Students

In her oily, cringe-inducing and totally predictable speech to AIPAC on March 21, Hillary Clinton argued that, since (according to her) “anti-Semitism is on the rise across the world… we must repudiate all efforts to malign, isolate and undermine Israel and the Jewish people.” In other words, we must do what we can to shut down any legitimate criticism of Israeli policy. A reliable means of doing so is to conflate said criticism with anti-Semitism and thus vilify the critic in question.

This week we take a look at the nefarious capitalist mechanism called free trade agreements, with a focus on world wide resistance to the TPP or Trans Pacific Partnership plus an update of anti-fascist resistance in Anaheim California.
On the music break, class war hip hop MC’s Emicia bring us Boa Esperança.

A Vermont college just banned the sale of energy drinks on its campus, saying the beverages contribute to risky sex and unwanted behaviors.
Middlebury College Dining Services will no longer sell products like 5-Hour Energy, Red Bull, or Monster Energy on its campus. College officials have linked the beverages to “problematic behavior” such as alcohol abuse, and “high-risk sexual activity.” It says, also, that the drinks don’t contribute to the dining service’s mission to “nourish” its students.

Israel is to put financial pressure on Palestinian schools in occupied East Jerusalem in an effort to make them switch over to an Israeli-controlled curriculum, according to local activists and officials.
Almost all of East Jerusalem’s schools currently use a syllabus developed by the Palestinian Authority, a Palestinian government-in-waiting created in the mid-1990s by the Oslo accords. Before that, they relied on the Jordanian curriculum.

As part of the growing need to find sustainable ways to provide organic, quality food for ourselves, our families, and our neighbors, more young people have become interested in organic farming. Now new programs are teaching children the importance of self-sustainable farming, and how to farm using age-old techniques.

In an effort to feed children the best quality food possible while promoting environmental health, a Bay Area school district has become the first in the nation to serve 100% organic meals to students.

If graded in terms of encouraging and developing a well-rounded and informed citizenry in a democratic country, the best most public schools I am familiar with would be a “D”.  Put simply and bluntly, our public primary and secondary schools, our community colleges and universities are bureaucratic institutions whose main social and intellectual aim and achievement is the indoctrination of students in the prevailing corporatist-consumerist-racist-sexist social norms and whose primary institutional interest is self-preservation.

Recently, a teacher at a school in Augusta County, Virginia handed out a homework assignment. The homework, part of the Geography curriculum, dealt with world religions. Among other exercises, it included a question asking students to copy Arabic calligraphy (in order to help them understand the complexity of calligraphy in the Arabic language).
Here is the question:

Entering Columbia University is a dream come true and the first step in what I hope will be a fulfilling career. My time at Columbia undoubtedly represents one of the most eye-opening and stimulating periods of my life. Most of my peers were as ecstatic as I was when going through the gates of our Morningside Heights home for the first time. And yet, as fall finals loom just days away, some of our fellow students have suffered from tragic depression, going as far as attempting to take their own lives.

It’s thirty years of consumer orgasm and vocational thinking, educating to push away anything good and deep and critically thought out, those great books and thoughts that distract one from making money, hand over fist, or struggling trying to do something in the social services.