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Gilbert, AZ Censors Biology Books the Old-Fashioned Way
nbauman writes The Gilbert, AZ school board has voted to tear out a page from Campbell's Biology (a standard highly-recommended textbook that many doctors and scientists fondly remember), because it discusses contraception without also discussing adoption. Julie Smith, a member of the Gilbert Public Schools governing board, said that she was a Catholic and "we do not contracept." Smith convinced the board that Campbell's violates Arizona law to teach "preference, encouragement and support to childbirth and adoption" over abortion. The Arizona Education Department decided that the pages didn't violate Arizona law, but nevermind. Rachel Maddow generously risked hassles for copyright violation and posted the missing pages as a service to Arizona honors biology students.
It appears the school board didn't care about what was on the other side of the same page? Most textbooks I have seen are printed on both sides, so they just threw out two pages of of the book. I have used Campbell in the past (though not the current edition) and I suspect by the time the book reached the second side of that page they were no longer talking about contraception or abortion.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I can see a small crossover in biology and contraception, since contraceptives do interact with biology. Not so much for the condom, but very much so for the pill ("how does it work?") and then getting into male contraception, and also sterilization (tube tying in both genders) I can see where that has a biology application.
But adoption, how the heck does that belong in a biology textbook???
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
“I’m Catholic; we do not contracept,” Ms. Smith said. “It is a grave sin.” By including those pages in the curriculum, she added, “you have violated my religious rights.”
Her agenda is to make everyone Catholic.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
This will all but guarantee that every student in the school system will read the page the school board is removing. Everyone knows that the quickest way to encourage a teen to seek out and read something is to remove it or ban it and tell them its not permitted.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
why we let religious loonies dictate what can and what can't be taught. Separation of church and state my ass!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
om the original article:
“I’m Catholic; we do not contracept,” Ms. Smith said. “It is a grave sin.” By including those pages in the curriculum, she added, “you have violated my religious rights.”
“I’m American; we do not censor education,” vomitology said. “It is a grave sin.” By removing those pages in the curriculum, he added, “you have violated children's educational rights.”
FTFY
~Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit, but Wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad.
The science of contraception is a liberal world view?
Well, that explains a great deal...
Meanwhile, the Cathloic school I attended was more than happy to explain all forms of contraception, and making mention that there's a risk that it won't always work. The Catholic school also noted a form of contraception based around when the female partner has the period, a form of contraception fully sanctioned by the Catholic church.
Well there isn't much actual discussion of the science behind it - note how it appears before fertilisation has been discussed. On the other hand, it does mention the "rhythm method", which is both Catholic-friendly and a means of birth control. but adoption certainly isn't a means of birth control and wouldn't make sense.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
But if it was about questioning global warming info being removed there would be crickets.
Well yeah, because the only place such discussion would likely be would be in a science book, and what's in a science book should be supported by evidence. The kind of "questioning global warming" that people like you mean is not supported by evidence, it's distorting evidence, and does not belong in a science book.
As Colbert put best, "reality has a well-known liberal bias". It comes from being willing to actually ask questions and observe the world to find our answers, rather than an unwavering loyalty to an ideology. In this case these fucknuts are taking their religious beliefs, based on nothing, and prioritizing them over actual science. That's not political in any way, that's just fucking idiots. Unfortunately for those who are politically conservative but aren't insane the "conservative" party has spent 20 years courting the religious morons in every possible way and happily set themselves up for this kind of shit.
I used to get high on life, but I developed a tolerance. Now I need something stronger.
No censoring is happening. By doing this they have ensured that every student in that class will go find the missing page and read it. The point is that we are in the internet age, not the dark ages. You can't hide information.
In the war between our tribe and our enemy there can be no neutral ground. Any claim that isn't part of our tribe's identity and thus a pure, sweet truth, must be part of our enemy's and thus a vile, contemptuous lie. There can be no compromise with such Pure Evil. There can be no giving up any part of our cause, no show of weakness by ever admitting we were wrong. No matter what the cost to actual human beings, we will get our way.
But hey, at least people can change their ideological tribe, so it's a step up from ethnic ones!
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Well it's "News for Nerds, stuff that matters".
Let me elaborate.
The US is still, regardless of an individuals feelings towards it as a nation, the most influential nation with respect to sciences, technology and geo politics.
People like me from Europe, but also plenty of your fellow countrypeople from other states, are somewhat uneasy towards large areas of the US that are dominated by, to us, strange religious tendencies. At times it can feel like parts of the US aren't all that different to the Taliban in their general attitude, albeit the details differ vastly of course.
Now when things like this redaction of text books occurs, it lights up like a warning light that the, oh let's call them Christiban just for the fun of it, might be making inroads again.
And the US's position towards science, technology and teaching of science is of utmost importance for the rest of the world due to the US's massive influence in these fields. Noone can ignore it.
In closing I'd also like to notice that anyone scared by the actual Taliban, that group of not so terribly well funded Reactionaries in a overall not so terribly important part of the world, should realize that they are a trivial non-issue that a fully Talibanized ("Christibanized") US would pose.
Fantastically funded, large armed forces, nuclear weapons, a megapower... if that became in it's total a state dominated by relgious fundamentalists like that chick from that school board... that's a thought to shiver in fear of.
The international perception of the US changed a lot in the past decade or two. When I was young, in the 80s, the US was the place to be. It was the dream land. Freedom, peace and the promise that hard work will make you a rich man.
Today the US are regarded not unlike the USSR was while it still existed, with suspicion and caution. Don't get them pissed off, you know what they can do, and what they have done... Plus, and that hurts me personally quite a bit since I do know a lot of people in the US and found a few very good friends there, the whole religious bit paints the people as somewhat dim witted, naive, if not gullible or even outright dumb. The general sentiment is that in the USSR, the people at least knew their government was bullshitting them, but in the US, they succeeded. The people actually believe that they're living in paradise while in reality they are trapped in a hellhole.
But nobody really would say that openly. Sure, we joke about the US behind its back and make fun of it (mostly the government, less so the people), but nobody would dare say it to their face. In general, the US are regarded as the international politics version of the dim witted schoolyard bully. Nobody would dare speak up against him since we all know he can beat us up good, and if we suck up to him we might even get some spoils when he rips off someone's lunch money, but when he ain't around we're much more happy and we make jokes about how dumb he really is.
It's sad, actually. Mostly because I do know a lot of very good, very intelligent people in the US. What's sadder is that most of them are desperately trying to find employment in Europe with the goal to leave the whole religious cesspool behind them...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
And this (extremely insightful) explanation is why so many United Statsians are so terrified of our own country. We are seemingly just a few votes away from a tyranny of the vocal religious minority. Give a fundamentalist a few thousand nuclear missiles and the most expensive army the world has ever known, and brown people around the world start to get nervous. But we have to do it, because terrorists, or freedom, or something!
"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" - Salvor Hardin
I could conceive of this in a sex ed class.. ..
Only if there was a practical exam at the end of the year.
Blank until
The parent did not use capitalization correctly. Yes, you consider yourself conservative, but allowing people to do drugs is not a Conservative (TM) position, it is a Liberal (TM) position. In fact, it is the intersection of liberal and conservative called libertarian. But, hey, those are just labels used to demonize and divide.
By the way, your argument falls apart in many ways, but mostly when kids are involved. Let's say mommy and daddy sit at home shooting up heroine (you shoot heroine, not LSD) and don't take care of their kids. Consequences, right? We put mommy and daddy in jail for child neglect and abuse. Great, now what do we do with the kids? Is it right to give them to some religious charity that will just indoctrinate them? Maybe there isn't a secular charity around to help. So, do we just tell the kids: "Oh well, mommy and daddy had to face consequences. You're on your own. Good luck." Or do we do something for them? If we do something for them with public money, that gives us control over what people put in their bodies, no? And, we have to do something for them because decades of history now show that you just perpetuate the problem by punishing the kids through punishing the parents.
Or, do we treat it like a public health issue, and get mommy and daddy treatment instead of taking them away from their kids? In which case, who pays for the treatment? We could put them in NarcAnon, but that doesn't really work and its a cult anyway. Again there might be some religious charities that will indoctrinate them. There might be some public charities. But that's really the problem with charities, they're unreliable, some are cults, and some indoctrinate into religions. So, we pay for it. Which, again, gives us some control over what goes in people's bodies, no? And, we end up doing that through taxation and regulation on what is available instead of an outright ban which hasn't worked at all.
We could be like Portugal and completely legalize everything. But, Portugal poured all of their former drug law enforcement dollars into public health treatment. There's no way in hell we would ever pour anywhere near 10% of what we currently put into drug law enforcement into public health treatment because we are a very punitive society (as evidence by your execution remark). So, we have to make a choice. And that choice is to not be a libertarian "paradise" that lets people put whatever in their bodies whenever for whatever reason.
The general sentiment is that in the USSR, the people at least knew their government was bullshitting them, but in the US, they succeeded. The people actually believe that they're living in paradise while in reality they are trapped in a hellhole.
I live in the U.S. I've also spent significant time living outside of the U.S. I agree with you that there are many, many things about the U.S. to criticize, and elements of its foreign policy are quite criminal.
However, your statement there is more than a little extreme. Many U.S. citizens do recognize that there are serious flaws (a lot of them post frequently on Slashdot, for example), though admittedly the pro-American rhetoric is stupid and ignorant at times.
On the other hand, I think compared to many years of life under the USSR, Americans are not "trapped in a hellhole." The USSR was in existence for roughly 70 years. Of those 70 years, the first 30 under Stalin experienced not only random purges and murders from the government, but largescale famines, along with economic and political uncertainty. For the last 15 years or so of the USSR, there was a gradual decline that saw economic conditions, shortages, etc. that are unlike anything generally seen in the U.S.
So, yeah, basically if by the "USSR" you want to only count the 25 years or so from the late 50s to the early 70s when conditions were pretty good, yeah the U.S. currently isn't much better than that.
But to say that U.S. people are gullible or dumb because they don't recognize -- unlike the USSR -- that the government is bad... well, we don't have random purges of people we know happening every other week... ya know, like Stalin did. In case you're unaware, Stalin ordered the murder of what historians estimate to be between 20 and 60 million people, most of them his own countrymen.
When everybody knows someone who "was disappeared" by the government, you can bet that citizens would become more suspicious of anything that government says.
In contrast, it's only in the past few years that it's become somewhat acceptable for the President of the U.S. to outright kill American citizens without a trial. Our leaders haven't deliberately killed tens of millions of citizens.
The only similar period in the U.S. that experienced turmoil on the level of most of the history of the USSR was probably during the Great Depression. So 10-15 years of the past century, compared to most years in the entire history of the USSR. And even then, the government wasn't going around killing people.
So yeah, I think some Americans are deluded about how "great" their country is, and they don't realize how many things have decayed or what rights have been restricted. But to call it a "hellhole" compared to the USSR where the citizens were smart enough to recognize how bad they had it... well, if the U.S. actually ever gets as bad as the world of Stalinist purges, I bet the American people would be smart enough to have the kind of cynicism you expect.
Catholics range from fundamentalist jerks like this woman to those like the Jesuits who are quite sophisticated philosophers and fully aware of the difficulties which arise aligning faith with reality. Unlike Protestants who are prone to start a new denomination when they have a disagreement, all Catholics tend to continue considering themselves Catholic but they build up cliques which can barely tolerate each other under the common umbrella of the main organization. I attended a Catholic high school even though my parents were Southern Baptist; this is not unusual in New Orleans where the Catholic schools have an excellent reputation for their secular education. They had a standard procedure for non-Catholics to opt-out of rituals like the Mass when those arose, although we did have to learn the major points of Catholic doctrine (which has turned out to be useful) and we also got a whole year of comparative religion hitting the main points of other world religions. I have to give it to the CSC that they weren't afraid to hold their own beliefs up for comparison with their competitors.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]