Things We Love: Learning, Language, and Saving the World

I normally post articles on how to save the world by voting in your best interests, but today I want to highlight a website that is changing the world in a different way. Please take a second to check out FreeRice.com.

The site's application gives you a word with four possible definitions, and if you define the word correctly, the site's sponsors pay for 20 grains of rice for the UN World Food Program, which works to end hunger worldwide; answer 5 questions correctly in a row, and you donate 100 grains. According to the WFP the average person who includes rice as a staple in his/her diet eats 400 grains per day, and I was able to donate 2,000 grains in about 10 minutes. Fun and meaningful! If words aren't your thing, you can choose from the following subjects:

• Famous Paintings

• Chemical Symbols (Basic)

• Chemical Symbols (Full List)

• English Grammar

• Identify Countries on the Map

• World Capitals

• French

• German

• Italian

• Spanish

• The Multiplication Table

The questions vary in difficulty, and the program adjusts the level of difficulty based on how you perform.

From their FAQ:

The rice you donate makes a huge difference to the person who receives it. According to the United Nations, about 25,000 people die each day from hunger or hunger-related causes, most of them children. Though 20 grains of rice may seem like a small amount, it is important to remember that while you are playing, so are thousands of other people at the same time. It is everyone together that makes the difference. Thanks to you, FreeRice has generated enough rice to feed more than two million people since it started in October 2007.

So go do that today right before you start making your No on Prop 8 phone calls from home, and save the world twice in one afternoon.

Chicago Pride Campus Goes Before Community Forum

A proposed LGBTIQA school in Chicago goes before the local community forum this week in the last step towards a possible approval by the Chicago Public Schools board. The high school proposed this spring by the Greater Lawndale Little Village School for Social Justice would be called the Pride Campus. The Social Justice High School- Pride Campus, if approved, would offer college prep courses in all subject areas and would open in time for the 2010/11 school year.


The CPS Office of New Schools has already gone through the process of interviewing a design team made up of veteran teachers, administrators, a member of the About Face Theater, and dozens of others involved in this projected. The delegated principle, Chad Weiden of the proposing school, was interviewed this passed August.

Currently, the design team is scouting a location. They are hoping to build the school in a centralized location to make it easier for students to reach.

The proposing team believes that it is a necessary option for the LGBTIQ youths in the school system and their allies given the often hostile atmosphere that permeates the current school environment. They do not, however, feel that it should be the only option, and certainly desire to put an end to prejudice inside the schools. However, two years ago, the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) found that roughly thirty-five percent of all Illinois students reported that sexual and gender identity was a common reason students were harassed and bullied. Over three-quarters of the students replied that they had heard homophobic comments made by their class mates.

Many LGBTIQ students in the area have reported that the toxic attitudes from others at school often caused them to miss school, drop out, and even contemplate suicide. Too many of the students reported far more violence against their person or belongings in far greater numbers than did heterosexual students in their classes.

The benefits of creating such a school, the second in the country after New York’s Harvey Milk High School, would be the creation of a positive, hate free environment where students can learn among those who will neither judge them nor bully them. There are concerns about a growing ghettoization among the LGBTIQ community. By not interacting with their fellows, it is reasoned, others cannot learn to accept the sexual and gender identity differences in others, and that it could become a form of segregation. A large number of people in the LGBTIQ community have mixed feelings concerning the creation of schools like the Pride Campus or Harvey Milk HS.

On this subject, we would like to hear your comments regarding the creation of this and other schools directed towards the LGBTIQ community.

One Note, the original article refered to the LGBTQA or lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, questioning, and allied community.

Original article: Edge on the net