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Texas Planning Public Execution of Education
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i think its particularly important mainly because of his words having an impact on the idea of separation between church and state which is a very very important issue that we currently face.
i mean if you ask around you'll find few if any people who know about the virginia statute of religious freedom he wrote.
it might not be necessary to deal with everything he wrote but you definitely want to highlight his major works at least.
It's purely a religious move.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdhGK9aYjDY&feature=player_embedded
("a Christian land governed by Christian principles")
Don't blame Texas, blame religion.
I think there's enough blame for both.
It's that guy over there. That Texan guy.
And it's contagious cancer. And he's licking people.
yeah they are
I think something a little problematic, since while it seems okay to teach people "The Europeans were very stupid, and this led to the Great War", it's less okay to say "The Europeans had engaged in smaller, but still very violent wars, for their imperial possessions in Central Asia and Africa for decades, and that in turn contributed to the great war". Like there's some sort of recent jerk-back response to teaching about economy-building colonialism.
I'm not an expert, I think there was a concern of what one million Americans marching in the direction of Hanoi (over one year or five years or whatever depending on how it went) would cause in a response in the USSR and China, who were watching the situation very closely (perhaps closer than we were). The Vietnam War wasn't fought in a vacuum, after all, no wars are. Saying "Oh, we would have won if we'd just let the army do its job" isn't always a safe perspective. If we'd let the army do whatever it needed to, no strings attached, I wouldn't be surprised if it ended up in them waiting until every population center in the North had been bombed into oblivion (or perhaps even resorting to things like tactical nuclear weapons to turn it into a big irradiated crater) before sustaining casualties that were increasingly unpopular to its image.
Of course, that's entirely speculative on my part. But we'd seriously underestimated the North's willingness to endure (if not the Viet Cong movement's) more than once already. This could just be my upbringing in a capitalist police state talking, but I think we're a civil society because we keep the armed forces on a leash.
Well, I keep tabs on what my daughter is learning and make it a point to instill my own social and academic values on her rather than trust that her school is being a good daddy. That's not really fighting the system, but it hardly makes me on par with Joe Nutbar over there, trying to strike inconvenient opinions from the history books.
Maddie: "I am not!"
Riley: "You're a marsupial!"
Maddie: "I am a placental mammal!"
It's a good thing we still have Rock and Roll and Country music though, with their perpetually wholesome messages.
Well, right, but frankly knowing what the holidays are is a bit silly.
Christmas has major economic impacts. Arguably Santa Claus is the most influential and important piece of Christianity today.
Why not blame people who can't handle it in a reasonable manner?
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2) That's an American thing and not essential to world history or culture.
I'd have thought that it was more in there to be included as a comparison - if you want to compare and contrast different cultures I don't think its that unreasonable have to include the things you want to compare them to in the syllabus. Wouldn't have thought there would be a large section on christmas, but if you want to include Eid and the like it makes sense to include christmas just so you have a complete set (plus there's probably quite a bit people don't know if you wanted to add in some christmas trivia as well so then learn something, origins of the various traditions which are no where near as obvious as most other religious festivals - why fir trees in December to celebrate the birth of someone born in spring in a desert, plus all the other non-anglican christmas traditions and date changes etc).
Thinking about it, there's quite a lot you could do for Christmas. That said, I'm not totally convinced that was the motivation.
Whether or not some of its' songs have questionable lyrics is immaterial---you can find plenty of examples that are G-rated if thats your actual concern. And if you're including the Beat Generation, some of that stuff is not exactly family friendly either. Not a shock that this double standard is in place, but still annoying.
Of course, I would likely want to not include the Beat Generation for entirely petty reasons, such as the fact that I think they're terrible.
Modern evangelicals like to pretend that Rock and Roll stopped being recorded after Elvis died, and Country music didn't start recording until Garth Brooks arrived.
Anything beyond that range is lalalalalalalalalalalalaallcanthearyoulalalalalalalalsorrytooloudlalalala
rarrr, Jeffe. History's not about "opinions" just because interpretation of events and records can differ. This wouldn't be as big an issue if the board were just trying to include such alternate interpretations, but they're not really doing that. They're trying to turn the study of history into a series of lectures outlining a weird form of american-fundamentalist mythology, a mythology that only survives if you selectively ignore many sources and distort others. The damage this kind of "education" does to a kid's ability to think critically is at least as big a problem as the intended content of the lectures.
Also, none of those art forms existed when non-christians or non-whites were producing them.
It's more that Jefferson is the author of the concept of separation of church and state in US governance.
Nobody else is commentating on this? Maybe everyone else already knew this is how it goes down but to me it seems incredibly weird that a Board of Education meeting would start with something like that. Not to mention the fact that she says a bunch of stuff that's just plain wrong.
jesus h. freaking christ on a stick i honestly hoped it wasnt this bad but ... wow...
I thought you guys were supposed to have a separate church and state?
It's incredible that state officials are that blazingly open about it.
This really isn't surprising, it would be surprising only if someone was trying to pull that religious stuff and someone stood up and said "Woah now."
I mean we have In God We Trust on our money and One Nation Under God in our Pledge of Allegiance, of which in some schools you can get into trouble if you don't say it. It's not illegal, but you'll piss off the school and make it a huge deal and if you live in a small town your community will probably hate you because you're now that guy. Oh and Christians aren't typically the nicest people when it comes to realizing that you're not one of them. (I know not all Christians are like this, but I've met characters from both sides of the fence.)
So really this is just America. Also a Texan small town, I mean really this is business as usual.
Did I mention that Austin is considered hella liberal by the rest of the state's standards?
I apologize, I must have missed that.
Either way I still don't find what they're doing to be surprising, minus location now.
How many of the representatives there are representing Austin or Travis County? I'm curious, because Austin isn't just "hella liberal by the rest of the state's standards," it's pretty much hella liberal.
These people have no interest in making fair policies or doing their job properly.
There's 15 of them, assume equal population, so maybe one.
There are plenty of people who can be Christian and fair-minded at the same time. It just happens to be that some of these folks are not so.
in the southern states they throw around the word god and christian like some kind of secret word/badge of honor
if you arent christian you are not american is pretty much the consensus.
I'd say that people who can be Christian and also fair-minded don't really count (to me) as "extremely religious".
When you can't do your job (whatever it is, barring being a clergymember) without injecting your religion into every aspect of it whether it belongs there or not, you're extremely religious. Also possibly a religious extremist.
Two representatives represent part of Travis County - and they're both Republicans.
Ken Mercer & Cynthia Noland Dunbar.
The reason for that is just the way they've drawn the district lines. Both those individuals pretty much split Travis county down the middle - and then they have half of all the surrounding counties - Hays, Williamson, etc. These are ridiculously conservative areas (Williamson county in particular is pretty much where all the Religious Right folks get together. *Edit: And yeah, it shows by that video above. Cynthia Dunbar is the one giving the "prayer" above, and she was basically elected by Williamson County).
If you look at the District Map you can see how the lines are pretty much drawn in order go dilute the more liberal, population-heavy city areas. The result is 10 Republicans (66%) and 5 Democrats (33%) - whereas the State in general is not even close to being that Republican -- In the 2008 Presidential election, 55% of voters voted Republican, and 43% voted Democrat.
I did not know that evangelicals were big into music.
Killing communists, trade unionists, and indigenous people in South America? That I knew. But I honestly did not know they had specific grievances with music. Besides producing all that god-awful Christian rock or whatever it is.