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Tea party targets schools for 'Constitution Week'

Started 1 year ago by Ken
Latest reply from JoB

Ken
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America's kids will be learning about the U.S. Constitution this coming school year with help from a decidedly conservative Idaho publishing house, if a tea party group gets its way.
... they'd like the teachers to use material from the Malta, Idaho-based National Center for Constitutional Studies, which promotes the Constitution as a divinely-inspired document.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2015139827_apusconstitutionalconflict.html

The book the fifth grader brought home this year was a bull goose right wing republican version (Dick Arney was one of the consultants) of the constitutional convention, but the parts the stepgrandson was assigned to read were vague and general enough to be barely acceptable. When he is older I will teach him in depth from source documents and actual historians.

This kind of crap combined with NCLB will turn all but the strongest personalities into compliant followers of revisionist history.

Posted 1 year ago #
JoB
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This is not good.
does anyone know where we can make a noise loud enough to catch attention of the local news?

Posted 1 year ago #
DP
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Malta, Idaho, eh?

Igor! Set the target coordinates for Malta, Idaho. We'll teach those a yokels a lesson about divine inspiration . . .

Meow-ha-ha-ha!

Eat Second-Amendment lead, potato heads!!

Posted 1 year ago #
kootchman
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I hope they learn to read.... now that would be an unusual public school accomplishment. Fact, they can teach I have two mommys, or two daddys. or an assortment of all ... as long as they pass a comprehension test at the end.

Posted 10 months ago #
mehud7
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Kootchman, Easy to read but more difficult to write- I believe it would be "mommies" and "daddies."

Posted 10 months ago #
redblack
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not to mention the fact that less than 10% of schools in america are private.

in a country with a literacy rate percentage in the high 90's, someone is learning to read in public school systems.

the united states invented universal education. but what do you know? conservatives are tired of paying for that, too.

it's easier to scrap the whole system in favor of vouchers than it is to actually work to improve it, eh, kootch?

besides, "teach to the test" is a corporate thing, not a socialist thing.

but that's not really the crux of the OP. the issue is corporate privatization of public schools and rewriting taught history to fit a political and/or religious agenda. they're teaching propaganda.

Posted 10 months ago #
kootchman
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Posted 10 months ago #
kootchman
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I love school systems... in fact I pay for two of them. I was just reading yet another fine example though of the public school system American taxpayers pay for. Pardon the cut and paste... but here ya go... That 90 per cent literacy rate? Still real confident in that figure? Hope you didn't get that stat from a public school district...if you did ... look for the erasure marks on the tabulation tables... good grief...and this superintendant? Here comes the best... 2009 Winner of School Superintendant of the Year. What we ARE tired of paying for is the public school "industry".... redblack.... you like paying for this kinda crap? Oh yea, the GEA... on the front lines defending their members and calling for of course "due process"... yea...due process alright..blindfold or no blindfold..pick the six from a list of taxpayers. Lifted from the Atlanta Journal and Constitution.. a VERY liberal newspaper... the more you read the more revolting it gets!

The only surprise is that the "correction parties' they held at various faculty and principal homes...the GEA didn't bargain for overtime pay!

Atlanta Journal Constitution writes, “Across Atlanta Public Schools, staff worked feverishly in secret to transform testing failures into successes. Teachers and principals erased and corrected mistakes on students’ answer sheets. Area superintendents silenced whistle-blowers and rewarded subordinates who met academic goals by any means possible.”

The voluminous report names 178 educators, including 38 principals, as participants in cheating. More than 80 confessed. The investigators said they confirmed cheating in 44 of 56 schools they examined.

Posted 10 months ago #
kootchman
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Seattle School District, 46,000 students, 2011 budget 577 million.

Washington Diocese 34,000 students budget for WA taxpayers? 0

You are welcome, no thanks necessary .... although it would be NICE gesture if the WEA would drop their vitrolic campaign and allow some voucher program eh? I mean after all, we ARE doing a great job educating our kids...and we do pay taxes...Add the Lutheren system, the non secular private schools.... or does your support of children not extend to ones of the Christian faith? You DO want to educate ALL children right? That would be a tad over 900 million if ya did a dollar for dollar exchange. Heck, if ya have a church/state issue ( I do... so reduce it about 10% for the religious instruction portion) shucks, i will go one better.. just send me a check for a mere 5k per kid... that would help

Posted 10 months ago #
Ken
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"A childish illusion fixed in the minds of all children born in a certain decade and hammered home for four years can easily reappear as a deadly serious political ideology twenty years later."

- Sebastian Haffner, Defying Hitler: A Memoir

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The nonsectarian or secular public school was the means of reconciling freedom in general with religious freedom. The sharp confinement of the public schools to secular education was a recognition of the need of a democratic society to educate its children, insofar as the state undertook to do so, in an atmosphere free from pressures (Justice Felix Frankfurter, U. S. Supreme Court, in McCollum v. Board of Education, the 1948)

... the problem to be considered and solved when the First Amendment was proposed was not one of hazy or comparative insignificance, but was one of blunt and stark reality, which had perplexed and plagued the nations of Western civilization for some 14 centuries, and during that long period, the union of Church and State in the government of man had produced neither peace on earth, nor good will to man. (Justice Prescott of the Maryland high court, Horace Mann League of the United States v. Board of Public Works, 220 A.2d 51, 60 (Md. 1966))

Government in our democracy, state and national, must be neutral in matters of religious theory, doctrine and practice. It may not be hostile to any religion or to the advocacy of nonreligion; and it may not aid, foster, or promote one religion or religious theory against another or even against the militant opposite. The First Amendment mandates governmental neutrality between religion and religion, and between religion and nonreligion. (U. S. Supreme Court, Epperson v. Arkansas, 393 U.S. 97, 103 [1968])

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Posted 10 months ago #
redblack
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kootch: you need to look at this WSB forums thread regarding testing. yes, teaching to the test is becoming an industry. but the people who grade the standardized tests are not teachers. they're just part-time and temp workers. i encourage you to read some of the links from that thread; the test scorers oftentimes aren't even parents and they have a weird way of interpreting kids' answers.

you also might be interested in this article (also from a VERY liberal source, but you can't deny the numbers):

http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/welfare-state/Content?oid=6686284

taxes paid by washington churches last year? 0.

no need to thank me, either.

btw, you already got a tax credit for each kid. i didn't. you're welcome.

Posted 10 months ago #
365Stairs
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Will someone please escort "redblack and kootchman" (which actually sounds like a good 70's tv show) to Malta, ID to set those sons-a-youknowwhats straight...

DP - load up the little kitty and haul arse to assist...it could get ugly...

Posted 10 months ago #
dawsonct
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No profit motive in the public school "industry," Kootch. When you privatize a public function, someone makes a profit off of it, which makes it a non-cost-effective solution.
In other words, our tax dollars would be spent to ensure someone's lavish lifestyle, instead of educating the next generation, which is where our focus, as a society, should be.
---
While it IS true a well-educated populace is quite a bit more difficult to mislead, and therefore will not produce as many underclass Republicans as the connedservatives need to continue their pillaging of our collective wealth, it is better for ALL of society to have a well-educated populace.
Which brings to mind my eternal question: why do Republicans SAY they love America, when they obviously hold most AMERICANS (well, to be fair, JUST the bottom 98%, excluding themselves of course) in such great disdain?

Posted 10 months ago #
redblack
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i'm not going to idaho without a fight.

Posted 10 months ago #
JoB
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the problem with private schools is that there is no public disclosure of their curriculum.

taxpayer dollars should come with taxpayer influence, don't you think?

Posted 10 months ago #