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.
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.
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
***************
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.
************
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/
Tootie,
So about those facts supporting your claims?
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.
“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.
“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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
“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.
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.
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
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.
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:
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.
“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.
Chris,
Thanks.
Sierra Nevada is brewed in Chico CA.