Can we just STOP the dumb...Pleeaassseeeee!

[uselesslegs]

Louisiana Private Schools Teach Loch Ness Monster Is Real In Effort To Disprove Evolution Theory

"Some students at private schools in Louisiana are being taught that Scotland's fabled Loch Ness monster is real, a claim that is then held as evidence disproving Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, the Scotsman reports."

"And Bruce Wilson, a researcher specializing in the American political religious right, told the Scotsman that one of the texts also claims "dinosaurs were fire-breathing dragons."

and last but not least...

"The [Ku Klux] Klan in some areas of the country tried to be a means of reform, fighting the decline in morality and using the symbol of the cross ... In some communities it achieved a certain respectability as it worked with politicians," the textbook reads, according to the Herald."

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/education/how-american-fundamentalist-schools-are-using-nessie-to-disprove-evolution.17918511

[Howey]

YOU

SON

OF

A

BITCH!

I had that up here to post after I finish an argument elsewhere.

It's Bobby Jindal. He's interviewing for VP, so what else do you expect? Plus, it's Louisiana. There's dumber than Floridians. They'll never make it that far in school anyhow.

[uselesslegs]

Oooooooooopppss!!!

This particular subject, has always gotten my ire up rather quickly.

I have no power to stop a parent who wishes to retard their child's development or raise them to be under prepared for the world...but if I lived in Louisiana, I would make damn sure the state didn't use my tax dollars, via a voucher system, to promote or fund such insanity.

Those poor fuckin kids are going to spend years sorting all this shit out...once the real world demands their attention...and it's wholly unconscionable that people throw their children into a pit of ignorance.  Just unconscionable.

[Howey]

Here's more from the link I had:

This 2012-2013 school year, thanks to a bill pushed through by governor Bobby Jindal, thousands of students in Louisiana will receive state voucher money, transferred from public school funding, to attend private religious schools, some of which teach from a Christian curriculum that suggests the Loch Ness Monster disproves evolution and states that the alleged creature, which has never been demonstrated to even exist, has been tracked by submarine and is probably a plesiosaur...

Among the other claims taught in ACE science curriculum, according to Scaramanga, are the following (the last three ACE curriculum claims are detailed in a subsequent post by Scaramanga titled, 5 Even Worse Lies from Accelerated Christian Education),

    - Science Proves Homosexuality is a Learned Behavior
    - The Second Law of Thermodynamics Disproves Evolution
    - No Transitional Fossils Exist
    - Humans and Dinosaurs Co-Existed
    - Evolution Has Been Disproved
    - A Japanese Whaling Boat Found a Dinosaur
    - Solar Fusion is a Myth

It goes on...but here's another link (be sure to watch the video):

http://www.talk2action.org/story/2011/6/27/151131/081

Taxes of all types owed by businesses to the state, are diverted to "scholarships" for private schools. In Florida, the largest of these programs, over 80% of the students subsidized by tax credits are attending religious schools, many of them using fundamentalist curricula.

The national pro-voucher movement is spearheaded by the Betsy DeVos-led American Federation for Children, which has absorbed Advocates for School Choice and includes Alliance for School Choice, and funds many of the state "school choice" non-profits. A major partner in states across the nation, and an organizer of local support for the pending Pennsylvania voucher bill SB-1, is the Association for Christian Schools International  (ACSI).

So why was I holding on to this for two days? yeah...I've been busy dealing with a personal matter, but here's why.

Because none other than Mittens Romney wants to do the same fucking thing.

Governor Romney has been an advocate of so-called "school choice" since his first run for the White House.  In 2007, Romney suggested American parents should not only be encouraged to abandon the public schools; they should be rewarded for it with a tax break for home schooling their kids:

    "I also believe parents who are teaching their kids at home, homeschoolers, deserve a break, and I've asked for a tax credit to help parents in their homes with the cost of being an at-home teacher."

Now, as the Republican nominee outlined in a recent speech to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Romney wants to redirect $25 billion from two federal programs into a new voucher scheme.  As the New York Times explained:

    As president, Mr. Romney would seek to overhaul the federal government's largest programs for kindergarten through 12th grade into a voucherlike system. Students would be free to use $25 billion in federal money to attend any school they choose -- public, charter, online or private -- a system, he said, that would introduce marketplace dynamics into education to drive academic gains.

But as the experience in Indiana and Louisiana suggests, that system would instead introduce large quantities of public cash into the coffers of religious schools and academies whose educational credentials may be suspect at best...

That's certainly not the case in Bobby Jindal's Louisiana, where voucher-receiving institutions must be blessed by the state.  As the Daily Kingfish noted, over 90 percent of the 115 schools qualifying for Jindal's $8.500 voucher are religious institutions.  And as Reuters documented, many of the 7,450 slots reserved for voucher students are at some pretty suspect schools:

    The school willing to accept the most voucher students -- 314 -- is New Living Word in Ruston, which has a top-ranked basketball team but no library. Students spend most of the day watching TVs in bare-bones classrooms. Each lesson consists of an instructional DVD that intersperses Biblical verses with subjects such chemistry or composition.

    The Upperroom Bible Church Academy in New Orleans, a bunker-like building with no windows or playground, also has plenty of slots open. It seeks to bring in 214 voucher students, worth up to $1.8 million in state funding.

    At Eternity Christian Academy in Westlake, pastor-turned-principal Marie Carrier hopes to secure extra space to enroll 135 voucher students, though she now has room for just a few dozen. Her first- through eighth-grade students sit in cubicles for much of the day and move at their own pace through Christian workbooks, such as a beginning science text that explains "what God made" on each of the six days of creation. They are not exposed to the theory of evolution.

    "We try to stay away from all those things that might confuse our children," Carrier said.

Oy...what if Mittens was elected President and the Mormon Church got all the vouchers for their schools? Implausible? Read...

A conservative think tank is distributing a lengthy essay on the history of education in Utah that implies that if Mormons don't vote in favor of the state's school voucher law that they could face cultural extinction.

The Mormon-oriented Sutherland Institute bought advertisements in Utah's two largest newspapers to publish its essay, which says public schools were introduced in Utah by federal officials who wanted to end The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' control of the state...

I guarantee you...if Romney's elected President, there will be Mormon (and other) grade, middle and high schools popping up everywhere, paid for with government vouchers, and replacing our public schools, filling kids heads with nonsense.

Remember this?

http://www.politikalculture.com/index.php/topic,1143.0.html



What happened to the First Amendment?

[Howey]

Oooooooooopppss!!!

This particular subject, has always gotten my ire up rather quickly.

I have no power to stop a parent who wishes to retard their child's development or raise them to be under prepared for the world...but if I lived in Louisiana, I would make damn sure the state didn't use my tax dollars, via a voucher system, to promote or fund such insanity.

Those poor fuckin kids are going to spend years sorting all this shit out...once the real world demands their attention...and it's wholly unconscionable that people throw their children into a pit of ignorance.  Just unconscionable.

It's had me riled up for years, Chuck. Don't you remember my arguments against home schooling with lil Mike?

Edited to include: Republicans don't want the citizenry smart. They want us dumb.

[uselesslegs]

Our "tomorrow" is tech, whether we like it or not as a people.  It is the future.  Matter as fact, it's already here.  We're falling further behind with our continued robotic *business* approach in determining children's education.  I, and many other people like me, can memorize and crunch for an FCAT, it doesn't mean I learned a fuck'in thing as I forget the material a week or a month later, after I've already passed the test with flying colors.  It doesn't mean I learned to analytically or critically think...it just means I can pass the Test, the same Test that's suppose to determine whether I'm learning and growing as a student. 

The same test that says I'm ready to go out in the world or onto higher education.  Testing is ONE of the means to determine, in part, whether a child is learning or not.  To hold it as THE key component of determination is like saying our GDP being up should be the only consideration as to whether our economy is good.

All that aside...NOW mix in even MORE rungs down the ladder in education with *knowledge* that not only doesn't prepare a child for a modern tech world, but it actually disassociates them from being tomorrows tech leaders...hell...today's tech leaders.  Innovation in biology won't be found in someone who is taught to ignore how biology works. Innovation in tech won't be found in someone who is taught that everything that makes tech work, isn't real or is a lie.  When you set up opposing dynamics that say, "The advances in modern medicine don't have anything to do with our understanding of evolution and nothing else within biological medical/science explains how things work, better than evolution, but ignore it anyway and go help people!"...you aren't helping shit.

[Howey]

Remember what I said the republicans do not want us smart. There immigration play means bringing in foreigners with high tech skills, giving them an education in exchange for their loyalty. LilMike used to bring it up. They don't want the Mexicans, the want the Indians, who are more conservative.

[Rana]

Remember what I said the republicans do not want us smart. There immigration play means bringing in foreigners with high tech skills, giving them an education in exchange for their loyalty. LilMike used to bring it up. They don't want the Mexicans, the want the Indians, who are more conservative.

Cheap labor nd canon fodder, that is what Republicans want!

[ekg]

How has being smart or educated come to such a low standing in this country? How is it 2012 and we look more like Europe circa 1145? I've said it time and time again that we're an extremely new country, one that never really had it's 'religious' dominance .. but I'd always thought in the back of my mind that we never would or could just because we're in a totally different century, with the dark ages well behind us..

but those 'dark ages' aren't behind us.. Europe, yes.. us? no.

there was light and knowledge and intelligence before the fall of Rome. After, there was the dark ages were knowledge was lost and religion and 'myth' ruled for hundreds of years... we're entering that time... Rome fell this time around with the financial collapse and the black man in office.. it's been heading there for awhile, but those 2 events led to a rise in a party (tea) that's insane in it's fundamentalism.. and we're going to pay for their stupid before long..

[ekg]

Among the other claims taught in ACE science curriculum, according to Scaramanga, are the following (the last three ACE curriculum claims are detailed in a subsequent post by Scaramanga titled, 5 Even Worse Lies from Accelerated Christian Education),

    - Science Proves Homosexuality is a Learned Behavior
    - The Second Law of Thermodynamics Disproves Evolution
    - No Transitional Fossils Exist
    - Humans and Dinosaurs Co-Existed
    - Evolution Has Been Disproved
    - A Japanese Whaling Boat Found a Dinosaur
    - Solar Fusion is a Myth

are you fucking kidding me?

[uselesslegs]

are you fucking kidding me?

No...they're not fucking kidding you.

[ekg]

No...they're not fucking kidding you.