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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. The curriculum also claims that a Japanese fishing boat caught a dinosaur.
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Sadly, that's only the half of it. Read the full article if you want a good chuckle. Programs like these are also being pushed in Pennsylvania.
In the past, I've been a big supporter of private school voucher programs; I've always thought they would be beneficial to our education system, but after seeing this article, I'm beginning to rethink my position.
It's one thing for taxpayer money to go toward private education, but it's an entirely different issue if those schools are pushing an extreme religious view. This kind of thing really pushes the boundaries of separation of church and state, as well as making our students even more dumb than they already are.
Are you comfortable with the idea of your tax dollars going paying for this kind of nonsense?
We'll see a big change in tune regarding school vouchers and "freedom of religion" once someone wants to collect public funds for children attending a Rastafarian school.
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School vouchers in Louisiana, Pennsylvania and other states allow parents to send their kids to whatever school they want. That's perfectly lawful, except that some of those schools aren't able to take an influx, and more than that, some or even many are teaching unapproved 2004-vintage piles of steaming evangelical shit.
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Critics have expressed concern about some of the schools approved for the program, including a lack of site visits in the approval process and the inclusion of schools that do not appear to have the facilities or staff for the large increases in enrollment that would result if all of their available vouchers were used.
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So anyway. Here are some of the things these textbooks teach:
- Modern Africa needs the Bible. Only 10% of Africans in Africa are literate.
- Humans and dinosaurs co-existed.
- God designed “checks and balances” to prevent environmental crises, so chill! After all, “Roses are red, violets are blue; they both grow better with more CO2.”
- “Rumors” of foreclosures, high unemployment, homelessness, and general misery during the Great Depression are just socialist propaganda.
- The Ku Klux Klan kept "blacks, Catholics and Jews 'in their place'." The Klan were "a means of reform" who fought "bootleggers, wifebeaters and immoral movies" and achieved "a certain respectability as it worked with politicians".
- Unions just want to destroy the accomplishments of “hardworking Americans.”
- Mormons, Unitarians, and Catholics = bad.
- “God used the ‘Trail of Tears’ to bring many Indians to Christ”
- “Through the Negro spiritual, slaves developed patience to wait on the Lord and discovered that the truest freedom is freedom from the bondage of sin.”
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Is this what you want the younger generation to be taught?
Oh, so we should force these kids to go to public brain washing institutions where they learn things like "condoms make safe sex."
Just because your teenage pregnancy problem was not prevented by a problem does not mean that condoms are ineffective.
Given the choice between brainwashing my [hypothetical] children into condom-use versus brainwashing them into believing that dinosaurs are real and evolution is a lie, I think I'd choose the former.
Now, let's have fewer red herrings please.
The whole thread is a red herring. Close it now?
---------- Post added 06-21-2012 at 02:59 PM ----------
The point is that there are agendas that provide false information on both sides. One doesn't really matter (who really cares whether a japanese boat caught a dinosaur), where as one does (saying that condoms make safe sex is misleading and has the potential to cause real problems for teens.)
Well, it's a good thing that today's sex education says Safer Sex. Additionally, I've had sex with a condom literally thousands of times, no children, no STDs. And that time you accidentally had a kid, did you use prayer in place of proper prophylaxis? Or was it a defective condom and that's why you hate them so?
1) The concept of vouchers and semi-privatized/whatever/charter schools does afford parents more options.
2) While some places abuse this freedom to push archaic nonsense, I'm sure other institutions take advantage of the freedom to dig deep into math and science.
3) If the institutions are not investigated thoroughly enough, that is a problem of rigor - an unintended consequence - which can be corrected over time.
From an educational standpoint, the concern beyond secondary education is probably accreditation.
If there are dozens of private school systems, and if they are not subject to some common form of accreditation, then if becomes difficult to judge whether the instruction incoming students have received is adequate preparation.
There are certainly entrance exams that can be applied, but if graduates from a particular school system do not meet minimum entrance exam requirements, I would bet most of them (and the school system they came from) would claim they are being discriminated against, rather than acknowledging that their flawed educational techniques are to blame.
Agreed. That's why I have been supportive of them in the past.
Yes, however, my concern would be the high percentage of religious institutions. The Department of Education indicates that over 76 percent of private schools are religiously affiliated. Religious organizations don't have the best track record when it comes to handling science issues. Can they teach it just as well as public schools or better? Yes, absolutely. But, will they?
If vouches become commonplace then we should be concerned about exactly where this money is going. The whole thing opens a giant can of worms in regards to religious freedoms. Maintaining proper academic standards would require trampling on the first amendment, or completely ignoring this kind of institutionalized ignorance.
I would believe that those religious institutions are a reflection of the geographically local culture.
This is the heart of it.
A few possibilities:
1) Have a state issued minimum curriculum. Allow the institutions to teach whatever they like in addition to certain topics.
2) Audit the institutions. Normalize the performance across all institutions such that if one is failing to adequately teach a required subject, it is punished for the poor performance.
I would be for school vouchers if my library tax dollars could go to Amazon.com. I don't even use the library. You have to wait weeks before you can borrow anything that's worth a damn.
Let's start a Rastafarian school, Tocsin. Freedom of religion, right?
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They do. Safer, anyway. Kids are going to have sex, might as well make it safer for them. Abstinence only sex education enforces the American puritanical obsession with sex (Yes, I said American. Sex. Obsession. It's not nearly as big a deal in other countries. After you reach age of consent, sex suddenly goes from taboo to the GREATEST THING EVER - just look at those pointless but mandatory sex scenes in Hollywood movies, when it is merely another facet of life). Like alcohol, denying them sex and making it taboo only serves to make sex into a larger issue than it has to be, like American kids who have a reputation of going to Germany and getting dangerously drunk because it's so badass to be taboo, whereas German natives, who have a much healthier attitude towards alcohol, know their alcoholic ABCs and don't go as wild.
Kids are going to drink and they're going to fuck. Teach them the science of safe fucking and for gods sake, lower the drinking age.
Sorry... my proposal
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The sex ed portion of a normal high school health class curriculum teaches the only thing that's 100% effective is abstinence. Then the class moves on to cover the effective rates of different kinds of birth control, what measures reduce rates of STD transmission (for specific STDs), how effective each method are and what using different kinds of protection in tandem means in terms of pregnancy and STD risk reduction.
Getting shrill over an education you never received and reinterpreting a soundbite to fit preconceived notions about said education doesn't lend much authority to your position.
wonder if the school will be liable to lawsuit under defamation/libel/slander etc.
No. I do not want the younger generation to be taught such nonsense, but inevitably they will be. I don't know how those schools ended up on the approved list.
I can't believe these things are happening in America. Such a huge amount of stupid is hurting my brain.
Except many religious teachings wouldn't be complementary or supplementary, they would be outright contradictory. Evolution is a prime example. In order to enforce minimum state standards you would have to force these religious institutions into teaching ideas contradictory to their religious beliefs; something they would be loathe to do.
Which textbooks would these be? Who is producing them, and who is using them? Your OP doesn't say.
I am very familiar with all the major publishers of Christian textbooks, and many of the minor ones, by virtue of having overseen one of the largest State homeschool associations in the United States for almost 10 years. I have never seen ANY of the nonsense you cite in any of the textbooks that are in general use in Christian schools.
Please give me the specifics on these books so that I can take appropriate action.
They have schools in Louisiana?
I read a similar article in the extreme left site "alternet". I'd consider the source, although I'm sure there's some truth to it.
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Kitesurf has provided a good reference... but only one curriculum, ACE, is addressed in any detail. The article mentions A Beka and Bob Jones, but does not provide a lot of specific criticism, presumably because these are not "kooky" enough for a good story. In fact, they are both quite good (despite containing occasional references to matters of faith when they are relevant to the material).
I am quite familiar with ACE. I have for years advised people not to use it. The school for which my wife serves as Principal does not allow use of the ACE curriculum in any of its programs.
An article misleads by leaving the reader with the impression that ACE is representative of curricula used in Christian schools; it most certainly is not. But it is used in some schools and home education programs; I wish it were not.
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Originally Posted by Monte314
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Which textbooks would these be? Who is producing them, and who is using them? Your OP doesn't say.
I am very familiar with all the major publishers of Christian textbooks, and many of the minor ones, by virtue of having overseen one of the largest State homeschool associations in the United States for almost 10 years. I have never seen ANY of the nonsense you cite in any of the textbooks that are in general use in Christian schools.
Please give me the specifics on these books so that I can take appropriate action.
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I went to private school and many of the books available are like this. They dont teach this stuff all the time, but they do it enough to indoctrinate kids. They taught me things like catholics are going to hell, that black people are the spawn of Cain or Esau, and that their black skin is a mark of a sinner. There are a lot of other things too, its sad.
These claims were made in textbooks designed for non-sectarian courses? What textbooks were they? Who published them?
06-21-2012, 10:40 PM
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