Who Should Call the Shots in American Public Education?
At left is a brief discussion on the subject of public schooling, and, in particular, the question of who should make the decisions re: curricula. The author suggests that the “client” to be served by public education is not the parents of the children, but rather society itself.
A couple of examples in support of this idea:
1) Science
Society is best served by educating kids in the basic sciences. For example, the theory of evolution is the accepted scientific theory as to how all this plant and animal life got here. Creationism isn’t a valid scientific alternative, and thus shouldn’t be taught as if it were.
The woman who taught my kids science in the local public school tells her class at the end of the year, “Now you know what scientists tell us about these subjects. Are there other ideas? Yes, for instance, that an all-powerful God created the universe and populated the Earth with various life forms. If you like, you can attend a church and pursue this concept, but it’s not what they pay me to teach.”
A reader suggests that failing to teach science is a form of our child abuse. I think he’s nailed something quite important there.
2) History
The best ideas in teaching of U.S. history reside in making sure our kids understand that slavery was an extremely important, albeit cruel, institution in the development of the southern part of our nation–even if that doesn’t support the notion of American exceptionalism and our nation’s moral superiority.
Here’s another example of how Americans have somehow, and fairly suddenly, lost their ability to think.
Obama makes a good point here. Who does that?
IMO, the content of the meme at left is one of the very best ideas ever propounded by humankind. It speaks to the subject of “cognitive biases,” a big deal nowadays. However, it’s been attributed to essentially everyone in history. Who said it first? Best?
From a reader: A message written on the back of an SUV quickly went viral after being shared online.
In a recent post I wrote that I believe that ultimately it will be revealed that Trump has an unlovely relationship with Putin, perhaps only insofar as Trump worships Putin, and envies his position as absolute ruler. It’s true that Putin controls every aspect of Russian life, especially how the media portrays him to the people, and this is exactly what Trump wants to achieve here in the U.S.
From “David Attenborough Fans”: 150 ft. Iceberg passing through Iceberg Alley near Ferryland, Newfoundland, Canada.
The author of the meme here makes a good point. How is Trump a viable candidate to lead the most powerful nation on Earth?
I don’t think quantum mechanics is capable of being understood, not because it isn’t true, but because the human mind didn’t evolve in such a way to deal with things that fail to conform to our intuition of time and space.
A reader sent me this, commenting: Cannot make this up. Elon the Nazi has joined team Trump traitors campaign.
