Categoría: cultura

Refugees Detained at U.S. Airports; Trump Immigration Order Is Challenged

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By NICHOLAS KULISH and MANNY FERNANDEZ / JAN. 28, 2017

President Trump’s executive order closing the nation’s borders to refugees was put into immediate effect on Friday night. Refugees who were airborne on flights on the way to the United States when the order was signed were stopped and detained at airports.

The detentions prompted legal challenges as lawyers representing two Iraqis held at Kennedy Airport filed a writ of habeas corpus early Saturday in the Eastern District of New York seeking to have their clients released. At the same time, they filed a motion for class certification, in an effort to represent all refugees and immigrants who they said were being unlawfully detained at ports of entry.

Mr. Trump’s order, which suspends entry for all refugees for 120 days, created a legal limbo for people on their way to the United States and panic for families who were awaiting their arrival.

The president’s order also blocks the admission of refugees from Syria indefinitely, and bars entry into the United States for 90 days from seven predominantly Muslim countries linked to concerns about terrorism. Those countries are Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

It was unclear how many refugees and immigrants were being held nationwide in the aftermath of the executive order. The complaints were filed by a prominent group including the American Civil Liberties Union, the International Refugee Assistance Project at the Urban Justice Center, the National Immigration Law Center, Yale Law School’s Jerome N. Frank Legal Services Organization and the firm Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton.

The lawyers said that one of the Iraqis detained at Kennedy Airport, Hameed Khalid Darweesh, had worked on behalf of the United States government in Iraq for 10 years. The other, Haider Sameer Abdulkhaleq Alshawi, was coming to the United States to join his wife, who had worked for an American contractor, and young son, the lawyers said. They said both men had been detained at the airport on Friday night after arriving on separate flights.

The lawyers said they had not been allowed to meet with their clients, and there were tense moments as they tried to reach them.

“Who is the person we need to talk to?” asked one of the lawyers, Mark Doss, a supervising attorney at the International Refugee Assistance Project.

“Mr. President,” said a Customs and Border Protection agent, who declined to identify himself. “Call Mr. Trump.”

The executive order, which Mr. Trump said was part of an extreme vetting plan to keep out “radical Islamic terrorists,” also established a religious test for refugees from Muslim nations: He ordered that Christians and others from minority religions be granted priority over Muslims.

In the arrivals hall at Terminal 4 of Kennedy Airport, Mr. Doss and two other lawyers fought fatigue as they tried to learn the status of their clients on the other side of the security perimeter.

“We’ve never had an issue once one of our clients was at a port of entry in the United States,” Mr. Doss said. “To see people being detained indefinitely in the country that’s supposed to welcome them is a total shock.”

“These are people with valid visas and legitimate refugee claims who have already been determined by the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security to be admissible and to be allowed to enter the U.S. and now are being unlawfully detained,” Mr. Doss said.

A supervisor for Customs and Border Protection at Kennedy Airport declined to comment, referring questions to public affairs officials. Calls to officials in Washington and New York were not returned early Saturday.

According to the filing, Mr. Darweesh was granted a special immigrant visa on Jan. 20, the same day Mr. Trump was sworn in as president. Mr. Darweesh worked with the United States in Iraq in a variety of jobs — as an interpreter, engineer and contractor — over the course of roughly a decade.

Mr. Darweesh worked as an interpreter for the Army’s 101st Airborne Division in Baghdad and Mosul starting shortly after the invasion of Iraq on April 1, 2003. The filing said he had been directly targeted twice for working with the United States military.

A husband and father of three, he arrived at Kennedy Airport on Friday evening with his family. Mr. Darweesh’s wife and children made it through passport control and customs, but agents of Customs and Border Protection stopped and detained him.

Brandon Friedman, who worked with Mr. Darweesh as an infantry lieutenant with the 101st Airborne, praised Mr. Darweesh’s work. “This is a guy that this country owes a debt of gratitude to,” Mr. Friedman said. “There are not many Americans who have done as much for this country as he has. He’s put himself on the line. He’s put his family on the line to help U.S. soldiers in combat, and it is astonishing to me that this country would suddenly not allow people like that in.”

Mr. Friedman, who is the chief executive of the McPherson Square Group, a communications firm in Washington, added, “We have a moral obligation to protect and repay these people who risked their lives for U.S. troops.”

He also said he feared for America’s military. “This not only endangers troops in the future, it endangers troops who are in combat now in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, wherever,“ Mr. Friedman said. “If those interpreters and those fixers hear that the United States is not going to protect them, then they don’t have any incentive to work with U.S. troops, and there’s no way that we can operate without their support and assistance.”

“He is a brave individual, and he cares about Iraq and he cares about the U.S.,” he said of Mr. Darweesh.

Mr. Alshawi was supposed to be reunited with his wife, who has been living in Texas. The wife, who asked to be identified by her first initial, D., out of concern for her family’s safety, wiped away tears as she sat on a couch in her sister’s house early Saturday in a Houston suburb.

The woman, a 32-year-old who was born in Iraq, met her husband when both were students at a Baghdad college. The couple has one child, a 7-year-old son who is in first grade. The boy was asleep in the house at 3 a.m. Eastern time Saturday, unaware that his father was in the United States but under detention and at risk of being returned to Iraq.

Relatives crowded the living room in their pajamas and slippers, making and receiving phone calls to and from other relatives and the refugee’s lawyers. At times, D. was so emotional that she had trouble speaking about her husband’s predicament.

She pulled out her cellphone and flipped through her pictures. She wanted to show a reporter a picture she had taken of her son’s letter to Santa Claus. In November, at a Macy’s Santa-letter display at a nearby mall, the boy wrote out his wish: “Dear Santa: Can you bring my Dad from Sweden pls.” He has not seen his father in three years.

“I’m really breaking down, because I don’t know what to do,” she said. “It’s not fair.”

She and her relatives had not told her son that his father was finally coming to Houston and that the son’s wish to Santa was about to come true. “It was a surprise for him,” she said.

Earlier on Friday, she had watched news coverage about Mr. Trump’s executive order. “My husband was already on the airplane,” she said. “He got to the airplane at 11 o’clock in Houston time.” At that point, she grew worried about what effect the order would have on her husband, but she assumed it would not take effect immediately.

D., along with her brother and her sister, asked that their full names not be used because they were concerned that publicity about the case would lead to harassment.

At about 2:30 a.m. Eastern time Saturday, Mr. Alshawi called his wife on her cellphone. They spoke for about five minutes, and D. put the call on speaker so the rest of the family gathered at the house could hear. It was the first time D. and her husband had spoken since he arrived at the airport in New York at about 8:30 p.m. Eastern time on Friday, she said. He had flown from Stockholm to New York, and was supposed to then fly to Houston.

“He gave his package and his passport to an airport officer, and they didn’t talk to him, they just put him in a room,” she said. “He told me that they forced him to get back to Iraq. He asked for his lawyer and to apply for an asylum case. And they told him, ‘You can’t do that. You need to go back to your country.’”

She said the authorities at the airport had told him that the president’s signing of the executive order was the reason he could not proceed to Houston.

“They told him it’s the president’s decision,” she said.

D.’s brother added of the phone call with his brother-in-law, “He’s very calm but he’s desperate. He said, ‘They are sending me there, they are sending me there,’” referring to Iraq.

In: nytimes

As Trump stresses ‘America First’, China plays the world leader

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By Ben Blanchard | BEIJING
FILE PHOTO - Chinese President Xi Jinping attends the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland January 17, 2017. REUTERS/Ruben Sprich/File Photo

FILE PHOTO – Chinese President Xi Jinping attends the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland January 17, 2017. REUTERS/Ruben Sprich/File Photo

China is calmly mapping out global leadership aspirations from trade to climate change, drawing distinctions between President Xi Jinping’s steady hand and new U.S. President Donald Trump, whose first days have been marked by media feuds and protests.

Just days ahead of Trump taking office, a self-assured Xi was in Switzerland as the keynote speaker at the World Economic Forum in Davos, offering a vigorous defense of globalization and signaling Beijing’s desire to play a bigger role on the world stage.

Even on the thorny issue of the South China Sea, Beijing did not rise to the bait of White House remarks this week about “defending international territories” in the disputed waterway. Instead, China stressed its desire for peace and issued a restrained call for Washington to watch what it says.

“You have your ‘America first’, we have our ‘community of common destiny for mankind’,” Retired Major-General Luo Yuan, a widely read Chinese military figure best known for his normally hawkish tone, wrote on his blog this week.

“You have a ‘closed country’, we have ‘one belt, one road’,” he added, referring to China’s multi-billion dollar new Silk Road trade and investment program.

And while China has repeatedly said it does not want the traditional U.S. role of world leadership, a senior Chinese diplomat accepted this week it could be forced upon China.

“If anyone were to say China is playing a leadership role in the world I would say it’s not China rushing to the front but rather the front runners have stepped back leaving the place to China,” said Zhang Jun, director general of the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s international economics department.

STEPPING UP

That message was reinforced this week when Trump formally withdrew the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, distancing America from its Asian allies. Several remaining TPP members said they would now look to include China in a revised pact, or pursue Beijing’s alternative free trade agreements.

“At many important multilateral forums, China’s leader has put forward Chinese proposals, adding positive impetus to world development,” Su Xiaohui a senior researcher at the Foreign Ministry-backed China Institute of International Studies, wrote of the U.S. TPP decision in the overseas edition of the People’s Daily.

“In the economic integration process of the Asia Pacific, compared to certain countries who constantly bear in mind their leadership role, what China pays even more attention to is ‘responsibility’ and ‘stepping up’,” Su said.

China’s hosting of an international conference on its “One Belt, One Road” initiative in May is one opportunity for Beijing to showcase its leadership of global infrastructure and investment.

A diplomatic source familiar with preparations said China was likely to hold it at the same glitzy convention center used to host the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in 2014, setting the stage for Xi’s most high profile diplomatic event of the year.

“China’s pretty much inviting everyone,” the diplomat said.

Another area where China is keen to be seen as leading the way is climate change. Trump has in the past dismissed climate change as a “hoax” and vowed during his presidential campaign to pull the United States out of the Paris Climate Agreement.

Li Junhua, head of the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s Department of International Organizations and Conferences, said world was worried about climate change and whether countries would honor their Paris commitments.

“As far as China is concerned, my president has made it extremely clear, crystal clear, China will do its part,” Li told reporters.

LEARNING PROCESS

It’s not always been this way. China has been through a long, tough learning process to become a more responsible power.

In 2013, China, angered with Manila over the long dispute on the South China Sea, only stumped up meager aid to the Philippines after it was hit by Super Typhoon Haiyan, prompting rare dissent in the influential Chinese state-run tabloid the Global Times that Beijing’s international image would be hit.

It also will not be plain sailing. On certain key core issues including the self-ruled island of Taiwan, China will not back down.

In its first official reaction to Trump taking office, China’s Foreign Minister urged his administration to fully understand the importance of the “one China” principle, which Trump has called into doubt and under which Washington acknowledges China’s position of sovereignty over Taiwan.

China also expects that under the Trump administration it will be left alone on one issue that has long dogged ties with Washington – human rights.

The WeChat account of the overseas edition of the ruling Communist Party’s official People’s Daily noted with approval on Saturday that Trump’s inaugural speech neither mentioned the words “democracy” nor “human rights”.

“Perhaps looking back, these things have been hyped up too much” by U.S. politicians, it added.

(Editing by Lincoln Feast)

In: reuters

With Echoes of the ’30s, Trump Resurrects a Hard-Line Vision of ‘America First’

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WASHINGTON — America, and the world, just found out what “America First” means.

President Trump could have used his inaugural address to define one of the touchstone phrases of his campaign in the most inclusive way, arguing, as did many of his predecessors, that as the world’s greatest superpower rises, its partners will also prosper.

Instead, he chose a dark, hard-line alternative, one that appeared to herald the end of a 70-year American experiment to shape a world that would be eager to follow its lead. In Mr. Trump’s vision, America’s new strategy is to win every transaction and confrontation. Gone are the days, he said, when America extended its defensive umbrella without compensation, or spent billions to try to lift the fortune of foreign nations, with no easy-to-measure strategic benefits for the United States.

“From this day forward, it’s going to be only America first,” he said, in a line that resonated around the world as soon as he uttered it from the steps of the Capitol. “We must protect our borders from the ravages of other countries making our products, stealing our companies and destroying our jobs.”

The United States, he said, will no longer subsidize “the armies of other countries while allowing for the very sad depletion of our military.”

While all American presidents pledge to defend America’s interests first — that is the core of the presidential oath — presidents of both parties since the end of World War II have wrapped that effort in an expansion of the liberal democratic order. Until today, American policy has been a complete rejection of the America First rallying cry that the famed flier Charles Lindbergh championed when, in the late 1930s, he became one of the most prominent voices to keep the United States out of Europe’s wars, even if it meant abandoning the country’s closest allies.

Mr. Trump has rejected comparisons with the earlier movement, with its taint of Nazism and anti-Semitism.

After World War II, the United States buried the Lindbergh vision of America First. The United Nations was born in San Francisco and raised on the East River of Manhattan, an ambitious, if still unfulfilled, experiment in shaping a liberal order. Lifting the vanquished nations of World War II into democratic allies was the idea behind the Marshall Plan, the creation of the World Bank and institutions to spread American aid, technology and expertise around the world. And NATO was created to instill a commitment to common defense, though Mr. Trump has accurately observed that nearly seven decades later, many of its member nations do not pull their weight.

Mr. Trump’s defiant address made abundantly clear that his threat to pull out of those institutions, if they continue to take advantage of the United States’ willingness to subsidize them, could soon be translated into policy. All those decades of generosity, he said, punching the air for emphasis, had turned America into a loser.

“We’ve made other countries rich,” he said, “while the wealth, strength and confidence of our country has disappeared over the horizon.” The American middle class has suffered the most, he said, finding its slice of the American dream “redistributed across the entire world.”

To those who helped build that global order, Mr. Trump’s vow was at best shortsighted. “Truman and Acheson, and everyone who followed, based our policy on a ‘world-first,’ not an ‘America-first,’ basis,” said Richard N. Haass, whose new book, “A World in Disarray,” argues that a more granular, short-term view of American interests will ultimately fail.

“A narrow America First posture will prompt other countries to pursue an equally narrow, independent foreign policy,” he said after Mr. Trump’s speech, “which will diminish U.S. influence and detract from global prosperity.”

To Mr. Trump and his supporters, it is just that view that put America on the slippery slope to obsolescence. As a builder of buildings, Mr. Trump’s return on investment has been easily measurable. So it is unsurprising that he would grade America’s performance on a scorecard in which he totals up wins and losses.

Curiously, among the skeptics are his own appointees. His nominee for defense secretary, Gen. James N. Mattis, strongly defended the importance of NATO during his confirmation hearing. Both Rex W. Tillerson, the nominee for secretary of state, and Nikki R. Haley, the choice for ambassador to the United Nations, offered up paeans to the need for robust American alliances, though Mr. Tillerson periodically tacked back to concepts echoing Mr. Trump’s.

And there is a question about whether the exact meaning of America First will continue to evolve in Mr. Trump’s mind.

He first talked about it in a March interview with The New York Times, when asked whether that phrase was a good summation of his foreign-policy views.

He thought for a moment. Then he agreed with this reporter’s summation of Mr. Trump’s message that the world had been “freeloading off of us for many years” and that he fundamentally mistrusted many foreigners, both adversaries and some allies.

“Correct,” he responded. Then he added, in his staccato style: “Not isolationist. I’m not isolationist, but I am ‘America First.’ So I like the expression.” He soon began using it at almost every rally.

In another interview with The Times, on the eve of the Republican National Convention, he offered a refinement. He said he did not mean for the slogan to be taken the way Lindbergh meant it. “It was used as a brand-new, very modern term,” he said. “Meaning we are going to take care of this country first before we worry about everybody else in the world.”

As Walter Russell Mead, a professor at Bard College and a scholar at the conservative Hudson Institute, put it the other day, “The fact that he doesn’t have a grounding in the prior use of the term is liberating.”

“If you said to the average American voter, ‘Do you think it’s the job of the president to put America first,’ they say, ‘Yes, that’s the job.’”

But Mr. Mead said that formulation disregarded the reality that “sometimes to achieve American interests, you have to work cooperatively with other countries.” And any such acknowledgment was missing from Mr. Trump’s speech on Friday.

Mr. Trump cast America’s new role in the world as one of an aggrieved superpower, not a power intent on changing the globe. There was no condemnation of authoritarianism or fascism, no clarion call to defend human rights around the world — one of the commitments that John F. Kennedy made in his famed address, delivered 56 years ago to the day, to protect human rights “at home and around the world.”

That was, of course, the prelude to Kennedy’s most famous line: that America would “bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”

But the America that elected Mr. Trump had concluded that it was no longer willing to bear that burden — or even to make the spread of democracy the mission of the nation, as George W. Bush, who was sitting behind Mr. Trump, vowed 12 years ago. Mr. Trump views American democracy as a fine import for those who like it.

“We do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone,” he said, “but rather to let it shine as an example for everyone to follow.”

Dimensions by Carl Sagan

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Do you think you live in an organized world?, Chaos is not part of your mind?, Do you think that your existence have a purpose?, Do you believe in parallel universes? Are you a relativist? Let me tell you: Our existence is just a sweet or bitter coincidence in this universe, you are always living in an illusion among constant chaos and Carl Sagan suggests this in this awesome old video. Enjoy it!

The “Post Truth Society” o la gran era de las noticias falsas en el Perú

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¿Te molestan algunas cosas que lees en internet?, ¿Si colman tu paciencia o te indignan, eres de los que las comparte y difunde en las redes sociales?, ¿odias a Castañeda Lossio, crees que Susana Villarán era una vaga, que Keiko es ociosa o PPK un lobista?, ¿Confirmas la fuente de lo que compartes?, ¿Confías ciegamente en internet?, ¿Sabías que tal vez podrias estar formando parte de una campaña de desinformación con esos sharing que haces a cada momento sobre algún tema determinado?

El ser humano es emotivo por naturaleza y puede reaccionar ante ciertos estímulos de una manera apasionada lo cual es aprovechado por expertos en comunicación para contraargumentar a sus opositores de turno (religiosos, políticos, ideológicos, culturales, etc) manipulando y evolucionando ideas que son compartidas en una comunidad determinada para generar una gran división que es el signo de lo que ultimamente se conoce como “Post Truth Era” o era del declive de la confianza en las instituciones o simplemente la era de las “Fake News” (noticias falsas).

La pérdida de credibilidad de muchas instituciones se da debido al actual estado de la tecnología e información, hoy todo es transparente y, sin embargo, se manipula la verdad para servir a la voluntad de cualquier ente opositor con la finalidad de difundir noticias falsas y lograr cohesión y polarizar una sociedad. Esta técnica es, ciertamente, lo mas bajo y vil que puede existir para lograr la popularidad de un concepto (idea, negocio o servicio) en el Internet. La búsqueda de atención y popularidad utilizando información manipulada y falsa es lo mas común que existe actualmente desde que se utiliza el sensacionalismo, el amarillismo o el escándalo para vender o hacer mas popular una idea. Lo malo de esta situación es que mantiene en la ignorancia a una comunidad bajo un velo de supuesta verdad.

El siguiente video nos muestra el punto de vista de este youtuber y que bien puede ser aplicado a la política peruana, a los ataques que vemos en las campañas políticas, la leyenda de los pishtacos en Huaycán, al actual debate de #conmishijosnotemetas y la denominada “ideología de género” entre grupos religiosos y el gobierno, el reconocimiento de la unión civil homosexual en el país, y hasta el asunto de los escándalos armados y que son transmitidos por los mas “reputados” medios de comunicación a través de sus infames “Reality Shows”.

Vivimos ahora en una sociedad donde todo ha perdido credibilidad gracias a la popularidad de los “Likes”, donde muchas personas ni se molestan en revisar la veracidad de lo que comparten o asumen ciegamente que todo lo que esta en internet es cierto. Esta situación nos llevará inexorablemente a la ignorancia y la división como sociedad en el futuro y todo ello con una finalidad: Controlarte a través de una ilusión.

En el siguiente video “Cómo Detectar a un Mentiroso”, Pamela Meyer nos cuenta en resumen que “la mentira es un acto cooperativo”, “la mentira es el intento por llenar un vacío y mostrar nuestros deseos” y que “las mentiras tienen un alto costo económico tanto a corto como a largo plazo”. Por último, la transparencia y el “oversharing” que vivimos actualmente puede, de hecho, cegarnos frente a la verdad de los hechos y llevarnos a perder confianza y credibilidad en las instituciones y sus “autoridades”.

Por ultimo, tenemos la opinion de Francis Fukuyama, quien menciona que al referirnos al concepto de “Post Truth Society” estamos frente a una situacion en la cual es posible afirmar cosas sin tener una base factica y, sin verguenza alguna, no hacemos diferencia entre una afirmacion verdadera o una falsa. Independientemente de su naturaleza, la gente seguira creyendo en ella. Asimismo, señala que esta situacion es el reflejo de algo profundo: La perdida de credibilidad de las autoridades e instituciones producto del estado de la tecnologia, disponibilidad de informacion y transparencia.

 

Mexicans Are Lazy | Ep. 7 | That’s Racist

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Este comediante tira abajo algunos estereotipos que el comun de norteamericanos asigna a los inmigrantes mexicanos. Con un estilo simpatico pero tambien objetivo nos señala, por ejemplo, que el calificativo de “flojos” para los mexicanos se remonta a 1846 cuando gran parte del ahora territorio del Oeste estadounidense pertenecia a Mexico. Los norteamericanos señalaban que los mexicanos poseian en sus territorios grandes extensiones de tierra que no trabajaban y basados en el espiritu de trabajo protestante, pues era menester hacer productivas aquellas tierras asi sea quitandoselas a Mexico por la fuerza.

El profesor que escribió la carta a los alumnos suspensos: “Este sistema educativo crea inútiles”

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“El problema es que hay alumnos que suben los pies a la mesa y cuando les digo ‘tú eso lo haces en tu casa?’, me contestan ‘pues sí'”

Pablo Póo Gallardo es profesor de Lengua y Literatura en el único instituto de Iznájar, un pueblo cordobés de 4.400 habitantes. En los últimos seis años, ha pasado por 14 institutos distintos de seis provincias andaluzas. Ha plasmado su experiencia en un libro, La mala educación, en el que transmite un mensaje claro: el sistema educativo actual es una fábrica de vagos. Esa misma premisa sostiene en una carta a sus alumnos suspendidos que se hizo viral a finales de diciembre, publicada por El Huffington Post.

“No sabes nada de la vida; y no lo sabes porque lo tienes todo. A pesar de que en casa no entra mucho dinero, nunca te ha faltado de nada, porque tienes unos padres que se parten el lomo por ti”, indica en la misiva a los más vagos del primer trimestre. “La vida no es la ESO, desconfía de todos aquellos que quieren que seas feliz entre los 12 y los 16. Cuando seas mayor de edad les vas a importar un pimiento”, añade.

La carta ha tenido una gran repercusión en medios de comunicación y redes sociales. “Simplemente, era un post más de los que publico en El Huffington Post, donde escribo sobre temas educativos”, dice a Verne por teléfono. “Ante el éxito que estaba teniendo la publicación en redes sociales, me propusieron que convirtiera la carta en vídeo”. La versión visual de la misiva, de cuatro minutos de duración, acumula 400.000 visionados en YouTube.

“Tenía que escribir algo, coincidiendo con el final del trimestre. Entonces se entregan las notas, así que me pareció la ocasión perfecta para dar un toque de atención. Es una charla que tengo muy interiorizada, ya que la doy habitualmente en clase pero siendo mucho más duro. Digo las cosas aún más claras”, comenta este profesor sevillano de 33 años.

“Trabajo con chavales que viven en un entorno socioeconómico complicado. Me han llegado a sacar una navaja en clase”, indica Póo, que aprecia una falta de esfuerzo casi endémica entre sus alumnos: “Mis alumnos ven vagancia en sus casas y se acomodan. Dicen ‘¿para qué voy a estudiar si voy a trabajar en el campo o en una peluquería?’. Viven en una completa burbuja”.

Póo carga gran parte de la culpa de esta situación en el sistema educativo, “que como tenemos comprobado no funciona”, pero no excluye a los propios alumnos. “La valoración del esfuerzo es cada vez más difícil. Hoy en día, es muy difícil suspender a un alumno. Gran parte del problema viene de la moda del refuerzo positivo. No se les puede decir que han hecho las cosas mal, si no centrarse solo en lo bueno. ¿Qué clase de adulto va a salir de ese tipo de actitud?”, comenta.

El profesor de Secundaria se contesta a sí mismo: “Eso crea inútiles. Dejamos que pasen los cursos sin ningún esfuerzo, haciendo todo lo posible para que avancen pese a tener asignaturas suspensas”. Resume su pesar en esta historia, que publicó en 2014, en la que un loro consigue pasar la ESO sin dificultades sin más virtud que la de repetir lo que escucha. “Muchas veces, te preguntas cómo algunos alumnos han podido llegar al último curso”, añade.

“Uno de los grandes problemas de la educación es que los profesores no hacen las leyes. Nosotros somos los que estamos cada día al pie del cañón y conocemos los problemas. Se tiene la imagen utópica del alumno que se esfuerza y suspende porque no puede dar más, pero eso es muy minoritario. La mayoría son unos vagos”, dice Póo, que lamenta que “para rebajar las estadísticas de fracaso escolar, se haya reducido el nivel académico”.

El autor de la carta viral no se muestra especialmente optimista de cara al futuro: “No creo que de esta legislatura salga un sistema que cambie todas estas cosas. Algo mejorará, pero no lo tengo claro”. “El problema es que hay alumnos que suben los pies a la mesa y cuando les digo ‘¿tú eso lo haces en tu casa?’, me contestan ‘pues sí’. ¿Qué se puede esperar de unos padres que regalan la Play Station a su hijo después de que le queden cinco?. Los profesores no siempre tenemos razón, pero tienen que escucharnos un poco más”, dice.

En: verne.elpais.com

El Tribunal Europeo de Derechos Humanos ordenó a niñas musulmanas a ir a clases de natación mixtas

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El tribunal internacional ubicado en Francia considera que el interés público de la escolarización está por encima del privado y obligó a todas las alumnas a realizar natación con sus compañeros varones, independientemente de sus preceptos y costumbres religiosas.

El Tribunal Europeo de Derechos Humanos ordenó que todas las niñas en edad escolar deberán ir a clases de natación- en caso de corresponder- mixtas. El organismo señaló que la educación como derecho de Estado prevalece sobre las convicciones religiosas.

El Tribunal Europeo de Derechos Humanos ordenó que todas las niñas en edad escolar deberán ir a clases de natación- en caso de corresponder- mixtas. El organismo señaló que la educación como derecho de Estado prevalece sobre las convicciones religiosas.

Esta institución, que juzga posibles violaciones de los derechos humanos en 47 países europeos, falló en contra de un matrimonio musulmán que se negó a que sus hijas fueran a clases mixtas en una pileta.

El tribunal, con sede en Estrasburgo, basó su sentencia en el derecho de todos los niños y niñas a gozar de una escolarización completa que permita la integración social; un derecho que prima sobre las prácticas religiosas.

El caso se originó cuando la pareja con doble nacionalidad suiza y turca, residente en Basilea, se opuso a los cursos de natación obligatorios para sus hijas. El colegio informó en 2008 a la familia de que los cursos eran obligatorios e incluso intentó mediar con alternativas. La dirección ofreció a los padres que las niñas llevaran burkini, un bañador que cubre todo el cuerpo y la cabeza, y también que pudieran desvestirse en salas separadas de los chicos, pero los padres mantuvieron su negativa. Ante la falta de acuerdo, las autoridades aplicaron en 2010 a los padres una multa total de casi 1.300 euros por “incumplimiento de responsabilidades paternas”.

La sentencia es polémica ya que produce un choque fuerte entre padres musulmanes y autoridades que deben garantizar la igualdad de oportunidades entre los escolares. Como era de esperarse, la familia rechazó la asistencia de sus hijas a las clases antes de comenzar la adolescencia, momento en el que se mezclan los dos géneros.

Más allá de la libertad religiosa, los padres argumentaban que las clases de natación no forman parte esencial del sistema escolar suizo y añadían que sus hijas ya asistían a cursos privados para comunidades musulmanas. La sala del Tribunal de Estrasburgo, presidida por el juez español Luis López Guerra, sentenció: “el interés de esa enseñanza no se limita a aprender a nadar, sino que reside sobre todo en el hecho de practicar esa actividad en común con todo el resto de alumnos”.

En: diarioregistado

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