“Quote of the Day”

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Jack Koolik – ‘My Hero of the Day’

Please join us in congratulating Jack Koolik! He just received his high school diploma after dropping out of high school 71 years ago to serve in World War II.

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Watch the video, HERE:

http://www.kirotv.com/news/news/national/90-year-old-gets-hs-diploma-71-years-after-droppin/ngDXD/

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Tay Thi Nguyen – ‘My HERO of the Day’

Via: Nicholas Kristof – New Youk Times

TAY THI NGUYEN is one of the mightiest people I’ve met, at 94 pounds. She has a towering presence, at a bit more than 5 feet tall. She is so strong that she probably could bench press 25 pounds.

Three times Tay Thi has fainted while here at college, training to become an English teacher, because she starved herself to afford tuition. But she had the strength to persist and soon will become the first person in her village to graduate from college, and she embodies such grit and selflessness that, to me, she’s the world’s college graduate of the year.

Tay Thi, 20, also underscores the principle — especially important in the aftermath of the kidnapping of the Nigerian schoolgirls — that the best leverage we have to achieve social change is to educate girls.

The eighth of nine children to an impoverished farming family in the Mekong Delta, Tay Thi shone in school, but her mother demanded — unsuccessfully — that she drop out after primary school and earn money as a live-in housemaid in distant Ho Chi Minh City.

“She got very angry with me,” Tay Thi recalled. In eighth grade, her mom burned her school books to try to force her to drop out, but Tay Thi borrowed books and continued to excel.

Staying in school was possible because of the help she received from Room to Read, an aid group that sponsored Tay Thi and covered her school fees, uniform, books, bicycle to get to school and other expenses.

Tay Thi persevered, even when her parents again burned her books in 12th grade, and, as she graduated from high school, she prepared secretly for the college entrance examination. Her mother found out about this when Tay Thi left to take the exam and lashed out, saying “I hope you fail the exams.”

Other students arrived at the exam location escorted by cheering, doting parents; Tay Thi arrived alone, sobbing. Still, she aced the exam.

With no parental subsidy, college seemed unaffordable, but Tay Thi saved every penny she could. She had long worked every vacation — sometimes in a factory job by day and in a duck soup restaurant by night until 2 a.m. Even during Vietnamese New Year celebrations, she worked in the fields by herself to catch crabs for money — watching the fireworks in the distance.

At college, Tay Thi confined herself to a food budget of $3.50 — per week. Malnourished, she sometimes toppled over in the middle of class in a dead faint.

Professors and students discovered that she was starved and basically penniless — leaving Tay Thi feeling humiliated. “I was so upset about that,” she said, but, in retrospect, it was a turning point because her teachers and classmates responded with kindness, sympathy and help.

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Tay Thi is trying to arrange to teach in her own remote village school, where she wants to advocate for education. “I would like to change people’s thinking,” she says. “It’s a way of helping children in my community,” she said.

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So let’s celebrate the mightiest college graduate of this commencement season, a young woman of incomparable strength who now is thrilled at the prospect of returning to an impoverished farming village to teach children and change the world.

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“Quote of the Day”

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personal thought:

You can deny it all you want, but Tesla was right.

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“Quote of the Day”

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California Teen Pregnancy Rates Drop 60 PERCENT Thanks To Sex Education

Via: Huffington Post

California’s teen pregnancy rate has dropped nearly 60 percent as a result of expanded sex education programs, according to a report released by the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) on Wednesday.

The report –- which was based on data collected until 2011 — revealed that the California teen pregnancy rate reached a 20-year low that year.

While in 1991, there were 70.9 births for every 1,000 teens aged 15-19.

In 2011 this number decreased to 28 births per 1,000 teens.

Teen pregnancy rates fell across all ethnic groups, according to the report.

The Hispanic teen birth rate dropped from 73.6 in 2001 to 42.7 in 2011 –- although Hispanics continue to be the group with the highest teen birth rate. Teen pregnancy rates for African-Americans, Whites and Asian-Americans also decreased significantly.

Several factors contributed to the falling pregnancy rates, the department said in a press release. One factor was the state’s school sex education program, which law requires to be comprehensive and medically accurate. The report also credits community-based education programs that provide sexual health information to teens and their parents.

Read more, HERE:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/19/california-teen-pregnancy-rates-drop_n_3625090.html

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personal thought:

As a former Californian, it’s great to see the state taking such an important lead, again.

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Malala – “Quotes of the Day”

Via: Huffington Post

Malala Yousafzai spent her 16th birthday demanding compulsory education for young people worldwide.

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In a speech Friday at the UN in New York, the Pakistani schoolgirl who was shot in the head in October 2012 for speaking out about her right to education, talked about how she represents some 57 million children around the world are not going to school.

The UN declared her birthday as “Malala Day.” Introduced by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Malala spoke out about terrorism, poverty and a united front calling for education.

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“We realized the importance of pens and books when we saw the guns. The extremists are afraid of books and pens.”

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“One child, one teacher, one book and one pen can change the world. Education is the only solution. Education first.”

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Read more, HERE:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/12/malala-day-at-un_n_3586266.html

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Nigeria – Images

Via: Nigerian Nostalgia Project

Peatwal Junior Primary School, Kano. 1960

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See more wonderful photos, HERE:

http://nigerianostalgia.tumblr.com/

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Louisiana Thinks Funding School Run By ‘Apostle And Prophet’ Is Somehow Constitutional

Via: Wonkette

Louisiana’s exciting experiment in public-school vouchers is steaming forward, providing parents and children with educational excellence and traditional values, hooray!

But that’s not all!

It’s also an excellent lesson in how the free market can improve education, by taking taxpayer funds from the wasteful public schools and handing it to efficient private schools run by religious loons, just the way Real America wants.

Among the 119 voucher schools approved so far is New Orleans’ Light City Christian Academy, founded and run by Apostle Leonard Lucas.

The state’s voucher program will be sending this gentleman, who “walks in the fullness of his calling and wears the mantle of an Apostle and Prophet,” some $364,000 to educate 80 students ($364,000 / 80 = $4,550).

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Read more, HERE:

http://wonkette.com/481709/louisiana-thinks-funding-school-run-by-apostle-and-prophet-is-somehow-constitutional#more-481709

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“Praise the Lord, and pass the vouchers” said the Apostles: Lucas/Ryan/Romney!

President Obama supports PUBLIC SCHOOLS – Vote Biden/Obama!

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Indonesia – Image Gallery

Via: First Time User

‘Going to School’

– by toniart57

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See more photos, HERE:

http://firsttimeuser.tumblr.com/tagged/Indonesia

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