If, as Mr. Vaughn suggests, everyone has the right to a diploma, then what is a high school education worth? I realize his intention was to proclaim that they would do whatever it took to bring students to minimum competency levels, regardless of race, creed, color, and all the other modifiers they toss in to be politically correct, but in order for “every child…[to] leave here with a diploma,” the minimums must be so low as to be meaningless. If competencies are raised to a meaningful level, some people will fail.

Story time: when I was in junior high and high school, the state required that every student pass a 9th grade proficiency test in order to graduate. This in and of itself is alarming; if one only needs to be competent at a 9th grade level in order to graduate, what are the remaining three years for? Since it took some people an unfortunate number of times to pass all four sections (as in close to double digits in number of times taken), we were given our first opportunity in the spring of 8th grade. I passed all four sections at this time and never had to deal with the absurdity again. I mention this not to brag (because, honestly, it really an accomplishment), but to show how low the criteria had to be set for most people to surpass it (eventually).

The problem of meaningless standards is only getting worse. As this Newsweek article elaborates, there is an increasing push to allow higher education opportunities for individuals with learning disabilities. Not content to make my high school diploma worthless, they now want my bachelor’s degree to mean nothing as well. I bear no animosity towards those with mental retardation, learning disabilities, developmental delays, or whatever the sensitive thing to refer to people with lower intellectual capabilities is these days; your intelligence is not the sum of your worth as a person. I simply think that too much value is being placed on getting a college education, to the point where we as a society have forgotten that many jobs really only need technical training pertinent to the task, not survey courses in western civilization and creative writing.

I don’t want to exclude from a university someone with, for example, Down’s Syndrome on the sole basis of their clinical diagnosis; if they can make it in regular college coursework, good for them. Institutional discrimination is always wrong and someone with MR/DD/etc has an equal right to try; this means they also have an equal right to fail. Too many concessions are being made already for “normal” students, in the form of courses in remedial pre-algebra or elementary writing skills for native English speakers. I’ll paint a giant target on my chest and say it: if you cannot master algebra and the intricacies of sentences starting with a capital letter and ending with a period, you should not be in college. Period.

The problem with making concessions to ensure equal treatment for all is that it inherently creates an unequal system. I had undergraduate classes with students who had Official Learning Disabilities (TM) and, as such, were allowed extras such as untimed tests. I know sometimes allowances are unavoidable, such as for the blind student who physically cannot read the test, or the person with cerebral palsy who can’t hold a pencil. Where does it stop though? Other people would likely have benefitted from an untimed test simply because it would have given them more time to think through the problem, but lacking the Official Diagnosis (TM), they had to struggle through with everyone else. Is the next step allowing learning disabled students to take the same courses for the same credit but with easier grading criteria?

I see the obvious solution as promoting technical/vocational education centers in lieu of general college educations, not just for special populations but for everyone. Not everyone who goes to college needs a four-year degree for any other reason than the industry they want to enter requires it. People (such as the students in the Newsweek article) can take skill classes like medical terminology and computer literacy to further their career goals while allowing universities to educate those who need to develop higher-order thought processes (lawyers, scientists, historians, etc).

If we want to continue proclaiming that education is a high priority, we must make sure that education continues to mean something.

That is, until I got to the last page of the article. Here lies a sad example of how a doctrine of love and inclusionism (at the cost of your right be an equal partner in your marriage) can lure the disenfranchised into thinking this is the only way to feel wanted. The woman interviewed says she didn’t want children and had a career she found exciting and rewarding. After attending services at Mars Hill and deciding to follow their teachings, she gave up her career and now has two young children (with presumably as many more as possible on the way). I genuinely felt sick upon reading this. Despite the church founder’s big talk about Jesus being edgy and confrontational, the Big Idea taught by Jesus is that God is love. He will love you no matter what as long as you are willing to turn to him. Instead of emphasizing the many ways to serve God (including through your career), this woman was indoctrinated with the idea that the only way to avoid the mistakes of other women in her life was to allow her husband to lead.

Proponents of the submissive doctrine point to Ephesians 5:22: “Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord.” I actually heard this echoed in my own place of worship last month, that even though it isn’t politically correct to make the man superordinate over the woman, it’s just a reflection of our relationship with Christ. Um…no. I voluntarily suborne myself to the Lord because I believe in his divinity. My husband, although he is a wonderful man and a caring, supportive partner, is not the Almighty. I am his equal partner – not his submissive follower. I think this church has forgotten the Bible also commands that “a man will leave his father and his mother, and will join with his wife, and they will be one flesh” (Genesis 2:24), two joined as one, not one appended to the other.

* Disclaimer: I don’t mean to imply that all stay at home mothers are subordinate. It’s a choice that all families must make after weighing their financial options and childrearing beliefs that can/should just as easily lead to the father staying at home with the children. However, the women of this church are expected to be both homemaker and “little woman.”

The position against stem cells holds that since (in their belief) life begins when sperm meets egg, destruction of the embryo to gain its pluripotent cells (capable of becoming almost any cell in the body and thus having nifty possibilities for health care research) is immoral and murderous.  The critics also argue the slippery slope, fearing that allowing stem cells to be harvested will lead to the creation of embryos specifically for this purpose (rather than the much more likely prospect of couples being allowed to donate their unused in vitro fertilization embryos rather than just having them tossed out, as an unknown number are each year).

Romney’s statement came from the recent announcement by Advanced Cell Technologies that they had found a way to harvest a single cell from a frozen embryo, leaving the rest of the cells to (potentially) develop into a person.  Instead of greeting this as the compromise that this is, the stem cell opponents are still afraid “[i]n laboratories you could have trays of new embryos being created.”  I’m genuinely astounded.  Has he ever even talked to a scientist, or more succintly, a lab manager?  They are not going to do more work than they have to (or pay for the fertilization) when they can use any of the thousands of embryos already in storage without damaging the embryo.

The coup de grace of this statement was in Romney’s description of “[stem cell research being] Orwellian in its scope.”  Has he ever actually read Orwell?  I’m not a literature expert, but I’m pretty sure Orwell wrote about the control of the government over its people and the extent to which it will go if allowed.  I think Gov. Romney was perhaps reaching for Aldous Huxley, with Brave New World’s scenes of fetuses being decanted along an assembly line.  A word of advice, sir: you’re more likely to be taken seriously if you actually have a clue what you’re talking about rather than dropping buzzwords simply to make yourself sound smart.

Updating faith traditions for a gender equal modern society is a wonderful thing. Certain churches could learn a thing or two about it, such as the Catholic Church’s stubborn refusal to admit women to the priesthood. However, anyone who actually viewed the traditional Trinity phrase as a symbol of the patriarchy that’s trying to keep women in their place (i.e. the kitchen, the nursery, and on their backs) needs to pay more attention during the service and to the English language. Fact the first: English is structured such that, when the gender referent is mixed or ambiguous, we use the male form. Fact the second: if you already believe in Jesus, you’re probably going to take the extra step and believe that he was, in fact, a he, complete with boy-parts instead of girl-parts. Fact the third: the entire concept of the Trinity is that it’s the three aspects of God in one divine being. Understanding this generally requires some metaphorical thinking – metaphorical, as in, “not literal.”

Please don’t misunderstand me. I see nothing wrong in visualizing God in a feminine form (if you conceptualize a form at all) or thinking of Him/Her as a nurturing mother as opposed to the traditional father figure. This Presbyterian proposal merely points out the fallacy of paying too much attention to semantics over substance. There’s a big difference between preventing women from church leadership roles simply because they can’t pee standing up and requiring an entire change of wording for fear of offending some overblown sense of gender sensitivity.

In retrospect, though, the alternate phrase of “Fire That Consumes, Sword That Divides and Storm That Melts Mountains” does have a certain…um…interesting ring to it.

As far as I’m concerned, non-prescription drugs fall into three categories. First, there are the legal ones, caffeine, alcohol, and nicotine. Second are the illegal ones (pot, ecstasy, cocaine) that, under controlled circumstances, are no more dangerous or addictive than the legal ones. Finally, we have the drugs that are illegal and should stay that way, owing to their rampant danger not just to self but to others; these include meth, heroin, and crack.

The distinction between the first two groups seems arbitrary to me. The only distinction I can think of is that the people who made group two illegal liked their coffee, highballs, and cigars too much to add them to the list. Yes, taking a hit off of a joint and then driving somewhere is stupid – but so is doing a shot of whiskey before driving. There are plenty of stories from the 70′s of functional coke addicts. Ecstasy used to be known as empathy and, before it was discovered by ravers, was used in California as an aide in marital therapy. Using them carries the same responsibility as drinking: no driving, childcare, or employment when high, only in moderation, and always have a party mommy (someone not partaking in any mind-altering substances) around so things don’t get out of hand.

Group three is a little more troublesome, mainly because they can’t be as easily controlled, even with a party mommy in attendance. Crack is quickly addictive, with little use as a purely recreational substance. Meth makes people do stupid things like steal Sudafed for the pseudoephedrine (and thus annoying me because now I can’t buy sinus happy pills without signing my life away) and have home labs that blow up, killing innocents. Heroin users walk a fine line between getting high and committing suicide. While I firmly believe that everyone has a right to ingest whatever obscure substances they like, this right must be countered with others’ right to safety.

I don’t see a change in the laws any time soon; coming out and saying that you’re anti-drug legislation is tantamount to political suicide. However, I hope that someday we can move past these inane regulations and legalize many wrongly illegal drugs. This will allow them to be packaged with warning labels and instructions for safe use and dosage. They’ll be subject to FDA regulations, so there aren’t worries about the drugs being mixed with unsafe or toxic substances. Best of all, I’d like to see the shit taxed out of the drug sales and the money can be used to fund schools.

And has anyone else ever had the urge to just chuck the frying pan at the “this is your brain on drugs” guy?