vaccinated. Not vaccinating your child is putting others at risk of illness, injury, and death. At that point, it stops becoming a "personal choice" issue and becomes a public health one. You don't have the right to swing your fist if my face (or my child's face) is along that path.
Do you even know how vaccines work? They present the body with a "pseudo-virus" (either a dead one or proteins that the real virus would have). The body sees the invading "virus" and figures out how to kill it. Then, when confronted with the real thing, the body will know how to respond. Dealing with a real virus is the same thing except that the body actually has to fight off the infection while dealing with the virus AND there's a much greater risk of injury or death. Plus, your children can spread their diseases to other people (especially those too young to be vaccinated or those with medical reasons not to vaccinate like compromised immune systems). In your quest for some mythical "real immunity", you are putting other people's lives at risk.
They already do this. Anti-vaxxers often claim that they are more than willing to vaccinate when vaccines are 100% safe. "Your new vaccine is 99.9999999999% safe? Sorry, but that's not 100% and it's your fault if my child dies from a disease the vaccine would have prevented." (Obviously speaking as a hypothetical anti-vaxxer and NOT as myself there!) This way they attempt to deflect any responsibility for outbreaks from themselves (for breaking herd immunity by refusing to vaccinate over imagined or minimal risks) to the doctors/"Big Pharma" (who they like blaming anyway for various imagined slights/conspiracies/crimes).
Remember, everyone. Mama McCarthy says that the toxins in vaccines are bad, but injecting yourself with botulinum toxin is just fine!
As a parent of a child with autism (as well as someone who is likely on the spectrum as well, albeit not diagnosed), I feel qualified to clarify some of this:
Autism is a developmental disorder. (It was never a "disease" as that implies being contagious. You'll never "catch" autism from me or my son.) The term "spectrum" is used because autism can describe individuals with vastly different levels of developmental delays. My son is very high functioning, you might not know from a casual observance that he even has autism, until he can't cope any more and melts down because his schedule changed slightly. Other kids with autism around my son's age might be non-verbal or have other, more severe, issues that their parents deal with.
This is only true for the anti-vaxxers and other such groups. Scientists actually investigating the cause of autism are focused on genetics as the primary cause. There might be environmental factors as well, but it looks like those only trigger existing genetic markers. I often liken it to diabetes. You can get diabetes from environmental factors (eating too much high sugar food), but your risk for it is determined by your genes.
See my first answer as to why it is a spectrum.
Again, this is just those anti-vaxxer/etc groups. Personally, I don't want to be cured. My brain is just fine as it is. In fact, I credit my autism with helping me program computers. (One of the traits of people with Asperger's Syndrome/High Functioning Autism is thinking in If-Then terms. Horrible for social situations, but fantastic for working with computers which operate - at a basic level - on an if-then system.)
The "growing threat" is just due to better detection. Were I my son's age now, I'd likely get diagnosed, but back when I was a kid that didn't happen. I was just termed as "shy" and perhaps "weird." I took things too literally ("take off your coat" => I take it off and put it on the floor) and didn't understand why people seemed to "get" this socialization thing where I didn't. It was almost like everyone got some How To Socialize instruction book and they forgot to give one to me. (I could get a diagnosis now, but that would spend money we don't have and wouldn't really help me or my son.)
The best thing for kids with autism is early intervention. Detect it early and give them therapy and other resources to help them deal with the neurotypical world. (That'd be the rest of you who aren't autistic. Never use the term "normal" to someone dealing with autism unless you want an angry diatribe directed at you.)
What about unvaccinated kids with a legitimate medical excuse? Where do you put them?
Also, what happens when Unvaccinated child coughs during lunch, touches the table, and then vaccinated-but-it-didn't-take or unvaccinated-for-valid-medical-reasons child touches the table next period? Unless you resort to full-on quarantine, you'll never separate them enough to prevent the anti-vax kids from infecting the non-anti-vax group.
Except that anti-vaxxers can (and are) causing people to get sick who can't vaccinate due to valid reasons such as illness/allergies or age (i.e. babies too young for the vaccine). Some of these cases result in death. If person A doesn't vaccinate and that kills person B's 6 month old baby, how is that evolution in action?
Herd immunity isn't rubbish. The reason we're worried is because of three things:
1) People who can't be vaccinated due to medical conditions. If you have an immune system disorder or are allergic to the vaccine, you won't be able to be vaccinated. In this case, you need to rely on herd immunity.
2) People who are too young to be vaccinated. Suppose you have an 8 month old baby and plan on vaccinating her. However, the MMR is given at 12 months. So your baby is still susceptible until then.
3) Vaccines aren't 100% effective. Nothing is. However, they are around 99.9% effective. Of course, with millions being vaccinated, this still means that thousands will still be susceptible.
If everyone was vaccinated who could be, herd immunity would protect these other people. When anti-vaxxers first started out, they relied on herd immunity also. Skip the measles vaccine and nothing happens! Because of herd immunity. As the numbers of anti-vaxxers grow, though, herd immunity breaks down and the diseases spread.
If anti-vaxxers were only affecting themselves/their children, I'd take a "it's a personal choice, albeit one I disagree with" stance. Since their choice affects (and kills) other people, though, I don't see this as a right of theirs. You don't have the right to kill someone else's baby because you want to listen to Andrew Wakefield and Jenny McCarthy.
Not only is today Pi day, but it is Albert Einstein's birthday also (he would've been 135 today). Also, 3 * 14 = 42 so today is also the answer to Life, The Universe, and Everything!
Here's an example of Common Core math. Someone tried to calculate their tip based on Common Core: https://twitter.com/BooyahSuckaFoo/status/435506648774230016/photo/1
And, yes, this is how my boys are learning to do math.
In our school district, we fell into the Common Core trap. We got some federal money but then the unfunded mandates meant we had to spend much, MUCH more. And we get told we can't back out without repaying that federal money... which is, of course, gone now.
So now we're making drastic cuts to pay for the Common Core stuff and our kids' education is taking a nose dive. But at least Pearson will get paid for their tests!
They've actually come up with standardized tests for PE now. I wish this were a joke. I really do.
http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2012/06/standardized_tests_for_the_arts_is_that_a_good_idea_.html === Just the first reference I was able to find.
As a parent of a kid who's doing "Common Core math", I can tell you that "Common Core math" is horrible. They're not being taught to work with numbers but to estimate answers (652 X 7? Well, that's kind of like 650 x 10 which is 6,500. Problem solved!) and to draw diagrams (1.8 - 0.5 => [OOOOO] OOOOOOOO => 13 O's => 1.3!). Working with numbers is now the "wrong way" and gets marked incorrect even if you get the answer right with that method.
This is purely politicians and corporations working together to "improve" education without any educators having input whatsoever. It would be like having a group of PHB's designing a program without any programmers having input and then having them claim it's so much better because programmers were the source of all of the previous versions' bugs.
The standardized tests are being used to rank teachers and can be used against them in job performance reviews. This means that teachers will do what they can to improve their kids' standardized test scores. This, in turn, means not teaching anything that isn't on the test. Teaching non-test materials means risking your job.
Right now, my son (5th grade) is doing a ton of test preparation materials because the teachers are told to do that to increase the test scores. (We're actually refusing the tests, but he still falls victim to "teach to the test.")
Not in New York State, they aren't. In New York, teachers are told to use the EngageNY materials and ONLY those. Though, when pressured, the Department of Education weasels out and claims it's up to the local school districts to decide. Then the local school districts say they were told by Department of Ed that they NEED to use these.
For those who don't know, EngageNY is literally a script. They tell the teacher what to say (exact words), when to say it, in what manner (excited, happy, etc) and how long to spend on each item, down to a 10-15 minute interval. Does one kid learn differently than another kid who learns differently than a third? Too bad. They all need to be taught the same materials in the same way and that's that.
Furthermore, EngageNY is horrible when it comes to math. They aren't teaching the kids to work with numbers anymore, but to draw pictures. For example, if you tell a kid to subtract 0.5 from 1.8, EngageNY says to draw a series of boxes like this: (Using O's to avoid /.'s "junk filter.")
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Now you circle 5 of these boxes and count the ones left. There are 13 left so your answer is 1.3.
If you actually do 1.8 - 0.5 = 1.3, then you've done the problem the wrong way and are counted as if you have the wrong answer. In addition, this method doesn't scale at all. Try doing it with 1,034.56 - 52.31. Your hands will cramp before you've drawn and circled all of the boxes!
My wife and I have been fighting this all year. My kids have gone from loving school to dreading it and everything has refocused onto the standardized tests instead of actually teaching the kids. We're refusing the tests. Every parent can, though sometimes the school will try to bully you out of it. Common Core wasn't designed with educators, it was designed by a group of politicians and big business folks the latter of which seem to get dollar signs in their eyes when they look at schools/students.