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Now Any Florida Resident Can Challenge What Is Taught In Public Florida Schools (orlandosentinel.com)
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."
Public education... having public input?! wow what a novel concept!
There's no one right answer.
1. Acquire Florida Residence and Textbooks
2. Challenge everything.
3. ?????
4. Profit!!!
Downsides include having to live in Florida, and the risk that Donald Trump will be your neighbor.
I mean, really, thank goodness for Florida... when something horribly embarrassing hits the news cycle, the statistically best chance it didn't happen here is you folks.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
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
My first thought was to cynically wonder if this were an argument for privatizing schools. Then it occurred to me that these would already be teaching what they wanted, and even if not, the private school has far more incentives to teach what the attendees' parents want. So I suppose the silver lining is that this was the result of the legislative process and can therefore be annulled by the courts. And if that's the best you can say about something, the phrase "damning with faint praise" springs to mind...
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Well the parents who ensure their kids study 'fake science' will get a nice lesson in darwinism when the only work their kids can do is flipping hamburgers.
Good for parents who do want their children to get a real well rounded education, will give them an advantage.
Though I feel bad for the children who get 'brain washed' who are being used as a tool.
Maykin Amerka grate agen!!
The schools should be safe. There's no such thing as an unbiased human, and dogs aren't likely to make too many demands on school curricula.
This can get expensive as every loon and troll will come out of the woodwork to throw monkey wrenches into the process.
Table-ized A.I.
It may "make it harder to teach evolution and climate change". On the other hand, it could also make it harder to teach intellectual design, or if teaching religion the schools may have to broaden their teaching past a certain branch of Christianity, but to also include e.g. Islam and Taoism.
I was in the second grade in the 1970's when I found out that there was a one-dollar bill, a two-dollar bill and a five-dollar bill. But no three-dollar bill. I was shocked. Everyone said "queer as a three-dollar bill" in my neighborhood. How can you have a queer without a three-dollar bill?
How is it that so many people are living in denial about reality?
Judging from the last the last election a lot more than you think.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Citizens should also gain the compensating right to require material to be ADDED to curriculums.
Then let's wait till 1st good guy steps in with pornhub printouts in hand (one hand).
Complain to get it removed. What is the reference supporting the claim that God created the Earth and creatures that live upon it? AFAIK, it's only one book.
And the bible is full of pornography. Easy to find examples.
I would think for sufficiently creative people with appropriate resources, this law could easily be turned around to cause all kinds of problems for it's proponents.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
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.
There are, however, lots of wrong ones and is what is going to cause some serious problems with a system like this.
Even if you did manage to get someone relatively free of bias what is especially troubling is the challenge based on their "ability to comprehend": that right there is going to limit education to what the thickest bureaucrat judging the complaint could cope with when s/he was a schoolkid.
...this law could easily be turned around to cause all kinds of problems for it's proponents.
So you mean enforced fairly and equally for all? Sounds like a good idea.
Unfortunately, the world looks at US for leadership and inspiration.
Both in good and bad.
Not that I like it, but the trends from the 'states do spread over the globe with slow but unstoppable force.
Maybe China will take over? But I doubt it would be a change for the better.
This sounds like excellent news for Florida Man stories. Education is the nemesis of Florida Man so, an outright assault on it should let Florida Man thrive.
Here's to you, Florida Man!
Poor attempt at trolling. Not enough block capitals & spelling mistakes and too much correct punctuation.
I mean, nobody can think that the theory of evolution, while incomplete has been disproved - it's used in the development of modern vaccines. Oh wait...
I grew up in Florida. My senior year, my English teacher let us watch "Full Metal Jacket" IN CLASS. And to think we went through almost the entire year without realizing how cool she secretly was.
The most twisted part is that if any member of the public had found out and complained, their primary objection would have probably been the film's antiwar sentiment and implied criticism of America and its military (that same year, my American History teacher admitted point blank that he was EXPLICITLY prohibited from saying anything about either Watergate or the Vietnam War because the Principal deemed both topics to be "too controversial").
This can work both ways. Somebody could challenge that Creationism is taught in science class, or they could challenge that climate change is not settled science. This might be a double-edged sword.
Assuming the "unbiased" hearing officer agrees with you. Is there a way to submit bias complaints about the school's choice of hearing officers?
> regardless of whether they have a student in the school system
There's such a thing as lowering the barrier to input too much.
We all pay for public schools because it benefits all of us to have an educated population. It matters to all of us that kids coming out of school are able to contribute to society, are smart enough to think critically, and are motivated enough to be good people who make their communities better for their presence.
Parents should absolutely be able to contribute input, but so should professional educators, so should professors and scientists and engineers and business leaders and so should everybody else. You filter the input by understanding why different input may be good or bad for accomplishing the goal, by selecting someone to figure that out. But you don't just block the input entirely.
Real lawyers write in C++
Florida was a blue state? Since 1952 Florida has voted for the Republican candidate 12 times in the last 17 elections.
However, if you are referring to the time frame from 1880 - 1948, then your argument might be valid.
http://www.270towin.com/states...
Well yes, ideally you should only teach facts and let kids come to their own conclusions as to the validity of anything else.
But if you let kids think for themselves they could easily come to very different conclusions than you want them to.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
On one side you have people who don't believe in evolution. On the other, you have people who believe everything is a "social construct", meaning they don't believe in biology. So the question should be : is there anyone who is not in denial of reality?
Both religious aversion to science, as we see in some, and also an equally worrying trend of memorizing what is needed for exams only as long as said exams are on the horizon, are symptoms of a common anti-pattern in education.
We should not spoon feed children facts, or purported facts, or disproved 'facts'. What should be taught are the generic skills required to problem-solve, research, fact check, and basically work stuff out for yourself. Importantly, the engineering-like idea that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and that weakest link is only as strong as its sternest test. And teach these ideas first in the context of practical engineering and problem solving. Let religious nuts drive 'genesis as literal' ideas all they want. With the above skills well trained, the religious ideas, free from the medieval risks of burning at the stake for heresy, will just seen too silly to too many. And the class time will be better spent than merely spoonfeeding a naive and simplistic picture of how evolution actually works in practice.
John_Chalisque
I would love to see the thoroughly vetted, peer reviewed study that says people only fall into one, or the other, of those two categories. I get it, though.. you want to make out both sides being equally bad... but they're not, and anyone paying attention understands that.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
Sweet false dichotomy, bro. Do you fuck your mom with that logic? -_-
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
And in between those two "sides" belong the majority of people. The problem is that the majority aren't represented in a system based on electing the most extreme candidates during the primaries. If you are a member of a political party, then you should be voting for the most moderate elements to get us out of this mess.
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.
And the next generation after that, will be Appy App Appers, that will try to get rich by writing the best and most successful Appy App on the AppStore, and become Appillionaires.
(Hey! Where's the "App" Troll when you need him ?)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Too obvious. Crappy troll. 1/10.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
I bet you think Walter Peck was a ghostbuster. You are a dopey cunt mate.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
More the party that wants to keep people stupid. Stupid people are easier to govern. Pol Pot already knew that.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Not teaching religion is exactly how such ignorance can propagate. You teach religion, in part, to show that every religion claims to have the "one true God", that every religion has the same basic rules and even comparable texts, and that every religion claims to be distinct and "punish" believers of those other religions.
Education is about learning these kinds of things, maybe you would have had an epiphany earlier if it were taught properly (i.e. including multi-diety religions alongside the monotheistic ones).
But in the same way that we don't let history majors teach maths, or science teachers to teach religion, it should be ENCLOSED WITHIN THE SUBJECT. It is against the law, in my country, to put too heavy an emphasis on personal religion outside of natural classroom discussions. A science teacher who was also a creationist, for example, would not be able to teach anything other than the approved sciences. They may be able to express a personal opinion if approached, but they would not be able to launch into a long discussion with the whole class about such things.
The problem is not "religion", or teaching such. It's about separation of lessons. If your state-approved expertise is in science, and you're hired to teach science, then you teach science. If you state-approved expertise is in religion studies, and you're hired to teach religious studies, then you teach religious studies.
The creep of political influence, even parental influence (who on average are less qualified than the teachers), into what gets taught in each lesson is the problem, and illegal in many countries.
There is no way on Earth that anyone should be teaching anything about any god whatsoever in a science class. Or, if they are, science teachers should be allowed to insist that Bible lessons include sections on how much bollocks the "science" in the Bible is.
Turn-about is fair-play.
Are you trying to deliberately end a bullshit bingo session early or why do you throw out buzzwords without rhyme or reason in a way that makes the average middle manager look like he knows what he's talking about?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
And even if it had been created (try to prove that first of all...), what makes you think it was this god? There's literally thousands others, all with their own creation myth. Why don't we get to hear them?
Teach the controversy! And let the students decide which bullshit story they like best.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Dude, a god that opens the mouth of an ass and is against buttfucking is a hypocrite.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Why we have public schools? Because not everyone is rich enough to pay for private schools. What about those that can't afford it? Just send the kids to the mines when they're old enough, like in the good old days? We could keep the shafts and tunnels smaller that way too, and this saves money. Not to mention that we could do away with all those bullshit safety regulations, kids are easier to replace. Plus, without wasting money on their education, it's not that big a loss either.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If anyone in the county can object about anything, this whole system can be made unworkable if enough people complain about random things, basically DDos the whole bureaucracy.
The world looked at the US for leadership and inspiration. Notice the time.
The US was the pinnacle of development and technology after WW2. The technological advantage the US had due to the space program took it well into the 80s as the leading nation in technology and science. It was a role model and something to aspire to.
The world looks at the US today, partly as laughing stock and partly to see what to avoid. Because we see the emperor managed to disrobe and still parades about as if he had clothes, convincing itself that only fools cannot see his garbs and thinking that we fell for it, but what we actually do is appease and humor him, much like you'd appease and humor a schoolyard bully that could easily beat you up. You suck up to him, but in reality, you hate him for being the stupid, ignorant dolt and bore that he is. You don't want to hang out with him, he's not really a pal or what you'd consider a cool guy, and as soon as he isn't in a position to threaten you anymore, you throw him out. Or keep him as some sort of court jester, because, let's be honest, it's hilarious how dumb he is. But you wouldn't laugh to his face or he'll beat you up.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Neither of them would have enough beans. There is no such thing as enough beans. What are you, a communist? Not wanting more is killing our economy!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Careful there. If you admit that the climate is change, the next thing you hear is that the change isn't good for us and that we have to work against it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
So... if the public wants to teach Sharia law is the way to go, that's fine?
Then why the fuck did we go to war with the towelheads?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Hyper-liberalism eventually elevates the individual so much above any sense of group or community obligation or standard that it is toxic to the continuing existence of any democratic state or community. Some may say what is going on in Florida is driven by conservative philosophy. But it is not. You can see democracies dying worldwide. They cannot even replace their own populations now. I've come to believe that hyper-liberalism is a core flaw of democracy and ultimately destroys democratic states. It destroys their ability to define themselves as entities composed of obligated individuals. It's leveling impulse demands lying about reality, and especially lying about the existence and survival utility of the differences between men and women.
E Proelio Veritas.
The part where they remove the material during the hearing process is a gaping loophole. I could challenge not just history and science, but could conceivably also challenge the way math is taught. Essentially I could shut down the entire education system in as few as a few hundred complaints of various topics. The only requirement seems to be a well constructed argument. With all the out of work lawyers out there, I could even see this as a mechanism to slow education until some 'incentive' was used to bribe a withdrawal of the complaint.
Honestly, I am surprised this didnt come out of Kalifornia. I guess the common denominator here is they are both very sunny locations. Maybe its a medical condition from too much sun causing both areas to go off the deep end all the time?
Im sure there's plenty of out of work lawyers celebrating this law. They're the only ones that are going to benefit. We graduate WAAAY to many lawyers every year; each with $200k - $300k in student loans. Each paying $3500+ a year in Bar dues to maintain their license. This could become an entire industry similar to lobbyists. Entire industries based on obstructionism.
I apologize for the pedantry but it wasn't perfected. Or even perfectly adapted. The huge search space of possible adaptations and shifting cost functions means that not everything gets tried even if it would be great, and that even if a perfectly adapted mutation occurs it just takes one small accident to erase it. 2 billion years is a long time but not enough to try everything.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
Statistically, we've got fewer and fewer avid TV watchers. People, by and large, realize that there are other things more worthy of their time. The result is, you've got a larger percentage of low IQ and low motivation losers actually watching television for hours each day, so it's no surprise the programming is adjusted to suit them.
The people with any kind of clue are gravitating more towards programming on demand like Netflix, where you get to watch what YOU want to see, WHEN you want to see it. And they're spending more time online where things aren't just a 1 way passive digestion of media.
..and you won't listen to me. At least in the state of Florida, you could potentially have an entire generation of kids who are dumb, think 'creation' is a real thing, and that 'evolution' and science in general are satanic lies intended to 'sway the faithful away from God' or somesuch bullshit. Praytell, how is shit like this going to make anyone smarter? It's not. If crap like this continues we'll be in another Dark Age where science and scientists are mocked, ridiculed, and maybe even physically attacked. I hate all religion for bullshit like this and really really wish humans would finally evolve out of whatever flaw it is in their brains that makes them want this shit.
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
It is important to have independent review of what is going on in public schools. Parents have a right to know and a right to file a complaint. Quite frankly, climate change doesn't belong in schools. People can find out whatever they want to know on their own. It has no purpose, really, for helping students find employment. The only reason it is even there is for a political agenda. Climate change is heavily politicized and more about an agenda to reduce first world countries to third world countries and global wealth redistribution. Maybe climate change is contributed to by industrial activity. But, that doesnt change the fact that climate change treaties are wealth redistribution schemes designed to make the US uncompetitive and wreck the US economy and are exploiting the issue to push a clearly political social agenda .
I can more empathize with Evolution. But, this too is politicized, and often used to attack Christianity. The fact is, the Catholic Church has issued encyclicals that individual catholics can accept Evolution. Young earth creationism is not universal in Christianity in any way. Creation can be in the framework of the big bang having a divine origination and then evolution happening afterwards after the initial first cause. But this won't stop atheists from trying to lie and exploit it to push their atheistic ideologies.
These chuckleheads deserve to be flooded by demands to "teach the controversy" of Time Cube, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Discordianism, Gorean philosophy, Ebolism, and even Baneposting. How dare anyone make a value judgement that contradicts anyone else's? Feels, not facts!
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
How about instead of having public input, Flordia just teaches scientific evidence, and scientific fact when possible, rejects all forms of religious education and stays up to date on all other courses, with what the world expert communities support?
Is it too much to ask, that schools teach established fact and evidence, along with a solid grounding in other areas, well rejecting nonsense?
What creationist / flat earther wanted this insanity, to allow the public to override education progress?
https://www.venganza.org/about...
Those same witneses were willing to die rather than recant the events that they witnessed
That is a pretty solid testimony
While it's obvious you have been drinking the koolaid, you might want to check your programming because the nonsense you're spouting makes less sense than the usual religious nonsense.
Those same witneses were willing to die rather than recant the events that they witnessed
That is a pretty solid testimony
While it's obvious you have been drinking the koolaid, you might want to check your programming because the nonsense you're spouting makes less sense than the usual religious nonsense.
To someone ignorant (either incidentally or intentionally) of historical facts.
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
1) how is this "unbiased hearing officer" going to be selected? How are they going to test is "unbiasedness"? 2) what's his salary going to be? 3) This law is just bait for trolling. Trolls will come out on both side to drown those hearing officers under a pile of frivolous claims.
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.
I get what you are saying.. but for every educated person who has a child in school there is an uneducated one... for everyone who sheds money, blood, sweat and tears, there is one who sheds meth or bigotry or hatred or bible-thumping. Your argument has to apply to them as well - that they get a say into what is taught.
Initially I feel really bad for whoever gets the job of "unbiased hearing officer" because I can't imagine a worse position to be in.
Then I feel really bad for the kids, who no matter what are not going to get good direction on learning.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Spontaneous generation was a theory to explain some observations. It made predictions that were found to be wrong, and was dropped. There was never any evidence that life couldn't form on its own, just that it didn't do it as often as predicted. You are also confusing evolution and the appearance of life. Evolution is what happened when life existed.
There are no cases of irreducible complexity, only dumb and unimaginative critics. Complicated relationships can develop spontaneously over millions of years. Bear in mind that a biological structure doesn't necessarily serve the same function it does now. Wings apparently started as radiators, and started to be useful for some form of flight.
Evolution (in the sense of the formation of new species) has been observed in the lab. The formation of life from non-living materials has not, AFAIK, but that's not the same thing. Evolution has happened in small pieces all over the world for a long time, while all we know of the formation of life is that it happened somewhere on the planet at some point in a very long period, so there's no reason to think it would be easy to reproduce in a lab.
The development of life, as it happened, was due to certain energy sources, which generated entropy. Most of this is from the Sun, which is creating entropy at a ferocious rate. The Laws of Thermodynamics apply only to closed systems, and allow for local variations.
There is no general agreement on the number of books in the Bible (consider the Apocrypha). Much of the Bible is accounts of people's observations and interpretations, but the formation of life is not one of them. According to the Bible, Adam and Eve were created in a world already going strong, and therefore had no observations of anything that happened before them.
Lots of legends of floods suggest a lot of local floods, not one big one. A global flood like Noah's would require that lots and lots of water mysteriously appear and then mysteriously disappear, and we would have noticed the effects.
You appear to be unaware of plate tectonics. Where land is now is not where it always was, and there are mechanisms that take ocean bottom and push it into mountains. And how the heck would a forty-day rainfall flash-freeze anything?
We find ancient cities now and then. The existence of an old city does not show that it was destroyed by God for being selfish and uncharitable and basically modern Republican.
I'll give the pointer here, to Snopes.com, to show that you've been swallowing some really dubious kool-aid.
If you want me to believe anything weird about Jericho, you're going to have to provide some sort of cite. I don't see any reason why walls would always fall in, and I haven't seen evidence that Jericho's walls fell outwards. I do know that, in some sieges, people pulled on ropes attached to grapnels at the top of the wall, although I don't know if that was ever done with stone walls.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Teaching religion tends to translate into "Teaching Christianity", "Teaching Islam", "Teaching [Insert your local religion]"
I don't have time to respond to all of this, but:
"Spontaneous generation was a theory to explain some observations. It made predictions that were found to be wrong, and was dropped. There was never any evidence that life couldn't form on its own, just that it didn't do it as often as predicted. You are also confusing evolution and the appearance of life. Evolution is what happened when life existed."
There is no evidence or scientific tests that have demonstrated life can come from non life (spontaneous generation). You must have proof that it can happen before your theory of evolution has any science behind it. There are many kinds of evolution, all collectively fall into the broad umbrella of evolution. Chemical evolution is the attempt to explain how non-life became living organisms. Biological evolution doesn't happen and has never been observed either (a banana becoming a dog).
"There are no cases of irreducible complexity, only dumb and unimaginative critics. Complicated relationships can develop spontaneously over millions of years. Bear in mind that a biological structure doesn't necessarily serve the same function it does now. Wings apparently started as radiators, and started to be useful for some form of flight."
Based on what, exactly? Were you there over millions of years to observe the development of those complicated relationships? When did radiators become wings? When dumbo the cartoon elephant in the Disney movie first aired? Do you realize how many fallacious built in assumptions you have in that single paragraph? Your grasp of science is very weak if you think that imagination is a substitute for evidence, testing, and results.
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
Not in any proper education system.
Even if you're in a faith school (game over anyway), UK law says that religious lessons have to include all the major faiths.
Which means nothing. We're talking about an event that may happen once per planet in half a billion years, involving things we do not fully understand. There is nothing to suggest that it didn't happen. And, of course, the Theory of Evolution assumes that we have life and examines what happens to it over the eons.
Creating a new species in life-forms that advanced typically takes a few million years, so you're going to have to be patient. We have observed a new species of bacterium evolving in a lab.
You're claiming that what you can't imagine is impossible. We're talking about what's possible here, not what's completely nailed down. If you want to talk about irreducible complexity, name something and I'll see about finding how it might have happened. Fuzzy spots in a scientific theory are completely normal, although obvious spots for further investigation and refinement and possible flaws in the theory.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes