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Now Any Florida Resident Can Challenge What Is Taught In Public Florida Schools (orlandosentinel.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the bias-free dept.

New submitter zantafio shares a report from Orlando Sentinel: Any resident in Florida can now challenge what kids learn in public schools, thanks to a new law that science education advocates worry will make it harder to teach evolution and climate change. The legislation, which was signed by Gov. Rick Scott (R) last week and went into effect Saturday, requires school boards to hire an "unbiased hearing officer" who will handle complaints about instructional materials, such as movies, textbooks and novels, that are used in local schools. Any parent or county resident can file a complaint, regardless of whether they have a student in the school system. If the hearing officer deems the challenge justified, he or she can require schools to remove the material in question. The statute includes general guidelines about what counts as grounds for removal: belief that the material is "pornographic" or "is not suited to student needs and their ability to comprehend the material presented, or is inappropriate for the grade level and age group."

18 of 484 comments (clear)

  1. Also Common Core by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Public education... having public input?! wow what a novel concept!

    1. Re:Also Common Core by SirSlud · · Score: 4, Insightful

      > regardless of whether they have a student in the school system

      There's such a thing as lowering the barrier to input too much.

      --
      "Old man yells at systemd"
    2. Re:Also Common Core by OrangeTide · · Score: 4, Insightful

      On paper it democratizes a bureaucracy that affects most of us. But it won't be average people who primarily use this mechanism to influence public education, it will be those with an agenda to convert public schools into their own publicly funded religious institution.

      --
      “Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
    3. Re:Also Common Core by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      What do you call a requirement most kindergarden teachers, and every teacher on up, have a bachleors degree minimum, and rewarding those who have a masters degree with raises?

      Union, Pension, 90th percentile incomes, and you come into work daily and teach 5-year olds their ABC's and 123's, how to make apple-seed figures on plates, how to share toys nice, take walks down to the park, and dispense time-outs.

      What's really going on here is there's an education industry selling more classes for the pure sake of it and playing a confidence game with credentialing. Worse, Education in the US was done to institute adolescance; the delaying of adulthood. Most teachers get out of high school, go to college for 4-6 years, then go right back into schools; like a circus gorilla raised in captivity, it's a child for its entire life.

      That game has now officially run it's course. People are beginning to demand their money back and businesses are beginning to question how wise it ever was to stop building their own employee's.

    4. Re:Also Common Core by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The US Constitution prevents anyone from succeeding at that, so that's an entirely phony concern.

      The religious pledge of allegiance proves otherwise.

    5. Re:Also Common Core by gl4ss · · Score: 5, Insightful

      this is just an extension of the "all opinions are just as good" method from fox etc.

      basically.. in order to be "neutral, unbiased" you have to provide both sides of a discussion equally. basically, what it means that if someone says that they should teach that the sun is made of cheddar and the moon out of marshmallow, they should get just as much of a platform to present this opinion.

      it's fucking stupid and it makes stupid people even more stupid so there's that.. and it fits the binary notion.

      like, about the composition and how the moon came to be.. there are like 100 scientific, kind of sense making theories. if people were sensible about unbiased they would present 1000 of those theories and the 40 DIFFERENT "god made it" arguments. in any case it would be pretty great to teach that if you teach the religious explanation, then you would also tell of the 100 OTHER RELIGIOUS EXPLANATIONS.

      because basically, the quickest way to make an atheist or at least an agnostic is to simply teach that, hey, there's these fucking 100 different religious views that are totally incompatible with each other.

      --
      world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
    6. Re:Also Common Core by Kohath · · Score: 3, Insightful

      That 35th world ranking for maths for the USA is now looking like nirvana.

      Yeah, government schools aren't very good. So you should definitely freak out if anyone tries to change anything about them.

    7. Re:Also Common Core by mvdwege · · Score: 1, Insightful

      So I'm supposed to believe in man made global warming because 99.87698769876% of experts tell me it's real? If facts and knowledge are not up to democratic vote then what happens to that argument?

      What happens is that it proves you're an idiot. There is a difference between the acknowledged experts in a field agreeing and a majority of the general public agreeing on something. That you are trying to create a false equivalency betrays your bias.

      --
      "I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
    8. Re:Also Common Core by Darinbob · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I call it common sense. I don't want uneducated teachers out there. College has been a requirement for public school teachers for many decades. If you want teachers with less education, you can try private schools or home schooling.

    9. Re: Also Common Core by Opportunist · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Garbage in, garbage out.

      What happened was simply that people got disillusioned, and that the TV heroes changed big time. In the 60s, the heroes were astronauts and everyone could make a living on a single income. Getting rich, or at least comfortable, was something you could realistically achieve with hard work. The 80s came and the TV and movie heroes were the yuppies who also convinced anyone that you gotta and gonna get rich if you are smart, climb the corporate ladder and get to the top.

      Today the TV heroes are washed up idiots and wannabe-celebs in reality docu soaps and getting rich is something you could hope for by winning the lottery or suing the pants off some rich guy who hit you with his car. Even the TV shows we have feature bumbling fools and underachievers as the protagonists.

      How do you want to motivate kids in such an environment to waste their time on learning anything? It's moot anyway. And I can't blame them, they're mostly even right.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    10. Re:Also Common Core by Opportunist · · Score: 2, Insightful

      No, teach it. If you want equal footing with reality, all the bullshit stories have to.

      Besides, the Norse gods are way more powerful than that Christian guy. I mean, think about it. Jesus promised to deliver us from sin and evil. Odin promised to slay the frost giants. Now, I don't see many frost giants these days, but considering sin and evil...

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    11. Re:Also Common Core by kbg · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The problem is majority of the public are complete imbecils. So letting imbecils to having any input into science education is an extremely bad idea.

  2. Banned book week by bugs2squash · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I loved banned book week, when my kids were encouraged to read books that had been banned at some time and discuss the reasons behind the ban. In florida they'll have to make it banned book month now.

    --
    Nullius in verba
    1. Re:Banned book week by Hognoxious · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Did the what read The Bell Curve? The cat?

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  3. Education is like any Profession by Roger+W+Moore · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Public education... having public input?! wow what a novel concept!

    Input is one thing, being able to challenge material in the curriculum when you may not know the material yourself is a different thing. Education is like health care or indeed any other profession: you want to be able to give input on the best course of action to a professional who can weigh that input along with what they know to devise the best course of action.

    If your doctor's course of treatment for you could be challenged by random members of the public and judged by a random bureaucrat who likely has little to know medical knowledge you would get terrible health case. The same is true for education.

  4. Re: darwinism at work by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 3, Insightful

    A doctoral thesis proposing a radical departure from known science is, however, not something you would teach in elementary schools. Do the legwork, be open to the peer review and if your thesis ever goes mainstream, then it could make it into the curriculum.

  5. Re:I *went* to school in Florida by Opportunist · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Even though Vietnam was a prime example why you should let the military do its job and keep politics out of the crap. Or, in other words: There is politicians, and there's generals. Politicians running politics and generals running wars works. Politicians running wars and generals running politics doesn't.

    Let people do what they can do, and stay out of shit you don't know.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  6. Those who care most having input!!?? by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Parents, who invest $1M per child and blood, sweat, tears and sleepless nights having input on what their child learns?? This concept is anathema to the fascist progressives and alt-left who believe they know better what your child should learn than you do, never mind that at best most of them hold a BA in philosophy or education, while there are many parents that hold MS and PhDs in hard science fields.

    --
    If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like