Mediaboss Marketing

A Wikipedia 'edit-a-thon' is being held at the Surrey Art Gallery on Saturday in the hope of improvingthe massive online encyclopedia's coverage of women in the arts.

The event, done in partnership with Vancouver-based Runghmagazine,will see volunteers gather at the art gallery and virtually to write and edit entries with a focus on art and feminism.

AlannaEdwards with the Surrey Art Gallery saysit's long been established that the vast majority of Wikipedia editors aremen, which can affect whatappears on one of the most-viewed websites on the planet.

"I think it's important to edit on Wikipedia because without women telling their own stories, without these stories being recorded, content can be skewed and become problematic," she said.

Wikipedia itself has acknowledged the gender gap.In a 2020 report, parent organization Wikimediafound 87 per cent of its contributors are male.

Edwards saysparticipants are encouraged to come with up with ideas for entries. Those seeking inspirationcan work on an entry for"pre-researched artists and artworks" from Surrey Art Gallery's permanent collection.

During a previous edit-a-thon, volunteers created an entry for local artist Roxanne Charles-George. Edwards said Charles-George was pleased with the result.

A similar event was held in Richmond Public Libraryin February to address gaps in knowledge about B.C.'s Black history.

Listen | A similar event in February addressed knowledge gaps about B.C.'s Black history

On The Coast4:47Black History Month Wikipedia edit-a-thon

"Everybody knows they go to Wikipedia first when you're doing research," librarianAdair Harper told CBC's On the Coast last month. "So it's reallyimportant to improve coverage there."

Edwards says attendees at Saturday's event can learn how to research, create a user account, and publish a Wikipedia page.

"You don't need experience," she said. "We're all learning together. There's small ways that you can make big changes."

The edit-a-thon will take place at Surrey Art Gallery onMarch 12 from noon to 4 p.m. Those who aren't able to attend in personcan take partvirtually.

View original post here:
Wikipedia 'edit-a-thon' in Surrey hopes to bridge knowledge gap about women in the arts - CBC.ca

It's possible that all the heart warming-ness of "Ted Lasso" all starts inJason Sudeikis' head.

OK, yes, the "Saturday Night Live" alum developed the show and helps write it, but we're talking about a whole other thing called the "Jason wiki."

The Jason wiki, or Wikipedia, is a catalog of each of the characters in the show's history that are not always shown in episodes. We learned about the wiki during the show's South by Southwest panel Monday morning.

Sudeikis, who plays Lasso, Brett Goldstein, who plays Roy Kent, and Brendan Hunt, who plays Coach Beard, appeared via video chatbecause they arein London, where they started filming the show's third season about two weeks ago.

A supervising producer on the show, Kip Kroeger, and a "Ted Lasso" editor, Melissa Brown McCoy, appeared in person at the panel with Nancy Jundi of DigitalFilm Tree.

More: Sandra Bullock's message for people moving to Austin: Don't change it

Goldstein and Hunt both appeared to be in the back of two separate cars that were headed for the same location the fictional Richmondteam's locker room. Both would freeze and disappear from the screen during the broadcastto a packed room. Dozens of people lined up well before the panel's 10 a.m. start,and the line had to be extended outside at Austin Convention Center.

OK, back to the Jason wiki.

"With Jason, it's interesting, because we'll be sitting in the cutting room going overthe show and he'll start sharing deep, deep backstory that's in the form orthe context ofscenes or the perspective of characters and stuff like that. And it doesn't necessarily ever make it on the screen, but it informs so much of what's going on," said Kip Kroeger, a supervising producer on "Ted Lasso."

More: Daniel Radcliffe is looking for Austin's best barbecue at SXSW

Hunt, who also is one of the show's co-creators, said Sudeikis has a starting point for each of the characters and then the rest of the writers room will chime in to furtherdevelop the character. Even if the wiki notes don't end up in the show, they still affect how characters make their decisions, he said.

It was clear, even from a mostly virtual panel, how much the actors enjoy working with each other. Hunt was making jokes,Goldstein was cussing and Sudeikis was laughing.

When Hunt and Goldstein made it to the locker room set, they ran inside and gave each other a hug. The SXSW crowd cheered.

More: Hanging out with the Muppets, Brett 'Roy Effing Kent' Goldstein andBren Brown at ACL

Excerpt from:
Jason Sudeikis keeps a Wikipedia page in his head of 'Ted Lasso' characters - austin360

Earlier this week, my colleague Melissa Cedillo reported on a letter signed by 64 members of the faculty at St. Louis University, protesting a proposal before the Missouri legislature that would bar certain subjects, and/or approaches to subjects, from the classroom. The bill, supported by conservative Republicans, especially targets issues of race and gender.

In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis is set to sign a law that bars teaching about LGBTQ issues in lower grades. The bill passed the legislature and has received widespread support from conservative Catholics. The article in the National Catholic Register was especially interesting. It turned for expert commentary to Deacon Patrick Lappert whom they identify as "a board-certified plastic surgeon."

Lappert had this to say about the bill: "It's a legislation about transparency so that the parents can understand what their children are being exposed to." It is difficult to imagine a more loaded, biased verb in this context than "exposed." I am guessing the teachers in Florida are not streaking naked through the hallways. But, hey, who can argue legal principles with a board-certified plastic surgeon?

In Alabama, abill banning "divisive concepts" is moving quickly through the legislature. How quickly? It was put to a voice vote of the House State Government Committee 20 seconds after it was introduced. Among other things, the law says no classroom instruction that induces "a sense of guilt, complicity, or a need to work harder solely on the basis of his or her race or sex."

The letter from the St. Louis academics addresses many of the reasons progressive Catholics should object to these laws. I wish to point out that these laws also suffer from some common flaws that should especially alarm conservative Catholics, the largest of which is that they are politicizing education in the most outrageous way. Conservative Catholics once celebrated the traditional concern to prioritize culture over politics. Conservative Catholics used to believe a lot of things.

Americans traditionally have entrusted decisions about curricula to local school boards. Local boards seek to combine parental and community input with expertise from educators to produce curricula that are accurate and helpful, that will prepare students to be good citizens and active, thoughtful members of society. They may turn to a state or federal Department of Education for certain special needs, but the local boards make the decisions, or hire the superintendents and principals who do.

Jon Valant, of the Brookings Institution, looked at the politicization of school board elections last year and noted that the usually sleepy meetings of the local school board had sometimes erupted into fierce debates about mask mandates and curricula. He warned that the turmoil "will change who runs for local school boards and who wins those seats, in many cases for the worse. And this will be happening right as school districts are seeing a major infusion of federal funds, with board members poised to make high-stakes decisions about how schools respond to the pandemic's impacts."

Most of this fervor is the result of the cancer of Trumpism metastasizing through the body politic. Still, a local school board at least has a shot at overcoming polarization: It is harder to declare a culture war against someone whose daughter may serve on the volunteer fire department with your son, or whose son may coach your granddaughter in basketball. The desire to maintain those other unrelated relationships might, just might, serve to lower temperatures. Local control of government is very problematic when it comes to how we fund public education, but it might help to let cooler heads prevail when it comes to debating curricula.

In fact, in New Hampshire, pro-public education candidates recently won 29 of 30 open school board seats, including some parts of the state that are reliably conservative. Jennifer Berkshire, at The Nation, explains that the defenders of public education in the Granite State successfully painted their opponents as the extremists, and that was the key to success. Regrettably, the New Hampshire legislature didn't get the memo and is still pushing to enact restrictions on what teachers can say in the classroom.

In 33 states, the state legislative districts are carved out by the legislatures, and incumbents like to create safe districts, so state legislatures, like the U.S. House of Representatives, are now filled largely with incumbents who only have to worry about a primary challenge. Voters, more and more of whom are unaffiliated with either party, face no real choice in November. It is a recipe for ever more extreme government. Legislatures are the last places to debate education policy.

Conservative Catholics used to extol the virtue of subsidiarity, the idea that decisions should be at the lowest level of society possible and the highest necessary. I would stand with them to defend any parent who wished to have his or her child taken out of the classroom when something to which they object is being taught. That is far different from taking over the whole classroom. And it is far, far different from having the state legislature take over the classroom.

These laws all represent a kind of legislative heckler's veto. In his magnificentdissent inFeinerv.New York, Justice Hugo Black disagreed with the majority's decision to uphold the arrest of a speaker who was accosted by a mob of hecklers: "In my judgment, today's holding means that as a practical matter, minority speakers can be silenced in any city. Hereafter, despite the First and Fourteenth Amendments, the policeman's club can take heavy toll of a current administration's public critics.Criticism of public officials will be too dangerous for all but the most courageous."

Justice Black went on to invoke the words of Justice Owen Roberts inCantwellv.Connecticut:

In the realm of religious faith, and in that of political belief, sharp differences arise. In both fields the tenets of one man may seem the rankest error to his neighbor. To persuade others to his own point of view, the pleader, as we know, at times, resorts to exaggeration, to vilification of men who have been, or are, prominent in church or state, and even to false statement. But the people of this nation have ordained in the light of history, that, in spite of the probability of excesses and abuses, these liberties are, in the long view, essential to enlightened opinion and right conduct on the part of the citizens of a democracy.

Free speech is often attacked, and the attacks can come from any ideological side. Virtually every night on Fox News, the talking heads condemn "cancel culture," but what are these laws restricting education other than an effort to cancel arguments and ideas of which they disapprove?

The psychological desire to "cancel" is found in all sorts of unlikely places. When did we lose the willingness to aspire to the liberal, democratic vision articulated by Justice Roberts? When did we lose sight of the value of a good argument? How can conservatives or liberals extol freedom as they do, but then refuse to even make an argument about how American history should be taught? It is pathetic. Are these laws not the curricular equivalent of burning books?

We live in a strange time and illiberal gods are on the march. That should horrify both liberal and conservative Catholics.

Visit link:
Keep the culture wars out of the classroom - National Catholic Reporter

Teachers are caught in the crossfire of a political and cultural conflict, and its threatening their ability to do their jobs, warns a new statement from five national groups representing tens of thousands of educators.

In their first-ever joint statement, the four professional organizations for teachers of particular subject areas, along with an anti-censorship group, condemned the widespread efforts to curtail classroom discussions about so-called divisive topics.

In their zeal, activists of the current culture wars unfortunately treat teachers as if they are enemies, says the statement from the National Council for the Social Studies, the National Council of Teachers of English, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, the National Science Teaching Association, and the National Coalition Against Censorship. Teachers need our support; they need our trust; they need to have the freedom to exercise their professional judgment.

Over the past year, 15 states have enacted bans or restrictions on how to teach the topics of racism and sexism in K-12 schools. Anti-censorship groups also decry what they say is an unprecedented volume of challenges to books in schools, particularly to those that focus on race, gender, and sexuality. Topics like evolution and climate change also have been threatened in the science classroom, and the way students make sense of and critique the world in math class has been challenged, the statement says.

The professional organizations for every discipline are unified in our concern about the limitations and the fissures that are being thrown upon teachers, said Emily Kirkpatrick, the executive director for NCTE, in an interview.

Teachers in every subject area have said theyve been accused of indoctrination or questioned for their curricular choices, as conservative politicians vow to root out instances of so-called critical race theory in schools. (Critical race theory is an academic framework that says racism is a systemic, societal problem. It has become a catch-all term for discussions of race, with some critics arguing that white children are being taught to feel guilty or hate themselves.)

Earlier this month, the College Board, which runs the Advanced Placement program, released a statement emphasizing the importance of AP teachers expertise. AP is animated by a deep respect for the intellectual freedom of teachers and students alike, the College Board said, adding that if instruction is censored, the AP designation would be removed from those courses, and students would lose out on potential college credit.

And the statement from the five national organizations argues that the scrutiny on teachers is creating a chilling effect in the classroom. Teachers are afraid to assign books that might be challenged, and as a result, teachers very ability to do their job is under threat, the statement says.

Yet teachers jobs have never been more important as they work to catch students up after the pandemic has stalled academic progress, Kirkpatrick said: Now is the time to give teachers as much agency as possible.

The culture clashes and uptick in censorship challenges are contributing to many teachers desire to leave the profession, she said. Teacher dissatisfaction rates are at record highs, and although its yet to be determined whether teachers will actually leave the classroom, large numbers are saying they want to quit.

The stakes are too high, the joint statement concludes. We cannot let good teachers leave the field because they no longer have the freedom to do their jobs. We cannot let the education of our children and young adults become collateral damage in partisan political machinations.

Read the original here:
In the Culture Wars, Teachers Are Being Treated Like 'Enemies' - Edweek.org

Reaction

11:30

by Henry Hill

Credit: Getty

The risk of delay is being overtaken by events. The Government took almost a year to publish their response to the Commission on Racial and Ethnic Disparities (CRED), and as a result it ended up getting a little overtaken by events in Ukraine.

Which is a shame, because Kemi Badenoch the Tory MP who has taken the lead on equality issues is doing good work.

She isnt going as far as some on the Right might wish. Specifically, she opposes repealing the Equality Act, the legislation which spawns all those advertisements for well-remunerated public-sector diversity officers which go round Twitter every so often.

But among the 66 action points included in Inclusive Britain are some worthwhile steps, such as new guidance for civil servants explicitly banning their supporting political campaigns such as BLM on their work accounts.

And during the Q&A she made arguments which hint at useful future work, such as trying to build a school curriculum which brings all students together rather than catering separately to this or that identity group.

Yet despite the strong performance, and a good response from an engaged and friendly crowd at the Royal Society of Arts, it was difficult to shake off the feeling that the Government might not end up following through.

Badenoch had already explained that few of her parliamentary colleagues were particularly engaged in the issues raised by CRED and Inclusive Britain. Im doing this more as a duty, as she diplomatically put it.

Then theres the fact that any push towards a more Conservative line on equalities risks seeing her specific approach caught between two conflicting poles: on the one hand, the Prime Ministers aversion to controversy; on the other his newfound need to throw red meat to his backbenchers in order to shore up his leadership.

Depending on which side of bed Boris Johnson gets out of, that could push him either to back away from the programme outlined in Inclusive Britain or shoulder it aside for something more radical.

And what better excuse for taking the former, non-confrontational path than current events. Dont you know theres a war in Ukraine? How can we waste time on potentially controversial domestic issues when theres a war in Ukraine!

Such a narrative might suit a Prime Minister thankful that a foreign policy crisis has driven his problems off the front pages. But it would be a short-sighted approach for the Tories.

Voters are not nearly as engaged with foreign affairs as either politicians or the media. If the Government gets so caught up in the international scene that it neglects the nitty gritty of actually governing, it will be turfed out in 2024. Not even Winston Churchill managed to win on a thanks for saving the world ticket Johnson certainly wont.

It is also past time that the Right started focusing on structural questions like this over the long term, rather than lurching opportunistically from one headline to the next. As the Left know all too well, the only way to win a culture war is to wage it even when it isnt front-page news.

Go here to see the original:
Boris can't ignore the culture wars forever - UnHerd