In reference to Texas, where the school text book controversy is happening, what exactly do these morons need? They have 12 years plus kindergarten to teach children reading, writing, math and history. How hard can it really be to pack that into 4,380 days?
M_P
Any links to a news bit? Ive heard nothing of it
Basically the liberals want to scrub “traditional” history out of the books, and add in their revisionist history. Conservatives want to keep traditional history lessons.
Been going on since before I was born, I thought maybe this is a individual case though. There was an interesting book on text book censorship that I cant remember the name of, but points out many cases of this crap including how teachers teach etc… It mentioned a case in which the text books couldnt contain any info on owls, owls as characters (children books) or anything of the such because it might offend some indian tribes who see the owl as a evil spirit of sorts:rolleyes: Or how in a lot of inner city liberal schools and a lot of them in california teachers cant grade papers in red ink because its too imposing and degrading on the kids to see their paper filled with red ink for mistakes. Freaking crazy ass shit if you ask me.
These are examples of how our educational system fails our students at every level.
First, at the graduate level, instead of testing knowledge our system requires a student to create a theory out of whole cloth and defend it. Hence things such as Shakespeare was gay, instead of being able to recite every character in every play for example.
Second, those newly minted, but clueless BA/MA/PhD students go into the “education” field and think up new and wonderful ideas such as red ink scares students.
M_P
It all gets down to who do we blame the failures on. The teachers want the latest and greatest teaching materials and we give it to them, because:
One we want our kids to succeed and do not want to give the education system any reason not to.
Many of us don’t want to or do not have time to help with our kids education.
But I have to say this, we put men on the moon with old style math, and the “see spot run” books. Some of our greatest accomplishments happened during the 50’s-70’s using an older style education system. And here today we have problems getting kids to read. Maybe it’s not the way we teach things but society today that is the problem.
Back then one parent was able to stay home and greet the kids when they came home from school, understand and help with homework and better yet make sure homework gets done. Stress and instill a value system other than gang values in our kids. (Now before you all get up in arms I realize the folks belonging to this forum still do that today, but can you say that the inner city kids or those kids who are having problems learning have the benefit of that kind of home life).
Our foods at the time were not full of chemicals that can be said to cause autism or other learning disabilities.
Colan Powell grew up in Harlem and because he desired to succeed rose to the position of Secretary of State.
I just heard on the radio that the Philadelphia School system has an unbelievable truancy rate, somewhere in the range of 15%. No matter what system you use if the child is not in school he isn’t going to learn. We need to instill a desire to learn in the child and no matter what system you use they will learn.
We could go on and on.
Fox has been on the story…do a search for Texas Education
There’s a bit more to the story & it’s tied specifically to Social Studies. Texas sets the standard for the nation on schoolbooks due to volume, so many parts of the nation are affected & will get what the state prints.
Isn’t this the same state that is trying to put ID in the books and push evolution out? And then fired Chris Comer for being critical of ID? :rolleyes:
Yeah I don’t have much hope for Texas Education system.
+1
Bravo man, this is exactly what is wrong with the new generations coming up. It shows, not only in school, but when they reach the work envirement as well. I have employees that think they deserve a raise because they came to work on time for 2 weeks straight. I usually respond with, “you’re lucky you aren’t on unemployment for showing up late everyday for the 2 months before that.”
I am tired of the way society tries to cover up failure and pretend like it’s not a failure. These kids need the hard truth during school. If you don’t work hard you fail. You don’t get partial credit in real life for almost being right. Simple as that.
Like?
Edit: During my search I found this…
http://www.texastribune.org/library/data/the-revision-thing/
Since the last meeting, board member and former chair Don McLeroy — the most aggressive amender of curriculum and a self-proclaimed “religious fanatic” who believes education is “too important not to politicize”
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/6905110.html
AUSTIN — As the State Board of Education sits down this week to review proposed social studies standards, critics say the board could stand a history lesson of its own before setting the standards for public school students.
Among the choices the board has made this year:
• The board voted to pull a popular children’s book author after confusing him with the author of a book about Marxism.
• At the urging of a Dallas board member, the panel rejected a nationally known migrant labor leader because she was a member of a socialist group. Instead, the sponsoring member extolled the virtues of Helen Keller, unaware that Keller advocated for socialism.
• The board changed a section on McCarthyism after a member said research had “basically vindicated” the senator’s 1950s hunt for communists.
“This goes to the fundamental issue. The board is not made up of educators, yet alone historians. They look very ignorant when they don’t know that Helen Keller herself was a socialist,” said Julio Noboa, a history professor at the University of Texas at El Paso, one of the board’s socials studies experts offering recommendations. “It really makes them look stupid. These people are making education decisions for one of the largest states in the union.”
Some board members acknowledge mistakes in the effort to adopt new curriculum standards but say the process is set up to correct them.
seems like its the opposite of what you said. in fact most of the changes were proposed by Don McLeroy, a Republican.
hmmm, this is what a quick search came up with…
AUSTIN – The Texas Education Agency lashed out Wednesday at the Fox Network for “highly inaccurate” reports about the State Board of Education and its work on social studies curriculum standards.
The TEA, in a news release, cited a half-dozen errors in a March 10 broadcast of Fox & Friends, such as Texas proposing only to teach U.S. history from 1877 to the present.
The TEA said U.S. history “has and always will” be taught from beginning to the present. Early history is covered in the eighth grade, and the period 1877 to the present typically is presented in the 11th grade.
It also chided Fox for reporting that the board had removed George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Christmas, Independence Day and Veterans Day from textbooks.
Those haven’t been removed, and the board will not adopt history textbooks for a couple of years.
A Fox representative said it would address the issue today.
I try to like Fox. I really do. But they never fact check anything. 
you can read the changes for yourself here.
http://www.texastribune.org/library/data/the-revision-thing/
Yeah, kinda like how MSNBC, CNN, NBC, ABC, and CBS don’t either. They’re all bad in one way or another.
Agreed, but Fox has been worse than normal lately. And I guess I had come to expect more from them.
Basically “I’m right and your wrong”. Is what your saying then. :rolleyes:
so whats the outrage over? where are the big bad liberal boogeymen?
It’s no secret that the textbooks in the education system have been grossly edited to baby kids these days. Republican or demacrat, they can both be liberal, traditional minded CONSERVATIVES as a whole don’t believe in text book censorship. So who does that leave responsible? Liberals, is it some kind of rare happening that alot of this ridiculous text book crap passes in California? The single most liberal state in the country? I don’t think so.
This (like alot of things) tends to be a battle between liberal fruits and religious kooks.Both are avid revisionists when it suits their needs.
It’s very disheartening for the rest of us who want neither influencing our kids.
absolutey