Kip Austin Hinton

The Alamo should be integrated into the San Antonio Missions National Park . It should be a place to see and understand the past, good and bad. It is not a "shrine." It is an old church, built to offer/force a foreign religion to indigenous people. And it is a battleground, where a few Tejanos and white immigrants fought in a rebellion against the Mexican army -- some because of greed, others because of principle. In the 20th century, the Alamo became site of a battle over white Texas identity. The Daughters of the Republic of Texas have thrived on this battle. See Richard Flores: http://books.google.com/books?id=Rc4mtLSzu9oC New York Times ran an article about a legal battle at the Alamo/Mision San Antonio de Valero. The Daughters of the Republic of Texas are at the center. Of course there are good women in the organization. But as long as the Daughters' goals remain divisive, they will create (rather than memorialize) conflict. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12

Still contemplating this article. Though i am interested in the concept of online classes, this is the main reason i have not yet agreed to teach one. For now, i integrate online elements into a face-to-face course. - http://chronicle.com/article/article-content/125329/ - I know cheating is endemic not just online but at all colleges, from community college to ivy league. I agree with one of the commenters: the only students likely to be immune to ghostwriting are those who are too poor to afford the high cost. Since application essays are a large portion of ghostwriters' business, a poor student deserving of a college education/scholarship is being unfairly excluded every time a rich student hires a professional writer. This is a strange way our admissions processes reward wealth and dishonesty. - Financially speaking, the only way the poor can cheat on a paper (thesis etc.) is to plagiarize it themselves - that is, copy and paste from wikipedia or a paper from the web. Colleges

Re: the future of UC retirement, letter from president Mark Yudof http://universityofcalifornia.edu/sites/ucrpfuture/ [University of California, like many educational institutions, is bleeding money. Each year, more and more of money goes to non-employees, , former employees who no longer contribute to the prosperity of the campuses. Current employees are struggling to increase the amount of money they personally will get in exchange for retiring. As experienced people retire, the university struggles to find money to hire young replacements, all while continuing to pay the former employee up to 100% of his/her highest salary. Yudof's letter is attached below.] These cuts are not deep enough. The people commenting here all talk about UC employees, as if a university’s mission is to employ people. I am a student. As you (employees ) get more benefits, students get fewer benefits, at greater cost (specifically, experienced retirees are not being replaced for lack of funds). Your year

This post is about the Quran, specifically a viral youtube video about how "evil" the Quran is. I am a christian, not a muslim. Since I am not a religious scholar, I probably misunderstand some things about every religion. What follows is my opinion. -------------------------------- There are a billion and a half muslims in the world; maybe you are a muslim, maybe not. regardless of what you or I think of their book, most muslims are not terrorists, and are not trying to take over our government or create sharia law. So our options, as a society, are 1. fight against all muslims and their religion or 2. figure out a way to stop killing each other I think most Muslims and Christians -- and others as well -- prefer option 2. Whoever made that video obviously thinks the Quran is evil. Well, even if this were true, what is your solution? Should we fight a war against all 1.57 billion people who call themselves muslim (ignoring that fact that almost all of them live normal

re: the la times sensationalist expose' series on value-added modeling of LAUSD teacher "effectiveness" this is a report by eva baker, linda darling-hammond, and many others. necessary context for those newspaper articles. http://epi.3cdn.net/b9667271ee6c154195_t9m6iij8k.pdf "Nonetheless, there is broad agreement among statisticians, psychometricians, and economists that student test scores alone are not sufficiently reliable and valid indicators of teacher effectiveness to be used in high-stakes personnel decisions, even when the most sophisticated statistical applications such as value-added modeling are employed. - "For a variety of reasons, analyses of VAM results have led researchers to doubt whether the methodology can accurately identify more and less effective teachers. VAM estimates have proven to be unstable across statistical models, years, and classes that teachers teach. One study found that across five large urban districts, among teachers who wer

[re: Ann Wortham meme about Obama] Well, I disagree with almost every claim in that article. First of all, the author is a strange "libertarian." Ann Wortham wrote a book claiming government should not make laws about racism. In her book, Wortham defended the right of business owners to discriminate against African Americans, or women, or the handicapped. She thinks the Civil Rights Act was unfair interference with businesses. In 1981, Wortham specifically defended " Lester Maddox, the owner of the Pickrick Restaurant in Atlanta, Georgia, who armed himself with a pistol and pick handle and ordered blacks to get off his property." ( http://www.thefreemanonline.org/columns/a-reviewers-notebook-the-other-side-of-racism/ ) So basically, she wants "liberty" for owners, but she opposes liberty for customers. She thought Black citizens should never have protested at Woolworth's counters. She wanted them to only "boycott" (how do you boy

http://www.elpasotimes.com/ci_15256386 Mexico blasts fatal shooting by Border Patrol agent Rock throwing led to teenager's death, US says By Daniel Borunda and Maggie Ybarra / El Paso Times Posted: 06/08/2010 10:38:18 PM MDT ... U.S. authorities said [15-year-old Sergio Adrián] Hernandez was part of a group throwing rocks at Border Patrol agents who were trying to detain two men who had illegally crossed the border near the Paso del Norte Bridge in Downtown El Paso. [actually, this information was false. it turned out they only tried to detain teenagers, not adults. and "None were carrying backpacks or appeared to have weapons... While holding down one of the Mexican boys, this agent fired shots toward Mexico." http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704256604575294950172855306.html?mod=googlenews_wsj ] [photo: this part of the Rio Grande is small, so they put a double 12-foot barbwire fence (top right of bridge photo, close-up below) that prevents entry into

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703572504575213883276427528.html in the mid 1800s when arizona was "acquired," 2/3 of population was native american. therefore, the traditional "accent" of arizona is a native american accent. half the white people in phoenix were born in a different state. they speak outsider dialects, including new york english, chicago english, and valley-girl. of course, most evaluators hired by the state speak a white, outsider variety of english. they all have accents, because everyone has some sort of accent. the question is, which accent will get you fired? Lippi-Green, Rosina (1997). English with an Accent. http://www.amazon.com/English-Accent-Language-Ideology-Discrimination/dp/0415114772 the answer is obvious: accents associated with immigrants from mexico or other latino countries will get you fired (never mind that arizona actively recruited hundreds of teachers from mexico, and convinced them to move to the state years ago

i went to a big conference, of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) . it was tiring and overwhelming, i don't know how many people were there. tens of thousands. it's the one everyone says we (grad students) have to present papers at - so i presented a paper. met great people, learned and partied with them. saw carol lee shake her groove thing. i submitted the same paper last year, but it was rejected. so i fixed the things reviewers didn't like, and this year they accepted it. appreciate criticism. by the way, AERA finally has an opinion about something. education is part of our world. how did they make it through the 20th century without any "political" opinions (eugenics, fascism, genocide, internment camps, mccarthyism, jim crow, voter literacy tests, brown v. board, nclb, etc.)? my title: Undocumented Paradox: Activist Immigrants and the California Dream Act my abstract: IDEAS is UCLA’s undocumented student support group. My ethnography fo