The most horrific part of the debate last night

[heidi]

And it was a pretty big challenge to choose the most horrific part - but frankly, while there are problems in having teachers who've had no certification process and no training in teaching, especially on an elementary school classroom-teacher level* and there are catastrophic issues with McCain's health care proposals and his complaints about John Lewis just feel weird, none of that demonstrably minimizes the health of girls and women across the country. What's next? Air quotes for "incest" or "rape"?

[Poll #1279744]


* I think there is merit in having middle- and high-school teachers, and in specialty classes, where someone who doesn't have a specific certification but does have a specialty in that area, but given that I've just been through a situation where someone with a teaching degree but no early childhood education was my son's kindergarten teacher (until the principal removed her because she wasn't a good K-level teacher) and was rapidly screwing up his learning experience, I'm not very into it for the K-5 level.

Comments

[belleweather.livejournal.com]

Alas, no. He wanted to make every woman who miscarried a pregnancy report their miscarriage to the state or face felony charges. As far as anyone could tell, he had some weird idea that women were miscarrying late-term fetuses in their living rooms (WTF?!?!?) and thought it was a cover for abortion.

He didn't really get that any late period could be a miscarriage. There was a movement within the feminist/infertility/not stupid community to point this out to him by mailing him a butt-ton of used tampons and pads to make sure we were reporting anything that could possibly be a miscarriage. Soon after that got started he very publicly changed his mind.

Yay for the power of the internet. :)

[ness-va.livejournal.com]

Haha, I wish they'd reported on that here. Brilliant way to change his mind.