Texas school board changing the curriculum

[Monte Carlo]

The entire raison d'etre of the United States of America is that those states enjoy a considerable level of freedom from Federal government, including education.

 

I can't see the USA accepting a centrally imposed cirriculum, no more than they would penal policy or anything else. And why should they? I wouldn't trust Dubya nor Obama with that.

[Gorgon]

Communists back then typically operated by infiltrating trade unions and working from the inside to instigate strikes. once the Communist party of the US were outlawed their operations became entirely underground. One of the most successful spies in ww2 was a Comintern double agent in Japan, Victor Sorge.

 

The actual degree of infiltration of the government was negliable though. If I recall McCarthy thundered forth with a list of hundreds of known Communist infiltrators in government, the list was utter nonsense, and the actual threat did not warrent the level of persecution which followed.

 

Especially not if the US wanted to continue to call itself a free and open society. The real irony of course is that Communism never really took root, not because of repression, but because Americans weren't buying it.

[Gorgon]

Communists back then typically operated by infiltrating trade unions and working from the inside to instigate strikes. once the Communist party of the US were outlawed their operations became entirely underground. One of the most successful spies in ww2 was a Comintern double agent in Japan, Victor Sorge.

 

The actual degree of infiltration of the government was negliable though. If I recall McCarthy thundered forth with a list of hundreds of known Communist infiltrators in government, the list was utter nonsense, and the actual threat did not warrent the level of persecution which followed.

 

Especially not if the US wanted to continue to call itself a free and open society. The real irony of course is that Communism never really took root, not because of repression, but because Americans weren't buying it.

[Hurlshort]

My theory on education is that you never take sides as a teacher. Ever. You are to remain the ultimate neutral party at all times. You present your information, and you then tell the students never to trust the information that they are given. They need to do their own research, they need to see multiple sources, they need to think critically. I never disclose my religious or political views to the students, some bother me about that, and I tell them to come back after they graduate.

 

I know most of my students are too lazy to ever do that, they treat the textbooks like gospel, but they also forget most of it quickly. The real indoctrination happens at home anyways.

 

There is a left wing bias in education. There are a few teachers on my campus that I find bothersome with the fact they wear political pins and the like. But I will say they are in the minority. The majority care little about indoctrinating students, they just want them to do their homework, learn to read and write well, calculate formula's, and become a generally confident and successful young adult.

[213374U]

stuff

Frankly, I find your insinuation that it takes a Ph.D for a person to start having a semblance of a critical attitude, stupid beyond words. You CANNOT begin changing the way a person's mind processes information and makes decisions based on that when they are 18. Fostering a critical approach to information is something that needs to be integrated as a central tenet of the curriculum, not as a "bonus skill" to be taught for 10 credits in college. Science is fundamentally and in essence, a critical spirit applied to preliminary hypothesis and observational data. If you go and teach "abiogenesis Good, ID Bad, ok?", you aren't doing a very good job at teaching science. And the thing is, at grade 10, you can't go much deeper than that.

 

Of course, the root of your arguments lies with some rather blatant strawmanning, materialised in absurd examples involving post-doctorate level debate of the merits and flaws of current abiogenesis theories in a grade 10 classroom. It's funny that you are so bent on showing how these nutjobs don't tolerate free speech, when you don't tolerate anything else but what you accept to be The TRUTH being taught.

 

I fully agree with Wals -- education isn't about truth or facts or data as much as it is about providing people with a basic toolset of skills for them to use in their academic or professional field of choice, and life in general. Whatever they end up doing with those skills afterwards is fully up to them. Freedom of choice is a bitch, huh?

 

re Dresden: yay hindsight!

[Walsingham]

I think an anecdote may serve, as has just come back to me. In sixth form (age 17-18) we had one of our shinier teachers sit us down in front of a panel of "visiting experts" to "discuss" abortion. What we got shown was very quickly identified as ran anti-abortion propaganda. The result was a furious an insulted rebuttal of each point by a cross-section of students which went far beyond the time allotted and into class time - something which never happened ever.

 

The point wasn't that we'd been pro-abortion indoctrinated and we were far from liberal in most cases. What saved us from accepting barefaced lies (for example the procedure they described was twenty years out of date as one trainee nurse pointed out) was our critical faculties. Honed in our politics, history, philosophy and science lessons, and further sharpened by exposure to genuinely great spekaers like Douglas Hurd and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Not to mention a first class school library. I'd like to aim for that raw capability rather than focus on facts first.

 

Although I should say that cognitive ability appears to be closely linked to experience storing, retrieving and manipulating subject specific data. So i'm not saying we should abandon physics and just teach philosophy.

[Orogun01]

The entire raison d'etre of the United States of America is that those states enjoy a considerable level of freedom from Federal government, including education.

 

I can't see the USA accepting a centrally imposed cirriculum, no more than they would penal policy or anything else. And why should they? I wouldn't trust Dubya nor Obama with that.

Why should they? Because every five minutes there is some complain about the children; which really is a lingo for faceless political mass. At least in public schools the government should set a more strict curriculum.

 

On the subject of American's opinions: You are not going to be able to make everyone agree but this is a vital issue that should not be left to be discussed. The USA always asks for the "Disney" solution, a fairy that's going to wave a wand and make all the problems go away.

[Thorton_AP]

@ Calax. You've just proved my point. Dresden is a 'bad' thing, you are buying into the now-default revisionism on the subject. Group-think.

 

How about Dresden as a good thing? Dresden as a strategic target? Dresden as logical payback for the "9/11 every week for a year" that was the unprovoked Blitz on London? Dresden as a part of the sad but irreducibly sensible way to destroy Nazism?

 

Kids need to understand alternative POV. Intelligent Design? It's utter bollocks. But I'd be comfortable with it being taught as long as it's balanced out, I'd quote Voltaire but it's a bit of a cliche. Religion doesn't make sense to me yet it is still taught, personally I'd go all French on the issue and ban religion from schools full stop. But that's just me.

 

 

Where do you draw the line? Dresden as a logical payback for the 9/11 every week for a year? How about the "Bombing of London as a good thing." Racial genocide as a good thing. Auchwitz as a good thing. After all, you want to teach our kids the alternate points of view, might as well share the pros and cons of setting up death camps, right?

 

I know that I'm just using a slippery slope, but it really sounds like that is what you want. I think teaching our kids that something like Dresden (vindictive revenge that your own side regrets doing as a good thing has a greater chance of educating young, still very much developing children that this type of behaviour is okay. At least under certain circumstances. I disagree in many ways.

 

 

There are aspects of history that can definitely be shown from alternate viewpoints without negative effect, but teaching 14 year olds a perspective that the philosophy of the White Man's Burden is a good thing is not the way to do it.

[Monte Carlo]

The desirable standard of 'a liberal education' means just that, as others have described above.

 

Liberal in the sense that (a) you respect the oppsing view whilst retaining the right to shoot it full of holes if you can (b) the idea that, generally, you play the ball not the man © if you play the man as opposed to the ball then there's a good reason for it (d) not taking the information provided to you on trust isn't disrespectful, it's mandatory, (e) remember, only because Dave in your English class is a bit thick doesn't mean anything - he might be a ninja in science / maths / sports so show the guy some respect and help him if he wants it, and lastly (f) provide some evidence for your assertions.

 

If you achieve that, as per Hurlie's rather reassuring personal standards, then you can present anything to a class of young people with no worries whatsoever. I see no reason why a class of 14-15 year olds, properly educated, couldn't shoot down in flames creationism, intelligence design, kabala, scientology or any other wacky stuff you want to throw at them. Hell, I want my kids to do that.

 

Cheers

MC

[Monte Carlo]

Auchwitz as a good thing.

 

Hyperbole and strawman arguments in a perfect tango.

 

I'm not arguing about moral relativism, which is what you are describing in extremis. I'm arguing about an opposing point of view. "Dropping bombs on civilian population centres is wrong." This is groupthink. Hiroshima looks different if your grandfather was a marine. Dresden looks different if your grandparents lived through the Blitz (that's me). If you are a Sunni Muslim in Fallujah in 2004/2005 then the Iraq war looks a bit different I guess. You drop bombs in a war of national survival to achieve strategic aims --- yes you vaporise tens of thousands of civilians so your own people don't die.

 

Look at that, it's freaking horrible. Teaching why rational people came to that decision is a fell responsibility. You have to try to see if both ways.

 

And all you can manage is.... Auschwitz. Mechanized slaughter based on racial hatred. Please, there is a baseline. What is the alternative argument there? There isn't one. It's the morality of the clinically insane.

Edited May 22, 2010 by Monte Carlo

[Thorton_AP]

I see no reason why a class of 14-15 year olds

 

Have you been to school recently? Place it in a sociohistorical context for the region, and the exact same lessons will achieve very different results. Then you get into the ideas of what it means to be "properly educated." I doubt you'll find much consensus for what that term means.

 

I was a pretty smart student, and like to think that I did a pretty good job of understanding circumstances of things such as Dresden. But looking around the room, there are a lot of not-so-smart students in the room that totally miss the point. And even then, when I was young and things like affirmative action concepts were taught to me, all I saw was the perspective of "rewarding someone based upon physical traits, not merit" in spite of my teacher trying to illustrate the concepts of systemic and institutional discrimination as barriers of entry to various aspects of society. The fact that I grew up in a conservative, almost "redneck" environment helped cement those thoughts, and definitely the thoughts of my peers. Many of them still feel that way today unfortunately, and when perceived that way it just fuels racists vitriol IMO.

[Wrath of Dagon]

In America, students are taught to revere the military in hero worship, and are never shown the military's bad side (firebombing Dresden for example, was mentioned to me in ENGLISH class),

I love it how Calax makes an argument, then immediately contradicts himself. Yes, Slaughterhouse Five is usually read in the English class, so what? Also constant strawmanning, Intelligent Design is not part of the Texas curriculum, so what does it have to do with anything?

[Calax]

stuff

Frankly, I find your insinuation that it takes a Ph.D for a person to start having a semblance of a critical attitude, stupid beyond words. You CANNOT begin changing the way a person's mind processes information and makes decisions based on that when they are 18. Fostering a critical approach to information is something that needs to be integrated as a central tenet of the curriculum, not as a "bonus skill" to be taught for 10 credits in college. Science is fundamentally and in essence, a critical spirit applied to preliminary hypothesis and observational data. If you go and teach "abiogenesis Good, ID Bad, ok?", you aren't doing a very good job at teaching science. And the thing is, at grade 10, you can't go much deeper than that.

 

Of course, the root of your arguments lies with some rather blatant strawmanning, materialised in absurd examples involving post-doctorate level debate of the merits and flaws of current abiogenesis theories in a grade 10 classroom. It's funny that you are so bent on showing how these nutjobs don't tolerate free speech, when you don't tolerate anything else but what you accept to be The TRUTH being taught.

Science in particular is an utterly different field where "fair" is not used. And I'm specifically using that example because that example is exactly what people who say "Teach the controversy!" are trying to say. Evolution is a theory, in science a theory is a term denoting the underpinnings of a particular field (germ theory, gravitational theory, evolutionary theory, nuclear theory). Also, science is about what you can see and experiment on to get results. "Teaching the controversy" is trying to put what isn't science into science, and in order to refute the idiocy that is ID you have to go REALLY deep into the biology and anthropological fields.

 

Are we going to teach the controversy over the fact that there is a black kettle in orbit around Mars? I swear it's there!

 

In America, students are taught to revere the military in hero worship, and are never shown the military's bad side (firebombing Dresden for example, was mentioned to me in ENGLISH class),

I love it how Calax makes an argument, then immediately contradicts himself. Yes, Slaughterhouse Five is usually read in the English class, so what? Also constant strawmanning, Intelligent Design is not part of the Texas curriculum, so what does it have to do with anything?

I brought it up because it was mentioned in engilsh class, not history, history classes only focused on the stuff that made people looking like flowers, which was exactly my point. Is there a slant? Yes, but I'd hardly call it a liberal slant.

 

As to the Texas curriculum, It's not part of it now, but there have been other school boards who have changed the entire textbook because of their personal religious belief (Most famously, Dover) because they felt that (in the case of dover) the text was "Laced with darwinism"

 

Understand, I'm talking mainly in the sciences, not the more cultural based stuff. Science does not operate on "teaching the controversy", it operates on knowing facts and expanding based on those facts, if you were to try to make discoveries using ID's "evidence" you wouldn't get very far.

[Wrath of Dagon]

Communists back then typically operated by infiltrating trade unions and working from the inside to instigate strikes. once the Communist party of the US were outlawed their operations became entirely underground. One of the most successful spies in ww2 was a Comintern double agent in Japan, Victor Sorge.

 

The actual degree of infiltration of the government was negliable though. If I recall McCarthy thundered forth with a list of hundreds of known Communist infiltrators in government, the list was utter nonsense, and the actual threat did not warrent the level of persecution which followed.

 

Especially not if the US wanted to continue to call itself a free and open society. The real irony of course is that Communism never really took root, not because of repression, but because Americans weren't buying it.

 

The decrypted messages gave important insights into Soviet behavior in the period during which duplicate one-time pads were used. With the first break into the code, Venona revealed the existence of Soviet espionage[12] at Los Alamos National Laboratories.[13] Identities soon emerged of American, Canadian, Australian, and British spies in service to the Soviet government, including Klaus Fuchs, Alan Nunn May and Donald Maclean, a member of the Cambridge Five spy ring. Others worked in Washington in the State Department, Treasury, Office of Strategic Services,[14] and even the White House.

 

but it was not until 1995 that the bipartisan Commission on Government Secrecy, with Senator Moynihan as chairman, released the Venona project materials. Moynihan wrote:

 

"[The] secrecy system has systematically denied American historians access to the records of American history. Of late we find ourselves relying on archives of the former Soviet Union in Moscow to resolve questions of what was going on in Washington at mid-century. [...] the Venona intercepts contained overwhelming proof of the activities of Soviet spy networks in America, complete with names, dates, places, and deeds."[33]

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venona_papers

[Monte Carlo]

This is why I was wondering about the big deal with regards to HUAC. Subsequent evidence vindicated the principle and concerns, if not methods, of the initiative.

 

The idea that the USSR was not trying to infiltrate and undermine Western democracies is naive.

[Calax]

This is why I was wondering about the big deal with regards to HUAC. Subsequent evidence vindicated the principle and concerns, if not methods, of the initiative.

 

The idea that the USSR was not trying to infiltrate and undermine Western democracies is naive.

What I got out of the lesson was less about weather it was happening or not, and more how/why the HUAC would call somebody. Often those who were called before them were completely innocent, with no evidence that could have brought them to the commission, but their lives were destroyed and they were outcast because they'd been effectively fingered by the government. There were no outright accusations made, but the members would use the comittee for political gain. It was a witch hunt in the same vein as the Salem trials, calling on your 5th amendment protections would get you blacklisted and ejected from your jobs

 

If you want a hollywood version watch "The Majestic", the main character gets called before the commission.

Edited May 22, 2010 by Calax

[Hurlshort]

It is a pretty simple case of Machiavellian politics. Does the end justify the means?

[Gorgon]

Communists back then typically operated by infiltrating trade unions and working from the inside to instigate strikes. once the Communist party of the US were outlawed their operations became entirely underground. One of the most successful spies in ww2 was a Comintern double agent in Japan, Victor Sorge.

 

The actual degree of infiltration of the government was negliable though. If I recall McCarthy thundered forth with a list of hundreds of known Communist infiltrators in government, the list was utter nonsense, and the actual threat did not warrent the level of persecution which followed.

 

Especially not if the US wanted to continue to call itself a free and open society. The real irony of course is that Communism never really took root, not because of repression, but because Americans weren't buying it.

 

The decrypted messages gave important insights into Soviet behavior in the period during which duplicate one-time pads were used. With the first break into the code, Venona revealed the existence of Soviet espionage[12] at Los Alamos National Laboratories.[13] Identities soon emerged of American, Canadian, Australian, and British spies in service to the Soviet government, including Klaus Fuchs, Alan Nunn May and Donald Maclean, a member of the Cambridge Five spy ring. Others worked in Washington in the State Department, Treasury, Office of Strategic Services,[14] and even the White House.

 

but it was not until 1995 that the bipartisan Commission on Government Secrecy, with Senator Moynihan as chairman, released the Venona project materials. Moynihan wrote:

 

"[The] secrecy system has systematically denied American historians access to the records of American history. Of late we find ourselves relying on archives of the former Soviet Union in Moscow to resolve questions of what was going on in Washington at mid-century. [...] the Venona intercepts contained overwhelming proof of the activities of Soviet spy networks in America, complete with names, dates, places, and deeds."[33]

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venona_papers

Well. Is there supposed to be a discrepancy between what I said and your link ?. Where are the hundreds of infiltrators in government from McCarthy's famous list.

 

What kind of double agent has a Communist party membership card. You don't find moles by grandstanding and serving your own ambitions in senatorial hearings. It's simply NOT a job for a politician. Double agens communicate with Moscow, not with American Communists.

 

A good ol' fashioned witch hunt on the other hand.

[Walsingham]

I don't think McCarthy was correct, but he was far from mental. Look at the way Communism was spread in Europe including Britain and you see a vanguard of communist agitators and thinkers paving the way. Just have a listen to the fellah in my sig. But this is my point. We can't even agree on whether there were or weren't communist infiltrators. A clearly observable - if not necessarily observed - fact. I'm not suggesting we don't talk about McCarthy, just that kids would be best served by being taught HOW to make up their minds.

 

ASIDE: If a mosquito lands on the back of your neck do NOT swat it as hard as you want to. Ow. Ow. Ow.

[Wrath of Dagon]

Well. Is there supposed to be a discrepancy between what I said and your link ?. Where are the hundreds of infiltrators in government from McCarthy's famous list.

The discrepancy was you saying the infiltration of the government was negligible contrasted with the pervasive infiltration in the quotes.

 

Edit:

According to authors John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, the Venona transcripts identify approximately 349 Americans whom they claim had a covert relationship with Soviet intelligence, though fewer than half of these have been matched to real-name identities.[19]

 

The Office of Strategic Services, the predecessor to the CIA, housed at one time or another between fifteen and twenty Soviet spies.[20] Duncan Lee, Donald Wheeler, Jane Foster Zlatowski, and Maurice Halperin passed information to Moscow. The War Production Board, the Board of Economic Warfare, the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs and the Office of War Information, included at least half a dozen Soviet sources each among their employees. In the opinion of some, almost every American military and diplomatic agency of any importance was compromised to some extent by Soviet espionage.[21]

So from that, hundreds may not have been unreasonable, and of course McCarthy had no knowledge of Venona, so he was probably speculating. Edited May 22, 2010 by Wrath of Dagon

[Gorgon]

Alright, I suppose you can have that one. The Soviets did what every other major power does, spy on everyone else, and they were good at it.

 

From spy network to America Communist revolution on the other hand, a rather immense gap.

[Gorgon]

Alright, I suppose you can have that one. The Soviets did what every other major power does, spy on everyone else, and they were good at it.

 

From spy network to America Communist revolution on the other hand, a rather immense gap.

[Gorgon]

From your edit : 'in the opinion of some'. That's rather flimsy isn't it. In the opinion of some we have been secretly invaded by martians.

[213374U]

Science in particular is an utterly different field where "fair" is not used. And I'm specifically using that example because that example is exactly what people who say "Teach the controversy!" are trying to say. Evolution is a theory, in science a theory is a term denoting the underpinnings of a particular field (germ theory, gravitational theory, evolutionary theory, nuclear theory). Also, science is about what you can see and experiment on to get results. "Teaching the controversy" is trying to put what isn't science into science, and in order to refute the idiocy that is ID you have to go REALLY deep into the biology and anthropological fields.

Uh huh. If you really believe there is no controversy within the scientific community, I think it's pretty pointless to continue discussing this issue. Controversy is essential to science, as it's the engine driving its continuous self-renewal, be it to reinforce existing theories, expand, or discard them. I was taught about things like spontaneous generation and the luminiferous aether in my science classes, when I was like 14, btw. Where would you suggest these things be taught, "Stuff That Is Not Science 101"?

 

I'm not going to suggest that pseudoscientific crap should be taught as a valid alternative, but being able to examine alternatives that may lie outside the scope of science where science itself still can't provide a reasonably complete answer isn't going to turn kids into mindless zealots.

 

 

Understand, I'm talking mainly in the sciences, not the more cultural based stuff. Science does not operate on "teaching the controversy", it operates on knowing facts and expanding based on those facts, if you were to try to make discoveries using ID's "evidence" you wouldn't get very far.

Simply because the scientific curriculum is usually focused on the mathematical aspect, it doesn't mean that's all there is to it, or even that it ends there. A lack of imagination is one of the worst things a scientist can suffer from -- being a number wiz isn't equivalent to being a good scientist. We have supercomputers, but see how far they advance science, left to their own devices. Edited May 22, 2010 by 213374U

[Gorgon]

I don't think McCarthy was correct, but he was far from mental. Look at the way Communism was spread in Europe including Britain and you see a vanguard of communist agitators and thinkers paving the way. Just have a listen to the fellah in my sig. But this is my point. We can't even agree on whether there were or weren't communist infiltrators. A clearly observable - if not necessarily observed - fact. I'm not suggesting we don't talk about McCarthy, just that kids would be best served by being taught HOW to make up their minds.

 

ASIDE: If a mosquito lands on the back of your neck do NOT swat it as hard as you want to. Ow. Ow. Ow.

That's not really disputed, at least not by me. The Soviets trained and funded hundreds if not thousands of promising young revolutionaries in infiltration and political agitation. They had some major successes too, notably China. The question is what to do in the face of this of agitation which depends on a helping hand from the established order in the form of draconian counter insurgency measures. In nine times out of ten the answer is simply to do nothing.

 

By the way all of the Comintern documents were released to the public followinhg te collapse of Communism, although I haven't read them (they are in Russian) they are frequently referred to as showing indirectly the massive Soviet disappointment in the American Communist movement. In Japan several prominent Communists even did an about face and converted to the hyper nationalism of the time. Effectively killing Communism in Japan until it was resurrected by MacArthur.

Edited May 22, 2010 by Gorgon