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Do We Need National [Education] Curriculums Yet?
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This is the equivalent of California revamping their Building Code to allow buildings to be constructed to Haitian standards. A simple "Well, a good building inspector will recognize that the Code itself is insufficient and make up for it in other ways, and the real problem is bad inspectors" is not a good reason to implement a shitty Code.
Actually the job of inspectors starts and stops with ensuring that it meets whatever minimum standing code requires. The better analogy would be that builders/developers should realize that collapsing homes aren't a good selling point and personally accept the moral requirement to have seismically engineered construction. Should, that is...
Nor is there anything stopping it now. However Congress generally tends to do things in broad strokes then let the bureaucrats deal with actually making shit work.
It would be like if Texas singlehandedly decides on what goes into the textbooks that are distributed throughout the country. As unimaginable as that scenario is...
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I try, man, but when the Texas stupid starts spilling over there borders and stupiding up the rest of the country...
But textbooks are not all there is to curriculum. Texas can put whatever they want in the textbooks, but it does not mean that Vermont has to teach that. They can simply ignore the offending parts of the textbooks. If they have Texas curriculum then they have to teach it, which is far far worse then just some bad textbooks.
Not just in the content but in the design too. For example, it's certainly possible to write a textbook in such a way that it encourages critical thinking, just as it's possible (and common) to do the opposite.
One of the biggest problems in my part of the teaching industry is the assumption that textbook quality doesn't matter that much. Work as a principal or something similar and you'll hear things like 'A good teacher can make up for a bad textbook' all the time. Which I find ridiculous, because a good textbook can make a teacher a much better teacher. And a great teacher can teach well without a good book, but it takes much more work than it would with a good textbook.
We accept flaws and conservative design in textbooks we wouldn't readily accept elsewhere, and they influence even the best teachers.
I just saw on PolitiFact (went to check on the Obama Meter) that Fox News is apparently saying Texas officials are planing to remove references to Christmas and the Constitution from school textbooks.
I thought what Texas is really doing was in Fox's fucking favor?
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Well, the Constitution doesn't really agree with Fox's sensibilities, and Texas is selectively ignoring parts of it. Especially that pesky Establishment Clause.