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‘Because you’re Canadian’: Teen allegedly bullied by teachers for being Canuck drops out of U.S. school
Mocked for his red-and-white gym gear and derided for hailing from a nation of seal clubbers, an Ottawa-born teenager says he dropped out of a Christian school in Upstate New York because staff relentlessly teased him over his Canadian background.
“I think it started as joking and then it went too far,” said Noah Kilpatrick, speaking by phone from Watertown, New York.
Attending Faith Fellowship Christian School was otherwise fine, said Noah, but in class the teacher would often lampoon Canada as a cartoonishly small country filled with communists and people who club seals for fun.
“History class and sometimes math class … they were stereotyping Canadians and saying we were all stupid — it was offensive,” he said.
When Noah paid for his school lunch with a toonie after forgetting to bring greenbacks (the two currencies were at par, he noted later), the same teacher, who is also the school’s principal, allegedly held up the coin at an assembly to publicly remind students that toonies are not legal tender. (Photo: Tina Kilpatrick)
Calgary eliminates letter grades for students up to grade nine in an attempt to save children from failure
The Calgary Board of Education is moving to save children from failure. Under a proposed new marking scheme, the board is to relabel such students as “support required.” If they improve, their skills will be upgraded to “emerging.’’
The Calgary board is doing away with letter-grade assessments for children between Kindergarten and Grade 9, and is also eliminating personalized comments. On a draft of the new report card protocol, traditional letter grades and percentages have been replaced with a four-point system: “exemplary,” “evident,” “emerging” or, “support required.”
School official hope the assessments will offer additional precision, but critics don’t buy it. ‘‘I’m still searching for the benefit to the children,’’ argues Peter Cowley, director of school performance studies at the Fraser Institute. He said phrases like “evident” or “emerging” don’t seem to give parents any clearer understanding than a letter grade. (Illustration by Mike Faille/National Post)
Bras begone: China clamps down on cheating in university entrance exams by banning brassieres
Education chiefs in northeast China have devised a new tactic to clamp down on cheating in the country’s annual university entrance exams: they have banned bras.
Before this week’s gaokao — the intensely competitive Chinese equivalent to A-levels — schools in Jilin province have outlawed any metal object or item of clothing that sets off detectors being installed outside exam halls.
The measure is reportedly an attempt to prevent increasingly brazen and sophisticated cheats from sneaking listening devices or transmitters into the exam. (STR/AFP/GettyImages)
No heroes allowed: Calgary student, 13, reprimanded for defending his classmate against a knife-wielding bully
Briar MacLean was sitting in class during a study period Tuesday, the teacher was on the other side of the room and, as Grade 7 bullies are wont to do, one kid started harassing another.
“I was in between two desks and he was poking and prodding the guy,” Briar, 13, said at the kitchen table of his Calgary home Friday.
“He put him in a headlock, and I saw that.”
He added he didn’t see the knife, but “I heard the flick, and I heard them say there was a knife.”
The rest was just instinct. Briar stepped up to defend his classmate, pushing the knife-wielding bully away.
The teacher took notice, the principal was summoned and Briar went about his day. It wasn’t until fourth period everything went haywire.
“I got called to the office and I wasn’t able to leave until the end of the day,” he said.
That’s when Leah O’Donnell, Briar’s mother, received a call from the vice-principal.
Ms. O’Donnell was politely informed the school did not “condone heroics,” she said. Instead, Briar should have found a teacher to handle the situation.
“I asked: ‘In the time it would have taken him to go get a teacher, could that kid’s throat have been slit?’ She said yes, but that’s beside the point. That we ‘don’t condone heroics in this school.’ ”
Instead of getting a pat on the back for his bravery, Briar was made to feel as if he had done something terribly wrong. The police were called, the teen filed a statement and his locker was searched.
Read more. (Mike Ridewood for National Post)
Two Chinese kindergarten students die after rival school poisons yogurt
Chinese state media say two girls have died after eating poisoned yogurt placed outside their kindergarten at the direction of the head of a rival school.
The Xinhua News Agency says police believe the poisoning was motivated by competition for students between the schools.
It says the woman confessed that she injected the yogurt with rat poison and asked a man to place it with notebooks on the road to the rival kindergarten in Pingshan county in Hebei province. (Tyler Anderson / National Post files)
‘Disgraceful’ professor ignites firestorm over his secret: modern scientists do not need advanced math
Mathematics has a unique capacity to infuriate people, so when a world-leading scientist announced his belief that advanced math is unnecessary for the modern scientist, the response from the nerdosphere was blistering.
In the last week or so, since an excerpt of Edward O. Wilson’s new book, Letters To A Young Scientist, ran in the Wall Street Journal, the evolutionary biologist and ant expert has been criticized as “insulting,” “misinformed,” “sad,” “misguided,” “counterproductive,” “frustrating,” “flat-out wrong,” and “a disgrace.” He is “trading on fear” of math, and “uncritically accepting the idea that math is something inherently unpleasant.”
“Don’t listen to E.O. Wilson,” one mathematician wrote of the Harvard professor emeritus. “He does not understand what mathematics is.”
In the book, the two time Pulitzer Prize-winning Prof. Wilson shares what he calls a secret: that many top scientists today are mathematically merely “semiliterate,” and this is not so bad, because they can work with mathematicians as needed. (Getty Images/Thinkstock)
‘You have zero class’: Anonymous issues blistering attack on N.S. justice minister over lack of charges in Rehtaeh Parsons case
One day after threatening to release the identities of four boys allegedly involved in the gang rape of teenager Rehtaeh Parsons, the hacktivist group Anonymous has issued a blistering attack on Nova Scotia Justice Minister Ross Landry and other authority figures over their decision not to prosecute in the case.
“What we have learned is certainly appalling, but it wasn’t the act of rape that shocked us. It was the behavior of the adults in Rehtaeh’s life that we found most disturbing,” the Anonymous group “Operation Justice for Rehtaeh” said in a Thursday morning press release that took aim at “school teachers, administrators, the police and prosecutors.”
“All of you have created a mess and instead of taking responsibility and cleaning it up, the first thing you did yesterday morning was get on television and defend your jobs. You have taught the young men in your community a terrible lesson: rape is easy.” (Facebook)
Anonymous threatens to out boys involved in alleged gang rape of N.S. teen unless RCMP charges them
The “hackivist” organization Anonymous says it knows the identities of at least two of the four boys involved in the alleged gang rape of Rehtaeh Parsons and are threatening to release their names and locations unless the RCMP charges them.
“Our demands are simple: We want the N.S. RCMP to take immediate legal action against the individuals in question. We encourage you to act fast. If we were able to locate these boys within 2 hours, it will not be long before someone else finds them,” the Anonymous group working under the name “Operation Justice For Rehtaeh” said in a Wednesday press release.
The group initially said they knew the names of two of the four boys, but within 30 minutes said on Twitter it knew the names of all of the alleged perpetrators.
“We do not approve of vigilante justice as the media claims. That would mean we approve of violent actions against these rapists at the hands of an unruly mob. What we want is justice. And that’s your job. So do it.” (Facebook)
‘Those are the people that took the life of my beautiful girl’: Mother goes on attack over teen’s suicide
On Sunday night, Rehtaeh Parsons’ family removed her from life support, and on Monday her mother took to Facebook to lash out at those she holds responsible for her 17-year-old daughter’s suicide.
Leah Parsons wrote that the straight-A student’s descent into agony began 15 months ago when she went to an acquaintance’s house in suburban Halifax and was sexually assaulted by four boys her age, who later distributed a photo of the assault among their classmates.
“Rehtaeh is gone today because of the four boys that thought that raping a 15 yr old girl was OK and to distribute a photo to ruin her spirit and reputation would be fun,” she wrote.
“Secondly, all the bullying and messaging and harassment that never let up are also to blame. Lastly, the justice system failed her. Those are the people that took the life of my beautiful girl.” (Facebook)
‘The justice system failed her’: Nova Scotia teenager commits suicide after being raped, bullied: mother
The mother of a 17-year-old Halifax girl who committed suicide says her daughter was raped by four boys about 18 months ago and viciously bullied after a photo of the alleged incident was passed around her school and community.
Rehtaeh Parsons tried to kill herself Thursday night and was taken off life support Sunday.
In an extensive post on a Facebook memorial page, her mother Leah Parsons described how the straight-A high school student became depressed and suicidal after the incident. (Facebook)
Toronto professor learns not all editors are welcome on Wikipedia when class assignment backfires
A recent dust-up between Wikipedia and Canada’s largest university raises questions about how collaborative the popular website that bills itself as “the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit” truly is.
The online information portal recently took a professor from the University of Toronto to task for one of his classroom assignments.
Steve Joordens urged the 1,900 students in his introductory psychology class to start adding content to relevant Wikipedia pages. The assignment was voluntary, and Joordens hoped the process would both enhance Wikipedia’s body of work on psychology while teaching students about the scientist’s responsibility to share knowledge.
But Joordens’s plan backfired when the relatively small contingent of volunteer editors that curate the website’s content began sounding alarm bells. They raised concerns about the sheer number of contributions pouring in from people who were not necessarily well-versed in the topic or adept at citing their research.
Discussions in the Wikipedia community became very heated with allegations that articles were being updated with erroneous or plagiarized information. Some community members called for widespread bans on university IP addresses and decried the professor’s assignment as a needless burden on the community. (Ken Jones/University of Toronto; Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)
School officials found a Toronto-area teenager with a handwritten manifesto detailing a plan to abduct, torture, rape and kill a girl in the school’s “sound-proof music room.” The disturbing discovery came after a schoolmate was threatened with outrageous sexual violence in an online chat.
Quick intervention by a teacher and a call to police may have averted tragedy; a judge has declared the young man, who was 17 at the time, “a sadist” and found him guilty of threatening bodily harm.
Ever wonder what can happen when everyone does the RIGHT thing in the face of scary school violence?
My exclusive story in the National Post shows you: http://natpo.st/10f6HLD
(Photo: Paul Sakuma / The Associated Press)
Ontario schoolgirl uses secret code word to outwit potential abductor in ‘textbook example’ of street proofing
A 10-year-old girl who outwitted two potential abductors by asking them for a secret code word has been praised by police for her quick thinking.
The girl was approached on Monday outside Applecroft Public School in Ajax, Ont., by a strange man trying to lure her into his car. The man, who was accompanied by a woman sitting in the passenger seat, claimed the girl’s mother had sent him to pick her up.
The girl and her family had established a secret password to be used as proof a person was really sent by her parents.
“She asked this person what the code word was and obviously they got it wrong,” Dave Mason of Durham Regional Police told CTV. “She told them ‘You got the code word wrong’ and that person left.”
School board forced to apologize after Windsor teachers trick students into thinking they’re going to Disney World
A southwestern Ontario school board is speaking out against teachers who pulled an elaborate prank on a group of Grade 8 students in Windsor.
A spokesman for the Greater Essex County School Board says teachers used “poor judgment” when they led students to believe they were going on a graduation trip to Disney World.
Scott Scantlebury says teachers at Roseland Public School prepared a PowerPoint presentation, complete with pictures and video, to lead the kids to believe the trip to Florida was in the works.
He says the final slide revealed the planned trip was only to a local bowling alley, leaving students devastated. (Google Maps)
‘She’s literally lost a career’: Woman files $1.3 million lawsuit against university for giving her a C+
So you got a C+ in an important university course. Sucks, right? But would you be perturbed enough to sue your school for over a million dollars, claiming the poor grade dashed your hopes of a promising career?
That’s the approach a Pennsylvania woman is taking as she arrived in court this week with a $1.3 million claim against her alma mater, arguing the grade in a class critical to achieving her master’s degree has destroyed her chances of becoming a licensed professional counsellor.
