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California Moves To Block Texas' Textbook Changes
eldavojohn writes "Yesterday the Texas textbook controversy was reported internationally but the news today heats up the debate as California, a state on the other side of the political spectrum, introduces legislation that would block these textbook changes inside California. Democrat Senator Leland Yee (you may know him as a senator often tackling ESRB ratings on video games) introduced SB1451, which would require California's school board to review books for any of Texas' changes and block the material if any such are found. The bill's text alleges that said changes would be 'a sharp departure from widely accepted historical teachings' and 'a threat to the apolitical nature of public school governance and academic content standards in California.'"
If you can't fight them... Put a fence around and let them devolve in peace.
"apolitical nature of public school governance"
Say what?
It's nice to see some politicians actually are looking out for the best interests of their society. I'm sure he's corrupt in other ways but, in this regard at least, he's doing the right thing. I hope more follow suit.
Is he seriously implying that current curricula was set with political blinders on. Not that I agree with the slant Texas has put on history, but to imply that the current histories taught do not have one is disingenuous.
"a threat to the apolitical nature of public school governance and academic content standards in California."
"apolitical"? Huh?
There's no such thing in an organization that exist solely via government, aka "public schools".
Interesting idea, but it seems to put the onus and cost on California's school board. I'm not American but I was under the impression that they are not currently awash with money. Would it be better to put the onus on publishers tending for California's schools? Maybe also they should be required to publish an addendum if any of this revisionist history fond its way into the books.
Because something that is widely accepted is always true.
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
The next time a southern state wants to secede from the union.... LET THEM!!!!!!!!
Seriously, the country is better off without them.
They take all our tax money and return nothing. They dumb down the rest of the nation, and they are also probably largely responsible for most of the failed mortgages.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
recall our ambassador to Texas.
If the liberals that are ruining the USA are fighting the conservatives that are ruining the USA then the rest of us can have some peace and quiet for a while.
To give Texas back to Mexico? It could be a major win/win by getting rid of a major pain in the ass and giving the illegal immigrants a "legal" place to go.
Brrring...hello Texas? This is California...umm...you're black. I offer into evidence the California teacher spouting off a few days ago about how California is "stolen occupied Mexico". Guess that guy never heard about the Mexican American War (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican%E2%80%93American_War) which Mexico lost. Apolitical? How about historically accurate? Try that for once.
Texans seem to want it one particular way. Thats fine, they can vote and agree to have it that way.
California doesn't want it that way. THATS FINE, they can vote and agree to have it THEIR way.
Thats the advantage of having state laws rather than federal laws for things like this. People can dictate how THEIR community is ran and thats perfectly fine within reason. While you and I may not agree with it, the majority of Texans do so let them do what they want and stop trying to push your agenda on to them.
If you don't like it, live somewhere else or get enough Texans to agree with you to change the law.
One of America's biggest problems is everyone in it thinking their way is the only way and that everyone else in America should do and act the same way.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Textbooks should assumedly be 'politically neutral'. Who decides what is neutral? Isn't that an incredibly powerful position politically, because all deviations from neutrality will be erased by default unless enormous prestige in the face of strong opposition to partisanship is faced down?
One of the changes that was found non-neutral is that the textbooks will include a 'suggestion' that the McCarthy anti-communist policies 'may' have been justified. Should textbooks similarly not include what may be interpreted as a 'suggestion' that the French Revolution 'may' have been justified (e.g. "lots of people were poor and poor people tend to get upset when others are extremely rich" - a pure bona fide justification for the bloodbath)? Or what may be seen as 'suggestions' that the Soviet or Maoist uprisings 'may' have been justified? If there are _existing_ suggestions of this kind, is it OK for Texas to remove them?
Should they include a 'suggestion' that hatred against the US and violence against US citizens in the Middle East 'may' be justified? Or is this banned already?
History education as a whole is terrible and really all too often is used to teach an agenda.
A great example is the Atomic bombing of Japan. A good friend of mine went to a very good college. When she told me about what she was taught about WWII was was shocked.
It seems that the the US was racist and that is why we nuked Japan and that we treated the Germans with much more respect.
When I asked her about the Batan death march she had never heard of it.
When I asked her about the rape of Nanking. She had never heard of such a thing.
When I asked her about the threats to kill all the POWs in Japan if the US invaded she never heard of that.
But she did tell me that they told here Japan was willing to surrender before we dropped the bomb if we would have promised them that they could keep their emperor. "BTW that is a myth. The goal of negotiations was to prevent the occupation of Japan and not to just preserve the status of the Emperor".
It doesn't matter it is all slanted.
The teacher brought in a old woman that was a child when the bomb was dropped... That will help bring balance.
Truth is that with the exception of Japan and Germany in WWII the villains tended to not be as bad as history teaches and the heroes then to not be as pure. Notice that I left Italy out. Frankly they where just your average tin pot dictatorship and not really all that evil. The just fell in with a bad crowd. Oh and yes Stalin was just as bad as history says. Heck the only reason that Germany really lost on the Russian front was because Hitler was the on person on the planet that treated the Russians worse that Stalin did!
I get the feeling that all too often History is taught as a way to make use feel superior to those that went before us. Frankly that is a dangerous and stupid thing to do.
I would love to see a history class about the atomic bombing where they actually tried to teach the students to understand why Truman thought dropping the bomb was a good idea. What information he had and what was going on at the time.
Maybe then we could actually start learning form history instead twisting it to make us feel so much more enlightened than the historical figures from that past.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Yes, textbooks are dangerously biased so lets set the elementary aged kids loose to learn everything from the internet. Seriously? There's so much noise that gets thrown around the web that most adults have trouble identifying what is and isn't real (if I had a dollar for every email I get telling me that cleaner X is going to kill my pets and babies I wouldn't have to worry about the mortgage). Letting someone run free to learn on the internet is like saying "go find information that you agree with", that's all that 99% of people are ever going to do.
I realize you specifically call out primary sources, but do you really think that such sources aren't just as politically bent as modern sources. I guarantee you that you can find primary sources that describe the Kent State incident as everything from a horrible accident, to an violent demonstration, to murder of innocent college students. There's no way that a young kid is going to be able to sift through it and find the facts of the situation, that's why we pay professional historians to gather the facts in the first place.
Why don't we simply get rid of textbooks? With the internet primary source material is -very- easy to find and would teach children how to think rather than how to be brainwashed by the Right/Left. A teacher would guide discussions and offer hints about what primary material would be on tests, but really, textbooks by nature are not "apolitical" they have human editors with human biases. Perhaps 20 years ago the argument could be made that it was too hard to find primary sources, but today? One look at Google Books shows thousands of relevant, historical material for free.
I thought at first you were advocating getting rid of textbooks in physical form, but then I realized you meant paper, online, audiobook, everything. I don't think we should go that far.
Although it can be useful to examine primary sources, it may not always be practical. For instance, you might expect to be able to teach a subject to a child even though the primary material is beyond their reading or comprehension level. For that matter, it might not be written in a child's native language or even one he/she could be expected to study.
I'm also not certain that primary information is as available as you suggest. Not all subjects are equally well documented on the internets in primary form. And some that are are behind paywalls. Plenty of science and medical journals require a subscription or per-article fee to access them. Probably others as well. Maybe you could overcome this by making sure that your school has a subscription to just about everything a student might be expected to need. But then you're back in the filter business like you were before with the textbooks.
I think we'll continue to need textbooks in one form or another.
I am not a crackpot.
Hopefully he doesn't have another law for dealing with people who misspell his name.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Microsoft "Cloud Services" ad on the right side of the Slashdot page. Expecting "services" from Microslop is analogous to expecting "health care reform" from Newt Gingrich.
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With the internet primary source material is -very- easy to find and would teach children how to think rather than how to be brainwashed by the Right/Left.
Yeah, there's no way to get brainwashed by the left or the right on the internet.... ;)
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
"a sharp departure from widely accepted historical teachings"
So was teaching that the earth revolved around the sun.
None of this would matter if the government didn't control education. What a waste of money.
Yeah, that's why that San Francisco school sent home the students for wearing American Flags on Cinco De Mayo. Completely apolitical.
Because what primary source material you get directed to has a lot to do with what secondary or tertiary sources you go through to get to them... and the internet is full of second, third, and fourth-hand sources with agendas who selectively filter information. If you don't already know how to think before you come to the internet, you're pretty much doomed.
These days, a person can spend their whole life on the internet and never have to come across information that they don't want to accept. The ability to pop up and expand the echo chamber is limitless, and a lot of people want that, which is the problem.
Sure, the internet can help get straight information directly to people, but they still have to know where to look and know why they want to go there. But even if people got info directly from LOC, National Archives, and the NSF, there's still going to be "people" who think it's doctored info from the government trying to scam us. And, who knows? From time to time, they may be right. The problem as I see it is that there really aren't any pure sources of straight facts, and that truth in a philosophical and practical sense isn't and can't be the sum of the facts. Peer-reviewed textbooks that have a bit of curatorship from experts are supposed to be trusted sources of information. Then the politicians get into it, and they ruin everything.
I have no real ideas on how to fix it though. I'm not sure it can be fixed, just made differently broken. I suppose we have to aim for 'good enough,' but one thing is for sure, screw Texas.
that joke map showing canada absorbing the west coast and the east coat down to maryland, calling the south and the middle "jesusland" was a funny internet meme at one time, but as of late, is looking more like a serious cause
i admire canada's healthcare, it's sober banking rules, it's pragmatic international policies. and meanwhile i am stuck in this country with these fucking morons in the south ruining this country with neocon presidents, religious fundamentalism and ignorant libertarian wish fulfillment fantasies of the market just taking care of itself with unicorns and rainbows
give the south and the plains their assault guns and their abstinence education leading to lots more pregnant teens and their creationism denying leading to ignorance of basic science, and let them sink into the third world hellhole they so fervently desire to be
canada: give them alberta for the northeast usa, pretty please?
i honestly feel more affinity with canadians, in terms of morality and values, then i do with faux news zombified morons in the lower regions of my own country
i seriously, seriously have a major problem with some of my own countrymen who live in some sort of medieval parallel universe of prideful ignorance
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
"a threat to the apolitical nature of public school governance and academic content standards in California."
I lol'd. Hard.
i think the guardian has successfully trolled /., this story happened almost a year ago. i can't think of another reason in this day and age that a newspaper would report a year old story as a new story unless it was a troll.
if it is as bad as all the hippies have said then california is doing the right thing in choosing the textbooks they want, just as we have chosen the textbooks we want. in the end the cream will rise; the stupid kids will dig ditches and smart kids will be engineers, lawyers, etc.
lose != loose
This is the same thing I said yesterday: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1654076&cid=32232668
So Texan programs like this,
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/bestoftv/2010/05/13/ricks.teacher.fired.beating.cnn?hpt=T2
are going to expand to the rest of the US?
As the most populous state in the union vis à vis the largest textbook market, it seemed odd to me that California would lose out to Texas in deciding what content textbooks should contain. How about giving the rest of the US a choice between Texas-styled and California-styled editions of textbooks? Although one version is obviously most cost effective for publishers, two versions isn't as bad as fifty separate editions. -Joe
Get off my virtual lawn, you damned virtual kids!
"It's an urban myth, especially in this digital age we live in, when content can be tailored and customized for individual states and school districts," said Jay Diskey, executive director of the schools division of the Association of American Publishers.
--
Three companies are responsible for about 75 percent of the country's K-12 textbooks, Diskey estimated. Representatives for two of them--Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and McGraw-Hill--on Friday referred inquiries from The Associated Press to Diskey. The third, Pearson Education Inc., did not respond to a request for comment.
--
For now, California's curriculum will not be subject to any modifications, Texas-influenced or otherwise. Last July, the Legislature suspended until 2013 the statewide adoption of new educational materials to give cash-strapped districts a break from buying new textbooks.
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
"I reject your reality and substitute my own." -- Adam Savage
When politicians are involved, everyone loses.
but there's a major difference between recognizing that bias is a permanent aspect of media and history no matter how hard we scrub it... and purposefully going out of your way to stick truly outrageous bias into your history/ media with no shame at all
it's also a form of dangerous idealism to equate the inevitable shades of bias in history with an outright propaganda whitewash of history
an analogy: there will always be crime in society. you can bust your ass fighting crime as hard as you can, but there still will be some crime. you'd have to magically remove human free will to prevent absolutely everyone from making bad choices that lead to a life of crime. but is that the same as completely stopping the fight against crime? to just let it go unimpeded?
obviously not. in the same way, accepting the inevitable slight bias in all of history and media is NOT the same as accepting complete propagandistic whitewashing. to equate them is idealism
that you cannot have the impossible (crime free society, unbiased history/ media) is no reason to accept the truly terrible (run away crime/ outright propaganda)
somethings in life you can never achieve. but stopping to work hard to get as close as possible to the impossible to achieve, is simply worse
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
In Peru, in the 80s, there was a group of maoist nutjobs called the "Shining Path," who vowed, among other things, to surround the cities from the countryside. What they were and are is a rural terrorist organization.
I've traveled in rural Texas recently. What you have there are a lot of poor, uneducated, disenfranchised white people sporting racist tatoos buying knives and swords at stands by the side of the road. The gun trade is a bit more private but still quite active. The textbook changes just reflect a wider change in worldview in the rural south. What they are poised to do are to become the next generation of terrorist nutjobs fobbing bombs at wealthier people, mostly in cities. They're just waiting for the next corn-pone Hitler, which the networks that gave us the Becks and Palins of the world will be all too happy to provide.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Is a textbook allowed to give a suggestion that hatred of the US or the western world might be justified?
Why, then, is it not allowed to suggest that hatred against communists might be justified?
Is it because the US is bad and people in the middle east ARE to a large extent justified, so the former is a valid point to make, while communists were good or at least not very bad at all, so the latter is under all circumstances false to suggest?
Please post alternative hypotheses for the observed fact.
Here's the link to the Texas Education Agency page showing the revisions by the two groups involved. I suggest looking at the high school revision, it's wording is essentially COMPLETELY changed. Poor teachers, that's a lot of extra work for them.
http://www.tea.state.tx.us/index2.aspx?id=3643
Studying stuff you know you will never use seems unappealing enough. Now students will understand that their studies are not only useless, but a load of half-truths made to fit whichever political agenda is in control.
Just memorize stuff long enough to regurgitate it on the exam, and if you can get away with it: cheat. I mean, why not? It's nothing but a lot of useless lies anyway, right?
Maybe, just maybe, subjects like math will not be overly politicized. But that stuff is all being offshored to the world's "best and brightest" i.e. cheapest.
Summary: "Wouldn't work."
Guess what? You're wrong. I know of several high schools and at least one college that does exactly what you describe - they let the children go to the source material and read the actual words. Of course the teacher doesn't let them "flounder" around the internet. She assigns the reading material.
The advantage is the students learn the ACTUAL words of the historical figures, rather than have it filtered (and censored) by textbook writers. The students read Jefferson's words about how he thinks the Church is corrupt, but he still believes Jesus was the messiah, rather than a textbook summary that falsely-claims Jefferson was an atheist (or deist).
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
After all, this fact is probably one of the ones the Left has eliminated from the text books over the years.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
California is right up there on the failed mortgage list, along with several other hard blue states.
Clinton, one of your progressive icons, signed the law that repealed glass stegall. It passed congress with bipartisan support, and he made no attempt to veto it, even if that would have been symbolic. That opened the floodgates for huge financial fraud. He also was part of a sucession of both R and D presidents keeping greenspan as the fed chairman, the guy who single handedly did the most damage to the economy over the last generation. And now we have someone even worse, bernanke, re-appointed by the current president, one of your icons a D person. And a whole lot of other wall street insiders to other important economic posts where they screw over the population for their high stakes derivatives gambling "industry".
One of your other icons, barney frank, was instrumental in getting that law passed that allowed people with no verifiable incomes to get what became known as "liar's loans"
You can go look that stuff up, educate yourself. This left right schism is promoted to keep the people divided, so they fail to see where real blame for all the various high crimes really lie.
If you, anyone you, are still stuck in the finger pointing mode that it is "all them damn teabagger and neocon's fault", or "all them damn pinko commie librul's fault"...I *really* pity you, because you've been successfully brainwashed, no different from any other cult member.
there were a giant wall separating texas from the rest of the usa
but as it is, what texas decides to do has an effect on me. thus, i have a right to say on what texas decides to do. if texas is going to unleash a bunch of propagandized holy warrior children into the usa, i want to clear my throat and say "no, texas, you don't get to whitewash history and zombify your children, because the influx of propagandized morons affects my life: these people vote, they make decisions, large and small, in loca, state and federal government, that affect my quality of life, and you will not drag me and my country down to third world status"
the lie is that state rights somehow have a superior advantage to federal rights. they only valid rights wall exists between the individual and society. the idea that state rights has some sort of validity is a false construct, that somehow the decisions a state makes is somehow superior or less superior, in terms of trouncing on indivudal rights, or upholding them, as compared to federal decisions
in other words: individual rights is the paramount issue, correct?
in that regard, how is it possible that what a state decides can somehow protect the individual, or trample on the individual, to a better or worse degree than a federal decision? on what logical basis is that possible?
state's rights ia c ontrived false construct, if you are truly motivated by the only morally and intellectually defensible cause: individual rights. state's rights cuts both ways. it is neither more for individual rights, or more against them. its a red herring to confuse the two concepts
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
LoSCOTUS of SBOErg.
So basically, they can't afford the books no matter what is in them till 2013. That's good stuff right there, don't care who ya are.
[quote] "a threat to the apolitical nature of public school governance and academic content standards in California."[/quote]
That's funny. The only standard applied to California education is mediocrity.
.sig? Get your own damn
If you stop to think about what the U.S. would be like without the former members of the Conderacy..what a fine place it would be! Given demographics from the 19th century etc. you'd have something that was a cross between Great Britain and Scandinavia. The U.S. today would likely be like Denmark on a massive scale, a social democracy that works and everyone is happy.
As a German I've wondered why Germany was able to move on, more or less, from devastating defeat to become a modern country. Whereas the states of the former Confederacy seem mired in the past, even though the American South was also devastated in losing their war. And both National Socialist Germany and the Confederacy could point to impressive military achievements (Rommel the Desert Fox, General Lee, etc). As an outsider I see these differences though:
1) In the American South, the former slaves (the raisin d'etre of the US Civil War) were present and part of life after the war. Whereas the countries Germany tired to conquer were far away from the lives of average Germans. It is probably an unfortunate part of human nature that when you have been oppressing someone, and that person is now free and you see him every day, that constant reminder brings guilt, which brings unhappiness, and eventually anger and resentment. Rather than contrition
2) Germany was actually lucky to not have a slave-based economy (despite the best efforts of the National Socialist regime and Albert Speer). The German blue and white collar workforce was able to easily build things that the world wanted. So, for Germans the war's end meant: keep working that drill press, keep making those precision optics. Whereas I think for the whites in the American South, they did not have many skills to fall back on when the black slaves were freed. If you have been primarily a slave watcher, when the workers are gone, you are pretty much hosed.
Longer term, for the American South to move on to modernity, I suspect a big part of the answer will be for Southerners to acquire a new identity to be proud about. Today I think only New Orleans has a culture that is desired and liked. I think many parts of the South have tried to rely on American football as an outlet for a drive for excellence, but that is really not enough. The American South really needs something about its culture, or something about the work they do, that would be "world class" enough to let them cut their ties with the baggage of hate and resentment from the Confederacy. Either that or the former Confederacy will prove to have been indigestible by the United States, and the U.S. will turn away from science, and it will indeed cease to be a great power. Which would be a travesty! The U.S. has so much potential, if only the crazy haters in the geographical basement could be reset somehow.
I don't agree with a lot of the stuff they are attempting to change. But at the same time I don't agree with the textbook revisions that the liberals have been doing uncontested for much too long now. Current educational material are already filled to the brim with political viewpoints.
.sig? Get your own damn
He didn't have to spell the formula out in full. That he did it anyway, does suggest, he was perfectly "in" Christianity — as is the GP's point.
BTW, every President since has also been a Christian. The current one was, reportedly, quite devout too — at least, until he moved to the capital.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Gotta love the evil conservative hyperbole there.
No one is implying that all conservatives are evil. That's why it said this:
The alterations and fallacies made by these extremist conservatives are offensive to our communities and inaccurate of our nation's diverse history.
Frankly, if you've looked at the changes suggested, anyone in favor of these is an extremist. The best you could say is that they're not truly a conservative, as they're advocating wholesale revision to the point of making shit up. Here, TFA sums it up neatly:
The Texas recommendations... include adding language saying the country's Founding Fathers were guided by Christian principles and a new section on "the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s." That would include positive references to the Moral Majority, the National Rifle Association and the Contract with America, the congressional GOP manifesto from the 1990s.
The amendments to the state's curriculum standards also minimize Thomas Jefferson's role in world and U.S. history because he advocated the separation of church and state, and require that students learn about "the unintended consequences" of affirmative action and Title IX, the landmark federal law that bans gender discrimination in education programs and activities.
If you don't already see that for the steaming pile of bullshit it is, let me break it down for you:
the country's Founding Fathers were guided by Christian principles
"Lighthouses are more useful than churches." -- Ben Franklin.
Thomas Jefferson had some stronger words about the Christian faith in particular, but I couldn't find them offhand. No, these men were largely deists, making this an outright lie. The most charitable interpretation you could make is that they were guided by Christian principles, even if they weren't Christian, but that's obviously mistaken at best -- the Bible itself is clear about submitting to authority, that any Earthly authority (like, say, the British King) was placed there by God. No, they were guided largely by ideas floating around the world at the time, many dating back to the Greeks -- books like Plato's Republic, not the Holy Bible.
...a new section on "the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s." That would include positive references to the Moral Majority, the National Rifle Association and the Contract with America, the congressional GOP manifesto from the 1990s.
Hardly nonpartisan. I suppose you're going to tell me that the books are currently favorable to modern liberals? I'd say that this is pretty damning evidence of these being not just extremists, but conservative extremists.
The amendments to the state's curriculum standards also minimize Thomas Jefferson's role in world and U.S. history because he advocated the separation of church and state...
Can't have that, can we? It's only one of the pillars of the Great American Experiment, a prerequisite for religious freedom and expression. I very much doubt anyone writing this is a current member of the Church of England, are they? Then they owe their freedom to practice their current religion to Thomas Jefferson.
...and require that students learn about "the unintended consequences" of affirmative action and Title IX, the landmark federal law that bans gender discrimination in education programs and activities.
Are they really suggesting that banning gender discrimination was a bad idea? If you needed an example of why Yee said, "some Texas politicians may want to set their educational standards back 50 years," this is it.
I have to imagine that most conservatives would be ashamed to be associated with drivel like this. In light of that, I think the sentence you quoted is entirely true and warranted, as written:
The alterations and fallacies made by these extremist conservatives are offensive to our communities and inaccurate of our nation's diverse history.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Who calls it the War for Southern Independence? Everyone in the south knows it as the War of Northern Aggression :)
Why don't we simply get rid of textbooks? With the internet primary source material is -very- easy to find...
No it isn't. With history there is no primary source. Every historical document has some political element in it even if it is unintentional. Even 2 eyewitnesses to an event will have their recollections of the event twisted by what they expected to see. The human brain is a tricky thing.
History is never about indisputable facts. At it's best it's collecting as many views of an event as possible, attempting to weed out the highly unlikely or patently imposable and sifting the rest to come up with what most likely happened. Hans Delbruck is an example of history done well.
Who is John Galt?
that what texas forces the individual to do is no different than what the feds force the individual to do
what does texas, or the fed, force the INDIVIDUAL to do? only at that interface is there any meaning
the logical failure is to suppose that texas is any more or less inclined to do something wrong to individual rights than the feds. that somehow texas is looking out for your interests in a superior, or inferior fashion, than the feds. on what basis can you say this?
both the feds, and texas, are capable of violating your rights. therefore, the idea of state rights as some sort of protector of your individual rights, to any worse or better degree than the feds, is a false idea
what i am saying is that the idea of states rights is a false hope. the state legislator or police can violate your rights just as easily and just as horribly as the feds (and in fact, does). so why look to the state as a protector of anything?
the only morally or intellectually valid criteria is violation of, or upholding of, individual rights. any measurement of states rights is a completely false idea in regards to individual rights. so what is the point of talking about states rights at all if individual rights are your concern? why do some people equate states rights with individual rights? such an equation is logically incoherent
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
White Texans = Shining Path??? Wow, your ranting about everything from Beck and Palin or Hitler and the Shining Path only shows how little you know about Texas. I'll just point out one small thing for you: The same road that brought you into Texas will also lead you out. Feel free to take that path and not return.
Federal Tax Burdens and Expenditures: Texas is a Donor State
Texas taxpayers receive less federal funding per dollar of federal taxes paid compared to the average state. Per dollar of Federal tax collected in 2005, Texas citizens received approximately $0.94 in the way of federal spending. This ranks the state 35th nationally and represents a slight decrease from 1995, when Texas received $0.95 per dollar of federal taxes paid (ranking them 37th nationally) -Source: The Tax Foundation
Foreclosure Rates Oct 2009
California #3, Texas #28 - Source: RealtyTrac
The left has been manipulating the textbooks for years but now they whine because the right is doing the same thing. I don't agree with some of it (evolution , etc) but as everyone keeps pointing out, elections have consequences.
He and other CAREER PARASITES need to stop wasting tax payers money and take a long hard look at where they dragged our (Californian) schools down to. Leland Yee is an attention whore, and this is not about Texas, he doesn't give a rats ass, his entire legacy has been attention whoring and sucking up public's money to unsure his job and jobs of his fellows bureaucRATs. California's schools are in a pitiable state and need help, NOT LIP SERVICE and sure as hell not more layers of costly bureaucracy.
the northeast is trying to move towards canada, and texas and the rest of jesusland is trying to move towards haiti. cut the morons loose, let them revel in their faux news and their religious fundamentalism, and in a few decades, let canada (including the northeastern former usa) provide humanitarian relief for their resurgent diseases (since science is the work of the devil) and their crumbling buildings and highways (since government regulation and taxes is anti-libertarian). all the while their propaganda and rewritten history will keep the southerners happy: their poverty and their ignorance means they are good god-fearing folk, and the decadent north lacks morals and values and only has money because of (insert random historical propaganda humility)
you can have your jesus and your gutted government and your guns. enjoy your trip to poverty and suffering, reactionary morons
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Students in American don't "read" anything anymore.
Yes, textbooks are dangerously biased so lets set the elementary aged kids loose to learn everything from the internet. Seriously?
The internet is simply the means. Most sites are as biased as textbooks. However, it would be expensive to give every student a copy of The Federalist Papers when studying the constitution, with the internet it is there and free.
The teacher would still assign readings, it would just be using the real material. Imagine if rather than reading Shakespeare, Dante or any other great author, we would only read summaries by someone else. Rather than reading Romeo and Juliet (or watching it being performed) we would just have a small paragraph describing the plot. Such things would be disastrous and pointless. However, we do the same thing with textbooks.
There's so much noise that gets thrown around the web that most adults have trouble identifying what is and isn't real (if I had a dollar for every email I get telling me that cleaner X is going to kill my pets and babies I wouldn't have to worry about the mortgage). Letting someone run free to learn on the internet is like saying "go find information that you agree with", that's all that 99% of people are ever going to do.
Those are not primary sources though. What the internet could let you do though, is find a study done by a university somewhere linking Cleaner X to cancer.
I fail to see how having kids read the actual words said by our founding fathers with the internet as the medium is terrible.
I realize you specifically call out primary sources, but do you really think that such sources aren't just as politically bent as modern sources.
They are, however, they are less prone to misinterpretation and revisionism that is prevalent and more dangerous in our world. Look at the Bible, over the years it has been interpreted as being pro-slavery or anti-slavery depending on who is reading it. It has been interpreted as being pro-segregation and anti-segregation over the years, etc. Same thing with historical documents, today we like to think of the US as having the moral high ground in everything, after all Lincoln was the greatest president, the US civil war was fought over nothing but slavery and everything falls into the right side (the victors) and the wrong side (the losers).
Teaching thinking through primary sources though is key because they are A) Free/Cheap (it would cost a fortune to have 2 contradictory textbooks, it is free to show documents from the federalist side and anti-federalist side, the confederate side and the union side) B) encourages thinking and debate C) show how important sources are.
There's no way that a young kid is going to be able to sift through it and find the facts of the situation, that's why we pay professional historians to gather the facts in the first place.
But they need to try because otherwise our society will fail. Any democratically run society depends on people who can think for themselves.
The problem is that yes, young kids might not be able to do this, but they are never taught to do things when they are older. Look at the primary 2 voters in the US:
A) The irrational liberal
B) The irrational conservative
No one seems to think for themselves. We've let editorials masquerade as news and we aren't teaching children how to think rationally. We live in an emotionally driven world, where logic is out and doing things to "feel good" is the only thing that matters.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
And how many teachers have the time & willingness to make this happen?
Most don't, since they can do it now and still don't.
Not that it's a bad idea, it's just more work for the teachers. However, it's a great idea for parents to help their kids understand the differences between facts & reported facts, how subtle phrases can clearly change things, how history isn't apolitical, how the founding fathers were mostly Christian yet wanted no religion in government, etc.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
The Spanish/Mexican upper class enslaved native population of their conquered territory. But to be fair - the French and English in Canada and the US also took Native American slaves, as did many Native American tribes. That's the problem with history, if you care to look at all of it, there is always something that taken out of context can be used to support or demean someone's opinion. History, like science should be viewed critically not politically, if you wish to learn. Those who scrub the data are seeking to obtain an advantage over you to restrict your liberty for their own gain.
The bill's text alleges that said changes would be ... 'a threat to the apolitical nature of public school governance and academic content standards in California.
Ok, that is the most laughably false thing I have read in weeks. Despite the spin of the legacy media, the reforms being pursued by Texas are, for the most part, a very late reaction to the distortions of government school curriculum that have been made by radical leftists over the course of decades. The left is simply upset that they will no longer be allowed to teach American school children to hate their own country and culture without resistance.
I've heard the 'big states set standards for textbooks' line for years.
Is it -that- much more expensive for a smaller state to find a different textbook publisher? Is the selection of textbooks so very small, and the marginal cost for a smaller order so very large, that there's absolutely no free market solution to this problem?
The whole point of having states manage their own education is that California shouldn't care what Texas does or doesn't want to teach. Having a big inter-state brawl over what should be taught is exactly what the system is supposed to avoid.
There has got to be an opportunity for smaller publishers here.
Since when are public school governance apolitical?
It's not all that hard to get the info from LOC.
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/jefferson_papers/mtjtime1.html
Or elsewhere.
http://rotunda.upress.virginia.edu/founders/default.xqy?keys=TSJN-print-01&mode=TOC
Tinfoil (or paper) hat conspirists will never be happy, so why try.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
however, i have a problem with you if you equate the ignorant bias that is currently in our history books with the outright attempt at propagandization that is going on in texas
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Teachers are hired to teach, not to sit in the back of the classroom, print off worksheets from purchased curriculum, run a few scantrons and then give a final.
If a teacher refuses to actually -teach- fire the teacher. Simple. With all these education budget cuts, teachers are now a dime a dozen.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Texas wasn't WON, it was TAKEN from the mexicans
Mexico wasn't WON. It was TAKEN from the Spanish. (Who had taken it from the Indians.)
The US wasn't WON. It was TAKEN from the English.
We can do this all day.
And you'd love it if we did, wouldn't you? Great job hijacking the discussion away from what raving lunatics Texans are being today, and refocusing it on an historically irrelevant distinction. Wow. I am in awe of your propaganda skills.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Define Messiah. Jefferson certainly didn't believe that Jesus was the divine son of god, but he valued Jesus' philosophical contributions.
I'm also interested to know how you define deist. If he believes in God, but rejects Jesus' divinity, what does that make him?
I don't disagree with your theory, but have you actually been in an elementary or middle school classroom in years? Budget cuts mean classrooms of 35 or so kids who don't have extracurricular activities and too much energy. Oh, plus unions means no firing of teachers. This all adds up to too little energy to put into teaching beyond the given curriculum for most teachers.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
There should be nothing obligatory in government schools, except math, natural sciences (theory of origin of anything excluded), English and athletics.
History, economics, sociology, literature, music, dances, etc should not be obligatory and should not affect any national grades
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
If they were only concerned with history books, you might have a point. But these asshats are trying to rewrite SCIENCE books too.
Learn something new.
want George W. Bush back in our country. Leave him be in the land of lala
I'm a Christian, and a Creationist. Yup.
If you want to know if I believe God created all we are aware, if, yes, I believe he did.
If you want to know if I know HOW he did it, well, I dunno. If evolution explains it suffuciently for science to make sense of it all, I'm fine with that.
Here's the details of my belief;
1. God declares himself to be omnipotent, omnipresent, and omnisicent. This means, to me, that he can do anything he wants, and he can be anywere, in fact everywhere, and know everything, even the future. All of this depends on him being omnipotent. You don't have to agree with me to understand my belief, ok?
1a. God also declares himself to have existed for all time. This gets complicated to some, but if God created the Universe, he existed outside of it (making something implies you are not PART of it, it did not exist until you made it, therefore you existed before it, be it a cake or the Universe.) Again, you can disagree, this is my expression of what I believe. And yes, I beleive I am correct, but I'm making these points so you might understand better why I make them, and my conclusions.
2. If God is in fact onmipotent, then he can indeed create anything he wants - including the Universe.
3. If God is onmipotent, then he can also create the Universe as he wishes. This includes creating it all at once, over the span of a week, or billions of years. And he can choose to make all of this appear as if it were made in a week, billions of years, or even instantly. Yes, he can make fossils, create artifacts that appear ancient to us, or he could have made Earth billions of years ago and work the processes to give us this world we see today.
4. The Bible, in the book of Genesis, does state that God created the world (and the Universe according to most scholars) in six days. We can have a frank discussion on what a day is to God, and if this is a literal translation of a 24-hour day or not, but in the end, my point 3 explains my belief that if he wanted to do it in six days and make it look like billions of years, he could.
In light of these beliefs, I am not compelled to challenge evolution as a viable scientific theory. I am not threatened by teaching it as established fact, though of course we still call it theory - science calls many things 'theory' that are settled science. However, I am somewhat dismayed that the discussion has devolved into an 'either-or' choice. A single paragraph in a science text, pointing out that many religions have other explanations for the creation of the Universe and of life on Earth would satisfy me. Christianity isn't the only faith that has a creation story. And offering minimal challenges to evolutionary theory doesn't seem to me to be a big deal, though this needs to be presented to students when they can grasp the concept of alternative views and competing theories. In other words, teach our children to think and excercise critical discernment, and this will not be a problem.
The Texas Board of Education does need correction in this matter. I am not the one to offer it to them. And we probably need some way to print more than one version of a science text. In this age of books-on-demand, electronic delivery, and the many other advances in printing, we can do a lot better. The textbook publishers are the problem here, not a bunch of self-serving administrators in ANY state of the Union.
Sheesh.
ps- From what I've seen over the past 3 decades, history texts in particular have been edited in the direction of a definite liberal/leftist bias, with blatant re-writing of historical events and slanted descriptions and conclusions. I don't want to see it turn to the right - I want it history taught as HISTORY, facts and reality, with opinion and conclusions labelled as such. Get the facts right first, please.
A good example of this would be to teach the reality that many of the men who founded our nation (the U.S.) were devout and active Christians, and their faith influenced thei
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
I think the important thing to note is that publishers will not be able to simply adopt the Texas standard in all their textbooks in order save publishing costs. They will have to produce two separate textbooks unless they want to lose the huge California market. Meaning the smaller states will have a choice instead of being stuck with the Texas revisions.
"Thbbft!" - Bill the Cat
Very good points.
I'm often irritated by people who like to say "the founders were Christians so the USA must be a Christian nation". The founders did not have a completely homogeneous notion about the role religion in government in the first place, but I find it particularly errant when people talk about Thomas Jefferson's ideas about the USA being a Christian nation. Jefferson was a Christian and he was deeply absorbed in matters of faith--yes, he did publish his own edition of the Bible that was focused on the works and wisdom of Jesus Christ. These facts are evidenced by a large volume of his own writings.
The fact that he Thomas Jefferson was a Christian doesn't say ANYTHING about how he thought a government should work.
Jefferson's position on the role of any religion (Christian or otherwise) in government has been explicitly defined in his published writings. He knew that any institution of man is vulnerable to corruption and his objectivity allowed him to see that both governments and religions are institutions of man. He saw the influence of religion on government as a cancer to any free society. You can see this fact very clearly in the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, which was authored by Thomas Jefferson, that says it is not the right of the government to leverage religion and vice-versa. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Statute_of_Religious_Freedom
Jefferson, in particular, was a Christian and a founder who knew that intermingling of governments and religion was an abomination against both and he said so. To deny this and argue that the USA was founded as a Christian nation is to betray Jefferson's stated ideals and those of many other founders.
+= E
Yes it is true, denying the role of Christian religion would be a lie, just not how you think:
Some Europeans who came here were fleeing Christian sectarian persecution-- that is why our Constitution has protections against religion.
Christian religion was the "moral" support for slavery.
Christian religion was the "moral" support for the massacre of the indigenous population.
Christian religion was the reason indigenous children were kidnapped, and brainwashed away from their parents (to be Christians) in an effort to destroy the indigenous cultures.
In all cases of evil throughout the history of this country (including the present; Bush, an apocalyptic Christian, called his murderous escapade in Iraq a Crusade), Christians are front and center. So, yes, Christians have a great deal to do [with all that is wrong] with this country.
Best quote ever:
An indigenous chief was tied with a noose around his neck, and his feet in a wood pile for a fire to burn him alive (Christians can't even kill their victims humanely). He was one of the last of up to 20 million people who inhabited Hispaniola before the Christians came and massacred them. A preacher came to him, and tried to get him to convert to Christianity "to save him" before he was burned alive-- he would still be burned alive regardless-- that's how Christians role. The preacher told him about heaven and hell... the chief asked, "Do all Christians go to heaven?" The preacher replied, "Yes." The chief stated, "I think I would rather prefer hell."
The quote gets some of its power because it is how pretty much everyone who is not a Christian thinks about Christians at least some of the time. Sometimes we pitty you like mentally retarded children, other times, you are just too dangerous / annoying.
That you were abused by your parents and brainwashed into believing in fairy tales is sad. That you would try to foist your wacko and demonstrably false beliefs on others is both evil and criminal. Evolve.
Why do we spend so much time arguing about evolution vs creationism in primary schools? Kids can barely read or work out math problems. Focus on teaching kids critical thinking and concrete facts that we can actually reproduce.
We don't teach kids theorems on why 1 + 1 = 2. Why do we try to teach them how the world was created? Save it for higher education. Teach them practical skills that will allow them to truly make decisions when they get to that point.
Insisting that evolution has its place in primary education is just as much about pushing agendas as including creationism. Neither one is needed to actually educate. Both of you need to get off your high horse and realize you aren't helping.
there is still a struggle
if you pretend all struggles can be solved dispassionately, passion still exists
the effort to reach an understanding has it limits, and if the understanding is not reached, then the conflict continues in baser ways
as soon as you erase passion (and all the good things that affords in this world), you will also erase all the bad things passion produces. since this is a fool's errand, you simply need to accept that we are human beings, and we have our limits, and if we have a a passionate belief in something, the struggle can get ugly at times
so brace yourself and stand aside, there's no magic wand to make this all go away, the struggle gets mean, and the cause is worthy
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
proof? Believe it or not Einstein http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialogue_Concerning_the_Two_Chief_World_Systems . Come to think of it I don't think I ever read in a history book about the pope being Galileo's college drinking buddy.
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
You might try reading ALL Jefferson's writings, instead of just the ones that fit your view. Jefferson was most definitely a deist, or as he referred to himself, a 'unitarian', which at the time meant virtually the same thing.
He did most certainly believe in Jesus as a good man, but denied his "Son of God" status. He rejected the idea of the trinity, and the divine status of Jesus, quite plainly in several writings. In 1823 he wrote a letter to Adams, saying, “And the day will come, when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as His Father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva, in the brain of Jupiter.”
He believed Jesus was a great philosopher, and his teachings were morally among the best ever seen. He did not believe he was the son of God, nor divine in any way. He discounted the virgin birth, and the resurrection. In no way, shape, or form was he what we would today call "Christian".
So guess what? You're wrong. That filtering takes place, whether through textbooks or a teacher assigning specific reading.
California is in nearly as bad an economic shape as Greece; they may not have enough money even to do book reviews. That leaves the US Department of Education, but I bet they won't touch the issue as it would be a perfect gift-wrapped present to Republicans throughout their spectrum ("Commie Muslims taking away local control of our schools!!!").
but somewhere between "I've been spending the last 2 years amassing firepower" and "Clinton and Reno _murdered_ families in Texas and Idaho" i have to reply to you seriously, because even if you are just a well-crafted troll, there actually are people out there who think like you wrote
look: the simple act of "amassing firepower" renders you worse than any problem you are complaining about
a conviction to solve your problems via violence rather than words. that's the problem. this is why clinton and reno PROTECTED us from an apocalyptic cult. it is not possible for civilian society to peacefully coexist with armed cultists. why?
ever here of a self-fulfilling prophecy?
that's when by your actions, you define the terms in which you struggle with the world. in a civil society, you use words. but if you introduce guns because your words don't have an effect, then maybe then you've only proven you don't deserve to be in civil society. then civil society has to call in its own guns to save itself from the likes of you: someone who has to use guns instead of words to get their way
so rightfully, we have to come in and forcefully disarm you. YOU'RE the problem, and frankly, you're a paranoid schizophrenic nutjob (or a really, really good troll: congratulations in that case, you sure fooled me!)
get rid of your guns, and start talking to people. the only other alternative is we have to disarm you to protect us from you. because on your current trajectory, a violent armed individual with deep grievances with society is incompatible with society
have faith in words. having faith in guns is a form of intellectual cowardice
stand down son, talk with your mouth, not your gun
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I take issue with your "most people go to church on Sunday" statement. The percentage of people who say they go to church in Texas is 49% percent, above the national average of 42%. It is not "most people", not even a majority. Sure, the rural texans probably have a higher church attendance than people in Houston or other metropolises but there's another point that's more important: about half those people who say they go to church lie about it. This site has a good run down of actual church attendance versus claimed church attendance, it's about half. So even if the majority of rural texans claim they go to church, it's a good bet that only about a quarter of them do.
The conclusion is that the good old-fashioned red-blooded church-going "real" america that people like you (and Sarah Palin) go on about is a lie, it doesn't exist. Similar arguments can be made for the rest of your statement, but I'll leave that to what the others who have responded to your comment have said.
And the real question here is that why is it that 51% of people in Texas are allowing the minority of people who go to church to dictate their educational curriculum?
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
Oh man, reading that line of bullshit just cracked me up. Listen to this politician: "We don't let politics interfere with education in this state, that's why we, your elected, political leaders, are enacting laws to prevent it." The very action he is undertaking falsifies his claim. His own claim falsifies itself merely by coming out of his mouth! You would have to be a complete idiot to buy into this nonsense.
Seems to me California would have more important things to worry about.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
So the only proof of your claim here is that poor people in Texas have racist tattoos and buy knives and guns? You know, that is not a new phenomenon. Poor people have to entertain themselves too. It's the rich people in the cities who are changing the textbooks, BTW.
i believe in the sovereign sanctity of the usa. i have to, i have ancestors who died in the civil war (both sides), and the revolution. probably killed by tory bastards who fled to britain (what is now canada, but was britain: i can't put much stock in the national pride of country who has the face of some bitch from another country on their money: how can you be proud of an identity you so readily subsume to someone else's identity?)
now i'd like you to take a good hard look at state's rightists: they are the one talking about redrawing borders. not international borders, but for the sake of their agenda, they might as well be, so incompatible they are with american values (by which i mean real american values: separation of church and state, solid education, etc)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Even better, in TFA he follows it up with:
Gotta love the evil conservative hyperbole there. I really wish people would vote for people with less of a flair for the dramatic.
Exactly; when in doubt just ad hominem.
The reason that Texas has so much clout is that the State of Texas (or its school boards, under state supervision) actually BUYS the textbooks and issues them to the students throughout the state for use during the academic year. Perhaps if other states set similar standards and were similarly active in actually putting their money where their mouths are, they would be able to overcome the unique position that Texas finds itself in. It's one thing to bitch about how Texas chooses to make their educational decisions; it's quite another to actually put up or shut up when it comes to laying out actual state dollars to provide the children of the state with their textbooks.
There's so much noise that gets thrown around the web that most adults have trouble identifying what is and isn't real
However, that's a very important skill. That's why you should learn it as early as possible.
In the Internet it's easy to look for both side of the coin (that's what you call noise), I don't see how that's dangerous.
If they could, they'd probably introduce a version or the burqa, but with a different, less Muslim name -- "Victorian Modesty Clothing", for example.
It's things like this that make one thankful for the 'separation of church and state' language in the US constitution. Now, we just need some work to enforce that language.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
I didn't learn history in High School; I learned the accepted myths which may well have had some factual basis. Covering nuance would confuse too many people so there are items that get smoothed over and simplified. Texas wants to put its own mythology out in front. This is a long-standing Texas tradition because, in my experience, people from Texas often look and act like people from anywhere else until something happens which makes them feel obliged to defend the honor of Texas, the honor of Texas women, or any one of a dozen or more of the basic precepts covered in "What it means to be a Texan" which is part of the unwritten curriculum of every Texas public school. Texans generally believe that the USA is God's chosen beacon to the world because Texas can't do it all by themselves. But they don't want anyone doing anything that threatens their sense of Texanhood so they will have their own books if that's what it takes.
To try to find connections between the Bible and modern government is ludicrous. Take this moment and read a random page out of Leviticus. Try not to laugh out of discomfort. Old Testament not your thing? The New Testament never condemns slavery and actually tells you how to keep slaves. The South was on the winning side of the theological argument for slavery.
Furthermore, to quote Sam Harris... "I've read the books. God is not a moderate. There's no place in the books where God says, 'You know, when you get to the New World and you develop your three branches of government and you have a civil society, you can just jettison all the barbarism I recommended in the first books.'"
Why do people still believe in Christianity? It is 2010. Must we propagate this insanity any further? All the sane people need to keep standing up and being heard.
I must say, modding this guy flamebait for an honest query about the usefulness of textbooks in a modern society is especially poetic given his signature line.
Changa hates change.
gun-toting, slaver appreciating, free market shilling, bible thumping, evolution refusing, gravity ignoring rednecks ?
but why ?
Read radical news here
Democrat Senator Leland Yee...
"Democrat" is a noun, not an adjective.
you're talking to me, over the internet
which means you have SOME sort of belief in the power of words
now simply understand that those words are all that you are entitled in your dealings with me, or anyone else in this world
when you introduce guns in the equation, then me, or anyone else, has a right to introduce guns as well
so why don't you calm the fuck down, lose the fucking guns, and TALK TO SOLVE YOUR PROBLEMS. or admit that you're a halfwit who NEEDS guns to solve their problems. then you get this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbeville_Standoff
some fuckwits picked up a gun rather than opened their mouth to solve their problems
so what is wrong with this world?
THEY ARE
YOU ARE
these sorts of situations: "i'll solve my problems with a gun," are not the fault of the government, THEY ARE THE FAULT OF THE VIOLENT SEPARATIST NUTBAGS LIKE YOURSELF WHO SHOOT RATHER THAN TALK
if you use your gun to back up your words, rather than simple logic and reason and an open mind willing to concede that sometimes you might be WRONG, then you've put yourself on an unerring collision course with a body bag, in your near future. YOUR CHOICE
USE YOUR FUCKING BRAIN, NOT YOUR TRIGGER FINGER, RETARD
or i will be seeing you in the newspaper soon, another pointless death due to an idiot who couldn't use words, but had a gun
IT DOESN'T HAVE TO BE THAT WAY
back up your words with THOUGHT, not LEAD
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
i kind of enjoy ideological bloodsport
and i do detest those who will sit in their ivory towers and issue condescending cold edicts, and never get out in the mud and roll up their sleeves and actually fight for what is right
what i'm saying is: yes, it is possible to succumb to passion and lose your higher faculties
but its also possible to sit in coldness and never actually fight when it is necessary to do so, and thereby lose the world to those who will fight, regardless of their actual legitimacy
what is that saying? "all that is required for evil to prevail in this world is for good men to do nothing" or something like that
violent passionate flat out WRONG people will always exist. and sometimes a good word won't defeat them
what i'm saying is you should be prepared to fight. not because you want to, but because sometimes the ugly fight is bought to you no matter how good your intentions
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I agree that it is primarily MY responsibility to raise MY children. I can honestly say that I take an active interest in what my children learn in school and I constantly try to encourage independent thinking, especially considering my children also go to a "redneck" school. Because of the area we live in, I have no effective influence over what textbooks they buy, in fact they would likely buy those books BECAUSE of the nonsense they contain.
My concern is for those children whose parents do NOT do this, and the effect this will have on a country that already made the mistake of re-electing George W. Bush due to a prevalence of "redneck thinking."
(Please don't get all outraged about my use of the word "redneck." I grew up and live in a rural area. Some would undoubtedly consider me "redneck." I just honestly don't know what else to term the groupthink that seems to dominate some of these rural areas, especially in the south.)
One of these days I'm going to cut you into little pieces. - PF
slap in the face to these hard working people who for the most part just want to be left the hell alone.
And collect checks from the Federal Government.
Most of the states from which you hear the most noise about "government encroachment" and "getting rid of Government" get more in Federal expenditures than they pay in taxes. Montana, from which you hear lots of whining, gets $1.47 back for every $1 they pay in taxes. Alaska gets $1.84; they're pigging out on Federal tax money. New Mexico is the biggest pig of all, at $2.03. And those "liberal" states? They pull their own weight. New York only gets back $0.79 for every dollar they pay in taxes. California gets even less, $0.78. Massachusetts gets $0.82.
Texas gets $0.94, so they're paying their way, but not by much.
I'm getting to the debate late, but I'd like to share my experiences as a dependent of a parent in the US Army through the 80s. Much of my childhood I went to DoDDS (schools for military children overseas) and got a very right-wing flavored version of American history. Much of it you see almost mainstream today. I learned that hippies protesting is what caused us to lose in Vietnam, Ronald Reagan was the greatest President and ended the Cold War. I also learned nothing about Iran/Contra and his involvement in selling weapons to a terrorist nation to support drug dealers peddling crack in America. I later learned that all the objects to Gulf War I was nothing but wussy rants from a new age of hippies trying to lose another war for the US. In turn, I did NOT learn that the US gave permission to Saddam to invade Kuwait.
It took about 10 years, but I managed to unlearn much of the propaganda I had pumped into my head back then.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Considering California's current financial peril and it's astronomical budget deficit, they should reuse the same books or take whatever is cheapest and STFU. They are wasting precious time and resources worrying about ideology when they are hemorrhaging money on stupid programs and policies. Every history textbook has a spin or omissions (there's only so many pages) so to argue that one group's inaccurate bias is better than another group's inaccurate bias is a petty way to waste resources when there is an 800lb gorilla like total insolvency in the room. These are high school textbooks. You're lucky if half the people even read them and don't just google for/copy the answers to questions. If you want a more accurate historical context, you need to research original sources from various authors and then formulate your own opinion.
Not quite. The mechanism for Texas's admission to the Union was a joint resolution of Congress. The terms of the resolution included language to the effect that it may be convenient at some future time to create up to 5 states out of the territory of the then Republic of Texas. However, this language is pretty much meaningless - per the US Constitution, you can't merge or split states without the consent of both the state(s) involved and Congress. The constitutional language would obviously trump anything in the joint resolution, and the prospect of both houses of Congress and the Texas state government agreeing to such a division is more or less nil. It appears as if the intent was to allow Texas to split into several states at the time of annexation, but Texas did not take the US up on that offer.
For more fun facts, see the main Texas article in Wikipedia. It's pretty much true that annexation to the US was the plan of the Texas revolutionaries all along, and the only reason it took so long was that the addition of a huge new slave state was vastly destabilizing to the delicate political balance between north and south... so it took 10 years to get Congress to approve of annexation.
The free market works!
That is all.
society, progress, civilty, education, progress: none of this is possible with the state
throughout history, various kinds of states have existed that have wrought great injustices. the usa was the first modern state to say "hey, lets rule by consensus". for simple matters, like taxes, to build your roads, it was expected of everyone to contribute. not contributing means you were freeloading. so then the issue is to come ask "why are you not contributing?"
but certain extremely excitable types like yourself would interpret the knock on the door, the men in suits, as armageddeon, and respond with gunfire of your own: self-fulfilling prophecy, you fail to see your violence as the trigger for their violence. you could have simply chatted, and said "i don't believe i am a part of society, even though i enjoy fruits from it" or "i have no cash currently, could we come to payment plan?"
but no, you overeact violently. this is the contents of what you wrote above
what is an example of such violent overreaction? well, howabout sharia law: you steal a loaf of bread, we cut your hand off. or: you don't bow to the king? then you lose your head
in other words, the injustice you see coming from the state is exactly what you deliver. you look at history and you see injustice from the state, when by your own words and actions, you are revealed to function exactly as such states did: the way you act is exactly how injust states act
meanwhile, the usa, even with rule by consensus, still has its injustices. but the point is to get rid of those injustices, perfect the state. surely you can see that NO state is far worse than the state you live in, even a bad state, no? no state is like mad max or somalia. you do have enough sanity to see we need a state i hope
so to have a just state, without violence or injustice, i ask that you join with us and speak with us and work on ironing those injustices out, to perfect the state, to make a more perfect union of what makes the usa a better (not perfect) country: rule by consensus rather than force
because we are a democracy. we rule by thought, dialog, consensus. we don't rule by force. really, that is genuinely the truth. to believe otherwise is to insist your delusions are more true than plain matter of fact simple facts of the construction of the state known as the usa
rule by force rather than consensus, that is the realm of injust states
and you
stalin fears being overthrown: send millions to the gulag or the cemetary. feds knocking on my door: respond with shotgun. same violent overreaction, same source of injustice in the world
you currently suffer from a massive hypocrisy: you complain about something, and then YOU DO THE SAME THING. you don't reply to violence with violence, you ARE THE ONE INJECTING THE VIOLENCE
you are the villain. you are exactly what you hate
tyrant: know thyself, and go oil your gun, one who complains about force... while implementing it
massive hypocrisy
i sent you a link, a narrative of a separatist shooting in 2003 in south carolina. in that narrative of events is the overreaction i am talking about. you tell me who the villain is in that narrative. now examine your narrative of massive overreaction
look in your heart: you are the tyrant you fear
check yourself before you wreck yourself, paranoid schizophrenic fool
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
There you idiots go again, talkin' shit about something you have no idea about.
The south has an identity, and a culture. A very, very strong one. You think the black folk in Atlanta don't have one? Try telling them that...better hope you have a vest on. You think the white folk that live alongside them don't either? Good luck with that line of thought.
if only the crazy haters in the geographical basement could be reset somehow.
The only thing that needs to be "reset" is you taking your view of an entire population from MSM. The only one hating here is you.
The "crazy haters" don't exist in any large numbers. You yanks are fucking ignorant tools, and the more you open your loud mouths the more it shows.
Something about the work we do? I'm sorry we don't all work in high finance in Manhattan fleecing the middle class blind, or work for government pushing paper. ( What benefit to society do any of you bring to us down here? )
You ever eat sugar, or molasses, or drink rum, or eat peaches, peanuts, pecans...ever wear cotton? You eat corn? ( of course you do, it's in everything! ) Wheat? Like beer at all? I'm sure you like beef and pork, right?
That's the work we do, and if you don't appreciate it, welcome to the tariffs we'll impose on those exports.
It is time for us to split. Have fun feeding the parasite classes, we'll have fun cleaning our guns. Just don't try to impose your will upon us again and we'll be kosher.
From the original post: "the apolitical nature of public school governance"
Am I the only one who sees this as an oxymoron?!
Is this saying nobody reviews new book purchases at these schools? I would have assumed at least one person from a school district department actually reads through and reviews the text. If that was the case they would notice any added craziness anyway and not order more. This kind of legislation would be a complete waste of time then. How naive I am?
I read "The Language Police" by Diane Ravitch, which describes how school textbooks are politicized. She give many examples where California requires PC phrases. For example, "slaves" must be replaced by "enslaved persons". California is (was?) the largest textbook purchase, according to the book.
The recent Texas changes, for the most part, mirror California 's demands. They are minor "thought adjustments". Texas wants "free market" in place of "capitalism", because a "capitalist pig" is a negative term.
Both California and Texas are state-wide textbook adopters. In states with local textbook adoption, there is more likelihood that educators, not politicians choose the texts.
"It's an urban myth, especially in this digital age we live in, when content can be tailored and customized for individual states and school districts," said Jay Diskey, executive director of the schools division of the Association of American Publishers.
Yes he is right and flat wrong. As California is not buying books for the next couple of years to save money, Texas buys new books every year and it is the same book across the state. The choice of book changes every year. Texas is the biggest market by far for school books, so Bio and Social Studies tend to get slanted towards Texas far to the right mentality esp in Local government. So yes books are not tailored individually, but on a whole they are tending to be more focused towards Texas's biases in an attempt to get more sales there as CA is not buying books over the next few years.
---In a time of Chimpanzees I was a Monkey.
I find it funny that this thread is actually an argument over authority, not whether a Christian government is good or not today but whether some figures long dead were Christians and hence America now should be like them.
You behave as if the "Founding Fathers" were some kind of revelating prophets, which sounds quite odd if you claim to follow Jesus or nobody.
Personality cult? Civil religion? Idolatry?
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
They're not traitors if they've got the right to secede, which they did. On the other hand, support for secession wasn't close to universal, and may not have even been the majority; it was primarily the rich slave-owning land-holders who were represented in government.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Apparently the Mexican's tend to call the Texas part of it "Santa Ana's War", and not with respect for his competence.
After the 1846 war ended, the original surrender terms proposed by the Mexican government not only included the northern states that are now most of the western US, but also the states of Chihuahua and Sonora, so we would have ended up with a lot of Indian territory that the Mexicans hadn't begun to conquer successfully. By the time the dealing was done, they weren't part of it.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I lived in the US south for many years and I think you are on the right trail. Tied in to your second point, when met with failure, a common psychological defense mechanism is to blame that failure on some external factor-- other races, the government, atheists, liberals, gays, Catholics, Jews, the French, the damn yankees, and etc-- instead of blaming oneself. Southern churches capitalize on this human weakness by teaching that gays, atheists and liberals are sick. Republican politicians are capitalizing on the weakness too, they stir up the southern hatred of government and dream up all kinds of enemies to hate. And now, religion and Republican politicians have teamed up to take advantage of the rednecks. I'm pretty sure politicians in WWII Germany and religious leaders in the Middle East today did/do pretty much the same thing to manipulate the masses. How did Germany solve this sort of problem?
http://www.marxist.com/
Maybe, just maybe, subjects like math will not be overly politicized.
Obviously you haven't heard of things like the New Math, where math curricula were suddenly changed to emphasize abstract math concepts at an earlier age, supposedly in order to prepare more students to go to college in science and math. Why? Because of the Space Race and the Soviet threat.
So, unfortunately, math curricula are not immune either.
You might think that such moves are less distressing, since students are still getting good information in math classes, just a different emphasis. The problem is that in most states the math curriculum never recovered. Students today tend to learn very little practical math that might actually be useful in their lives (which was something distinctly emphasized earlier in the 20th century). I say this as someone who taught high school math and science for a few years. There were "application" courses for math that were supposed to teach practical skills, but they were thought of as the "dumb classes" and usually were taught by the worst teachers.
Meanwhile, some of my algebra II students could barely do basic arithmetic. (By basic, I mean things like 5 + 7.) Out of 140 or so students I taught my first year, only 2 of them knew what compound interest even was. Certainly none of them understood how it actually worked, or how it affected savings plans, loans and mortgages, etc. Many of these students were seniors in high school. Unfortunately, because of the state curriculum, I was forced to teach them a bunch of useless higher math skills (like putting the equation of a hyperbola in standard form) -- six weeks on abstract manipulation of conic section equations, but nothing in the curriculum that stated that exponential equations should cover practical issues like loans, interest, etc.
Most of this is the way it is because of the "new math" reforms... all because of politics. And how many people aren't able to manage their finances today because they are innumerate as a result of emphasizing abstract math over practical application?
the cop who shot a seven year old was not acting in the name of the state, he was a confused soon to be ex cop asshole
meanwhile, there are other wackjobs who actually INTEND to kill:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_Abbeville,_South_Carolina_right-of-way_standoff
that's the source of violence: random asshole wackjobs
the state needs a security edifice, or some timothy mcveigh moron is going to kill innocents
the state is a protective mechanism, not the perpetrator
question: is paranoid schizophrenia ever going to go away? no? then we need security from the crazed loonbag. thus, the state. which sends you into a hysterical tizzy only if you have some sort of bizarre persecution complex (which you obviously do)
the usa rules by consensus. you vote, you elect. if you don't like your officials, you vote for new ones. this is in contrast to states like china and iran, which rule strictly by fear, not via consulting with its citizens. that makes nondemocratic governments illegitimate and it makes democratic ones legitimate. the us government, and many others, are legitimate because they genuinely consult the will of their own people. this makes what they do, in the name of the state perfectly acceptable and reasonable. if they fuck up in a way that pisses off the people, they're thrown out of office. yes, really. that's actually the goshdarnit truth. try to fucking understand the fucking rock of gibraltar truth, please
next you'll tell me the media controls all of our brains or its all corporate dollars and everyone who votes is brainwashed. which puts you further into paranoid schizophrenic territory
i am a free man. you? you're not free. you're a slave to demons. not of the state, but in your mind
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
>>>Teachers are hired to teach, not to sit in the back of the classroom
I think the best teachers don't teach at all. They direct the students down a path, and the students teach themselves as they read the text, solve the math problems, or whatever. For me there's nothing more boring than a teacher that won't shut up and let me THINK on my own.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Instead of going all ape-shit and complaining that the Texas School Board is re-writing history for all of the US, boycott those texts and go for something more balanced. You don't *have* to buy those textbooks, you shouldn't sacrifice quality education just to save money. The texts used by Texas public schools have such a large influence on other states' curricula because they all buy those texts, so all those consumers are partly to blame for Texas's influence. If you don't like what they're putting out, you don't have to buy it. If the Texas School Board feels that education in Texas should be taught a certain way, that's their prerogative (insofar as what kind of powers were given to them when they were elected/appointed to the board).
To sum up, Texas School Board can "screw over" the education in Texas if they want. Everyone else can choose whether or not to follow suit. Texas is not responsible for the curriculum in California, and they're actually taking that to heart.
History is by it's nature political and is always taught with bias. That is the truth about history. Sure you can memorize facts, learn about why things are the way they are, but you can never have it taught to you without having something either intentionally left out or by having the "facts" changed by the person doing the teaching. Even if you are reviewing first person accounts of historical events, you are still learning from a biased perspective. This is the first thing that should be taught to every student who has to study history (which should be a requirement for every high school and college graduate).
'a threat to the apolitical nature of public school governance and academic content standards in California.'
BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!! California is about as apolitical as Saul Alinsky. I would say that, if we rated states, it would be the most "activist" state in the union. I believe that a LOT of people would agree that text books and teacher plans have drifted left over the last few decades. There is nothing inherently wrong with a desire to correct this in a county that is and always has been center right.
That's a good question you raise, and it made me think. I believe (just instinct, not data here):
1) Under the National Socialist regime, Germans had been whipped up into an emotional frenzy for so long, their appetite for emotional extremism was exhausted by summer 1945.
2) The idea of hard work as penance for your sins is deeply rooted in the Protestant German psyche, so hard work as penance, plus abundant technical skills, meant a population doing things that fit the needs of a successful occupation and recovery like a hand fits a glove. I would say that for many Germans, it's accurate to say that a guiding principle for life has been "if in doubt, work harder". That is less true for my generation, but it does help as a guide.
3) There was the threat of worse...although the western Allies took out a bit of understandable anger, blowing up large factories and so on after the ceasefire, there were nods of humanitarian gestures, such as the Marshall Plan. Whereas western Germans knew that not far away the Soviets were ready to take over if the western area didn't work out.
Perhaps #3 was decisive. It would be interesting to know, what would have happened in the American South after 1865, if there was good reason to believe that if the Union army got fed up with Southern behavior, the hammer would really come down?
Why do Texans want their kids to be ignorant?