Wednesday, November 18, 2015



Ben Carson: ‘Everybody Called Me Dummy’ in School

In a speech at Liberty University on Wednesday, GOP presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson said when he was a child, his peers called him “dummy,” because he was “a horrible student.”

“In fact I was a horrible student, and everybody called me dummy. That was my nickname, and I believed it too. I didn’t think I was very smart, and I remember once we were having an argument in the schoolyard about who was the dumbest kid in the class. It wasn’t a big argument, because they all agreed it was me,” said Carson, "but then someone had to extend the argument to who was the dumbest in the world, and I said, ‘Wait a minute. There are billions of people in the world.’ And they said, ‘Yep, and you’re the dumbest one.’”

Carson is a retired neurosurgeon, who worked at Johns Hopkins Hospital after graduating from Yale University and the University of Michigan Medical School.

He said his dream had always been to be a doctor – so much so that he liked going to the doctor and “would gladly sacrifice a shot just so I could smell those alcohol swabs.”

“There was one person who didn’t think that I was dumb, and that was my mother. She always thought that there was something there, and she would always say, ‘Benjamin, you’re much too smart to bring home grades like this,’” Carson said. “I brought them home anyway, but she was always saying that, and she just didn’t know what to do, and she prayed, and she asked God for wisdom to know what to do to get her sons to understand the importance of intellectual development.”

Carson said God gave her mother the wisdom to require him and his brother to read books and submit written book reports to her, even though she couldn’t read them.

“And you know what? God gave her the wisdom, at least in her opinion. My brother and I didn’t think it was wise at all. I mean turning off the TV, what kind of wisdom was that? Making us read two books a piece from the Detroit Public Libraries and submit to her written book reports, which she couldn’t read – but we didn’t know that – and she would put checkmarks and highlights and underlines, and we would think she was reading them, but she wasn’t,” he said.

“People were always saying to me, ‘Why did you do it? Your mother was always working. She wouldn’t have known whether you read the books or not.’ Yes, she would have, and back in those days, you had to do what your parents told you. There was no social psychologist saying let the kid express themselves, you know,” Carson added.

Carson discovered through reading about accomplished people that he was in charge of his destiny.

“As I read those books, incredible things began to happen. I began to realize, particularly, as I read about people of accomplishment and all kinds of fields, that the person who has the most to do with what happens to you in life is you. It’s not somebody else. It’s not the environment, and that was incredibly empowering to me, and I stopped listening to all the people around me – all the naysayers who talked about what couldn’t be done – and I started thinking about what could be done and what a difference it made in my life,” he said.

Once he got to medical school, Carson “did terribly” on his first set of comprehensive exams. When he was sent to see the counselor, “he looked at my record, and he said, ‘You seem like a very intelligent young man. I bet there are a lot of things you could do – outside of medicine.’” The counselor advised him to drop out of medical school.

Carson was “devastated,” so he went home and prayed, asking God for wisdom. He said he was going to a lot of classes but not really learning anything from class. As he thought back, he realized that what taught him a lot was reading, so he made “an executive decision to skip the boring lectures and to spend that time reading, and the rest of medical school was a snap after that.”

“Everybody learns in a different way,” Carson said. “I personally don’t learn anything from boring lectures, but I learn a lot from reading. Now there are other people who learn a great deal from boring lectures, and that’s how they learn. Other people, they learn from discussions. Some people learn from repetition. Some people are very visual. One of the other things I discovered is that I was very visual, so I made flash cards for everything that I needed to know. I had literally thousands of flash cards.”

Carson encouraged students to find out what works for them. “God has endowed us with these amazing brains, and we’re made in the image of God,” he said.

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UK: Children as young as FOUR being given transgender lessons which encourage them to explore their 'gender identities'

Children as young as four are receiving lessons from transgender campaigners – including a man who revealed to primary school classes that he is a ‘trans man’ and was ‘assigned female’ at birth.

Thousands of pupils have had the controversial classes, in which they are encouraged to explore their ‘gender identities’ and are questioned on what being a transsexual means, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

Up to 20 primary schools a year pay for the classes, given by campaigners’ organisation Gendered Intelligence. Parents’ groups have reacted with concern that pupils may be ‘frightened’ by the workshops, while experts warned the lessons may confuse young children.

Gendered Intelligence has confirmed it teaches pupils of all ages in primary schools, from reception class – where children are aged four and five – up to Year Six, where pupils are aged ten and 11. The workshops cost an undisclosed sum and have been available since 2008.

The Mail on Sunday has seen footage of Gendered Intelligence conducting workshops with primary classes, in a video available for teachers to hire at the cost of £20.

In one class, Year Six boys at Hotspur Primary in Newcastle are asked to describe the ‘girlish’ things they like to do, while the girls say what ‘boyish’ pursuits they enjoy.

Gendered Intelligence’s founder Jay Stewart, who is giving the class, asks the pupils if they think ‘life will be hard at school if you’re a boy at school who likes doing “girlish things”?’

Mr Stewart then asks the class what they think the word ‘transgender’ means and he follows this by revealing he is a ‘trans man’. He says: ‘When I was assigned at birth, I was assigned female when I was born. So I am transgendered. So have you got any questions for me?’

One girl asks if his ‘friends went off’ Mr Stewart after he made the change. He replies: ‘Most of my friends stayed my friends, which is why they’re such good friends. But I’ve also got lots of friends who are also transgendered and actually there’s a whole community of transsexual and transgendered people.’

At the second school featured in the film, Westerhope Primary, also in Newcastle, Mr Stewart again tells the pupils that he is transgender – despite teachers asking him beforehand not to do so.

Head teacher Jo Warner says that in a conversation with Mr Stewart and the class’s teacher, Katie Salkeld, she said: ‘We want you to look at gender issues, but at the minute we don’t feel absolutely comfortable with you actually saying, “I’m transgender”.’

Yet after the lesson, both Ms Warner and Ms Salkeld said they changed their view and believed Mr Stewart telling the children about his transgender status was right.

Gendered Intelligence describes itself as a not-for-profit ‘community interest company’.

Child psychotherapist Dilys Daws warned: ‘What can get confused is that children who just happen to be unhappy at the moment actually fixing on this being about their gender, when it might be to do with the relationship with a parent.’

Margaret Morrissey, of pressure group Parents Outloud, said four and five-year-olds were ‘far, far too young’ to receive the lessons. She added: ‘We’re in danger of frightening children and making them feel they ought to feel like this.’

Mr Stewart said: ‘It’s so important to be teaching children in schools that they can be anything that they want regardless of the gender that they have been given at birth.

‘Gendered Intelligence delivers age-appropriate workshops and assemblies by working closely with the senior leadership teams of each of the schools we work with. We are proud of this work and feedback is always incredibly positive.’

SOURCE






Rubio: ‘A Student Loan Is Worse’ Than Indentured Servitude

During an appearance at St. Anselm College in Manchester, N.H., on Wednesday, GOP presidential candidate Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said taking out a student loan is worse than indentured servitude.

“A student loan is worse. You still owe the money. The difference is if you don’t pay back the investment group, you have a contract, and they can obviously have legal remedies for it. If you don’t pay back your loan, it ruins your credit. They’ll collect on you for the rest of your life,” said Rubio. “Because they’re federally backed, they’ll garnish your wages. They’ll take it out of your tax return if necessary, so I think it’s way better than the issue of whether you want a student loan.”

Rubio described his proposal of allowing private investors to loan money to students, who would sign a contract to repay a small percentage of their income for the next 15 or 20 years.

“The student investment plan is an idea that actually allows individuals that instead of going to a student loan route, allows you to go to the equivalent of a private investment group the way you would with a company,” Rubio said.

“You present to them who you are, and what your background is and what your future goals are and your resume and your GPA and your transcripts, and they look at all this, and they decide whether or not they think you are a good investment,” he added.

“If you are a good investment, they pay for your tuition. This is primarily at the graduate level - and in return, you sign a contract to pay back a percentage of your income - one or two percent a year for 20 years or 15 years,” Rubio said.

A panelist at the event asked, “So the student investment plan was a new idea I had not heard of when I was preparing for today. Everybody I shared this with had the same question I want to pose to you: What’s the difference between indentured servitude? This is what comes front in mind when I hear something about 10 years of my life being paid over to another person.”

“A student loan is worse. You still owe the money,” Rubio said. ”The difference is if you don’t pay back the investment group, you have a contract, and they can obviously have legal remedies for it.

“If you don’t pay back your loan, it ruins your credit. They’ll collect on you for the rest of your life,” said Rubio. “Because they’re federally backed, they’ll garnish your wages. They’ll take it out of your tax return if necessary, so I think it’s way better than the issue of whether you want a student loan,” he added.

“On the student investment plan, the risk is on the investment group. If you don’t make enough money to pay them back in that defined period of time, they made a bad investment. In the student loan, if you borrowed $100,000, you owe $100,000, and you will owe that $100,000 until the day you die or pay it off,” said Rubio.

“If you just don’t make enough money to pay back the student investment group, they made a bad investment. They assume that risk. There’s a big difference, and by the way, it’s optional. It’s not mandatory. We’re not telling anybody they have to pursue this route, but it is way better than owing a student loan, which ... you will owe that amount of money whether you’ve found a job or not,” he said.

SOURCE






Neil Cavuto Schools Student Who Wants Free College

Keely Mullen, one of the lead organizers of the Million Student March, spoke with Neil Cavuto on Fox Business on Thursday saying that “[t]he movement, the Million Student March, is a movement for a more equitable and fair system of education,” noting that others should have to pay for college students’ schooling.

Neil Cavuto had just one question for the young college student: “And how’s that going to be paid?”

“The movement, the Million Student March, is a movement for a more equitable and fair system of education, as opposed to the really corporate model that we have right now,” says Keely Mullen. “So, the three core demands of the national day of action are: (1) free public college, (2) a cancellation of student debt, and (3) a $15 an hour minimum wage for people who work on the campus.”

“And how’s that going to be paid?” asked Cavuto.

“Umm, great question,” said Keely Mullen. “Uh, I mean, you know, so. I’m not sure if you’re talking on like a national level or particular schools. I can sort of touch on both.”

“Well, if you want all that stuff, someone has to pick up the tab,” said Cavuto. “Who would that be?”

“Umm, the one percent of people in society that are hoarding the wealth and really sort of causing a catastrophe that students are facing. I mean, we have a relationship right now where one percent of the population own more wealth than the 99 percent combined … .”

Cavuto then pressed in further, asking the college student Mullen practical questions regarding the feasibility of the Million Student March’s ideals. Needless to say, Cavuto seemed unmoved by her answers.

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