US public education

dteowner

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Didn't really want to start a new thread with this, but I didn't see any current one that made for a good fit.

I was reading up on my Red Wings when I noticed this article. If this doesn't highlight why our education system is in the toilet, I don't know what does.

Detroit's New Board of Education President
 
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That's an interesting one, dte, and it asks some difficult questions. I'm just wondering why on earth a guy who can't read write or spell and took ten years to graduate from college decided to go into the education field in the first place. You'd think it wouldn't be his area of interest in life.

OTOH, his problems with language are far from uncommon. I read posts from native english speakers on the internet everyday that make people for whom english is a second or third or fourth language sound like contemporary Shakespeares. Maybe his issues give him some perspective on the student body of his area that are valuable. The e-mails themselves, once you decipher them, seem to have a logical point and don't seem to indicate a lack of actual native intelligence. Dunno. It says something--bad about the educational system yes, but perhaps not so bad about his own persistence--that he's made the kind of headway he has with that level of communications skills.

Nonetheless, if I were a parent of a child in his school system, I don't know that I'd be happy.
 
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Texas Conservatives Approve Changes to School Curriculum
Conservatives on the Texas Board of Education have approved a series of major changes to the state’s social studies curriculum. The new curriculum stresses the superiority of American capitalism, questions the separation of church and state, and presents Republican political philosophies in a more positive light. One plank in the new curriculum ensures that students learn about “the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s, including Phyllis Schlafly, the Contract With America, the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority and the National Rifle Association.” In economic classes, free market advocates Milton Friedman and Friedrich von Hayek will be mandatory reading. Meanwhile, attempts by Hispanic board members to include more Latino figures as role models in the curriculum were defeated even though half of the state’s four million students are Hispanic. The legendary farmworker organizer Dolores Huerta was removed from the curriculum, as was the Mexican American painter Santa Barraza. Board member Mary Helen Berlanga stormed out of one meeting, saying, “They can just pretend this is a white America and Hispanics don’t exist. They are going overboard. They are not experts, they are not historians. They are rewriting history, not only of Texas, but of the United States and the world.”


another reason not to live in Texas...if they tried this in California I think the protests would get even larger. Dolores Huerta is a personal hero of mine.

the economics they need to teach is that as the supply for war goes up the demand for education goes down. you can replace all the teachers you want, convert to the proven not any more effective charter schools and you'll still get bunko. here in california its shameless how little money has been striped from schools, the only state with no oil extraction tax, and of course the largest daycare system known as the california penal system.
 
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The California budget crisis has little -if anything - to do with the wars.
 
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and of course the largest daycare system known as the california penal system.
So you're in favor of widely-applied capital punishment to thin out the criminals that are leeching the state's coffers?
 
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another reason not to live in Texas…if they tried this in California I think the protests would get even larger. Dolores Huerta is a personal hero of mine.
/QUOTE]

Actually I remember reading somewhere the reason they were so interested in Texas was that its the largest market for textbooks in the US and as a result most of the publishers print their books to the Texas curriculum... so even if you don't live there the textbooks will include all this.
 
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