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Thursday, May 10, 2012

Does it matter if Mitt Romney was a bully in high school?

See all posts on bullying.

The important question is whether Mitt Romney's character has changed since his high school bullying days. Obviously, he has learned to restrain his urges, if they still exist, toward physical aggression in public. But does he still have the urge to force others to think like him? To make them suffer for being different? And is he telling the truth when he says he does not remember the incident, to which other participants have confessed? (See second story below.)

Does it matter if Mitt Romney was a bully in high school?
When Mitt Romney was a senior at suburban Detroit’s Cranbrook school, he led a 'posse' that forcibly cut the long blond hair of a nonconformist junior, according to a Washington Post report.
By Peter Grier
Christian Science Monitor
May 10, 2012

Does it matter if Mitt Romney misbehaved in high school? That question arises due to a report in Thursday’s Washington Post that when he was a senior at suburban Detroit’s Cranbrook school, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee led a “posse” that held down and forcibly cut the long blond hair of a nonconformist junior.

In this video, Romney apologizes for any pranks he may have pulled in high school that hurt or offended his fellows. “He can’t look like that. That’s wrong. Just look at him!” an incensed Mitt said at the time, according to fellow student Matthew Friedemann, quoted in the Post.

Mr. Romney himself said Thursday that he cannot remember the incident. The longhaired student in question, John Lauber, is now deceased. But Romney gave some legs to the story by apologizing repeatedly for any pranks he may have pulled in high school that hurt or offended his fellows.

“As to pranks that were played back then, I don’t remember them all. But again, high school days – if I did stupid things, I’m afraid I've got to say sorry for it,” said Romney in an interview on Fox News Radio.

Romney’s opponents say they are torn by the relevance of an alleged incident that would have occurred some 50 years ago. But they forge ahead nonetheless, saying that if true, the forcible haircut could provide some insight into the character of a man who wants to sit in the Oval Office.

“Romney was 18 – old enough to vote, old enough to serve in the military, and old enough to know not to attack a vulnerable teenager unprovoked...

Here's a quote from the Washington Post story:

"The incident was recalled similarly by five students, who gave their accounts independently of one another. Four of them — Friedemann, now a dentist; Phillip Maxwell, a lawyer; Thomas Buford, a retired prosecutor; and David Seed, a retired principal — spoke on the record. Another former student who witnessed the incident asked not to be identified...“It happened very quickly, and to this day it troubles me,” said Buford, the school’s wrestling champion, who said he joined Romney in restraining Lauber...“It was a hack job,” recalled Maxwell, a childhood friend of Romney who was in the dorm room when the incident occurred. “It was vicious.” “He was just easy pickin’s,” said Friedemann, then the student prefect, or student authority leader of Stevens Hall, expressing remorse about his failure to stop it...Friedemann, guilt ridden, made a point of not talking about it with his friend and waited to see what form of discipline would befall Romney at the famously strict institution. Nothing happened."

Mitt Romney forced to apologise after he 'mocked and assaulted' high school classmate who was 'presumed gay'
By DANIEL BATES
Daily Mail
10 May 2012

Mitt Romney has been forced to apologise for forcibly shaving the head of a high school classmate who was regularly taunted for being gay.

The Republican presidential candidate grabbed tearful John Lauber and hacked away with a pair of scissors because he thought his bleached blond hair was ‘wrong’.

Mr Romney also supposedly mocked another student who was a closeted gay by shouting ‘Atta girl!’ when he tried to speak in class.

The damaging claims come a day after Barack Obama said he was in favour of gay marriage.

Mr Romney has made it clear he opposes it but issued an apology for fear of being seen as homophobic.

He said: ‘Back in high school, you know, I did some dumb things. If anyone was hurt by that or offended by that, obviously I apologize.

‘But overall, high school years were a long time ago'.

Interviews with Mr Romney’s former classmates at the $54,000 a year Cranbrook School in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, reveal he was fond of jokes that were mostly good natured by sometimes had a hard edge.

After the shaving incident Mr Lauber ‘seemed to disappear’ from life in school and was later expelled for smoking and died in 2004 of liver cancer.

Torment: The Republican presidential hopeful was said to have taunted students who were known to be gay and those from poor backgrounds at the exclusive Cranbrook School in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan

Decades after it happened he ran into one of Romney’s friends who helped hold him down and told him: ‘It was horrible.

‘It’s something I have thought about a lot since then.’

The incident supposedly happened in the Summer term in 1965 when Mr Lauber, who was a year below Mr Romney, came back from Spring Break with his hair dyed blond and styled so it was draped over one eye.

According to the Washington Post Mr Romney would not let it go and told his friend Matthew Friedemann: ‘He can’t look like that. That’s wrong. Just look at him!’

A few days later Mr Romney assembled a posse which found Mr Lauber, tackled him to the floor and held him down whilst the future governor of Massachusetts snipped away.

When it was completed the crowd cheered Mr Romney as he walked out of the room.

The incident was recalled by five former Cranbrook pupils including Thomas Buford, a retired prosecutor, who helped hold Mr Lauber down.

He said: ‘It happened very quickly, and to this day it troubles me. ‘What a senseless, stupid, idiotic thing to do.’

Phillip Maxwell, who is now a lawyer, added: ‘It was a hack job. It was vicious.’

Mr Friedemann, who is now a dentist, also felt bad for not stopping it happening and admitted Mr Lauber was ‘easy pickins’.

Mr Romney’s time at Cranbrook is credited with shaping into the hard-working, driven man he is today. It was also the time in his life when sports and socialising governed his life more than at any other time. Friends recalled how he and his friends would be up all night larking around, the sound of his laughter filling the corridors at 2am.

In English class however things took a more sinister twist - Mr Romney had a habit of interrupting fellow pupil Gary Hummel, a closeted gay at the time, by shouting ‘Atta girl!’

According to the Washington Post he also behaved in a ‘sour’ fashion towards scholarship student Lou Vierling when he found he he was from a poor area of Detroit.

Mr Romney’s wife Ann has claimed that contrary to his public image as a ‘tin man’, as one friend has claimed, he is actually a ‘wild and crazy man’.

And details about his pranks have come to light before, notably in the biography, ‘The Real Romney’, by Boston Globe investigative reporters Michael Kranish and Scott Helman

The problem with the latest revelations however is that they suggest a cruelty which voters might find hard to stomach.

Romney’s most famous such incident is also his most controversial - when he strapped his dog to the top of his car whilst on a 12-hour drive from Massachusetts to Canada in 1983...

Monday, April 30, 2012

School attendance among 5- to 24-year-olds in Liberia

An article that was published on this site in July 2011, "School attendance by grade and age in Liberia", shows that overage school attendance is very common in Liberia, mainly due to late entry into the education system. The official primary school age in Liberia is 6 to 11 years according to the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED). Yet, an analysis of data from a Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) from 2007 demonstrates that the vast majority of pupils in primary and secondary school in Liberia are older than the theoretical age for their grade. For example, nearly three quarters of all first-graders in Liberia are at least 3 years older than the official entrance age into primary education (see Figure 1). 24% of all first-graders are 5 or 6 years overage, 14% are 7 or 8 years overage, and 5% are 9 or more years overage. Children in the last group start primary school at age 15 or later.

Figure 1: Age distribution of pupils in primary and secondary education in Liberia, 2007

Graph with data on overage and underage pupils in primary and secondary education in Liberia

Source: Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) 2007. - Click image to enlarge.

Figure 1 shows the age distribution in the 12 grades of primary and secondary education in Liberia. The same DHS data from 2007 can also be analyzed differently, by single year of age instead of by grade. Figure 2 presents the level and grade attended for the population between 5 and 24 years of age. For each age group, the graph shows the percentage in pre-primary, primary, secondary, and tertiary education. The data for primary and secondary education is further divided into single grades, indicated by shades of blue for the 6 primary grades and shades of green for the 6 secondary grades. In addition, Figure 2 shows how many percent are out of school and for how many percent the level and grade of education attended is missing.

Figure 2: Level and grade of education attended by population 5-24 years in Liberia, 2007

Graph with data on school attendance by age in Liberia

Source: Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) 2007. - Click image to enlarge.

One surprising finding is the large percentage of children between 5 and 14 years who are in pre-primary education. About half of all 5- to 8-year-olds, 39% of all 9-year-olds, and 28% of all 10-year-olds are in pre-primary education. Even at age 14, nearly 7% are still in preschool. One possible explanation is that parents keep their children in pre-primary education due to lack of access to primary education.

Some children start attending primary education at age 5 or 6 but most children enter late. Even among persons 20 years or older, some are still in the first primary grade. School attendance overall reaches a peak at age 14, when more than 86% are in school, mostly in primary education. Primary school attendance rates are highest among 12- to 15-year-olds; two out of three children in this age group are in primary education. Secondary school attendance reaches a peak at age 19, when 38% are in secondary education; in addition, at least 30% of all 17- and 18-year-olds are in secondary education. Attendance rates for tertiary education are low and do not exceed 2% until age 24, when 4% study at a university or other institution of higher learning.

The percentage of the population that is not in any type of formal education decreases from 44% among 5-year-olds to 13% among 14-year-olds. From age 15, out-of-school rates increase again and among 23- and 24-year-olds in Liberia, 61% and 60%, respectively, are not in school. Lastly, for a small percentage of the DHS sample, the grade and level attended was missing.

Related articles

External links

Friedrich Huebler, 30 April 2012, Creative Commons License
Permanent URL: http://huebler.blogspot.com/2012/04/liberia.html

Saturday, March 31, 2012

World Atlas of Gender Equality in Education

UNESCO and the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) have published a new World Atlas of Gender Equality in Education that illustrates the participation of girls and boys in pre-primary, primary, secondary, and tertiary education. The data show that there has been significant progress towards gender parity since the 1970s. Two thirds of all countries have reached gender parity in primary education but at the secondary level of education girls are still lagging behind. In some countries, girls have the advantage with regard to access to and completion of education. At the tertiary level, female students outnumber male students in many high-income countries.

The atlas is divided into eight chapters that contain a total of 28 maps and close to 100 charts and tables:

Increased worldwide demand for quality schooling
Girls’ right to education
Enrolment and gender trends: primary education
Enrolment and gender trends: secondary education
Enrolment and gender trends: tertiary education
Trends in school-life expectancy
Gender trends: adult and youth literacy
How policies affect gender equality in education

An excerpt from Chapter 7 on literacy is shown below. The map (please click the image for a larger view) visualizes adult literacy rates from the database of the UNESCO Institute for Statistics. Among countries with data, literacy rates are lowest in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. The highest adult literacy rates are observed in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. For many developed countries, the adult literacy rate is unknown because these countries have achieved universal primary education and no longer report data on the traditional literate-illiterate dichotomy, focusing instead on the more narrowly defined concept of functional literacy.

The atlas is available in English, French and Spanish. In addition, UNESCO and UIS plan to launch an online e-atlas with interactive maps.

Excerpt from World Atlas of Gender Equality in Education: Map with adult literacy rates

Source: UNESCO, 2012, World Atlas of Gender Equality in Education, pages 92-93. - Click image to enlarge.

Reference

UNESCO. 2012. World Atlas of Gender Equality in Education. Paris: UNESCO. (Download in PDF format, 6.4 MB)

External links

Friedrich Huebler, 31 March 2012, Creative Commons License
Permanent URL: http://huebler.blogspot.com/2012/03/atlas.html