Texas Board Of Ed officially out to make students ignorant rednecks - Page 2

For Christianity in the US, try The American Jeremiad. Good stuff.

So again, no problem with rewriting history to fit the religious right's version of it? Just trying to clarify your position here.

I have a problem with anyone rewriting history, that doesn't change the fact it happens all the time. As I've said in another thread, we spend enough money on education the problem is management.

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Speaking of history.. this is a good read.

http://www.h-net.org/~world/threads/stan2.html

It starts at the bottom and breaks at each "Author".
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Couple of notes on the link. It's dealing with the National History Standards that were attempted to be enacted back in '94. Back in '89 Bush & Governors decided to push for world class content standards on education (including history) ... everyone was on board until the final product then everyone decided they had a problem with it for various reasons. (Too many whites, not enough minorities... not enough Washington... etc...) the vote finally went down in '94 and it lost 99-1. This was something that was put together by experts, teachers and historians for fucks sake.. THIS is what people always say they want and it was voted down almost unanimously.*

Here's another good read pertaining to the subject.

The real problem is... you have 50 individual states with representatives from each state and you'll never get them to agree on anything as encompassing as this subject due to the nature of our representative system. Reform at a national level is almost impossible and leaving it to the state \ localities results in snafu's like this..

* aided by a douchy procedural move by a Republican Senator from WA; Slade Gorton.. if I'm not mistaken.

But the kicker was that the Dark ages were not caused by Christians. The dark ages were caused by environmental effects. Namely the explosion of Krakatoa in 535 AD. The 535 erupted is believe to be bigger then Tambora erupted which caused a year with out summer. What libraries were saved during the dark ages were saved by religious people. Europe was simple hit harder by the dark ages, then the rest of the world, because it was already in a state of political unrest and wars.

I'd read it wasn't just a year without summer, it was basically a year without sun for chrissake. I'm kinda shocked actually that the 'year of darkness' in 535 isn't required knowledge in all history classes now that it's a theory thats been confirmed by many different ancient sources around the world. I remember the first time I read about it about ten years ago and I was utterly flabbergasted I'd not heard of such a momentous event before.

I don't know if it was that bad, but it was a year of winter, fallowed by years with out summer, most likely.

The Taupo eruption around the year AD 180 was probably the greatest eruption in human history, but sense it took place in the southern hemisphere, it had no real effects on human history, unlike Krakatoa, Tambora, and Thera. Laki and Baekdu both put out more more material, but were not as abrupt as the others.

The first job I had in teaching was in a Catholic school. There it was policy to say prayers when the kids came in, prayers at morning break, prayers before lunch and prayers at the end of the day. Then there were the various assemblies, religious education lessons, hookups with the local church etc.

As an atheist it was a very uncomfortable experience. When you're in your first year of training you're always under observation, which kind of backed me into a corner. So, each morning, lunch etc. it was a case of parroting the words without caring so much as a lick for them. Whether the kids picked up on this or not didn't much matter because all of them were parroting mindlessly anyway.

It was the same story for most of the teachers, with the exception of a handful closest to the reins of power. Whether those guys were truly religious or just faking it to further their careers I don't know. But it was their job to make sure the children were properly indoctrinated/brainwashed.

Which kind of rendered Faith a dark fiasco, in which almost everyone considered It a waste of time, and yet continued to waste their time upon It. I suppose fear of getting on the wrong side of the school governors (who were the Knights Templars of the establishment) was the primary motivator - but it's not like they were a constant and oppressive presence in the school. Although they certainly managed to instil an atmosphere of unease in which almost no-one would discuss the subject within earshot of anyone else.

In the end I got out. But just before I did I shared an illuminating conversation with the deputy head in which he stated that less than 3% of the kids were practising Catholics - despite the fact that ALL of them were listed as such on their entry applications ...

Perhaps we should just outsource the teaching of American History to India

Rules were made to be broken.

Globe and Mail interviews John Allemang* ‘They want to make it look like we are dumb morons'.
Ok, when did Yosemite Sam hitch up and produce a kid in Texas?

* is it my imagination or is that a bastardized anglicization?

That interview is brain-exploding.

Q: When I was a kid, I'd hear the statement by Jesus that it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. And I'd think, boy, are we in trouble.

A: Yeah, anyway, you know what I think's a useful standard we've put into world history that hasn't got a lot of attention? We have a standard that says students should explain the Arab rejection of Israel as a cause for ongoing conflict. I don't think you'd hear President Bush or President Obama make that statement. But it's an accurate statement. I mean Israel tried to recognize Palestinians, but you've never seen any serious statement about that by Palestinian groups.

Not to be a dick or anything, but what does that even mean in this context?

That was from a side subject about morons and progress.

I don't know about the answer, but the question seem to sum up the this thread greatly. As Jesus was using an old proverb about baggage, to sum up the problem about some people making it to heaven.

A: should be, Texas Board Of Ed has an excess of emotional and political baggage.

Weird example, why would anybody be shocked that there are prayers and religious instruction in a private religious school???

The funny thing is that these schools generally provide a much better education than their public school counterparts, and many of them don't waste their time with the nonsense that is being pushed by the guys in this original article (and Catholic schools don't have a problem with teaching real science).

I went to a Methodist school in Central America where I think 0% of the students were Methodist. They would teach us English since kindergarten and my math classes in 7th grade there were classes that started around 9-10th grade back here in the US.

Same here, except mine was an Episcopalian school in Texas. Long story short, I lost my fucking scholarship to that place because I sucked at algebra when I was in 7th grade. After transferring to public school, I didn't take algebra until my senior year of high school. Christ I wish I didn't suck at math.

I feel the same way , Jake.. people ask me to add simple numbers in my head and I can't do it (or sometimes I can, but it takes me forever*). I've always had a tremendous facility for language, but math mastery has eluded me. I got a 470 on my MATH SATs

*I've been told that my ability to juggle numbers in my head (what some refer to as a 'mental sketchpad') is under developed.

I suck at the written word, we all have our strengths and weaknesses..

I took algebra in 7th grade public school, and they acted like that was something special. I never really liked math, but it was always easy. Science and history were always my favorite subjects in school. You need math for science, so I always just took it.

See in school I could always multiply any two digit numbers in my head faster, then I could use a calculator. Part of the reason may have been my father and me use to play math games, like someone say a series of equations, as an example 11+13*25-75/5+95, and then the other person would give the answer, 200.

Err. Yeah, 200.

Don't do, that you are making me doubt myself. As it is it when I did it the first time, I did it in reverse just to check my answer, because I haven't done it in years. Man have I gotten slow, my math skill are all rusty

I use to do things in school I doubt I could do now. Anyway my father did not start me out at that level or finish with that level, that was just an example. He started out with basic Addition. Once I got good at that he added subtraction, then multiplication, then division, and decimal places. we did it over many years.

I'm sorry, I wasn't meaning to make you doubt yourself ... I was highlighing that I had to bust out the calculator to figure it out, I too am rusty! (unless it deals with poker math)

Which, by the way is funny because the schools I attended outlawed calculators and you had to prove your work in writing. You couldn't just write "200" it had to be shown how you got to the answer* and at the time it was frustrating to me because in my head I knew the answer and it was too tedious to have to write it out.

* they also didn't find the answer "42" all that funny when I dozed off and was awoken to "and what's the answer, Brian" ... I'm sure years later it hit them.

Are you saying there are primary/elementary schools where you can use calculators?

I'll be so fucking pissed off if I found out my kids weren't doing all of their math by hand before university.

We were able to use basic calculators in my high school physics class, because it was more important that we knew the formulas than being able to do the math.

What kills me these days is the concept of the cheat sheet. I've seen college courses that let you bring in a single sheet of notebook paper for a test, and whatever you can fit on it, you can use. So you end up with students bringing in sheets with almost the entire text book written in near microscopic text.

Yep. The American school system has gone down hill year after year. Interestingly enough, the national council of teachers of mathematics endorses calculators in the classroom. I believe the rational was to incorporate it into the class to prevent abuse both outside and inside the class, but I disagree. If you make kids show their work and write answers and give them lots of surprise quiz's you can see who is on a crutch and who isn't and failing grades will force better performance. Unfortunately we shifted from that dynamic and more into a x percentage pass = y percentage funding.

I totally did this every chance I got. Sure, I knew the material, but I was also a lazy fuck who just wanted to finish class and go get laid.

wait, when you were in college you had cheat sheets, that is so fucking unfear.

Something about these two things, juxtaposed, is giving me the giggles. Or a headache. Or kind of both, at once, originating behind my right eye. Should I see a doctor?

I remember being allowed a 3x5 card in high school physics for the midterm and final, but not the regular tests or quizzes. My math teachers were hard asses, so no cheat sheets there. Don't think I ever had a cheat sheet in college, though.

eta - DaveB is reporting that he was actually allowed a cheat sheet in library school. He is now scrambling to justify this. He can say whatever he likes, but I'm pretty sure this means that western civilization is about to grind to a halt. Everyone got their helmets and canned goods?

I have a bicycle helmet and a can of low-sodium black beans if that's worth anything

murr

We were allowed cheat sheets all the time in quite a few classes. If the class involved thinking (applying the right formulas in physics, doing mathematical proofs, etc), the thing is not going to save you in the first place anyways, so I never had a problem with it.

A lot of tests in my later college classes were open book, because it's applied learning. College is supposed to prepare you for the job world (for the most part), and, guess what? Most jobs will let you have the manual open. High school (and below) is a little different because it's giving you the base of knowledge to work off of, but unless your college prof is testing in your memorization skills (which is usually about half the time), open book (or study sheet) is fine.

For applied courses I have no problems with cheat sheets -- though for the theoretical stuff we had take home exams in the senior years.

My sophomore year was spent in a private Wesleyan academy, and there were two things about that experience that always stuck with me - 1) That the typical high school popularity contest bullshit was even more obnoxious there due to all the self-righteousness, and 2) a specific incident in my natural science class. The teacher was covering animal biology, and spent a good portion of the lesson tearing down evolutionary theory, mainly by focusing on the fallacious transitional animal argument ("if the bat evolved from the mouse, why hasn't anyone found the body of a bat-like mouse with little stubby wings?" etc.) and stating unequivocally that no aspect of evol theory had ever been proven. Upon him making this bold claim I interjected "wait, what about natural selection?" He got sniffy and tried to dismiss NS, the foundation of evolutionary theory, as a completely unrelated phenomenon that had no relation to evolution. As he & I went back and forth a bit on this a classmate behind me asked incredulously "so what, you mean you believe in evolution?"

"Well yeah, it's a sound theory with a lot of scientific support."

I'll never forget the look of utter disgust and contempt he gave me. In fact, the whole class looked at me like I'd just wiped my ass with the bible or something. Teach promptly picked up where he left off and I made a mental note to give absolutely no respect to the institution or anyone in it, and for the remainder of my stay there, I didn't.

Guess it really depends on the particular brand of parochial school.

That, but I mainly think it is a US issue, evolution is not that controversial in the rest of the world (well, not sure about more conservative Islamic countries ...).

On the other hand, if parents want to teach this to their kids, I rather they pay for a private school that talks about Creationism, rather than pester everybody else with their issues.

For the sake of Humanity please tell me you made this quote up?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010...tes-us-history

It's getting worse.

Sweet Jesus these people need to go away forever. How can we allow Texas to have so much influence in text book printing? I wonder if that part about California trying to ban these books in their schools will get anywhere. One thing that blows my mind is how short sighted these religious nuts are. Do they not realize how seriously fucked our country would be in such a short time if they ever got their way and we became Jesusland? It would be the end, economically and socially, of the America they claim to love so much. Of course they would still blame liberals. Fuck.

These fucking Taliban.

Yeah, they blinked on that one, backing away from calling it "triangle trade", which basically equates trading human beings with trading rum and sugar.