A recent study found that as much as three-fourths of the state schools were holding back the most talented and brightest students because they wanted to combat the scourge of “elitism.” These students were not being given more advanced work even though they were not being sufficiently challenged by grade-level material.
Instead of being allowed to progress at their own pace, the students were often asked to simply mentor the other students. The Ofsted study found that the school treated academic gifts as “not a priority” for teaching and that allowing them to work to their full potential would “undermine the school’s efforts to improve the attainment and progress of all other groups of pupils.”
Stephen Hawking, it appears, would have been a threat to the educational mission and told to eat glue with the rest of the kindergarten kids. Shakespeare would be told that he needs to return to those word group “mix and match” exercises and stop composing sonnets on the school computers.
What is interesting is that England has a gifted and talented program for the top five to ten percent, but these schools are choosing to ignore that policy.
With kids in the gifted and talented program in Fairfax, I can say that this view is inimical to the development of such children. These kids can actually do worse over time in standard lessons because they are not challenged and they tend to slip in their skills and interest. More importantly, by holding them back, you are denying them the opportunity to develop to their full potential. It is not more “elitist” in the pejorative sense than selecting the fastest kids for track and field competitions. Children have different skill sets and aptitudes. Finally, while such kids can be viewed as an elite group for their area, it does not make them elitists in the sense of people who believe that they are superior to others.
We have previously discussed the dangers of a “nanny state” with our close cousins in England. This would appear another such example of those dangers.
When talented children are not challenged, they can turn to less productive activities:
For the full story, click here.
I guess I was born at the very nick of the educational changes. I was a challenge for even the best of teachers and was given individualized studies between grades 5 and 6. I finished 2 years of work in less than 4 months. They mainstreamed me after that and just made sure I had enough to keep me busy.
The mind is a terrible thing to waste, let me spell POTATO or is that POTATOE?
England!!!
Don’t make me get my dog beating newspaper out again! Although, really, I don’t have to. This will be a self-correcting problem.
As someone who has had to pretend to be stupid (just to keep from scaring people at work or ruining his chances with the ditzy Bar Chick d’Jour) his entire life?
Good luck with that little bit of repression.
You are asking for trouble in ways you cannot even calculate. Because you’re all too dumb to see it coming. That’s what happens when you let the stupid monkeys run the zoo. And England is increasingly being run by idiots as evidenced by the run of news as of late.
At least our idiots are better criminals than yours.
See you in Hell. You may get there first with path building skill like this though, England.
when I had just turned 16 I was sent away to a private school for kids with behavioral problems(long story I won’t bore you with, instead I’ll bore you with this one). I managed to get my act together and in 9 months collected 14.5 credits toward a high school diploma.
Another 3 months would have given me time to earn the other 3.5 credits and graduate at 16, spend a year in Germany with my dad and come back to the States and go off to college to make something of myself.
Instead I returned to Key West High School where I was informed my Texas credits wouldn’t be honored and I was placed in a sophomore class. I’m not sure who thought it would be wise to place me in classes that were roughly two years behind where I had been but quite naturally, boredom set in and instead of being a genius marine biologist I’m a dropout with an 8th grade education.
life’s funny that way
You can probably tell from my posts that two of the credits I was missing were English credits
There is acceptable elitism and there is the unacceptable.
Selecting students with athletic ability to follow the elite sports track, that is acceptable, letting brainy nerds get ideas above their station is not. After all no nation actually needs scientist or engineers, just idiots who can run or swim very fast or do clever things with balls.
C. Everett,
“Another 3 months would have given me time to earn the other 3.5 credits and graduate at 16, spend a year in Germany with my dad and come back to the States and go off to college to make something of myself.”
famous school drop outs: Richard Branson, Simon Cowell, Henry Ford, Dave Thomas among others.
This is why I now see no problem with destroying the public school system. If we are paying good money why are we allowing institutions to dictate what knowledge our children aquire. Look at your tax bill people, and think of how you could use that money to decide yourself how to give your kid the best start in life.
yankee,
Your logic is like blowing up the planet earth because we have screwed it up so badly. How about teaching the Students the basic care principals about reading, writing, math and logic. Apparently, you did not take the 4th.
I will grant you that public school have there problems and it stems from the basic parental problems such as teaching their own respect and appropriately employing discipline. Most of the classroom time is spent on children that are disruptive.
So maybe if parent do the job that they agreed to when they agreed to make the child/children then sometime could be focused on the main reason they go to school.
FYI, you don’t normally go to the bank to get Baseball scores or the principal for classroom activities? So why would you want to cut taxes at the very basic educational system which has been a model for other country’s to learn from. Unless you are independently wealthy and can afford to send your child based upon your wealth to a private school. Lest I forget, the better school you choose to send your child to may have to have some social standing.
Other country’s do provide education to students, but only if you are gifted in a certain area. So, yankee what was your specialty at age 3 or 4? It may be a good ideal to get your child ready for a trade school as that will be the only way that they can make any money. Oh and by the way, unless you live in the city where the trade school is located your child has to commute or be boarded at the expense of the parent, unless they live with a relative or of the gifted variety.
yankee again, exactly how much do you pay in taxes? Because your cost just went up.
How well does Trickle down work, your feet wet Yellow?
There is a complete misunderstanding of intelligence regarding children and adults. Our and the UK educational system is not based on the best research regarding learning, it is based on class.
Everyone learns differently, has differing abilities and interests. Instead of ignoring this reality, it should be incorporated into our educational system. We also need to dispense with our very shallow ideas about elites and the supposed iron clad connection with intelligence and ability. There may be a connection in some cases, but our society tends to assume an automatic connection and that is where we get into trouble. We also have a narrowly defined understanding of intelligence that would leave out the man in the prior post who has figured out how to reconstruct Stonehenge. He is a “lowly” construction worker and thus would not be given the time of day by many of our “educated elites”.
Chris Hedges has spoken forcefully on why it is that our honored educational elites have brought our country to the brink of disaster. On the other hand, there are people from these same schools who do well by others and are trying very hard to make things right in our nation. Also, there are those of us (like C.E.K. and others) who don’t have any kind of elite degree but show a great deal of intelligence and concern for the wellbeing of others. We seem to desperately need some kind of short cut in assessing other people, but really there isn’t any. Actions are always what matter.
For children, it has been very helpful to all concerned when one child who understands a subject more than another, helps some other child out. Each child has the ability to help another child. When that is allowed in a school, it has been of immense value to all concerned.
As to the Palin discussion on another thread–she like Obama is a manufactured product of the elite. Obama’s brand was designed to fool liberals and progressives into supporting actions which are antithetical to their own ideals. Brand Obama has been extremely successful in the regard, and it worked on those who come from elite educations to those who have a high school education. So to those who think Palin supporters are ignorant and stupid, think about what just happened to many fine, highly educated people when confronted with the propaganda machine surrounding Obama. You would be wrong to assume that those who follow Palin are ignorant and uneducated. Brand Palin is designed to capture conservatives, just as Brand Obama was designed to capture liberals. Branding is sophisticated and powerful. Neither Obama nor Palin represent anything other that the ruling elite, yet many, many people think they represent the working class. Further, Palin came out with strong support for Obama’s peace prize speech. That should clue everyone into the fact that they all play for the same team, the team that will bring down the United States. Things are much more complicated and far more simple than they appear.
I don’t think it’s much better in the USA. Gifted programs are often the first thing cut when budget woes arise. I’m 31 now, and when I was in middle school in Massachusetts I spent four years working as an unpaid Special Education tutor rather than actually learning anything, due to the teachers’ requiring group work for everything.
Paging Harrison Bergeron…
My impression from employing graduates of the Fairfax system is that it mostly functions as a mill for training kids to do well on the SATs, so they graduate with Washingtonian arrogance and a lcak of breadth or citical thinking skills (which makes them really annoying, even compared with private school or Montgy County grads). If you can keep your kids out of that track, you should consider yourself lucky.
Thought you might get a sick kick from this one:
“Supplemental Analysis for
It Takes A Pillage: Behind the Bailouts, Bonuses and Backroom Deals
from Washington to Wall Street” Total on the bailout so far, 14 trillion. This will link to the breakdown of where the money came from and where it went.
Brand Palin=Brand Obama
http://trueslant.com/matttaibbi/2009/12/12/on-obamas-sellout-bailout-tarp-rubin-goldman-sachs-robert-bob-tim-geithner-hamilton-project-derivatives-financial-reform-citibank/#more-1170 (the above information is linked in this article)
As a former teacher, I would say that there was a problem with the “gifted and talented” programs that I saw in my school system. The programs only considered children with “certain” kinds of intelligence as gifted and talented…kinds of intelligence that could be easily measured by reading and/or achievement tests–and sometimes IQ tests. There are lots of extremely talented and gifted kids who don’t fare well on such tests. Many of the T&G programs I saw didn’t include children who were talented in the arts—or gifted with their hands. In addition, some kids who were included among the talented and gifted students one year—were not included in subsequent years…because of their test scores.
I do believe there are exceptional/precocious children and prodigies who probably need special programs. I guess what I saw too often were intelligent children who came from well-educated, well-to-do families included in T&G educational programs. I think some of my other students probably had as much intellectual potential—but didn’t have the same kind of intellectual stimulation as the T&G children had at home.
I loved the students I taught who had a passion for a subject…even if they weren’t designated as “talented and gifted.” Lots of them became self-learners. They got excited about a subject and learned everything they could about it. These children usually got encouragement from their parents too.
Another thing: Some talented and gifted programs just move kids up a grade or two vertically in subjects. There are ways to enrich educational programs and to get kids excited about learning by using a more “horizontal” approach.
I believe the best method for teaching children in the elementary grades is to take a multi-modal/integration of subjects approach. Kids with all kind of talents and gifts can be challenged and succeed with this type of education. I speak from experience. I had to adapt certain projects/assignments for some kids—but it was nice having all my students working on the same kinds of things—and joining in discussions with each other. There were times when my “needy” kids outshone the advanced students. I learned to never underestimate the potential of a child. Sometimes all a kid needs is something to spark his/her interest…someone to give him/her belief in his/her abilities.
My students did some amazing work—even the children who were on special education plans. Teachers must have high expectations for ALL their students. It’s interesting to see what kids can achieve when given the right support and encouragement.
************
KIMJ–
I couldn’t agree with you more about the “group work.” That was the craze when my daughter was in middle school in Massachusetts. My daughter is almost thirty now.
Amen, Elaine!!!
Yep, that’s why you go to school when you’re smart- to teach the other kids for free. I thought child labor was illegal in the UK.
The U.S. has nearly the same thing – de-emphasis on numerical and letter grades so all the Fredo Corleones don’t have to feel stupid for the F they received on the Algebra test.
P.F.
Your thumbnail avatar is distracting because we already have a Buddha here. While visiting, why not turn it OFF.
there is a general ambivalence towards all types of competition. Whether physical or intellectual.
In my opinion it is an effort to achieve equality of outcomes. And it is a denial of reality, someone is always going to be smarter, more athletic, more attractive or taller. You cannot level the playing field by handicapping the talented.
Just thinking about my education is so unpleasant I can’t even write a synopsis. But I did end up making a beeline to a technical high school and ended up making a darn good living therefore and it didn’t impede my self-education. The decline of trade schools (and in many cases the trades for which they provided their students) is a gap in our educational system I mourn.
I’ve been seeing late night commercials on TV for local, private trade schools that are offering classes in specific trades for “…just $10,000″ and I always recall that the same specific trade/craft education was available for free at a couple of high/alternative schools in my area. Magnet schools don’t take up the slack in my area except for one that specializes in the arts.
I agree that Britain will come to rue the day it implemented this policy.
lottakatz–
“The decline of trade schools (and in many cases the trades for which they provided their students) is a gap in our educational system I mourn.”
I agree.
From the Department for Children, Schools and Families (UK)
http://ygt.dcsf.gov.uk/FileLinks/312_new_guidance.pdf
General characteristics of gifted and talented learners
The following characteristics (taken from the 1998
Ofsted review of research by Joan Freeman) are not
necessarily proof of high ability but they may alert
teachers to the need to enquire further into an
individual’s learning patterns and ability levels.
He or she may:
- be a good reader;
- be very articulate or verbally fluent for their age;
- give quick verbal responses (which can appear cheeky);
- have a wide general knowledge;
- learn quickly;
- be interested in topics which one might associate with an older child;
- communicate well with adults – often better than with their peer group;
- have a range of interests, some of which are almost obsessions;
- show unusual and original responses to
problem-solving activities;
- prefer verbal to written activities;
- be logical;
- be self-taught in his/her own interest areas;
- have an ability to work things out in his/her head very quickly;
- have a good memory that s/he can access easily;
- be artistic;
- be musical;
- excel at sport;
- have strong views and opinions;
- have a lively and original imagination/sense of humour;
- be very sensitive and aware;
- focus on his/her own interests rather than on what is being taught;
- be socially adept;
- appear arrogant or socially inept;
- be easily bored by what they perceive as routine tasks;
- show a strong sense of leadership; and/or
- not necessarily appear to be well-behaved or well liked by others.
Yes, we don’t want any elite students spoiling the blancmange of mediocrity, do we?
We don’t want to highlight the fact that some people are brighter than others and/or work harder, do we?
No, the LCD must apply to humans as well as to maths. Forget all that ‘excellence’ stuff so beloved by the Ancient Greeks!
I mean, the world is peopled by easily manipulated ‘sheeple’ already so why rock the boat!
In various nations the ruling classes have different ideas about the purpose of education, especially free public education.
In nations that see themselves as needing to compete with other richer nations the intent behind education policy may be to maximize the potential of human capital. However in others where the interests of the ruling class are focussed on the problem of preventing upward social mobility from the unwashed masses creating unwanted competition for those at the upper levels of society the dominant purpose is to handicap the children of the poor so that they can aspire to at best a life of low wage McJobs or even better prison.
In both the US and Australia the intention of “conservatives” to destroy free public education is very obvious. The previous liberal/national government of Australia went out of its way to subsidize private schooling and to starve the free public systems to the extent that anyone who could afford to send their children to private school is forced to do so lest they condemn them to a bleak low status future. In the US this intention is more obvious and the race based malice against Negroes is a major driver.
There are other problems, the adversary relationship between public school administrations and teacher unions adds a goodly dose of dysfunction to the mix.
Another function that is obvious in American schools is to condition its products as docile citizens of the police state, to get rid of any sense of entitlement to fair treatment by the powers and to extinguish any capacity for critical thinking.
I do not know about Britain, I suspect that misguided egalitarianism may be a major problem rather than class war.
As a baby boomer schooled in the fifties and sixties I was lucky to receive a good free education from competent teachers. Public school children to day are not so lucky, since everyone sees teaching as a low status job for losers incapable of earning more money driving fork lift trucks the only competent ones in the profession should be investigated as probable pedophiles.
With lottakatz I sympathise. I hated every second of my school years. Were I to come into possession of both a time travel machine and and one of those gatling mini-guns as used by the Terminator I would be off to nineteen sixties Katoomba high school to get a little pay back for all the bullying, the insults and the sarcasm.
If allowing children to maximize the potential of their various talents, recruiting the inherent interest of the subject matter to motivate learning were considered important goals then schools have always been a dismal failure, but schools today are much bleaker places than they were in the past. Consider this atrocity story from Radley Balko http://reason.com/blog/2009/12/11/sexting-hysteria-drives-teen-tand from Syliva has a problem http://sylviasproblem.wordpress.com/2009/12/02/what-happened-to-hope-witsell/about a girl bullied into suicide because she was caught sexting. I left several comments on this thread but most failed moderation as evidently my weapons of mass destruction level sarcasm was interpreted as trolling.
Elaine M.
All the things you cite are symptoms of asbergers syndrome. The problems that asbergers “sufferers” have may be that their intelligence intrudes into and sabotages humans normal intrinsic stupidity that dominate human social interaction.
Carlyle–
Although many of the characteristics may be typical of children with Asperger’s Syndrome–not all of them are. For example, kids with Aspberger’s are unlikely to be leaders–and many may not be good at sports. They’re not necessarily sensitive–at least to the feelings of others. That’s what I gathered from my experience as a teacher.
From NIH:
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/001549.htm
People with Asperger have problems with language in a social setting.
• It may be difficult to choose a topic of conversation, their body language may be off, and it may be difficult for them to recognize that the other person has lost interest in the topic.
• They may speak in a monotone, and may not respond to other people’s comments or emotions.
• They may have difficulty understanding sarcasm or humor.
Other symptoms may include:
• Problems with eye contact, facial expressions, body postures, or gestures (nonverbal communication)
• Singled out by other children as “weird” or “strange”
• Difficulty developing relationships with children their own age
• Inability to respond emotionally in normal social interactions
• Not flexible about routines or rituals
• Lack of showing, bringing, or pointing out objects of interest to other people
• Do not express pleasure at other people’s happiness
• Preoccupied with parts of whole objects
• Repetitive behaviors, including repetitive behavior that injures themselves
• Repetitive finger flapping, twisting, or whole body movements
• Unusually intense preoccupation with narrow areas of interest, such as obsession with train schedules, phone books, or collections of objects
Symptoms
By Mayo Clinic staff
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/aspergers-syndrome/DS00551/DSECTION=symptoms
Signs and symptoms of Asperger’s syndrome include:
Engaging in one-sided, long-winded conversations, without noticing if the listener is listening or trying to change the subject
Displaying unusual nonverbal communication, such as lack of eye contact, few facial expressions, or awkward body postures and gestures
Showing an intense obsession with one or two specific, narrow subjects, such as baseball statistics, train schedules, weather or snakes
Appearing not to understand, empathize with or be sensitive to others’ feelings
Having a hard time “reading” other people or understanding humor
Speaking in a voice that is monotonous, rigid or unusually fast
Moving clumsily, with poor coordination
Having an odd posture or a rigid gait
I’d like to say that there are still many intelligent, conscientious, and capable teachers working in classrooms across the country. It’s easy to dump on teachers as being the major problem with our educational system. That isn’t necessarily so. Teachers bear the brunt of the unwise decisions made by some administrators and politicians. Our educational system today is primarily focused on prepping kids for mandated tests. Most of the teachers I worked with fought against this.
Teachers today are expected to be more than educators. Teachers and schools deal with all kinds of societal problems. AY touched on one of them when he said: “I will grant you that public school have there problems and it stems from the basic parental problems such as teaching their own respect and appropriately employing discipline. Most of the classroom time is spent on children that are disruptive.”
I found in my last ten-fifteen years of teaching that I had to spend valuable educational time at the beginning of each school year working with children to help them understand what was appropriate behavior–and what was inappropriate behavior.
I know there are incompetent teachers. My daughter had a number of them during her thirteen years spent in public school. She also had quite a few exceptional teachers who got her hooked on subject matter and excited about learning.
I can tell you teaching isn’t as easy as some people like to think. There were years when I had classes where the age differential between my oldest and youngest students was almost two years. Some students came to me reading below grade level–and some came reading way above grade level. I was expected to meet the educational needs of all my students–to try to ensure that they all progressed..in all subjects. I’m not implying that I didn’t enjoy my work. I did–but it was challenging.
Elaine, I’d echo your comment that: ‘teaching isn’t easy.’
As an ex-teacher myself, there were many moments when I could’ve walked out of the classroom and never come back.
And most teachers have a use-by date and they should leave teaching before they reach it and not allow things like super payouts to lock them into the system.
Cheers.
This has been happening in the US public schools for decades. This explains why AP courses are usually a joke (baby sitting classes for bright kids who cool their heels while the slower or not so bright kids finish getting business done).
Thomas Sowell has written about this. Chester Finn, Diane Ravitch, Phyllis Schlafly, Harold Stevenson, and others have all talked about this sort of thing.
Stevenson wrote a great book called The Learning Gap. It was based on a ten year study comparing US kids to Asian kids. Unlike the US, Asian educators believe in challenging the students at the highest levels of their abilities. They don’t “dumb down” the curricula because of the slower or less smarter kids. Those kids are required to spend more time studying to keep up.
The Asian model is based on the theory that all kids, unless they have mental retardation, etc., can achieve a high level of education, but some have to work harder at it.
In our system, we pace the school day to the slowest children while the bright (and generally obedient) students get bored. They are then put into AP courses at the high school level or are kept busy doing nonsense like picking up litter and feeding the homeless, or whatever penance they must do because they are bright.
Carlyle Moulton
You wrote:
“In both the US and Australia the intention of “conservatives” to destroy free public education is very obvious.”
Obvious to whom? The uniformed? It was only the conservatives who offered any meaningful reform in US public school education over the past 30 years. They led the way in that effort and it had nothing to do with abolishing the public schools or providing vouchers, but had everything to do with reforming the public institution most of them attended as children.
It was only after liberal belligerence, arrogance, stupidity, and intransigence that conservatives began to entertain a solution beyond the public schools.
It was liberals who promoted the absolute failures and frauds perpetrated on American children, such as Whole Language, New Math, and New New Math. Conservatives fought against these ruinous frauds until they could not longer stand it. The results are especially tragic since most criminals in federal prison are functionally illiterate, but only after having attended liberal controlled public schools well past the age when they should have learned to read. Too many of them GRADUATED and received a diploma unable to read only because liberals made it so.
It wasn’t until liberals became unmovable in their destructive tendencies, that conservatives ever began to entertain the notion of abandoning the schools for the sake of the children.
It was leftists like John Dewey and the Progressives who have assaulted the public school system, not the conservatives.
Early on in the last century, Progressives passed on their destructive ways to the liberals who then insured that the academic requirements for teachers colleges were gutted. It is liberals who made sure that when teachers graduate from college they are among the least educated graduates. It is liberals who select rotten curricula, and it is liberals who keep blacks in their place by denying them better textbooks or vouchers.
Conservatives tried desperately to prevent this!
As far as “free” goes there is nothing “free” about American education. First, someone pays for it (the tax payer). Second, a “free” people do not compel children by law to attend school. That is something communists do. It is enslavement to the state and a very evil thing.
You wrote
“The previous liberal/national government of Australia went out of its way to subsidize private schooling and to starve the free public systems to the extent that anyone who could afford to send their children to private school is forced to do so lest they condemn them to a bleak low status future. In the US this intention is more obvious and the race based malice against Negroes is a major driver.”
Geeze, you are just making stuff up.
Tootie.
Obvious to whom? Well obvious to me for one. But then I am one of those contemptible liberals.
One of the most common human fallacies is the single cause fallacy. This says that anything defined as a problem must have one and only one cause. One gets a situation in which one group of people says the cause is A and we must implement a solution based on this while another group shout loudly “NO the cause is B and we must implement a solution based on this”. Then both groups engage in a tug of war each group trying as much to prevent any changes based on the other side’s hypothesis as to implement one based on their own. In fact it may be that both A and B contribute to the problem as well as C, D, E….. that neither group realizes to be causes.
One tug of war is between authoritarians (they call themselves conservatives) and liberals. The former advocate that schools be in the traditional model with a curriculum based on readin, ritin, rithmatic and flogging. The liberals on the other hand want to eliminate ever telling the poor little children that they got the answer wrong in case it does permanent damage to their fragile self esteem but they want to make education less rigidly structured and authoritarian so that students are motivated by the intrinsic interest of their subjects and are allowed to proceed at a pace appropriate to their talents and abilities.
Actually a system based purely on the authoritarian model or purely on the liberal model would work to some extent. However when the system is being constantly changed as first one side and then the other gets dominance in the tug of war achieves nothing.
Authoritarian schooling works for children with some personality types but fails for others who become alienated and oppositional.
I would say that I am one of those for whom it did not work. I hated every second of my school years, the dominate effect of schooling was that I left the education system with a hatred of everything taught there music, dancing, Shakespeare, poetry and this hatred is only slowly wearing off. I was lucky that science fiction was not on the curriculum back then as if it were I would hate it as much as I hate Shakespeare and be illiterate. When I should have been doing my homework I was reading SF and was ashamed of doing so, I considered it to be trash. I did not notice until later that many science fiction writers are good as writers of the English language and as conveyors of thought provoking ideas. But I never touch traditional literature, I had it crammed down my throat in high school and I would never read it now as a matter of principle. I imagine myself saying to my former teachers, “you forced this crap on me when you had the power to do so but now I am free of you and to spite you I will never touch it again”. I did not discover that learning things could actually be fun until at the age of 40 years I started studying mandarin after marrying a girl from China.
The fact is that the things taught at school are intrinsically both useful and interesting, but schools working properly manage to conceal this from their students and then after making it as boring as possible force it on them. Schools fail to recruit the intrinsic usefulness and interest as the strong motivating factors that they can be.
I am not gong to answer all your points in this post, but will answer the matter of vouchers. Vouchers would be a great idea if the covered the full cost of sending children of poor parents to a decent functional private school but the do not. They are coupons redeemable at a school to pay part of the tuition, but poor parents can not use them as they cannot afford to bridge the gap between the limit of the voucher and the full cost of tuition. Parent who are not desperately poor however can use them, so a program ostensibly aimed to help the desperately poor in fact subsidizes the middle class to flee from public schools and their minority population. I suggest you peruse the archives of investigative journalist Greg Palast’s site using this search.
http://www.google.com/search?q=No+child+left+behind&sitesearch=gregpalast.com
Tootie.
“Belligerence, arrogance, stupidity, and intransigence” seems to me to be an great description of those who call themselves conservatives.
There is a problem with public school teachers unions both in the US and Australia. Sometimes employers get the unions they deserve and unions get the bosses they deserve. The truth is that the interests of employers and employees are partly in conflict and partly aligned, but sometimes the relationship between them deteriorates to the extent that all emphasis is on preventing the other guy from winning. That has happened in teaching.
Both the US and Australia are countries when income is a major component of one’s perception of one’s entitlement to respect and in both countries the pay of teachers has slipped relative to other professions between the nineteen sixties and the present day. In Australia fork lift drivers get more pay, because they have strong unions who can bargain for wages whereas when teachers go on strike, who cares. Low pay equals low status.
When I went to school many competent people taught there, people who could have succeeded in any profession since teaching bonded scholarships paid their way through university but some time in the seventies university became accessible regardless of means and people who would have gone towards teaching as the only option could try for law or pharmacy or something else high paying and high status and the subsidy to public schooling as bright children of the working class were channeled into it ended. In both countries their is a strong level of contempt for those who persist in teaching represented by this quote, “those who can do, those who can’t teach and those who can’t teach teach others how to teach”. It is one of those caring sharng feminised professions with low pay.
Now days teachers know that both the children and the children’s parents know that they are losers who can only be teaching because they do not think they can get anything better. If there are any competent teachers left, they should be suspected of pedophilia because no one who could do better would remain in a profession where they get neither money nor respect. The war between teachers’ unions and public school administration is the result of a critical crisis in teaching morale. Most of the disputes are not actually about what the participants say they are about. It is a chicken or egg question. If you only pay peanuts you will only get monkeys, but if only monkeys apply how can you justify paying them more than peanuts.
Enough for now I will continue later, maybe tomorrow maybe not. I have to do my northern hemisphere winter solstice festival shopping.
lottakatz:
“But I did end up making a beeline to a technical high school and ended up making a darn good living therefore and it didn’t impede my self-education.”
Truer words were never spoken, had I become a welder rather than an engineer I would, with not a doubt in my mind, be a wealthy man today.
The average plumber today probably makes 6 figures and a machinist probably makes more than most lawyers do. And a person that has 6-12 plumbers or HVAC techs working for him is probably making high 6 figures or maybe even 7 figures.
Now days a college education is usually nothing more than training to become someones bitch.
Elaine M:
“I’d like to say that there are still many intelligent, conscientious, and capable teachers working in classrooms across the country.”
I second that statement, my wife is one and there are many others just like her. She does it because she loves to teach. She is very smart and could have done pretty much anything she wanted.
I think Mr. CM doesn’t know where of he speaks. But then as my wife says, those that are not in the teaching profession seem to think they know better than the teachers.
Well, apparently it is in your best interests to demonize the people who are NOT destroying the public schools in America by attributing to them the characteristic of the people who are.
Fine, have at it, your intellectual inconsistency follows after you, not me.
How interesting it is that you refer to government workers (teachers) as if they were victims of evil conservative businessmen (employers) who had to defend themselves by forming unions. Put any spin on it you like.
It sounds like you think someone forced those poor teachers to become educators, then those evil “conservative” “employer” businessmen just kept cheating their “employees” out of pay! I guess you need to spin that too.
Our education system is run–top to bottom–by mostly liberals/leftists: from pre-school, to the PhD level, from boards of education which run the public schools locally, to accreditation organizations which drive the curricula of the colleges (including the teachers’ colleges), and admissions committees at all the Ivy League schools, and so on and so forth.
We spend more per capita among developed nations than most, yet our results are not so good, we are near the bottom. It isn’t about the money.
If there is a problem in education it can ONLY be because leftists are running the show. Bone-headed denial of this FACT is WHY conservatives have called for vouchers. It was done out of sheer frustration at the stupidity of those who refuse to consult the evidence about what does or does not work in education.
I you need my permission to base all your erroneous assumptions or conclusion on all the fictions you need to invent in order to demonize those who are not the cause of the problems, you have it. But you will protect those who are causing them and making yourself look bad.
Teacher pay is just another bone-headed complaint by the left which is without merit or evidence. Apparently leftist/liberal educators do not feel obligated to prove the stupid statements they continually make. They never have to prove their theories work.
As Professor Harold Stevenson (who wrote The Learning Gap, a small book summarizing his ten year study of schools in Asian nations and America) shows teacher pay is not the problem. Curricula is the likely culprit, as is the lack of coordination amongst teachers inside the classroom (Stevenson discovered that).
Also, the failure to expect more of children is a big problem which I already mentioned. And this dumbed-down expectation is SOLELY a left-wing phenomenon (don’t hurt Johnny’s feelings by making him struggle with hard lessons, blah, blah, blah, blah).
A study done in Boston (I think), monitored by Johns Hopkins, if I remember correctly, indicates that teacher pay is not the issue either. Inner city kids were given the same curricula from a famous private correspondence school (Calvert) to see if that would help. It did!
Nothing changed in the lives of the children or the teachers BUT the curricula and better student achievement. The curricula is critical. And it is the left/liberals/and democrats who have gutted the curricula in the USA, NOT THE CONSERVATIVES!
The absurdity of blaming any of this on conservatives is based on stunning ignorance. You are simply out of your league!
Another bone-headed notion perpetrated by stupid leftists who don’t feel they have to prove their claims is the notion that smaller class size benefits academic achievement. There is no evidence of that. At most it is a corollary based on the well known fact that private school kids in America do better in smaller classes. But public school kids sitting in HUGE classes in Asia do better than that!
Being the poorly educated people they are (not all, of course), educators jumped to the conclusion that class size was the problem, when it wasn’t. Billions and billions were spent, schools were built, tax payers fleeced, and money (always follow it!) flowed into and through the hands of idiotic leftists for their hair-brained schemes that perpetrated onto generations of American children intellectual darkness, thus leaving them with a mind that only a leftist could waste.
Conservatives opposed them at every step!
If things have gotten a little better in American education it is only because of conservatives and PARENTS who insisted on “readin’, ritin’, and rithmatic’”.
And we cannot really judge student achievement so well since the corrupted data leftists are fond of keeping, when they do decide to get of their lazy backsides and collect it has been rigged. Leftists/liberals are desperately trying to abolish testing altogether so they don’t have to held accountable for their fraudulent schemes.
For example, recently, within the last 5 years, I think, the SAT scores were rigged to make it look like SAT scores have not dropped that much over time.
This dishonesty, so well loved by the left, seems to have worked since there is little complaint about how poorly today’s kids measure up on the SAT test in comparison to kids in past. This new cheat by the left works like this. A test score of 1200 today, is what was once a test score of 1100 ten years ago.
THAT is how liberals and leftists improve academic achievement in America.
Conservatives opposed the rigging of the SAT test scores too.
CM,
A good friend has a son with AS. I assure you, his intelligence in some areas is not the primary factor in his difficulty forming relationships. He simply can’t sometimes. While a lot of human interaction is irrational as you point out, not all of it is. Emotions have a certain fuzzy logic. He is sometimes simply incapable of making those logics reconcile and internalizing his actions/reactions. His brain misses little things ours pick up subconsciously if nothing else: pitch changes in voice and some expressions just don’t register sometimes. In fact, in his case, it makes it doubly awkward because as a math/science prodigy he sometimes can see he’s missing something in a transaction but is still unable to do anything about it. That leads to frustration. Very often he cannot put his finger on what he is missing either. It doesn’t register. We were all concerned about his recent entry into high school, but thankfully, it has all gone as well as possible. But you misunderstand the nature of AS if you think miscommunication is solely a function of increased intelligence. It’s an actual “blind spot” people have to learn to work around.
“If there is a problem in education it can ONLY be because leftists are running the show.”
Purported Christians who believe Jesus was about Conservative philosophy/policy = hypocrites who lack the ability to understand that which they consider holy writ and/or consumed with their own sense of selfish greed.
Tootie:
My wife and I talk about that all the time and from what she says you are wrong.
Most teachers remain neutral and here in Fairfax County our children, for the most part are getting a good education. They also have a GT program and an IB program which is very good (my son went through that program so I know from first hand knowledge).
My son did have a couple of liberal teachers but he usually tore them a knew one so he is no worse the wear and probably a little better off. If you only get the conservative or liberal side you are not seeing the entire picture. And quite frankly I think both sides have good points and bad points.
I doubt Elaine M. told her students how to think and I know my wife doesn’t. Do some teachers, you betcha, but I think most try and keep their opinions to themselves.
You have been reading too much Dobson as in Focus on the Family. I say “focus on your own damn family” and leave mine alone. Busy bodies are busy bodies whether from the left or the right.
Byron–
You’re correct–I didn’t. I think children should be presented with all sides of a story. How else will they learn to think for themselves instead of becoming dittoheads? I didn’t want any teachers–whether they were conservative or liberal– indoctrinating my daughter with their ideologies.
It’s funny the way we throw conservative/liberal labels around. I find I have a liberal/progressive perspective on most issues–but a conservative perspective on some others.
Elaine M:
I don’t want someone ever telling me I cant read something or associate with someone or I cant have a drink or eat fast foods.
Some liberals and the religious right want to shove their views right up my a . . ., I say live and let live or laissez faire (let it be).
I don’t think people like Tootie understand that they are no better than the Marxists they profess to hate. Subjugation is subjugation it matters not which side of the aisle it comes from.
Tootie.
I will say one more thing before discontinuing the conversation with you. You are a conservative and nothing that I say is going to change your mind any more than will anything you say change mine. Communication between us is not possible because although we both speak English your English and mine are different languages.
The one more thing (for the benefit of those who might understand rather than for Tootie) is about whole language. I agree there is a problem here but it is not with the use of whole language but with its over use. Rote learning of phonics rules is boring and if children don’t need it subjecting it is wasteful. However it does not work for all children and these need explicit instruction in the rules to convert from spelling to sound and from sound to spelling.
Some languages are phonetic and the same character (or combination of characters) always stands for the same sound. Apparently Finnish is like this and it is easy to learn. English however is a mess, it is only about 60% phonetic. Some children thrown into the deep end of the reading pool will have no problem. Perhaps they have large memory capacities and remember both the sound and spelling of each word individually or perhaps they unconsciously deduce the rules of English phonetics. I think this must be my case, I can’t remember whether I was taught phonics but I have sometimes thought of attempting to write an essay on this subject but whenever I think about it I feel daunted by the size of the task. After considering just a few of the things that would need to go into the essay.
In English the same sound may be represented by different spellings, eg “There” and “their”, the one spelling may represent different sounds eg “bow” and “row”. Letters are sometimes silent like “k” in “knock” and “b” in “lamb”. Obviously I understand the rules of English phonetics because I am doing the conversion all the time, somewhere in my brain are neural networks that represent the rules but I have difficulty in explicitly recalling these rules. Obviously some children are failed by whole word, perhaps they develop false ideas about the rules and fail to modify these internal rules despite proof that they are not working. Possible false beliefs are that the same letter always has the same sound or that a letter always stands for a sound. One might imagine a child who persists in trying to pronounce “th” as “t” followed by “h” or one ho thinks “c” sounds as in “cat” and therefore pronounces “ceiling” as “keiling”.
Maybe part of the problem is lack of a quality control system. there are tests but nothing is done to fix the problem when a particular child is found to be struggling. If a test shows a child lacks necessary knowledge which is required for understanding of concepts to come it would seem logical for the teacher to give remedial attention to that child, but my experience is that this is not normally done. It is the responsibility of the child to recognize the gaps and fill them in and if he won’t or can’t then tough gorgonzola.
I remember being in this situation with maths in early high school and was lucky that a teacher, the head master in fact, took time to tutor me in the gaps in my knowledge, but this was definitely not normally done. i have read or heard somewhere that schools in Taiwan are careful to monitor each student and give remedial attention where necessary. In anglo countries this is not done.
I suspect that some of the controversy over whole word is the result of both sides retreating in to their ideological bunkers and refusing on principle to acknowledge that the other is at least partly right. Conservatives are right in pointing out that whole word on its own without monitoring students and giving remedial attention to the laggards does not work for a proportion of children. However proponents of whole word see conservatives as opposed to the whole concept (which of course they are) and therefore resist giving any ground. Liberals on the other hand are correct in saying that whole word being thrown in the deep end of the reading pool works for most and gets the reading quickly to reap the motivational rewards of acquiring the power to make ink on paper come alive while bypassing the study of rigid rules.
Buddah, Elaine.
I used to suspect that I may have had aspbergers as I did not develop any facility with social interaction until well into my thirties. After reading your comments I must conclude that I did not have it at all. Maybe living amongst fools gave me such contempt for humanity that it turned me off wanting to socialize.
Mike.
What has Jesus got do do with Christianity?
Byron.
In relation to your post aimed at Elaine M.
I suppose that it is theoretically possible for some teachers to find enough rewards in seeing positive results of their work, despite low pay and the contempt with which they are viewed, but what happens if one of them suffers a period of clinical depression? I think that knowledge of that contempt would threaten a downward spiral into demoralization. Also I suspect you are talking about teachers in a good public school in a genteel area where students arrive at the school door with many skills and much knowledge that poor students attending under resourced schools situated in drug war ghettos lack.
Schools in the US are financed from local taxes, not from state or federal taxes, so poor schools get less money, but start with poor quality raw material and are hampered by the social dysfunction that their pupils bring in the door. Students in these schools need much more resources invested in each of them to overcome these deficits. Teachers in these schools are likely to acquire a feeling off incompetence as they see so little improvement from their efforts. I recommend some episodes of the HBO TV series “The Wire” to illuminate the problems, I am not sure which series. There were stories set in a ghetto school where teachers tried to deal with the alienation of troublesome students who were headed to a future of street corner drug dealing and then prison by generating a special local curriculum that was based on recognizing the fact that these students came from an environment different from that of the genteel students from the white flight suburbs. The program was tested for just long enough to show results but then canceled on orders from above because of the need for teachers to spend more time teaching to the no child left behind tests. It’s fiction but I suspect fiction based on knowledge of reality.
Mike.
I used to think that I was an economic rationalist but I must admit that like you I am an evil liberal, pinko, lefty, latte sipping chardonnay swilling member of the chattering classes who think all members of species homo sapiens sapiens are entitled to human rights, even towl headed terrorist camel jockeys who did not actually do any terror but are rightfully Guantanamoed into solitary confinement.
off topic sort of.
*It is said that engineers take 2 minutes to resolve this, architects 3
hours and doctors 6 hours, Supervisors/Managers 10 hours.*
It took me a little over the 2 minutes. I throw down the guantlet to the lawyers are you faster than a doctor? My wife a teacher did it in about 30 seconds.
Which is the 6th number?
1, 2, 6, 42, 1806, ___???
Byron,
About 20 seconds to figure out the pattern, a little longer for the math. Music theory is all about patterns.
Gyges.
326442 but I did not time myself but it was less than 2 mins. I am a retired computer systems programmer
Byron.
I mixed up to whom I was replying, the previous post was addressed to you.
CM:
I am aware of that, but the problem is that a good many of these inner city children are smart as hell. And they are not being well served by the public school system. I don’t know what the reason is, low tax dollars, not serious about school, a dysfunctional family, drug abuse, one parent home, etc. But these things also happen in “genteel” neighborhoods.
There was a case in DC maybe 15 years ago about a guy that had a huge drug organization, millions of dollars in revenues and it ran like a clock. He could have run IBM for Christ sake as talented as he was. He set this up before he was 30 maybe even 25. I would call that more than gifted and talented. It was misguided but what a loss to society and to himself (he is in jail).
I agree with Tootie in regards to money, we used to educate people for far less than we do today. Not being in the educational system I could only hazard a guess at the reasons. Some of it is probably higher overhead costs (management levels).
Gyges:
What kind of thinking would you call that?
I vote “wishful”.
CM/Gyges:
out done by computer nerds, I am hanging my head in shame.
Buddha:
what is wishful?
Thinking that educational costs were less in the past compared to today’s dollars adjusted for inflation and taking into account that illiteracy and not going to school used to be the norm for Americans, not going to college. More students . . . with less teachers. And less resources per capita. That’s the reality of teaching today. Some teachers have to pay for supplies out of their own pocket. Not because they want to. Because they have to. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t have the tools they need to do their job. Tools their employer the state is supposed to provide by the way. And they don’t have this because the money for education is being spent on other things that politicians really care about. Like shit with their name on it.
And the pressures of school are not what they were when you or I were kids. Not even close. A bad day at my high school meant someone got the shit kicked out of them. A bad day at high school today can mean body bags. And don’t say inner city drug users unless you want me to club you about the head and shoulders with Columbine.
School is more costly and dangerous and less and less effective at actually teaching. It’s also no accident that when new facilities are built in this country that our schools look more like prisons than schools. Because they are being designed by the same people who design prisons. That way there will be less revolution when martial law in thrown down. The kiddies will be trained to follow blindly, not think for themselves. They’ll be used to being warehoused. Creating a critical thinker, especially in a student not blessed with a proclivity for raw logic, is an expensive proposition. It’s also one that pays off for society in the long run in the form of better workers, scientists, and artisans. Where as not educating your populace? Well, that just leads to slavery and violence.
Cost is a specious argument in education and the wrong metric in isolation. Efficacy in creating critical thinkers is the ultimate metric of education. And if we spent 1/20 of our defense budget on education, we wouldn’t need to fight wars. Our kids would be so smart we could beat down other countries with telepathy if not beat them economically.
Buddah.
Many dittos to what you justsaid.
Buddha:
“And don’t say inner city drug users unless you want me to club you about the head and shoulders with Columbine.”
But these things also happen in “genteel” neighborhoods.
I did not and would not as evidenced by the sentence above.
My wife is a teacher and we have paid for supplies out of our family budget so I understand that point.
“And they don’t have this because the money for education is being spent on other things that politicians really care about. Like shit with their name on it.”
no arguments there.
BIL–
I’d like someone to do a study to find out how much money is being spent annually for all the mandated tests that children are now required to take. I’d like to know which companies are reaping the rewards of this testing mania that is overtaking our educational system.
We’ve got some smart kids here in Massachusetts who have found and reported mistakes in the MCAS tests that they have taken. It makes one wonder who’s writing the tests.
Byron.
What surprises me is that most school massacres are by alienated right wing white students. This surprises me as I would think that black children have far more reasons to want revenge on their schools, their teachers and fellow students.
Perhaps they are prevented by historical memory of the lynching era and know that any massacre by some of them would be followed by a much greater one with the forces of law and order participating.
Elaine M.
Follow the link to search that I included in my previous reply to Tootie. It searches Greg Palast’s archives for all references to no child left behind. It is a scam. He is quite scathing about it.
Greg Palast http://www.gregpalast.com/ broadcasts on the BBC and writes in the Guardian. His site does nt get updated that often, I recommend visiting monthly. His books “Armed Madhouse” for example http://www.gregpalast.com/store/?id=10 are very well worth buying.
Byron,
I’ve always called it pattern recognition. Great survival skill for early man. It’s also part of why we’re hardwired to make up superstitions and see crosses on cow’s foreheads.
On the music end of things, trained musicians actually process music with the language parts of their brains versus the auditory parts that non-musicians use. As an interesting side note Sonata Allegro form (the first movement of symphonies) is actually a musical parallel to the classic essay form.
Byron.
The public school system does not serve any of its students well. There are many reasons for the dysfunction. Only by attending to all of the reasons would significant improvement be achieved. Attend only to one or two of the causes and the other umpteen will mean that little improvement appears.
Single cause theory means that vested interests scream about their own pet cause while doing everything possible to prevent others doing anything for another cause when their ideology vetoes that. Conservatives like tootie see with razor sharp clarity every fault that they can blame on leftists or liberals and they are right about some but no all. Likewise leftists can see with razor sharp clarity every fault that they can blame on conservatives and they are right about some but not all. Buy there are other causes to which bothe lefties and righties are blind. Here is my partial list.
1/ Schools are supported by local government level taxes, not state or federal. This means that the poorest areas have the least resourced schools. I am aware that “throwing money at the problem may not be the solution”, but if the people who say this require that the schools that their children attend are resourced with more money per student how can they argue that the ghetto schools must do with much less.
2/ Ghetto schools suffer problems because of the socioeconomic conditions in the areas in which they exist. Students come to school hungry because their parents can’t afford food or spend what they have on drugs instead. If they do eat they are fed junk so all the problems caused by additives in junk food are maximized. Students from the ghetto lack prior knowledge of things that children of the respectable classes know which are needed to support later learning. If no remedial training is done to remedy this it will struggle later.
3/ These schools exist in a war zone, students have to run the gauntlet of drug gang shoot outs on the way to and from school. Students fear violence at school. Chronic fear and anxiety are not conducive to learning.
4/ Many students are alienated and spend most of their efforts on insurrection. Not only to they kill any hope of themselves benefiting from school but the disruption they cause sabotages the education of those capable and prepared to learn.
5/ Because control of incipient violence is a priority, a much greater level of authoritarianism is required than in schools in respectable areas. Some students are sheeple and will knuckle down to mindless fascism but many will become more oppositional.
6/ Teachers are to various extent demoralized as they do not get the same feeling of reward by seeing visible improvements related to their efforts.
7/ The curriculum has become too crowded. Because so much more is known now than was known or example in the nineteenth century, there is a compulsion to teach a little bit about everything instead of teaching a limited selection in depth. Maybe teaching chemistry or physics in depth is better than teaching a little bit about every specialty in a shallow manner.
8/ There are too many essential facts which schools are expected to drill into their students. Schools can never succeed in this. It is better to teach students how to learn on their own and rely on their ability to acquire much of this essential knowledge themselves.
9/ Too many resources are used up in teaching to the test for no child left behind. The kind of things that children learn in order for their school to pass these tests are not useful to them in the long term.
10/ Industrial hostility between teachers and their employers.
11/ Too little rigor in the teaching of subjects because of fear of overloading the little dears brains and damaging their self esteem.
Carlyle:
I am fully aware that not all English language words, which include much Greek and French, are subject to phonetic rules. That is the very reason why it was ridiculous for American liberals to have tossed phonics overboard. Without phonics, ALL words have to be Sight and Say rote memorization, which is really what whole language is about.
Phonics reduces the number of words needing to be memorize and it allows for further expansion of phonetically deciphered words by the child during independent reading as she grows and encounters more complex materials.
It is not that phonics is perfect; it is that it is imperfectly ESSENTIAL for good reading skills in English (which is the only language I was referring to).
In one of your posts you said that conservatives are authoritarian, unlike you–a liberal. I’m sure we don’t agree on this. Perhaps you confuse foreign conservatives with American conservatives, the two are not the same. A conservative Saudi King is not the same as a conservative American president. One is conserving a bad thing, the other is not.
I think people make a huge philosophical mistake when they fail to recognize that the terms liberal and conservative have a context based on the form of government being discussed. And depending on the context, liberal or conservative yields different results.
For example, if I was a Chinese citizen, I would want my government to be liberal. That is because the Chinese form of government is bad. There is little if anything good to conserve.
Likewise, if I’m an American (I am) I want its form of government conserved because it is good. So, depending on the form of government, I could be either liberal or conservative POLITICALLY. Personally, most of us are both liberal and conservative. Politically, we resemble one or the other.
Edmund Burke is a hero of mine. He too was a conservative, but talked about a liberality of mind, and more importantly–the heart. For Burke (and me too) a liberal attitude (in its classical meaning) is a virtue. But that is not what American liberalism is about. American liberalism is about hedonism, nihilism, promiscuity, and theft. All of it leading towards brutal totalitarianism. It is not the liberalism Burke deeply admired.
In America, conservatives are limited government proponents. And in our system you cannot get to authoritarianism from conservatism, the road doesn’t lead there. This is because power is strictly limited to specified powers which the 50 states LOAN to the national government and are revocable. If the powers are strictly limited and your philosophy is to conserve those powers, you cannot become authoritarian unless you abandon conserving.
It is the totalitarians in America (liberals) who insist on compulsory government education in America. It is liberals who persecute and even agitate to imprison parents who home school their children. Barack Obama is a perfect example of the leftist liberal totalitarianism that would force little children into government schools at even younger ages.
It is liberals who harass and put roadblocks in the way of parents who wish to home school their children. If liberals were anything but narrow minded, they wouldn’t stand in the way of home school parents.
Merry Christmas, Pot. Have you seen kettle around or do you have her wrapped in black cloth so you don’t have to see her body?
Liberals cannot be totalitarian by definition, Trollie. Unlike fascists and theocrats who are totalitarians by definition and operation. As if your new, woman hating, Muslim bigoted, hate baiting divisive nonsense incarnation is supposed to be a paragon of liberty? Mr. “Muslims shouldn’t be allowed to immigrate”. Mr. “Women Should Be Locked In the Closet to Keep Me From Exercising Self Control”. And I say Mr because I believe your a woman like Cheney is a war hero. That or you are one of the most self-loathing women to ever draw breath.
Is that you under different names on NYC thread spreading that anti-Semitic garbage on the NYC thread? I’m just sayin’ . . . that’s about your speed too, Mr. 700 Club.
You are truly a loathsome little creature. A loathsome creature seeking to not just impose your beliefs on others, but your blind unreasoned hatreds too. Considering you’d use force to spread your views, that’d make your lot the totalitarians.
Just another play from the Neocon playbook – accuse your enemy of your crimes. Too bad the entire world has seen the traitors you back in all their totalitarian, fascist, aggressor, expansionist, PNAC induced venal blood thirsty scumbags drive America off a cliff – all in the name of their checkbooks.
You raise your children to be morons if you want. I don’t give a damn if you home school them or not, just to be clear. It frees up resources for kids who might stand a chance at learning something practical. You know, like the kid who will eventually cure cancer after learning enough science. But I suppose to your mind the world needs more meddlesome, incurious, unintelligent shit disturbers who can be easily marginalized because that either 1) can’t read or 2) are incapable of understanding the words (much like yourself) and 3) have an evangelical zeal for spreading their ignorance. Actual learning is hard. It’s work. But being spoon fed a diet of “You’re God’s Special People” is easy as it requires no critical thought, only ego and blind slavish obedience to some nitwits manipulation of an ancient text into a control mechanism. That’s why fundamentalism of any stripe works – it appeals to fear, hatred, ego and intellectual sloth.
So you raise your children to be intellectually inferior prey. See how well that works out for you in the long run. Stupid is a strategy with a different payout than intelligence for a society. But make no mistake. Just because you raise ‘em to be hateful, intolerant, ignorant close minded fools doesn’t mean others will or should tolerate ‘em. So please, Neocons, home school your children. It’ll make it easier for the more educated to take over. And you can’t have that, can you? Mr. Anti-intellectualism.
Keep raising more sheeple to slaughter in your God’s name. After all, smart people don’t fight wars for other people’s greed. It’s hard to get a youngster to march of to their death for Big Oil Profits if they are capable of questioning your “authority”, isn’t it?
for the record, I never even talked about white or black kids shooting up the classroom.
Most shootings, if I remember correctly, were done by kids on psychoactive drugs for depression and ADD. And I think all were white, although there might have been an Indian from a tribe in MI, WI or MN.
Carlyle:
I cant say that I disagree with your assesment. All very valid points. Those are neither conservative nor liberal problems, just problems.
What is your solution?
Tootie.
I have been puzzled by the policy battle over phonics for some time, it is raging in Australia as well as over your way. I am a literate person and translate between spellings and sounds and the reverse all the time as I read blog posts and write my own. I am puzzled how I do it. The only things I can remember about the infants school where I learned to read and write is my toes aching in winter from the cold. I cannot remember how I was taught to read and write, whether I learned a set of complicated rules and a small list of words that are exceptions, a smaller list of rules and a larger list of exceptional words, or a very simple set of rules and was required to commit a large list of exceptions to memory.
Obviously I have the ability to do sound/spelling translations in either direction but I am puzzled how I do it. It happens automatically as it were below the levels of consciousness.
Obviously teaching by phonics works for all children taught by it but it involves a certain amount of tedium and tedium leads to boredom that is demotivating. However the human brain is a very powerful machine for extracting patterns from disorder. Presented with a sufficient number of examples the human brain builds up neural networks that represent patterns. If the examples are sound spelling pairs the neural net represents the rules of English phonics. This means that most children thrown in to the deep end of the reading/writing pool and told to sink or swim find that they can swim. However this does not work for all children and taught by whole word alone these children flounder. One can speculate on what goes wrong, perhaps their brains prematurely extract a rules which works for some initial data but fail to recognise that later data does not fit and that the rules must must be discarded . Such false induction persist and lead to persistent mistakes and failure to recognize that the mistakes are in fact mistakes. If teachers fail to recognize that whole word is not working for some students and either give them remedial teaching using phonics or at least sufficient extra attention to help them over the rough patches in their whole word experience. I suspect that the rate of failure for whole word may be greater for children from deprived minoriities. Mindless ideological attachment to whole word as the universal answer risks doing great damage to the children of the poor. It seems to me that in the anglosphere, schools lack a quality control feedback system. They put the onus of remedying any gaps in knowledge shown by the tests on the individual students. I believe that in Taiwan the teachers have a responsibility to monitor the progress of each student and to remedy any lagging.
It seems to me that most people take their opinions on multiple issues which should in principle be independent of each other come from a limited number of prepackaged sets. If you know that someone is against land rights for gay whales one can predict that they will support the death penalty. If someone supports rights of indigenous peoples there is high probability they will also support gay marriage. I do not think I am one of these people. I have followed with interest certain conservative commentators all of whose opinions do not come from the conservative packaged set. They on some issues seem to agree with liberals. Then there is the issue of whether a person is a conservative simply because they self identify that way or for that matter that someone who claims to be a liberal is in fact a liberal and then are liberal and conservative the only positions in the ideology spectrum. More than this I will not say, you and I are never going to agree unless we agree to disagree. It is my bed time and I have not slept for a while since I have spent a sleepless night dreaming up angry troll posts for some other blogs.
Carlyle:
for what it is worth I can remember how I learned to read. I was probably around 4 or 5 (pre kindergarten) and one of my aunts came to visit, she was a teacher. I had a Huey, Luey and Dewey comic book and I forced her to read it to me, only God knows how many times, telling her to point out the words as she went. By the end of her visit I could read and was reading kids books by the time I entered kindergarten.
Would you call that whole word? My grandmother taught me phonics in a manner of speaking, I use it to this day to deduce the pronunciation of words I haven’t seen and it works pretty well although I never had a formalized phonics course.
Words are nothing but sounds that are used to represent concepts. Quite fascinating actually, how did we come to call a sphere a ball?
Byron and CM,
I too learned to read phonically before entering kindergarten. Mom’s doing. If I ever have kids, they will too.
Byron–
You most likely learned the words in that comic book by sight. Back in the day, that was called the look/say method. Some children learn to read best by sight; some by phonics. Most kids benefit from an eclectic approach. You can’t sound out lots of words–you have to learn them by sight. Phonics can help kids unlock many words by teaching them phonemes, word families, rhyming words, etc. No one way is the best way for all children to learn how to read. Reading books and poetry aloud to children is also important–as well as having lots of books/reading material in the home and in the classroom. I believe in introducing children to all the tools in the reading toolbox.
“I believe in introducing children to all the tools in the reading toolbox.”
Word.
In all seriousness? I have only one “side effect” that I think is related to phonics. I am a multiple offender when it comes to homophone abuse in first drafts. All writers have some bad habits, that’d be one of mine. But Elaine is right on, not just about reading, but all subjects. Give the kids all the tools to not only learn effectively, but to help them find ways they like to learn. Because when the process itself brings you joy, it becomes a habit for it’s own sake. People like to be happy. I may be unhappy about some of what I have learned on this planet, but I have never been unhappy about being able to learn.
Maximize happiness. Teach your children well.
Carlyle!!!
LOL —> “It is my bed time and I have not slept for a while since I have spent a sleepless night dreaming up angry troll posts for some other blogs.”
Sleep peacefully, then, and awake refreshed.
Your last post was very interesting. Did Whole Language start in Australia or New Zealand? I cannot remember.
It is curious that you do not remember learning how to read or when you learned to process words as you now do. I have heard that the Whole Language method is terrible for some children who are overstimulated by visual images. I heard that Whole Language often bombards the child (and her mind) with too many shapes, colors, and visual clutter.
It is almost as if there is too much for the brain to handle– over-stimulation. Whereas black and white letters and their sounds might be better received by such children, with a few scattered pictures thrown in for interest. I really don’t know if there is truth to this. I just recall having read a little something about it.
I wonder how far back any of your memories go? I remember two events from my childhood going back to age 3. Both were frightening events so I guess that may explain why I recall them. But I do remember learning to read in the first grade (about 7 or 8 years old). We had the now very famous Dick and Jane* books and we often sat in circles reading aloud.
Anyway, you are on to something mentioning Taiwan. Teachers in Harold Stevenson’s study (Taipei was one of the cities) always did follow up with the slower students. Children carry a spiral notepad in their book bags that goes to and from school each day. The teacher writes notes to the parent about the student and the student takes it home to the parent. The parents are able to monitor everything and those children who are not catching on so well are required to come earlier or stay later until they do.
The parents cooperate with this. No one is upset or angry with the child or the teachers and everyone exudes confidence that the child will catch on given enough time. The Asian school children in the study were as happy as American school children despite the extra requirements put on the slower student.
Stevenson relates an interesting story about the Asian classroom which, he thinks, underscores one problem in US schools. He tells the story about a class where the students must each go to the chalkboard and draw a very good geometric cube. One student had trouble getting it right. The student was given extra time at the board until he got it right, drawing, erasing, and redrawing it over and over again. No one thought this might embarrass the student and no one made fun of the slower student. The teacher insisted the student work at it until there was improvement and everyone in the class praised these improvements. The student who had the problem was proud of his own improvement witnessed by all including himself.
Stevenson said that that wasn’t likely to be done in American schools. Teachers fear to humiliate the slower student, and feared that the other students would laugh at the slow student. Thereby the needs of the slower student cannot as easily be met in real-time during regular school hours. Stevenson thought this should change.
Also, they have a team teaching situation in their large classrooms. This allows for better collaboration out of the classroom (they have strategy meetings each day) and for one teacher to help with the slower kids while the other moves the class forward. Classroom discipline was managed by the students! One student each week or so (I forget) was responsible for making sure things didn’t get too loud, etc. This worked well, because if you were bad to another student monitor, soon you would be student monitor and well, turn around is fair play.
Anyway, I loved Stevenson’s book so very much, and I could go on and on about it. But I must tell one more thing–it is one of my most favorite of the observations he made. And perhaps it is a most favorite of mine because it explains so many difficulties I had in school. Stevenson and crew observed (and I cannot remember which city school did this) that Assian children are taught HOW to organize their school desks and keep them that way.
They receive specific lessons on where to place each item, how to take items out, and how to put them back without messing up their desks or misplacing things. When I think of the virtual junk yards our school desks became (especially by the end of the year) I really have to laugh. I honestly think that being left-handed made things even more complicated for me (especially with the scissors!).
I guess the US researchers were impressed with this method of teaching students how to organize their little desk environments. Not only were students taught early on to be neat but it saved a huge amount of time that in US schools would be wasted while every last student hunted down a pencil or eraser (if ever!).
Stevenson talked about this kind of “housekeeping” and time wasted. It is another big difference between the Asian schools and the US.
Have a great day.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_and_Jane
For someone like me who throughout my public school years was a bad discipline problem (fighting and disrespect of teachers) and inveterately lazy about studying, listening in class, taking notes and homework, final tests and standardized tests were a Godsend. I could naturally read and comprehend about twice as well as a normal student. Typically, I would go into a final test pulling a D average, cram all night, finally reading the entire textbook and get somewhere in the 80′s or 90′s on the final, raising my final grade to a gentlemen’s C.
In NYS, where they had standardized Regents Tests, that offerred a ten year history of previous tests in review books, my Regent’s scores soared into the 90′s, while spending the school year doing virtually no work except for antagonizing my teachers and fighting with bullies. I graduated low in the bottom quarter of my High School Class, but got accepted to a good University via high SAT’s and won a full tuition scholarship thru another standardized test.
Aced my Law Boards in my middle 20′s and was accepted to Law School based on that and the ability to interview well. While I no longer fought or sassed teachers, my study habits in Law School were no different than High School, or College for that matter. Trouble was you really do have to do the work regularly in Law School and for the first time in my life I flunked out. Greatest lesson I ever learned. In work and in academia I started giving a hundred percent effort and finally succeeded.
No Child Left Behind is a blessing for people with my particular skills and a curse for most students. Children’s learning must be nurtured and good habits must be taught. In America where the financial and ethnic disparity between students plays crucial roles our school system is a sick joke, set up to benefit those who are already born into the elite. G.W. Bush being a Yale and Harvard grad proves it and his educational policies were a cruel joke played on the American people, with the full support of the no-nothing Christian Fundamentalists out to further dumb down their membership, the privileged plutocracy maintaining their status quo and the low tax fools who don’t give a damn for their or others children. Family Values people seem curiously unattentive when it comes to quuality education, but hyper-vigilant in attempted book burning.
Mike Spindell:
You just couldn’t help yourself, could you? You had a nice post until the end when you just had to attack Christian fundamentalists like a Tourretes Syndrome patient shouting out potty words, picking his nose, and farting at a luncheon.
What the heck do fundamentalist people have to do with the mess democrats have made of the US public schools? Christian fundamentalists are abandoning the public schools, not burning books. Christian Fundamentalists started the schools in America being so dedicated to knowledge and enlightenment. It is the heathens and pagans who currently run them who running our schools into the ground. It is the heathen and pagan teachers who are feeding LIES and junk science about global warming to kids in school.
Christian fundamentalists are putting their kids into private schools or home schooling them so that their kids can, on average, score about 30 points HIGHER on national achievement tests than kids attending public schools run or supported by fascist jerks who lie about Christians being book burners.
Whipping academic arse those Fundies are.
Dream on, Tootles.
As a technical employer, I’ve found home schooled Christian fundamentalists unemployable.
1) They lack the proper scientific and analytical skills for the work,
2) are often disruptive of work with their preaching and
3) are more likely to cause serious HR issues by either discriminatory or bigoted actions based on “their beliefs” than more traditional Christians. The last fundie that worked for me got fired for telling a customer they were going to Hell and calling a co-worker a whore because he didn’t like the way she dressed (a – not appropriate under any circumstance, b – the dress code is not his call or the call of his retarded misunderstanding of an ancient text as I’m the boss).
And make no mistake there is NOTHING “traditional” or Christ-like in the way you zealots often act, Tootles. That’s why people with actual free will usually give your Bible-thumping “Do as I say not as I do” hypocritical and retrograde message the finger. Jesus said love your enemies. Your lot clearly loves no one but your damn selves, Mr. We’re The Chosen. Jesus was about everyone. Your lot is all about “me me me”. Nice going on totally missing Christ’s point by the way.
You are socially maladapted when reared this way: raised in a cocoon of falsehoods and bigotry – taught not only a substandard set of knowledge by people without the expertise to teach it but to think they are somehow not only better than everyone else and that it’s their duty to be pushy assholes about it.
Just what I look for in an employee.
Enjoy that increased global competition!
Buddha:
I know some homeschoolers and they do do pretty well academically. But then I live in Fairfax, VA which has a very high percentage of people with advanced degrees. So either parent would be able to home school.
I shudder to think what homeschoolers get taught in Pig Stop Junction, AR or Bumpass, LA.
Byron,
Shudder a lot. I know a couple of home schooled exceptions – and to a one they strike me as the kind of person what would excel solely as a matter of innate intelligence. Self-teaching self-starters as it were. But 99% of the home schooled I’ve run in to are most certainly more to the end of the PSJ-Bumpass quality scale.
Buddha:
I understand how that works. It’s like how my experience with you leads me to believe everyone else who posts comments at blogs and has beliefs similar to you are mean and vicious.
Mike,
When I was growing up I was taught the value of hard work on many levels but it started with school. I was never allowed to “play” unless my school work was done and if my grades weren’t good my punishment usually meant spending my free time doing manual labor. Once I got into high school these habits were second nature.
My point is that my father made my education his responsibility. I think that many of the problems described in this thread result more from the lack of responsibility on the part of parents, rather than problems with the system.
chris–
“My point is that my father made my education his responsibility. I think that many of the problems described in this thread result more from the lack of responsibility on the part of parents, rather than problems with the system.”
Thanks. What you said means more if it doesn’t come from a teacher like me.
I think there a quite a lot of parents in the US who expect the schools to be responsible for nearly every aspect of their children’s education once their kids enter kindergarten. Parents are their children’s first teachers–but their responsibilty for helping with their education shouldn’t stop when their children start school.
Elaine M., et al,
The problem stems from lack of a responsible party raising and/or having the most influence over a childs early years. I say this as I stayed home with a child for the first year and by the time for the second one we had sufficient funds hire a full time nanny.
We thought that all was going well the eldest was good at arts and the second one by the time she could speak knew where every fast food joint in town was and what stores sold the best slurpees.
The eldest child would rather eat at Subway or Arbys than McDonalds or any of the other fast food chains.
The eldest was no problem at school and the second one detested the same. I know children have different make ups and the early rearing does not always stick. Especially when you raise independent children, young girls to wit.
Elaine,
This is a take off on your comment, not a contradiction of it.
I have noticed that many parents don’t seem to understand how to take care of their child(ren). I’m not certain what is going on here but I have some ideas. I notice that children are put in front of the TV and computer very early on. I see their toys are substitutes for human interaction. The toys “talk” instead of having the child and parent read together. “Musical” toys aren’t small instruments but again, things which the child presses instead of uses to make music. The whole idea of genuine creative play has almost vanished. I see parents with cell phones glued to their ears while they are with their children. I watch all of this with dismay because I don’t see these people as trying to be bad parents, yet I would have to say the substitution of electronics for human interaction is a really bad choice.
“You just couldn’t help yourself, could you? You had a nice post until the end when you just had to attack Christian fundamentalists like a Tourretes Syndrome patient shouting out potty words, picking his nose, and farting at a luncheon.”
Tootie,
It was my way of bringing guys like you out of the closet and I don’t care whether you think my post was nice or not. Christian Fundamentalists have in the last 30 years been working on the destruction of the basic freedoms of this country and have played a major role in dumbing down education.
1. By supporting candidates based solely on their alleged adherance to Christian principles, while overlooking the fact that these same people legitimized greed as the absolute value of American life.
2. By taking over local schoolboards and working towards the removal of textbooks with which they don’t agree, primarilly those in science and history.
3. By allowing con artists like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell to become billionaires by convincing the faithful the Jesus was a Republican.
4. By supporting illegal, unjust wars and torture, while sending the less wealthy of their own young men to die.
5. By electing racist legislators.
6. By believing in the tenets of a secondary role for women and supporting misogyny.
The sad, silly fact of it is that Christian Fundamentalists are no better than Muslim Fundamentalists, Jewsih Fundamentalists and/or Hindu fundamentalists. Fundamentalist religious belief is a cancer on humanity. The worst part of it is that all of these fundamentalists are influenced by sociopathic religious leaders who preach the opposite of what their original prophets believed.
They all use God’s name in vain for earthly power and in doing so have helped to cause much of human strife.
Notice tootie I didn’t say religious belief was bad, just the people who shape it into something their prophets would not recognize. Do you think that “The Golden Rule” and “Turn the other cheek” are consistent with Christian Fundamentalists? I could do the same with other faiths and show the inconsistencies but why bother. If you yourself as a Christian don’t have the sense of reading your bible and making up your own mind as to what it means, then you yourself are doing Jesus a misservice.
“I think that many of the problems described in this thread result more from the lack of responsibility on the part of parents, rather than problems with the system.”
Chris,
Some of what you say is true. My parents, while they loved me and wished the best for me did not oversee my schoolwork as my wife and I did with our children. In their defense my father was a 9th Grade dropout and my mother had heart attacks, strokes and suffered from being clinically depressed, so homelife was rather disrupted and I was left on my own.
While good parenting with school can help children the system is still messed up. I believe that is so because schools are set up like factories and because of that don’t take into account that children learn at their own pace. The school systems in america and most of the world prize conformity, over intellectual curiousity and due to that too many children with potential get left far behind.
Mike S:
“…just had to attack Christian fundamentalists like a Tourretes Syndrome patient shouting out potty words,…”
**********
Tootie inadvertently raises an interesting point, to wit, do Christian Fundamentalists share the same compulsion to say irrational things like some of those poor souls suffering from Tourette’s? An example from Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson following 9-11, two notorious, in-insufferable “fundies”:
JERRY FALWELL: And, I know that I’ll hear from them for this. But, throwing God out successfully with the help of the federal court system, throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools. The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way — all of them who have tried to secularize America — I point the finger in their face and say “you helped this happen.”
PAT ROBERTSON: Well, I totally concur, and the problem is we have adopted that agenda at the highest levels of our government. And so we’re responsible as a free society for what the top people do. And, the top people, of course, is the court system..
JERRY FALWELL: Pat, did you notice yesterday the ACLU and all the Christ-haters, People For the American Way, NOW, etc. were totally disregarded by the Democrats and the Republicans in both houses of Congress as they went out on the steps and called out on to God in prayer and sang “God Bless America” and said “let the ACLU be hanged”. In other words, when the nation is on its knees, the only normal and natural and spiritual thing to do is what we ought to be doing all the time – calling upon God. ~~~
PAT ROBERTSON: Amen
Mespo,
In my amusement I failed to note that Tootie had also shown further ignorance by invoking Tourette’s Syndrome. Only a small percentage of those with this syndrome shout curse words. The majority have tics, or make involuntary sounds. Those that shout curse words suffer from what I believe, remember I retired some time ago, is called Copralallia. I’ve treated a few people with Tourette’s, not for the syndrome per se but the stigma that goes with it and I know that these responses are totally involuntary leaving the sufferer blameless.
Now in the case of Falwell and Robertson, their verbal productions were done with malice aforethought, mainly to stir up their base and keep the cash rolling in. They deserve blame and opprobrium and censure. I gues that in Tooties case that translates into adoration and donation. Can others judge us by those we admire? I believe they can.
Tootie:
“I understand how that works. It’s like how my experience with you leads me to believe everyone else who posts comments at blogs and has beliefs similar to you are mean and vicious.”
So someone that disagrees with you is vicious but you can come in and call everyone baby killers and destroyers of American society, etc., etc. and that is not vicious? Why because you think God is on your side? Sounds like someone is not thinking quite right.
I think you need some real works in logic, may I suggest that heathen Aristotle for starters.
Buddha,
Look at Byron, our little conservative’s getting so grown up.
Byron, Buddha, and any other beer drinkers,
I suggest that if you can get your hands on a bottle of Traquiar’s House Ale you do so. Especially since I believe the two of you appreciate beers on the Maltier side of things.
Gyges:
My wife bought a bottle of Sierra Nevada Wet Hoppe Ale. It was good but man was it hoppey.
You could really taste the hoppes, they did a good job with that beer if you like hoppes. That was about all you tasted. I dont know why they even bothered with the malt. Just throw in some sugar and some hoppes and yeast.
Mike S.
You said: “While good parenting with school can help children the system is still messed up. I believe that is so because schools are set up like factories and because of that don’t take into account that children learn at their own pace. The school systems in america and most of the world prize conformity, over intellectual curiousity and due to that too many children with potential get left far behind.”
That criticizes all schools with a broad stroke. You don’t have to go from state to state to witness different types of schools that take different approaches to education–you can go from community to community in a state and find huge disparities. There are countless schools that are not set up like factories.
There have been plenty of schools in the US that have provided American kids with a quality education–and have viewed children as individuals and not little automatons who should spend their valuable classtime prepping for mandated tests. Unfortunately, with the new mindset in this country to have test-driven education, I think we may be seeing the demise of such schools.
I know of exceptional students who have been routed to “special ed” programs, ostensibly for the purposes of securing additional funding for the school/s.
Mike Spindell:
There is nothing wrong with anyone preferring a certain type of candidate and your opposition to Christians doing that is just sours grapes or worse (likely worse). And anyone calling themselves a Christian, but is a racist, isn’t a Christian. And anyone who thinks all Fundies are racists is just as bad as a racist.
Fundamentalist churches are generally the most open and friendly churches in America because the bible teaches that Jesus Christ died for ALL, and all happens to include people of color. Racism in America stems from slavery. Many Christians kept a pattern of racism born of slavery in their customs for too long, like Bob Jones University. But, they learned the error of their ways and I say that is wonderful.
Jerry Falwell said a lot of stupid things, like we all do, but there is nothing about this issue and the destruction of American education that has to do with fundamentalist Christians since the left owns the schools and has owned them for decades.
And I don’t find anything awful about the comments Falwell made (which you posted), but there is probably one misspoken phrase. He said “let them be hanged”. I imagine Falwell didn’t want to say, let them be damned (which is the colloquial phrase he was likely reaching for). He would probably not say that because it was something the bible forbids. I would disagree with him if he actually wanted them hanged for homosexuality. On the other hand, even the leftist Camile Paglia has outed democrats their their hypocrisy on abortion, she says they should just come out and admit it is murder. If it is murder, then, what Falwell and Robertson implied about “hanging” anyone (if that is what they implied) isn’t far from what most nations consider justice for mass murderers.
I will openly admit that many Christians like Falwell (including our own Pilgrims) do greatly err by insisting on Old Testament punishments in some things: like homosexuality. Christians get in trouble when they insist on Old Testament justice. Old Testament law was meant for the Jews and the nation of Israel.
That is not to say that Old Testament law is unjust or that some of it isn’t applicable or transferable to the modern state. Punishment for murder, rape, and kidnapping are as much recognized among Christians as they are among non-Christians, and the Christian viewpoint of it is solidly Old Testament.
Regarding the schools, Christians have a legitimate claim based on their having founded them here. Christians are only trying to maintain what was once their territory since Christians (including Catholics) were the main force for establishing education early in our history.
Contemporary Christians attempted to maintain this religious tradition and custom in the schools which once had allowed bibles and praying. They didn’t try to maintain this because of some overt intention on their part to violate the Constitution. It is leftists who portray it as such and continue to demonize them for it. Christians were carrying forward what had always been: a Christian influence in American schools. This is what civilizations do. They carry things forward. Of course, some thing have to be left behind because they are no longer viable.
It was only after the fascist state seized the school systems and wholesale took them over, that a hysteria on the left about the traditional customs stemming from the original Christian influence became a problem. To hear the leftist heathens tell it, it was the other way around. They stupidly act as if the government started education in America and those evil Christians have continually tried to violate the separation of church and state ever since.
Leftists do this because they are either ignorant of the history and development of American education, or they know the history are just plain hateful.
Princeton, Yale, Harvard, Columbia, and many more very old and distinguished (cough) schools were all started by Christians as devout as Jerry Falwell (but certainly smarter than him). Most were in fact devoted to the very cause of Jesus Christ and said so in the founding statements, some of which were chiseled in stone.
I know this embarrasses many of the heathens, atheists, and haters on the left.
Now, I admit that Fundies haven’t handled their opposition very well and they should just give it up now since the fascist leftists have seized the school systems Christians laid the foundations for centuries ago apprehending that they would be run by the people.
That war is lost and they need to move on.
Nevertheless, parents of any or all stripes still have every right to have textbooks eliminated from the public schools which are offensive (in their judgment) for any reason whatsoever. To help stop Christians from doing this, the left demonizes them. They, continually lie and spread the myth that Christians are opposed to science. We have only to look at recent events with the global warming hoax to know that it is not Christians who oppose science or truth.
Many of the greatest scientists in history were devout Christians (Mendel, Boyle, John Dalton, George Washington Carver, Charles Babbage, John Bartram, Descartes, Faraday, John Fleming, James Joule and many more). These are among the greatest ever.
There are many Christians throughout the sciences today. There is no conflict whatsoever between being a Christian and supporting science except in the mind of those who hate Christians and lie that there is.
You appear to think that only Fundies shouldn’t have the right to say what books should be in our schools and everyone else should. It is fascistic to think only government officials should have that power. That is what the communists think as well.
If it not government officials, then it is the people. But in your mind it is the people minus the ones you don’t like.
The only person, if any, that you drew out and exposed, was yourself.
Byron:
You misunderstand, Buddha was vicious and disagreeable. You are nice and disagreeable.
See the difference?
anon nurse:
How true. Also, have you heard the latest? Now almost all our kids have autism.
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
and etcetera.
Byron,
Sierra Nevada is in (or near, I forget exactly where it is, and sick kid has sucked away my extra energy for research) the primary hop growing region of the U.S. with water that chemically favors hoppy beers. There’s a very distinct West Coast beer making style, and it’s basically: take your average beer, add half again as much hops. That being said, Sierra Nevada does a better job of giving enough malt backing then some (couSTONEgh). For the absolute best balanced super-hopped beer you can find, get a bottle of Dogfishhead’s 120 Min. IPA. It’s an (fairly expensive) revelation.
Mike Spindell:
Sorry, Mespo posted the quotes from Falwell, not you.
Mespo:
You said:
“Tootie inadvertently raises an interesting point, to wit, do Christian Fundamentalists share the same compulsion to say irrational things like some of those poor souls suffering from Tourette’s?…”
Ah, I don’t think your theory will work. Falwell’s and Robertson’s field of study is the human condition, ergo they commented on it according to their understanding of what that is. They had professional (spiritual) standing, so-to-speak, even though you don’t like what they said. Theirs wasn’t a knee-jerk response, as was Mike’s.
Mike is not an educator (that I know of) or a researcher who can confirm to us that Christians are the ones responsible for the crummy public schools. On the other hand we can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that leftists are responsible for the mess because they run the schools at virtually every level imaginable with few exceptions.
So his comments were likely knee-jerk in nature as I indicated but took to a higher level because it seems to be almost pathological.
Falwell and Robertson at least had SOME justification for their statements even if you don’t like that justification.
No offense to the Tourettes folks, they cannot help it.
Byron:
You said that it was vicious of me to call everyone baby killers? Get out! I wouldn’t call EVERYONE baby killers, just all democrats.
If it is bad to call those who deny life to others vicious, then call me vicious,
PLEASEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
But that is not why I called Buddha vicious.
Tootie,
I’ll bite, let’s see some facts backing up your claims. Let’s start with this one:
“It was only after the fascist state seized the school systems and wholesale took them over, that a hysteria on the left about the traditional customs stemming from the original Christian influence became a problem. To hear the leftist heathens tell it, it was the other way around. They stupidly act as if the government started education in America and those evil Christians have continually tried to violate the separation of church and state ever since.”
To give you as selection of what I consider facts, I’ll give you a few interesting tidbits I learned from a quick Wiki search” “A 1647 Massachusetts mandated that every town of 50 or more families support an elementary school and every town of 100 or more families support a grammar school” Sure sounds like way back in 1647 the “fascist state seized the school systems.” Oh and in case you wear simply referring to the history of public schools in the U.S, the Land Ordinance of 1785 set aside a part of every township in the U.S. for public schools. Those crazy fascist Founding Fathers. Sixty or so odd years later, Land Grant colleges were established. The Mann reforms (1837 saw his appointment to the Board Education of Massachusetts) were in part based on the idea “that such education should be paid for, controlled, and sustained by an interested public.”
Now you might wonder what my point is. The point is simple, for the majority of the existence of the U.S. as an independent country, schools have been at least partially controlled by the government. Hell, it even looks as though the Government did help to start education in this country.
Of course what do I know about history?
“vicious and disagreeable”
Since I’m dealing with a Jesus Nazi bigoted troll, that’s exactly what I was shooting for. Glad you noticed. I can play very nice. Your lot doesn’t get that ride. To be clear: that side is the side of irrational hatred and divisiveness. I’m as nice as people let me be. Sometimes I’m either nice or not nice just to prove a point.
Except when it comes to propaganda trolls.
I’m going to screw with your lot simply because 1) any time I puncture your bullshit and keep you from winning a convert to the hatred side, that’s a win and 2) you’re jackasses supporting the agenda of corporatism which would qualify you as “evil puppets”. I have no issue making you lot look as vile as possible. If I hurt a few feelings along the way? So what. Are those bad bad words going to get you? Awwww. Be glad they aren’t broken bones. Pick up your word games if you’re tired of getting your asses kicked around here. Most of you don’t understand propaganda well enough to use it seamlessly. Some of you trolls are much better educated than you let one. You’re just not very good at what you do and quite frankly the resident troll killers here are all way out of your league. To that point: you still haven’t addressed the fundamental flaw underpinning your bigotry rationale.
Care to blather any more of your nonsensical hatred, Toolie, or do you want to address the fact that you’re an anti-Semite working for a Jew?
Really. I want to hear this one. I want to see if you can tie your logic in pretzel knots and TRY to address that basic hypocrisy of your bigoted positions.
Gonna pass on defending the hole in your logic large enough to drive an aircraft carrier through? Can’t say I blame you, Twaddles. Arguing from a position of hypocrisy, lies and hatred is going to meet the same fate of all arguments of that nature. They get dismantled and their hateful speakers have their facades shredded into unusable caricatures of their vile intent. We’ll gladly keep revealing your true nature: hateful little spoiled children.
See. Because unlike you Neocon zealots who want everyone dead who doesn’t tow their “Jesus is an American Fascist Capitalist” line, my goal isn’t your outright destruction. No. The shape of victory for this liberal isn’t concentration camps for you theocrats. No. The shape of my victory as that all you Robertson/Tilton/Hinn types get greeted in public with the same approbation a Minstrel Show would earn in Watts. I just want to make sure every time your hateful little tribe opens their vile mouths about how “we’re special and all you are going to Hell” that they are laughed out of any given room. From the Quiky Mart to the White House. This goes for Neocons fascists as well as the Insane Religious Right. That’s right. I used the word “insane”. Because that’s what turning a teaching of peace and love into a rational for hatred and killing is . . . it IS insane. Fundies are all brain damaged or they are ex-Fundies. Not a lot of middle ground there. Lots of people look to positively influence their life with the teachings of Jesus. Sometimes they get off on the wrong foot. But only the insane ones think Jesus wants death and global destruction so he can pull off his “disappearing believers” trick. Jesus didn’t write Revelations and would have thought it antithetical to his teachings. This very argument waged for weeks at the Council of Nicea. Revelations is a basis for a death cult and has NOTHING to do with the rest of the Bible – other than it’s purposeful introduction to the finalized New Testament by people who wanted a Fear stick to beat followers into submission and making them capable of being manipulated into doing things amoral or unethical to the Church leader’s Earthly benefit. And doing in “God’s Name” too. The non-insane realize that God is Love, He doesn’t need a building or your money, and that anyone saying “Jews need to die” or “Screw those niggers” or “Let’s go roll some fags” or “women should be pregnant and seen, not heard and it’s not rape if the man liked it” or “we are special saved people and the rest of you are vermin are on your own by default” and calling yourself a “Christian”?
All rational people realize that’s insane too.
That would be really entertaining if it weren’t so pathetic. Entertaining in that train wreck sort of way. Every time you try to force your beliefs on others, I want the ones you are attacking to ridicule you until you are neutralized and marginalized. Sputtering and angry that your attempts at brainwashing has failed. I want them to taunt you until you cry like a baby. I want people to think of fundamentalists of ANY stripe as something lower on the sanity scale than Tom Cruise or the Crazy Old Cat Lady from The Simpsons. Someone to be taunted and pointed at as a primitive: “Hey everybody! Look at the Neanderthal! So easy even a caveman can screw it up!” Every time you have the arrogance to say something bigoted, stupid and hatefully confrontational to someone who is simply minding their own business? I want everyone not blinded by your Pastor Polyester to just point and laugh so hard that you clowns hatred will be drowned out by the sounds of people’s laughter at morons.
Laughter is the best medicine for hatred. But simply stomping it out works too.
The history of this country in the mid-twentieth century is not very well understood. And for many of those whose history studies did not extend beyond high school, which is most of us, it is essentially a mystery. I don’t recall ever getting beyond World War I before the semester ended. If I hadn’t gone to college, I would probably believe that the League of Nations exists somewhere.
I note the foregoing because the explanation I have read on this thread for the development of private schools by Christian fundamentalists is wrong. They were not a reaction to John Dewey, or government fascists or liberal values, although in the beginning some of those terms were used euphemistically. While Catholic parochial schools have been a fixture in American life for more than a century, the genesis of Christian fundamentalist schools was the delayed but inevitable implementation of the decision in Brown v. Board of Education. The formation of conservative Christian schools was purely and simply a reaction to the integration of the public schools. All of the alternative explanations are claptrap.
During the most intense years of the civil rights movement, the only active religious figures, aside from the pastors of traditionally black churches, were Catholic religious and clergy from mainline Protestant denominations. People like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson stood mute, quietly preaching to their segregated congregations and completely avoiding the social debates of the day. After the passage of voting rights acts and other civil rights legislation, southern politicians, primarily Democrats, continued to resist in a number of ways, eventually leaving the party by the tens of thousands and becoming Republicans. It was during this period of time that we witnessed the formation of the first “private Christian academies.” As they have continued to grow, they have benefited by a resurgence of fundamentalism around the country. With the growth in the number of fundamentalists, Mr. Falwell, Mr. Robertson and others came out of the shadows and marched into public life. Politicians, eager to pander to desired constituencies, responded with programs such as “faith-based intiatives,” another euphemism, as a means of funneling public tax dollars into sectarian institutions.
When I started first grade in a public school in 1951, we did not pray or read the Bible. We pledged allegiance to the flag and to one nation, but not under God. That was a later addition. We learned to read using phonics. There was no outrage over the teaching of evolution and there were no demands for the inclusion of “creation science,” yet another euphemism for a very specific and narrow religious viewpoint that has neither sound science nor sound theology behind it. There were no demands that schools pull books from shelves. There were no committees formed to enable uneducated fanatics to edit textbooks and censor curricula.
In short, the history of the development of fundamentalist Christian schools is not long and not complicated. Bob Jones University is still a racist and anti-Catholic institution, so let’s lighten up on the revisionism, shall we?
Sierra Nevada is brewed in Chico CA.
Chris,
Thanks.
“Mike Spindell:
There is nothing wrong with anyone preferring a certain type of candidate and your opposition to Christians doing that is just sours grapes or worse (likely worse). And anyone calling themselves a Christian, but is a racist, isn’t a Christian. And anyone who thinks all Fundies are racists is just as bad as a racist.”
Ah Tootie,
My point which was quite clear was not that religious people are entitled to political viewpoints, but that religious leaders like Falwell and Robertson teaching that being Christian means being Republican is wrong. It’s wrong because:
1. It misinterprets Jesus and the Gospels.
2. It is an abuse of their tax exempt status.
3. It is an abuse of their pastoral relationship.
4. It is part of the scams that have made them wealthy men.
Also, Mike A. above gives a good retelling of the reasons for the founding of fundamentalist Christian Schools in reaction to desegregation. This shows the basic relationship between fundamentalism and racism.
Finally you comment about liberals controlling America’s sschool system is untrue. All of the school systems in the South and in the mid west Bible Belt were and are controlled by political conservatives. You write alot and make a lot of charges but you are simply ignorant of the history or the facts.
Mike:
You weren’t clear at all about Falwell and the GOP, except in the last post when you clearly said what you meant to say.
I don’t ever recall Falwell saying that a Christian had to be republican, but I am convinced that a Christian cannot be a democrat.
I’m neither.
I have no problem with people starting up private schools when the government violates citizen’s Constitutional rights by forcing them to send their children to schools parents have not chosen.
How is it justice to force any child white or black to attend a school parents have not chosen? It is as unjust to force a child to stay in an all black school you do not choose as it is to force a child to stay in an all white school you do not choose. Or to force a child to a mixed race school you do not choose.
My point is that parents ought to have the right to send their kids to whatever schools they wish.
That is, in a free country.
The Christians figured that out.
Byron:
Sorry about this late response to you and your wife concerning propagandizing children in the government schools.
It is done through the textbooks, not through teachers standing on soapboxes during school hours.
Mike Appleton
I don’t know if you were referring to me, but I never said Christian Fundamentalist schools were a response to Dewey and you cannot prove I did. This is exactly what I said in the seventh paragraph from the bottom:
“It was leftists like John Dewey and the Progressives who have assaulted the public school system, not the conservatives.”
http://jonathanturley.org/2009/12/13/english-schools-hold-back-talented-students-to-fight-elitism/#comment-97676
And no where in that entire post I wrote do I mention the term Christian Fundamentalist. You just made up that part.
The subject of my post was who was destroying the academic achievement in the government schools. The conclusion I submitted was that it was leftists, not rightists (or Fundies!) who were destroying academic achievement.
And the reason the right is virtually abandoning the fight to reform academics in education is because leftists were unwilling to do so. That is why former Education Secretary Bill Bennett, after much effort, wound up famously calling the government school system the blob. You cannot grab a blob and form it into something useful. It just slimes everything it touches and is impossible to handle.
Oh yeah, Bill is catholic.
No one has led the fight longer or harder to reform the government schools more than Phyllis Schlafly.
Oh yeah, Phyllis is catholic.
Neither are “fundies” and both are among the people I was referring to as “conservatives” or those on the right.
Gynes:
You wrote at
http://jonathanturley.org/2009/12/13/english-schools-hold-back-talented-students-to-fight-elitism/#comment-98469
“To give you as selection of what I consider facts, I’ll give you a few interesting tidbits I learned from a quick Wiki search” “A 1647 Massachusetts mandated that every town of 50 or more families support an elementary school and every town of 100 or more families support a grammar school” Sure sounds like way back in 1647 the “fascist state seized the school systems.”
Yes. I know that already.
Of course, what you refer to happened before the Constitution was written and I’m basing my comments, mainly, on the Federal government seizing the public schools (mostly through law and regulation and not funding)especially since the 1960s.
That still doesn’t discount the fact that those state schools (without federal influence or money) were run promoting Christianity. Children prayed. The bible was read. The Christian worldview was taught. Yes, it was a protestant worldview. That culture is what I refer to; it was there from the beginning. And it became customary and traditional.
That is what modern Christians, including Catholics, were fighting to preserve: the Christian culture within the schools. And that culture was never much in question until recently. The prayers and bible reading that the left objected to prove my point that it was customary and traditional. It was customary and traditional because the people who established the schools (and yes even those before the Constitution was written) made them that way.
It is that culture that the left is eliminating from the schools. And how it is doing that? Through the Federal courts. The christian influence came into the schools locally and is being extracted federally.
I believe that the states and local governments do have the right to operate schools but people should be able to opt out of them and not have to pay taxes for them.
About the first “federal” act to speak of regarding schools was a land grant by the Continental Congress. Obviously that too predated our Constitution.
I have previously had no quarrel with state and local funding of schools, but I am absolutely opposed to it now as long as there are compulsory laws forcing children to attend school.
I’ve decided to oppose enslavement to the state, not only of adults, but children.
Mike Appleton, Tootie.
I think some of us now classify catholics as fundamentalists along with the southern protestant loons. The hierarchy of the catholic church has regressed towards greater bloody minded authoritarianism under the current pope and the previous one.
Perhaps the term “woman hating fetus fetishists” could be used to include both fundies and catholics.
“I believe that the states and local governments do have the right to operate schools but people should be able to opt out of them and not have to pay taxes for them.”
***************
“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of
civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”
–Thomas Jefferson to Charles Yancey, 1816.
I think this is the essence of the appeal of fundamentalist religion to the ignorant and the reason that the dogmatists walk so briskly down the path of their own destruction. Freedom, it seems, is more than they can bear. See Jonestown and Waco.
Twaddles,
It is a free country. As in FREE NOT TO BE A CHRISTIAN OR FOLLOW YOUR DOGMA.
Apparently you “Christians” haven’t figured out that part yet.
It must be all that sub-standard private and home schooling.
Tootie:
Actually I have seen the soapbox used as well, but only once or twice when my son was in school.
I don’t think you need to worry too much about the text books, I was able to counter some of the lies, half truths and intentional omissions with information. I even read a few of the text books and while they weren’t exactly a conservative history of the world they were not as bad as I was lead to believe.
You don’t like the textbooks or the curriculum get on the school board and change it.
Personally I think we ought not to have text books and teach the classics in the orginal Greek or Latin. Then that way we would have a population that wouldn’t fall for the simple minded BS being purveyed by most in positions of leadership.
The old dead Romans and Greeks had been there and done that.
Byron–
The attempt to censor public school textbooks has been going on for nearly fifty years–far more by conservative Christian groups than other groups. Have you ever heard of Mel and Norma Gabler?
CONTEMPORARY CENSORSHIP PRESSURES AND THEIR EFFECT ON LITERATURE TEXTBOOKS
by Joan DelFattore
ADE (Association of Departments of English) Bulletin , 1986
THE American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom and other groups have noted a marked increase in the number of school censorship incidents reported since the mid-1960s and, more recently, since the conservative victory in the 1980 elections. 1 Because such incidents affect elementary and secondary schools more directly than they affect colleges and universities, this topic has been discussed extensively in education journals but not in the journals most commonly read by the members of college and university English departments. Nevertheless, the censorship of high school literature anthologies, in particular, should concern these departments because of its impact on such issues as textual integrity, the high schools’ preparation of future college students, and the colleges’ preparation of future high school teachers. Without an understanding of the sources and extent of contemporary censorship pressures and their effects on the literature included in high school textbooks, college and university English departments are unlikely to contribute effectively to dealing with this issue.
It is certainly arguable in principle that not all works are appropriate required reading for compulsory high school courses, although there are bound to be intense disagreements about what should be excluded, for what reasons, and on whose recommendation. 2 Banning certain books, however, is quite different from altering literary works to conform to the extraliterary beliefs of various groups. Unfortunately even major publishers of high school anthologies (including Scott, Foresman; Harcourt Brace Jovanovich; Ginn; McGraw-Hill; Macmillan; and Allyn and Bacon) delete or reword material that certain groups deem objectionable, not only in popular fiction and adolescent literature, but also in standard works by authors like Chaucer, Shakespeare, Swift, and Twain. These alterations are usually not noted in the students’ texts, or they are mentioned generally and inconspicuously on the acknowledgments page or in other introductory material. Often the alterations are not even acknowledged in the teachers’ manuals. Some publishers who claim to inform teachers of alterations do no more than mention that alterations have been made, without specifying where or what the changes are.
The pressures that lead to this practice come, most commonly, from right-wing organizations, many of which are religiously oriented. There are hundreds of such groups of varying sizes throughout the United States, including Save Our Children, the Heritage Foundation, People of America Responding to Educational Needs of Today’s Society (PARENTS), Parents Who Care, Citizens United for Responsible Education (CURE), Parents of New York-United (PONY-U), and Young Parents Alert. The most widely known and most influential of these organizations is Norma and Mel Gabler’s Educational Research Analysts, which operates from its base in Longview, Texas, to supply textbook reviews and other materials to individuals and groups throughout the country. Like many other right-wing organizations, Educational Research Analysts maintains that the literary works presented in high school textbooks should be entirely free of profanity, nonstandard English, sexual references, conflicts between children and authority figures, women in nondomestic roles, socialism, criticism of the founders or the policies of the United States, criticism of religion, homosexuality, paganism, the depressing themes associated with literary realism and naturalism, ambiguities, and nontraditional moral values. In a frequently quoted observation, Mel Gabler summarizes his organization’s philosophy: “Allowing a student to come to his own conclusions about abstract concepts creates frustration. Ideas, situation ethics, values, anti-God humanism—that’s what the schools are teaching. And concepts. Well, a concept never will do anyone as much good as a fact” (Parker 23). Richard Carroll, president of Allyn and Bacon, comments on this philosophy from another perspective: “The Gablers have taken the word ‘inquiry’ and have made it dirty. For the Gablers, inquiry is something that children aren’t supposed to do, and something that parents should be afraid of” (Parker 24).
http://web2.ade.org/ade/bulletin/N083/083035.htm
Byron–
Censorship of Evolution in Texas (1982)
Steven Schafersman
(Steve Schafersman, a geologist and evolutionary paleontologist, is president of the Texas Council for Science Education and director of the Texas chapter of The Voice of Reason.)
Recent textbook adoptions by the Texas State Textbook Committee continue the state’s suppression of the topic of evolution in science textbooks. On September 8, 1982, the Textbook Committee refused to adopt the top-rated world geography textbook, Land and People (Scott, Foresman, and Co.), because it contained the following sentence: “Biologists believe that human beings, as members of the animal kingdom, have adjusted to their environment through biological adaptation.” The book also contained many passages stating that the earth and its features were millions of years old and that the universe began as stated by the Big Bang theory. These items were heavily criticized by a religious fundamentalist and creationist husband-and-wife team, Mel and Norma Gabler of Longview, Texas, whose sole business is reviewing textbooks. The Gablers are known in education circles throughout the nation as the most effective textbook censors in the country. This couple has been promoting their narrow fundamentalist views for over twenty years by criticizing and influencing the removal of textbooks that contain material opposed to their views. Some of the Gablers’ objections to the Scott, Foresman world geography textbook were that “most people do not consider themselves animals,” that “many people, including scientists, do not believe the earth is millions of years old,” and that “the text is biased in favor of evolution. By not including other theories, the text implies that evolution is the only credible one. . . . Many people, including scientists, believe that the mammals were created, not `developed.’ . . . The text contains evolutionary speculations presented as fact [and] violates [Section] 1.3 of the [Texas Textbook] Proclamation.”
During the Textbook Committee’s discussion, two members spoke against the book, claiming it overemphasized the Big Bang theory and the theory of evolution and violated the proclamation dealing with evolution. Mr. Noon, from Longview, obviously motivated by the criticisms of the Gablers, said that the book was the most “controversial” book on the entire list and that “we will be in trouble all around Texas if we put it on the [adoption] list.” Because of the attack by religious fundamentalists, the book failed to be adopted, despite its high quality.
Other world geography textbooks, all adopted, were mostly inferior to the Scott, Foresman book, but they did not make the “mistake” of saying something about evolution and the Big Bang theory.
http://www.texscience.org/files/censorship-texas/
************
Textbook Censorship in Texas: A Timeline (Texas Freedom Network)
Texas textbooks have long been a target for censorship efforts by groups like the Texas Citizens for a Sound Economy, The Justice Foundation, Texas Eagle Forum and Texas Public Policy Foundation. These and other far-right pressure groups work to delete information they disagree with and inject their own political ideology and religious values. Their efforts over time have also succeeded in persuading publishers to censor their own textbooks before submitting them to the state for approval. Below is a timeline describing how far-right pressure groups have worked over time to censor textbooks in Texas.
1960s to present – Efforts to censor Texas textbooks stretch back to at least the 1960s, when Mel and Norma Gabler began to review the books. Mel died in 2004, followed by Norma’s death in 2007. Associate Neal Frey now runs the Gablers’ Educational Research Analysts. The Gablers whose motto was “We review public school textbooks from a conservative, Christian perspective” were based in the East Texas city of Longview. According to the Web site of their organization, the Gablers targeted more than a half-dozen “subject areas of concern,” including evolution, phonics-based reading in instruction, the free-enterprise system, “original intent” of the U.S. Constitution, “respect for Judeo-Christian morals,” abstinence sex education, and “politically incorrect degradation of academics.” The media-savvy Gablers adopted a variety of strategies in their censorship efforts. Primary among such strategies was the identification of long lists of “errors” in textbooks they reviewed. Often, however, many of the errors were simply ideological objections to textbook content. In recent years, other far-right pressure groups have eclipsed Educational Research Analysts in the public eye. Under Frey’s leadership, however, the group continues to review textbooks, and vigilance about the promotion of religions other than Christianity continues to animate the critiques. For example, among the group’s critiques of new math textbooks in 2007: “Replacing stan¬dard algorithms with haphazard searches for personal meaning unconstitutionally establishes New Age relig¬ious behavior in public school Math instruction.” (Educational Research Analysts Web site)
http://www.tfn.org/site/PageServer?pagename=timeline
Elaine:
“Unfortunately even major publishers of high school anthologies (including Scott, Foresman; Harcourt Brace Jovanovich; Ginn; McGraw-Hill; Macmillan; and Allyn and Bacon) delete or reword material that certain groups deem objectionable, not only in popular fiction and adolescent literature, but also in standard works by authors like Chaucer, Shakespeare, Swift, and Twain.”
that is a shame. I guess I am not a very good conservative, although I don’t think conservative is actually the right word for this. I am surprised to see the Heritage Foundation mentioned and that distresses me.
And the statement about facts and concepts, that is pure evil, no other word for it. I can assure you I tried to teach my children to think conceptually. No wonder people on the left think conservatives are such stupid schmucks, I would to.
I think the biggest problem with the conservative movement is that they embraced the religious right for political expediency. It was a big mistake and has limited the number of people willing to take a look at real conservative principles which are really nothing more than those of our founding fathers.
I can think of nothing worse than to live in a society dominated by fundamentalist Christians thinking God has chosen them to govern, er rule.
On the one hand you have Marx and on the other you have fundamentalist Christian
“conservatives”, same coin different side. One wants tyranny on earth for mans sake, the other wants tyranny on earth for heavens sake.
“I think the biggest problem with the conservative movement is that they embraced the religious right for political expediency. It was a big mistake and has limited the number of people willing to take a look at real conservative principles which are really nothing more than those of our founding fathers.”
Bingo.
The only caveat I’d add to that is “those of [some] of our founding fathers.” But you are right about one thing for a fact: conservatism as a school of political thought got fleas when it got into bed with fundamentalism. The infestation is likely fatal too.
No, Byron. You’re not a bad conservative. You’re a REAL conservative. You like to hedge your bets but you are neither arrogant nor stupid enough to think you are Chosen By The Invisible Sky God to screw with other people minding their own business.
But your brand has not only been stolen by zealots. They’ve used their corrupting influence to turn the GOP from the party of people like Eisenhower to the party of theocrats like Ron Parsley and amoral war criminals like Cheney. Ike would have kicked the crap out of either of those clowns for what they have done to his party. The GOP is not the conservative party anymore. It’s a lie that they are. They haven’t been since before Reagan. My grandfather was a conservative Republican and voted as such his entire voting life: until Reagan. He thought Reagan was a dangerous clown. The GOP are the Theocratic Fascist Party if you want a more accurate name. That’s why the GOP is self-immolating. The few remaining actual conservatives are fighting the crazies and the purchased. That is why I go out of my way not to do business with that kind of Republican. If you own a business and have POX Propaganda spewing from your radio and TV’s for the customer’s annoyance, I’ll gladly take my business elsewhere. If they have any nutball signage like birther nonsense? My money stays in my pocket. If they defend Bush or Cheney, not a damn dime from me. In fact, when I run into businesses like this, I do my best to discourage anyone from doing business with them. I’ve even turned down lucrative offers because I don’t work with or for those who would be oppressors.
And that’s what the GOP is. The party of repression and greed. Thanks to getting into bed with theocrats (and K St.).
I can understand why someone like you or FFLEO is proud to be a conservative. Even as a stated liberal, you know that I don’t discount all actual conservative ideas. But the party that supposedly represents your interests is most decidedly NOT a conservative party anymore.
They are fascist theocratic unconstitutional criminals. And that deserves not only scorn but removal from the system (by force if necessary). Neither corrupt and incompetent party is enshrined in the Constitution. Their survival is NOT guaranteed. We the People have the right to eject all players from the field if they screw with the Constitution. The morons in D.C. will be learning that lesson the hard way at some point.
“My point is that parents ought to have the right to send their kids to whatever schools they wish.”
Tootie,
I agree with that and that is why various beliefs have set up their own schools. I just want you to keep your particular religious beliefs out of the public school system, because that is for children of all beliefs, not just yours.
“but I am convinced that a Christian cannot be a democrat.”
This is the crux of your problem. where does that kind of thinking appear in Jesus words in the Gospels? Nowhere that I can see.
Tootie. I disagree with your statement that”a Christian cannot be a democrat”. You cannot win the US presidency currently without the catholic vote so you must consider catholics not to be christians. Therefore all hispanic catholic democrats are not christian according to your way of thinking.
Tootie,
So about those facts supporting your claims?
Byron–
Here’s something of a more personal anecdotal nature that you might find interesting.
Several years ago, I met Mary Ann Hoberman, an award-winning children’s author and the current US Children’s Poet Laureate, at a children’s literature conference in Maine. We got to talking about poetry. She invited me to have dinner with her and her friend Linda Winston, a cultural anthropologist and teacher. They told me about an exciting project that they were working on—an anthology of poems about science and nature and the Tree of Life. It was an enormous undertaking. The two women didn’t have an easy time finding a publisher for their book, “The Tree That Time Built: A Celebration of Nature, Science, and Imagination.” It took them nine years from the book’s inception to its publication in October 2009.
From the book’s introduction:
“The family tree of all life on earth might be called ‘The Tree That Time Built.’ It began putting down its roots millions of years ago. Its branches are crowded with our relatives, both close and distant—far more than we might imagine.”
************
Here is why Hoberman began working on the book project:
From The Evolution Revolution (Publishers Weekly): “Mary Ann Hoberman, current children’s poet laureate, has witnessed firsthand the struggle to teach evolution in the classroom, or in some cases, to even allude to it. One of the poems that she often recites in classrooms contains a line about monkeys being almost like people. Hoberman stated that when she would often recite the poem, she began to notice “frosty looks” on the faces of teachers and parents. ‘I was getting fed up with what was going on in this country,’ she says. And it was this frustration that led her to begin compiling, along with Linda Winston, an anthology of poems dealing with nature and the idea of evolution. The anthology, The Tree That Time Built, will be published in October.”
My Note: (There isn’t a line about monkeys being like people in the poem. There are lines, however about apes—chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans—being like us.)
You can read the rest of The Evolution Revolution at the PEN American Center website.
http://www.pen.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/4095/prmID/918
Here’s an excerpt from “Anthropoids”—the poem for which Mary Ann received some “frosty stares” when she recited it in some schools.
Anthropoids
The next time you go to the zoo
The zoo
Slow down for a minute or two
Or two
And consider the apes
All their sizes and shapes
For they all are related to you
To you.
************
Here is an excerpt from my review of the book that I posted at my children’s literature blog.
From the book’s main introduction:
“Have you ever wondered why there are so many kinds of living things in the world and where they come from? Or how and why some of them have disappeared? Or how people fit in with all the other forms of life? Scientists and poets alike ask these questions.
“Scientists explore these questions through systematic methods and procedures, transforming their observations into ever-unfolding scientific knowledge. Poets, too, through observation and imagination, discover new truths about our world. But in their case they transform their insights into works of art.”
The Tree That Time Built is truly a substantial anthology—and not just because it contains so many poems. It is the quality of its poetry selections, the thoughtfulness with which it was compiled and organized, the information imparted in the introductions to each section, and the notes included with some poems that help expound on the subjects addressed in them or touch on some poetic technique used by the writers, that make it such an exceptional book.
In addition, the anthology includes an extensive glossary that explains poetic as well as scientific terms and an About the Poets section with information about the writers whose poems are included in the book. But that’s not all! You’ll also find Suggestions for Further Reading and Research in the back matter and an audio CD with 44 poems read by 20 poets and artists.
Poetry books don’t get any better than “The Tree That Time Built”!!! It is truly a magnum opus. I know that it was a labor of love for both Mary Ann and Linda. The book was nine years in the making. It was a literary and science project to which these two intelligent women were truly dedicated. They were committed to seeing this project published. And I am grateful for their determination and perseverance—for they have given us a book that is sure to become a classic.
“The Tree That Time Built” is a book for people of all ages. It contains poems to delight and provoke thought in children and adults alike.
Here are the titles of the different poetry sections in the book:
• Oh, Fields of Wonder
• The Sea Is Our Mother
• Prehistoric Praise
• Think Like a Tree
• Meditations on a Tortoise
• Some Primal Termite
• Everything That Lives Wants to Fly
• I Am the Family face
• Hurt No Living Thing
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Adding to my review:
“The Tree That Time Built” is an exceptional anthology. In addition to the poems of some of our finest children’s poets, it also includes works by the following writers: William Blake, Emily Dickinson, T. S Eliot, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert Frost, Thomas Hardy, Langston Hughes, Galway Kinnell, Maxine Kumin, D. H. Lawrence, Ogden Nash, Mary Oliver, Rainer Maria Rilke, Christina Rossetti, Carl Sandburg, Wislawa Szymborska, Dylan Thomas, Mark Van Doren, and Walt Whitman.
I am happy and proud to have had some small part in helping these two women in finding poems that spoke to certain science/nature subjects for this book.
Click on the following link to look inside the book: http://www.amazon.com/Tree-That-Time-Built-Celebration/dp/1402225172/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1257438822&sr=1-1#reader_1402225172
I think it’s a shame that schools in some areas of our country won’t include “The Tree That Time Built” in their libraries.
We often wonder why students in our country don’t score as well on some science tests as children in many other countries–yet there are parents and others in the US who insist that the Earth is about 6,000 years old…who fight to have creationism taught in science classes. There are creation museums that depict scenes of humans co-existing with dinosaurs. There are adults bent on closing children’s minds to the wonders of the natural world and the universe. You can’t blame public school teachers for that.
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Here’s a link to an article about Mary Ann Hoberman at the Website of the Poetry Foundation:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/journal/article.html?id=182334
Mary Ann’s Website:
http://www.maryannhoberman.com/
Byron,
I noted that my last comment is awaiting moderation. Under “Recent Comments” in the blog’s sidebar, it isn’t noted that I left a reply at 2:13 pm. I’m writng this comment so you’ll know that I left the previous, extensive comment for you.
Elaine,
Let me guess the post had 3 links?
Gyges–
Correct. And I keep forgetting to include fewer than three links in some of my replies. I’m getting old. I have that disease known as CRS–Can’t Remember Sh*t.
Elaine M. “Gyges–
Correct. And I keep forgetting to include fewer than three links in some of my replies. I’m getting old. I have that disease known as CRS–Can’t Remember Sh*t.”
—–
Well then come sit on the special CRS Bench next to me
3 links will send your posting to moderation hell forever.
Elaine,
Lottas right, your best bet is to split the post in two, and post them.
Gyges–
I know it’s best to split my post in two–but I keep forgetting. That’s the problem!
lottakatz–
I think I will come join you on the CRS bench daily. We can have a stimulating conversation–the same one day after day after day.
I had a comment but for the life of me I cannot recall what it was.
May I have a seat? I have popcorn.
Pop Corn? Who’s he?
lol
Elaine, you may lose your mind, but I can’t ever see you losing your sense of humor.
BIL–
Paraphrasing Dan Quayle: What a terrible thing to have lost one’s sense of humor. Or not to have a sense of humor at all. How true that is.
CRS is Cognitive Remembrance Syndrome, I remember it from the DSM IV, but I’m not sure why I’m making this comment other than I think I was once a Therapist, or something.
Mike Spindell:
You asked at 1, December 18, 2009 at 12:02 pm, where the bible says anything like being in the democratic party is something a Christian cannot do.
My response to that is being in a political party is a voluntary act and association. I imagine that many so-called Christians could have thought that belonging to the Nazi party was justified by virtue of Christ’s outreach to all mankind, justifiable.
I would say they were wrong as well.
We (Christians) are told in scripture to
” Abstain from all appearance of evil. ” 1 Thessalonians 5:22
This doesn’t say to shut ourselves off from the world like the Amish do, but it tells us to avoid the appearance of evil. And I should say that belonging to a political party that cultivates evil as the Christian worldview defines it is embracing evil.
This is as opposed to something like being a citizen of the United States. It has, in my opinion, done great evil over the past century interfering in the affairs of sovereign nations all over the world and causing much suffering, despotism, and death.
Yet, no where in scripture am I told to avoid being a member of a nation because it does evil. But to voluntary associate ourselves with such poltical groups is unnecessary when such groups work specifically against Christians. It puts the Christian in the position of legislating against God, in essence.
It is, in my opinion a violation of scripture of the highest order. There are alternative political parties for the Christian besides the democratic and republican ones. So it is unnecessary to help the enemy of God.
I know that the USA has done many great and wonderful things as well. So please don’t misunderstand me on that one. I love my country.
Byron: Your post at 1, December 18, 2009 at 8:50 am
You said you didn’t think there was too much to worry about with indoctrination in textbooks.
I hope you are right, but I’m not convinced.
” Abstain from all appearance of evil. ” 1 Thessalonians 5:22
This doesn’t say to shut ourselves off from the world like the Amish do, but it tells us to avoid the appearance of evil. And I should say that belonging to a political party that cultivates evil as the Christian worldview defines it is embracing evil.”
Tootie,
A political party cultivating evil (also antithetical to Christian values)is the Republican Party. Your biblical reference may be correct, but your understanding is.