Monthly Archives: April 2006

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“Race Card” an intro to “Black. White.”

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I’m going to blog about the recent TV series “Black. White.”

It was on FX recently and I saw the show and wanted to encourage others to see it when they get a chance. For now I don’t have time to write much but thought you’d enjoy the intro music video by Ice Cube.

Did you get your race card?
I didn’t get my race card
Did you get your race card?
Hell no, I didn’t get my race card!
Did you get your race card?
Homeboy, where’d you get your race card?
Did you get your race card?
White boy, what is a race card?

Please don’t believe the hype
Everything in the world ain’t black and white
Everybody ain’t a stereotype
Just because I look wrong, I’m about to do right
Please don’t believe the hype
Everything in the world ain’t black and white
Everybody ain’t a stereotype
Just because I look wrong, I’m about to do right

Black as midnight, or bright as Snow White
You’d better do me right, or I’ma have to take flight
Put you on ice, blast on you twice
If you’re a zebra, better come out them stripes
Just because I’m dressed like I’m straight out of jail
Make more money then them white boys at Yale
And got more sense than your fucking President
That college graduate? He can’t pay his rent
But don’t call me brother, man
Unless your ass got my money in your other hand
Pull that black man shit, that white man shit
But see a suit and tie, and I’ll still get your ass euthanized
Cuz I never got my race card in the mail
Is that the reason why my life still hard as Hell?
I’ve been to jail, just like Martha Stewart
And we both told the judge that we didn’t do it

Did you get your race card?
Hell, no, I didn’t get my race card!
Did you get your race card?
Everybody, show me your race card!
Did you get your race card?
Yo, what the hell is race card?
Did you get your race card?
Can anybody tell me what is a race card?

Please don’t believe the hype
Everything in the world ain’t black and white
Everybody ain’t a stereotype
Just because I look wrong, I’m about to do right
Please don’t believe the hype
Everything in the world ain’t black and white
Everybody ain’t a stereotype
Just because I look wrong, I’m about to do right

Did you get your race card?
Did you get your race card?
Did you get your race card?
Did you get your race card?

Please don’t believe the hype
Everything in the world ain’t black and white
Everybody ain’t a stereotype
Just because I look wrong, I’m about to do right
Please don’t believe the hype
Everything in the world ain’t black and white
Everybody ain’t a stereotype
Just because I look wrong, I’m about to do right

Did you get your race card?
Did you get your race card?
Did you get your race card?
Did you get your race card?

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Some Facts about the GED

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Get the GED FACTS

  1. About one out of every seven people who receive high school diplomas each year earns that diploma by passing the GED tests.
  2. Ninety percent of colleges and universities recognize the GED. Passing the GED tests puts a person in the upper 25th percentile in terms of class rank, and lets colleges know the person has the skills and knowledge equivalent to applicants from traditional high schools.
  3. More than 95 percent of employers nationwide employ GED graduates on the same basis as high school graduates in terms of hiring, salary, and opportunity for advancement.
  4. Sixty-five percent of GED test-takers plan to enter college, a university, trade or technical school, or business school during the next year.
  5. The average age of persons taking the GED tests is 24.7 years old.

GED Background

  1. Tests of the General Educational Development (GED) were established in 1942 to help returning World War II veterans finish their studies and earn a high school credential.
  2. Recognized throughout North America by employers and institutions of higher learning, the GED program served as a bridge to education and employment opportunities for millions of adults since 1942. An estimated 12.6 million people have earned high school equivalency diplomas since the program began.
  3. Today, GED tests measure the academic skills and knowledge students are expected to acquire during four years of high school. The GED test battery consists of five tests: Language Arts – Writing, Social Studies, Science, Language Arts – Reading, and Mathematics.
  4. The GED testing program is jointly administered by the GED Testing Service of the American Council on Education and each participating state department of education. There are nearly 3,500 official GED Testing Centers in the U.S., Canada, and overseas.

Source: American Council on Education web site

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Education Pays

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If there is any major encouragement for staying in school it is because it pays off in the end. Here’s a chart from the Department of Labor Statistics.

Chart

When you start crunching those numbers you find some pretty impacting things.
Just graduating high school increases your pay over $8000 a year. Sticking it out through an associates degree is another $6000+ a year.

The unemployment rate decreases by a large amount just by completing high school. These are some powerful changes.

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Why don’t we do what the song says?

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So this is my rant about music at church (aka “Worship Music”):

Why don’t we do what the song says? You go into most churches today and they are singing the cool and popular worship songs. And you and everyone around you is belting out the words to the song. “I’m falling on my knees…” and as they sing the words, what happens? Well most of the churches I’ve been to everyone stays standing or sitting or whatever they where doing. It would seem to me that if I were to walk up to you and say “I’m falling on my knees” and didn’t actually do it, you might be suspect of the next few things I said (and if you know the words of the song you’ll have an idea of what I’m talking about).
I just don’t understand how we can all be okay with singing these songs that have us voicing actions we are taking.

But when the world has seen the light, They will dance with joy, Like we’re dancing now

And we stand around looking like a bunch of dorks.

I lift my hands up…
I bow down…

There’s a long list and I won’t go into them now, but it’s always been a point of struggle for me.

An then there is the other side of it. Even though I’m the one that has a problem with this and it bothers me and all, I very rarely actually follow through myself. Mostly I think I worry about getting looked at with all sorts of judgements, “look at him trying to act better then everyone; more religious; pious.” So I often opt for not singing that particular song, or line in the song, or halfway, top secretly raising my hand or bending my knees, etc. And this needs to be changed also.

In high school with my youth group I would point it out; these days I don’t. That’s the tough part, how do we encourage change in this? Should the folks playing the insturments up front be in charge of encouraging people to “do” what they “say”? They are the “leaders” after all.
I just picture someone visiting most churches today and hearing them sing “I could sing of your love forever” and hearing these words

But when the world has seen the light, They will dance with joy, Like we’re dancing now

And walking out the door to search for joy elsewhere.

Blog

Failing Reading Scores = Prison Cells

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(Welcome Baltimore City Community College Students! Please comment below if you found the information useful. And for what class. Thanks!)

From
Investing in Literacy

Indiana’s former governor has stated that determining the number of new prisons to build is based, in part, on the number of second graders not reading at second-grade level.

From
Dialects, Teaching Reading and Literacy to Dialect Speakers: Educational CyberPlayGround™

In California they plan how many jail cells they will build in the future by how many children are not reading on grade level by third grade.

From
Democracy and Equity: CES’s Tenth Common Principle

“Based on this year’s fourth-grade reading scores,” observes Paul Schwartz, a Coalition principal in residence at the U. S. Department of Education, “California is already planning the number of new prison cells it will need in the next century.”

From
Evidence Based Education Science and Learning to Read

David Boulton: We were interviewing Lesley Morrow, the Past-President of the International Reading Association, and she made a statement which flabbergasted me. She said this was a fact: that there are some states that determine how many prison cells to build based on reading scores.

Dr. Grover (Russ) Whitehurst: Yes. Again, the predictability of reading for life success is so strong, that if you look at the proportion of middle schoolers who are not at the basic level, who are really behind in reading, it is a very strong predictor of problems with the law and the need for jails down the line.

Literacy for societies, literacy for states, literacy for individuals is a powerful determinate of success. The opposite of success is failure and clearly, being in jail is a sign of failure.

People who don’t read well have trouble earning a living. It becomes attractive to, in some cases the only alternative in terms of gaining funds, to violate the law and steal, to do things that get you in trouble. Few options in some cases other than to pursue that life. Of course reading opens doors.

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Education is Important

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This week I’m going to be posting a handful of education related post. Two years ago when my wife and I were part of the Americorps program in Atlanta working in the public schools we were able to see first hand, and learn and read about at the same time, the horrible atrocities and inequalities occuring in our education system.
This week I’m taking a look at education and researching ways to help those that are falling behind actually succeed. I don’t know what that might look like, or the many examples there are, but that is my project for the week.

I’ll likely be posting mostly information, probably with some commentary from me here and there. Hopefully it is new information you have not heard before, and if you have it’s important information to reiterate. My hope is that you would see some of the reasons I have the passion that I do for education.

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April 9th, Weekly Update podcast

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The latest and greatest from Trying to Follow, now in podcast form. This 15 minute update fills you in on this week’s blog post and let’s you know if you want to spend time checking more of it out.


or download here.

For quick links to the stories:

And please leave your comments on the post, or if you like to talk leave a voicemail:
(775) 370-6924

Blog, Web Links

Tech Friday: Text Substitution saves you time.

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For years I thought it would be great to just type a few letters and have whole sentences pop up. I never got around to setting that up on my computer, though it’s nearly always been available.

Currently though, I find myself typing a number of the same things, both when I’m home blogging (for example my name, email and URL), and at work (repetitive statements, like teachers had for grade reports back in the day). So I finally decided it was time.

My program of choice is AutoHotKey (thanks Lifehacker). With a simple script I can turn “af” into “Ariah Fine” and much much more.

  1. Download AutoHotKey
  2. right click and select ‘new’->’AutoHotkey Script’ from the menu.
  3. Now insert this string:
    :oc:af::Ariah Fine
    and then copy that pattern to insert whatever else you’d like to (oc means hotstring).
  4. Now for fancier insert:
    :oc:gws::^+{Left}^xGet Well Soon, ^v{BS}{!}
    This will turn this: ‘Suzy gws’ into ‘Get Well Soon, Suzy!’
    Have fun changing that around.
  5. That should be plenty to get you started. Once your done just save and close and then double click your script and it’ll show up in the system tray. Enjoy!