Ramblings of Noah Arney

From this article at the Seattle Times.

New data from a large government survey show that by every measure, the decade long decline in sexual activity among high-school students leveled off between 2001 and 2007 and the increase in condom use by teens flattened in 2003.

The article also comments on previous reports saying

…that one in four teenage girls has a sexually transmitted disease and that the teen birthrate has increased for the first time in 15 years…

And further

“Since we’ve started pushing abstinence, we have seen no change in the numbers on sexual activity…. The other piece of it is abstinence education spends a good amount of time bashing condoms. So it’s not surprising, if that’s the message young people are getting, that we’re seeing condom use start to decrease.”

And finally

The proportion of teenagers reporting having sexual intercourse rose steadily through the 1970s and 1980s, fueling a sharp rise in teen pregnancy. The trend reversed around 1991. At the same time, more sexually active teens started using condoms and other forms of contraception. Together, the trends have pushed the U.S. teen-pregnancy rate to historic lows.

Well. It seems that abstinence only sex-ed has had the opposite effect of what was hoped for. Instead of continuing to decrease the teen-pregnancy rate it has helped to increase the rate by providing poor information on any paths other than absolute abstinence.

It is impossible to force someone to your way of thinking. I agree that reminding students that abstinence is the only fool proof way of avoiding pregnancy is a good thing. However, you cannot assume that everyone who hears that message will be abstinent. Thus it is important to teach students about as many working methods of birth control and STD prevention as possible, and also how well they work.

Ok everyone, it’s time to start teaching students about sex properly. Yes, abstinence is good, but not everyone will follow that path. Thus we must teach students how to protect themselves.

The only way to completely avoid death when riding a motorcycle is to not ride one. But since a lot of people enjoy motorcycles, perhaps we should teach how to ride one safely as well.

I felt like being geeky today, so I thought I’d take a look at Sen. Clinton’s mistake.  Normally I wouldn’t care, but after all of the fuss over Sen. Obama’s comments about clinging to guns I figured she’s fair game for slips.  So, without further ado here is the comment:

“There was just an AP article posted that found how Sen. Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.”

And of course the most important part:

“Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again”

If you want to jump down past the grammar discussion click here.

Now a comma is used for several things.  And I’d like to point you to this site from which I got my examples.  First is the listing use.  For example:

Noun:  He brought coffee, sandwiches, cheese and soda.
Verb:  She caught, cleaned, cooked and served the fish.
Adjective:  The weather today is cool, dry and windy.
Verb phrase:  I closed the door, started the car, pulled out of the driveway, and switched on the radio.
Clause:  Mayuki made the sushi, Yung-Hee cooked the meat, and Izabella chopped the vegetables

There is one thing that you must remember when using a list.  At the end, before the last item, you MUST use the word “and”.  Without that, it’s not a list.

The next use of the comma is for conjoining two clauses:

It was raining, so I took my umbrella.

To do this you need to use one of the coordinating conjunctions: and, but, or, so, and several more.

Most of the rest of this will have the examples taken from Wikipedia.

Commas can also be used for introductory phrases: Once upon a time, I didn’t know how to use commas

Parenthetical phrases are those bits that can be pulled out of a sentence without changing the meaning.  They fall into restrictive and non-restrictive clauses.  I’m not going to go into it much, but if you’re interested, I have a lovely worksheet I do with my students.  But, there are several forms of parenthetical phrases.  The following are the ones which interest us right now:

My father, a jaded and bitter man, ate the bagel (appositive)
My father, chewing with unbridled fury, ate the bagel (free modifier).
My father, in a fit of rage, ate the bagel (prepositional phrase).
My father, with no regard for his health, ate the bagel (adverbial phrase).
My father, despite his lack of teeth, ate the bagel (adverbial phrase). 

It is also used to separate dependant and independent clauses: “After I brushed the cat, I lint-rollered my clothes”.

And back to the politics.  The most important parts of this discussion on grammar are Parenthetical Phrases and Listing.

“Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again”

The only two possible types of comma that this could be are Parenthetical and Listing.  Lets look at listing.  As we know, a list is a number of points joined together by commas, and ending with the word “and” before the final.  Now we can assume that Clinton was attempting to give a list, meaning:

“Obama’s support among hard working Americans [of all colours], and white Americans [in particular] is weakening again.”

After listening to her comments though (which you can do here), I’m afraid that that’s not what she said.  She used the distinct pauses which indicate commas.  Also, she lacks the all important “and”. 

Before we continue, it is important to remember that her comments were full of “ums”.  Thus, I’ll rewrite what she said slightly.

She said “among working, hard-working”, but, from that, and from the “ums” which are included in it, she said “working” but then changed that to “hard-working”.  Her comment then is:

 ”Obama’s support among hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again”

Now, as we said, this is not, much as she might wish otherwise, a list.  It is a parenthetical phrase.  With the commas as they fall, she is saying:

“Obama’s support among hard-working Americans, is weakening again”

But, in order to assume this, we need to think that the introduction of the words “white Americans” does not change the sentence.  If it did change the sentence, the commas would not need to be there in that order.  Which means that “white Americans” is not adding to the sentence, but rather defining “hard-working Americans”.  Thus she has said:

“Obama’s support among hard-working Americans, [and they are] white Americans, is weakening again”

And that is where the problem happens.  She has verbally equated white with hard-working.  Which on the flip side implies that Obama’s largest ethnic group (black Americans) are not hard-working.

To be clear, when I started this I felt that people were simply taking their prior ingrained racism and applying it to the quote, seeing racism simply because it was a white person making a comment about white people.  However, after looking at the comma use, I feel that I must conclude that the comments made, though I’m sure it was a slip of the tongue, are in fact saying that hard-working Americans are white.

I originally posted this on a Ning site that we use for classroom discussions in my Educational Psych class.

Today there was an interesting discussion in the English/social studies prep room at ****. Someone brought up how grades were posted, and that most teachers posted them by student number (essentially alphabetically). One teacher though posted them that way and then highlighted in one colour those getting As, and in another colour those failing. A second teacher posts his grades sorted by grade. This lead to a discussion of the purpose of grades. Grades seem to be a motivation for students. But what we decided on was that it wasn’t just the grade, it was the competition for the grade. Competition was the motivator, not grades. I brought up that I felt it was doing a disservice to the students to assume that they can’t be intrinsically motivated. I said that in a Pass/Fail system students may start to loose their grade focus, and instead compete for doing individual assignments better than others, giving students for whom competition is the motivator more frequent chances for reward from their competition, rather than competing solely for the final grade.

It’s an interesting thought about what motivates our students to do well. I think that if grades are the main motivator, then we as members of the education system have failed them.

But really, think about it. What is the purpose of a grade?

Why do we give students grades?

Wait, no, that’s not it.  I understand why we give students grades, what I don’t understand is why we use the traditional A through F system.

It seems to discourage cooperation, and provide yet another thing for students to make fun of each other over.

I believe that we should go to a Pass Fail system, with a few alterations.  I don’t mean that we should get rid of numerical marking.  I think that many people use this correctly.  Numerical marking allows students to see where they are in comparison to the standard.  What I do not agree with is when it is used to see where students are in comparison to others.  A pass, then, should be 60% and higher (perhaps even 70%?).  This way in order to pass you must actually have achieved a level of ability that will allow the students to move to the next level of classes.

Grades should be used to help students, not to label them.

 Provincial exam marks have taken the place of actual GPA in deciding if someone can attend a particular university, so why bother with them?

Perhaps it is in fact to encourage competition.  Maybe people believe that students wont work hard unless there is a grade attached?  I believe that students will always find a way to compete, and that our focus on grades has simply made that the reason for competition.

 But in reality we’ll see how my opinion changes as I work in the schools.  Maybe I’ll find the reason for grades.

I wish I was still on practicum.  Part of it is that I don’t quite get the reason for being back here so soon.  I was learning more, faster, while I was in the high school.  I’ve come here where we now “reflect” on our experiences.  Like I haven’t already done that?  I’m a Theatre student; reflect is one of our major modes.  So instead of learning how to write a unit plan, or improving on our teaching style, we’re sitting in desks trying to pay attention to information that is either useless, already known, or easily accessible.  Regardless it does seem like a waste of time.  But more than that, I have another reason for not liking being back at UBC. 

It’s lonely.  There are tens of thousands of people here, but no one talks.  I know maybe 100 people here.  Actually talk to maybe 40, and spend time with less than 20.  At the high school there may have been less than 40 teachers, but I knew a large number of them.  They talked.  They interacted.  They were real.  Not always trying to seem to be a perfect teacher, lest someone notice that they have doubts.  I love teaching, but I have problems with the program.  I hate how they tell us to do one thing, but model something else.  How they tell us that people will react to your expectations, and then treat us like elementary school students.  How they tell us to access prior knowledge in our students, and then tell us that our prior knowledge is wrong.  Why are we jumping through their hoops to join a profession that is completely different from what they are portraying?

Maybe it’s the area?  Maybe surrey is just a more accepting and open area than UBC?  Could it be because of the large number of people on campus that no one talks?  I miss UCFV, I miss everyone talking.  I miss not having an oppressive silence on the buses.  The feeling that I’d be breaking some social norm to talk to someone I don’t know and may not be in my program. 

So here I sit at a session of the BCTELA (BC Teachers of the English Language Association) conference.  This session is on Blogging.  So yes, I’m blogging while being taught about blogging….  Fancy that.  We’re supposed to be using blogger, and yes, I created a blogger account, but I have no intention of ever using it again.  Sure it’s easy.  But I like having my wordpress blog.  Yes, I’m addicted.  Of course I have yet to install the newest version of wordpress.  There are some new features I’d like to try, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet.  And now I’m rambling.

Enjoy the world.