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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!
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
That was my plan too. The first things I'd challenge are the faked moon landings, the Holocaust hoax, the Kennedy assassination falsehoods, and the deliberate suppression of the subversive role of the mind control satellites. Then they'd see whether they really wanted this law.
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
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.
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.
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.
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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.
Proving that you know nothing about science. There is only one right answer. However it might not be the complete answer. For example, Einstein's relativity does not refute Newton - it ADDS to it.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
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.
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").
Who upvoted you? The members of the "We're awesome and everyone else is stupid, amirite?" club?
Only in a world where you kids grow up in a "everyone gets a trophy", can you somehow think that the conservatives ardent, militant support of Israel's "can do no wrong" people, can also be Holocaust deniers.
Which is it? 2 + 2 = 4 and 5 now?
> 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++
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
The wrong answer they will be taught is "god did it". Over and over and over.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.