Let's Restrict Home Schooling

[Hobbit]

The public school system is NOT fanatically indoctrinating people. What you're doing is known in psychology as "projection." I know that what you want is for schools to teach Bible lessons and lead school prayer sessions, teaching kids creationism (id) and replacing pep rallies with ritualized recitations of the pledge of allegiance and "God Bless America."

The thing you fail to realize is that YOUR view of what schools should be IS fanatical indoctrination. Teaching science in science class (I assume your frothing is over the teaching of evolution) is NOT indoctrination. If you want your kids (if you ever have them) to learn Bible stories instead of biology, geology and history, I recommend that you send them to Christian school. Every community has Christian schools. You shouldn't have a hard time finding one.

In the meantime, the public school system will continue to imbibe the nation's future-leading-minds with the secular education they need to function normally in society. And the Bible fables we all learned as kids will continue to be taught to them in Sunday school--just as they were taught to us.

I don't want theology taught in government schools because, among other reasons, they'll get it wrong, just like they do to everything else they touch. It's a plague.

As far as indoctrination, I don't know what else to call it. The New Deal is taught as the one thing that saved the United States from total collapse (while many economists believe it prolonged the Depression). FDR is portrayed as a saint. The Civil War (misnamed, for one) is taught to be about slavery. The impact religion had in the founding of this country is ommitted. They're even claiming that Thanksgiving was solely about thanking the Indians. School supplies are taken away, in violation of private property rights, and re-distributed as the teacher sees fit. Self-defense is a crime. The idiotic Global Warming Superdisaster myth is taught as fact. Teaching FACTS that even appear to contradict the gospel of Darwinism get teachers fired. There's hardly any mention of the birth of the Income Tax, the full applications of the Second Ammendment (many textbooks now claim the Second Ammendment does nothing but allow the creation of militias and that it's not an individual right), the horrible things done to the South during reconstruction, the atrocities committed against the American Indians, or even the fact that America is a republic, not a democracy.

There's an agenda there, and the agenda is not to teach kids all of the facts.

[Hagbard Celine]

I don't want theology taught in government schools because, among other reasons, they'll get it wrong, just like they do to everything else they touch. It's a plague.

As far as indoctrination, I don't know what else to call it. The New Deal is taught as the one thing that saved the United States from total collapse (while many economists believe it prolonged the Depression). FDR is portrayed as a saint. The Civil War (misnamed, for one) is taught to be about slavery. The impact religion had in the founding of this country is ommitted. They're even claiming that Thanksgiving was solely about thanking the Indians. School supplies are taken away, in violation of private property rights, and re-distributed as the teacher sees fit. Self-defense is a crime. The idiotic Global Warming Superdisaster myth is taught as fact. Teaching FACTS that even appear to contradict the gospel of Darwinism get teachers fired. There's hardly any mention of the birth of the Income Tax, the full applications of the Second Ammendment (many textbooks now claim the Second Ammendment does nothing but allow the creation of militias and that it's not an individual right), the horrible things done to the South during reconstruction, the atrocities committed against the American Indians, or even the fact that America is a republic, not a democracy.

There's an agenda there, and the agenda is not to teach kids all of the facts.

So is it the godless teachers unions or the textbook manufacturers -or- the US government that is to blame for the inadequacies of our nation's curricula?

btw, calling the scientific theory of evolution a "dogma" doesn't change the fact that it's a scientific theory just like sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken.

[Hobbit]

So is it the godless teachers unions or the textbook manufacturers -or- the US government that is to blame for the inadequacies of our nation's curricula?

It's mainly on the shoulders of the US government, which gets to set the curriculum, has ensured that any educational choices are prohibitively expensive, and, in general, has promoted the PC-ification of every government school. Without competition, schools can teach whatever they want rather than what the parents want, and with increasing levels of laws that forbid parents from dictating their childrens' educations, more and more kids are being taught the dumbest crap in school, directly against what their parents are trying to teach them.

btw, calling the scientific theory of evolution a "dogma" doesn't change the fact that it's a scientific theory just like sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken.

Yes, it's scientific theory, which means it should be tested, retested, and put under advanced scrutiny. Science is everchanging, evolving, if you will. To resist facts that may bring change is a crime against science. I'm not talking about teaching some 6000 year old Earth nutjob dogma here, but when a science teacher is fired for showing his students articles about the discovery of a pre-Cambrian stratum in China on the grounds of seperation of church and state*, I tend to think indoctrination.

I can't remember the guy's name, but I have read legitamite articles on him. He was a teacher in Washington State. The reason this stratum supposedly amounted to teaching religion is that it is evidence supporting a hole in Darwinian evolution called the "Cambrian Explosion." At the dawn of the Cambrian Era, nearly every phylum of life now classified appeared in a relatively short period of time (less than 10 million years). Prior to the discovery of this stratum, it was theorized that this didn't actually happen and that the transitional life forms were hard to fossilize and that the pre-Cambrian environment was not good for fossilization. The stratum proved both points wrong, as it was dated as just prior to the dawn of the Cambrian Era, contained extremely simple organisms (mostly sponges and similar creatures) that were almost perfectly fossilized. It's not exactly a silver bullet that completely disproves evolution, but it is a wrench thrown in the gears, and American teachers are forbidden from teaching its discovery, because Americans United for the Seperation of Church and State has classified it as religious dogma.

[Abbey Marie]

Inconvenient Truth in Schools, a Little Inconvenient?
by Matthew Sparkes, London, UK on 05.20.07

A student from Ontario has complained that he has been shown An Inconvenient Truth a total of four times as part of high-school classes. Understandably he was shown it in his environment class, and then his world issues class, but was also shown it in history, and economics. "I really don't understand why they keep showing it," says McKenzie, whose last name is withheld on his parent’s request. "I've spoken to the principal about it, and he said that teachers are instructed to present it as a debate. But every time we've seen it, well, one teacher said this is basically a two-sided debate, but this movie really gives you the best idea of what's going on."

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007...udent_from.php