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| User | Post |
| Pas'ra'chilli Posts: 17/58 |
Originally posted by Arwon But there are still plenty of Catholics around. |
| Koneko Posts: 445/656 |
Hypothetically: I am a parent (adoption) violently opposed to conventional male-female marriage. Am I allowed to demand that any story that has a man kissing a woman not be read to the class? What if I'm the only one with that opinion about that sort of thing?
I agree with Arwon. Kids aren't as stupid as most people seem to think. It seems to be fairly common to assume that they don't have real thoughts or form their own opinions. I think the school system would be far more effective if people (because children are people) were taught a basic understanding of most subjects, then allowed to pursue those academic topics most interesting to them. This isn't realistically possible at this point, sure, but that's mostly because people don't believe that children could want to study. Oddly enough, the idea of "college" doesn't scare them. Hmm. But that's actually just my opinion. It might not be correct, because I'm certainly not all the school-age students, and I don't magically know how they would prefer to learn. Maybe I'm being too optimistic, thinking that given the facilities to learn and the knowledge of how to use those facilities and left mostly to their own devices for a while that they would actually get anything done. I also believe that anyone who would play sports all day long in the absence of a mandatory education deserves what they get when I see them earning minimum wage at the grocery store. People who don't want to learn shouldn't have time wasted on them. Woo, tangent. |
| Arwon Posts: 238/631 |
Nah, hit em young and at best you've got 'em for a few years.
How else do you explain the fact that Catholic schools are actully more or less factories for militant atheists? |
| Pas'ra'chilli Posts: 10/58 |
Social engineering does work, but not as it is practiced in schools or churches. To condition a person you have to isolate them and put them through some form of abuse (in a cult setting this is probably verbal) to make them feel powerless. Once that is done you can give them a sense of empowerment by belonging to the cult or society or whatever.
However, young children can and do buy into nonsense tossed at them and as the saying goes, "Get them when they're young and they're yours forever." Pah. That's about all I disagree with in the above statement. |
| Arwon Posts: 237/631 |
No, there really isn't. Scripture when I was 7 was pretty much just as doumb, just with bratty little 7 year olds instead of smart-ass teenagers. You underestimate the ability of kids to simply not absorb information, and certainly you treat them like automatons for whom what they get told at age 7 controls their lives. Bollocks to that. At best you can have a kind of temporary hold over kids to scared of authority to act out... but by the time we reach teenage yers we're already laughing t or forgetting or ignoring most of what we learned in our younger days.
SOCIAL ENGINEERING DOESN'T REALLY WORK which means the battles over control of schools are pretty dumb. Honestly, if you're worried about indoctrination go fight the bloody advertising industry, they're far better at it. The point is you're never going to teach EVERYTHING, so the idea of being even-handed and equal with it is absurd. Teachers need some free reign to teach what they think will engage kids minds, not just some proscribed cirriculum all people must follow. Just relax, stop being anal retentive about indoctrination, and realise that a gay fairy tale does not matter at all and is entirely valid and appropriate. Seriously, I wish all these god damn "pro-family" (how did that term get hijacked by such a narrow band of cranky crusaders?) would just fuck off and let people do their damn jobs. You know nothing about this teacher or school, you know nothing about how they do their jobs, all you have is one half-assed sensational news article designed to trigger Pavlovian responses about the American kulturkampf and some weird conviction that anything gay is part of some insidious agenda to gay-ify your kids and make them do the buttseks. Finally, it's not the same material. It's a sodding fairy tale. A silly little story designed to pass the time and make the litle blighters sit still and listen to you. They're not discussing politics or social issues, they're not discussing sex, they're reading a damn story. |
| Silvershield Posts: 269/587 |
Originally posted by ArwonThanks for ignoring the absolute crux of what I've been saying: there's a difference between teaching certain things to an adolescent audience and teaching that same material to a classroom of seven-year-old kids. |
| Arwon Posts: 236/631 |
Originally posted by SilvershieldOriginally posted by ArwonFine, my religion will be taught to our nation's seven-year-old kids too. And if you object, then you're being anal about it. Fine by me, we do have religion in our schools here, it's no big deal. Exposure to many things is fine. It doesn't matter though, because no-one gets "converted" or anything like that... what happens is that it turns into a big joke. This is because religion seems kinda, uh, dumb to the majority of us who aren't religious, and so it turns in to "get the religion teacher angry or ask her dumb questions to send her off on weird tangents" and everyone thinks the class is funny and a waste of time. Then I realise I have dog shit on my shoe and so I remove it with pages of the bible because that's the only paper handy. Then the teacher insults my best friend because he is gay, and since he's in his political crusader phase he threatens the school and so it becomes an optional class and the religion teacher befriends a pregnant slut instead since no-one's gonna show up when they can have a free period after lunch. Good times. So what's my point here? Oh, yeah, go nuts, try and teach your religion in schools. The point isn't what's getting taught, the subject matter is really quite secondary since indoctrination is incredibly ineffective. The point is learning study methods, critical thinking, information management strategies, all those mental tools you need. School can't teach you a fraction of what you might need to know about life, it can only help you so you can do it yourself later on. So again, everyone needs to lighten the fuck up about educational content and realise that kids aren't paying attention anyway. |
| Thexare Posts: 654/1104 |
Originally posted by Clockworkz Er, Clock, just going to point out that not many people here are likely to know who he is. My memory's a bit sketchy on that subject too, so lemme grab a Wikipedia link... Here. Note that I cannot comment on any overlooked or potentially inaccurate information, it's 5:30 AM and I shouldn't be up this early. Fries my brain. =/ |
| Clockworkz Posts: 717/984 |
Fine. Let's teach all the Muslim and Hindu teachings as well. Let's throw a touch of Gerald Gardner in there just for good measure.
Hey; gotta be equal, right? |
| Silvershield Posts: 268/587 |
Originally posted by ArwonFine, my religion will be taught to our nation's seven-year-old kids too. And if you object, then you're being anal about it. I'm all for a comprehensive liberal arts education - I attend a liberal arts college, in fact - but I'm eighteen. You're overlooking the age of the students in question. |
| Arwon Posts: 234/631 |
God, some of you people are anal about what should and shouldn't be taught. Lighten up... education isn't about indoctrination and people aren't automatons. Education's about teaching ways of thinking and giving people mental tools for dealing successfully with life. It's not about carefully choosing what people do and don't get expoed to.
Whatever happened to the concept of a comprehensive liberal education? Maybe we should just turn everything back over to the fucking Jesuits. |
| Randy53215 Posts: 232/726 |
Originally posted by rekawdniw Heh, now if only all schools were like that. My school wouldnt dare attempt. Then again.... I am like the only republican and hardcore Christian there. |
| geeogree Posts: 164/207 |
I'll jump in here only to point out that it is the Jehovah Witness religion that is against transfutions not mormons. |
| Silvershield Posts: 267/587 |
Originally posted by Reshaper256No doubt. I wish I were on your side, because intolerance is a sad reality of modern society, but I can't bring myself to disregard the definite interest that other groups have in this issue. Namely, those who are anti-homosexual: to play Devil's advocate for a moment, why do you and I have the right to teach children that their point of view is wrong? According to their (extreme view of) religion, God certainly disapproves of homosexuals, so we are essentially discarding their religion by allowing this material. And there's a difference between not promoting a specific religion and outright forcing children to deny its precepts. To frame it differently, is it the right of the school system to teach children the character of medical procedures such as blood transfusions, even if the parents of those children are Mormon (I think that's the one) and do not believe in such things? Is it right for a young child to be exposed to birth control as a necessary and desirable thing if his parents are strict Catholics? Both blood transfusions and birth control save lives, but are each religions' reasons for rejecting them actually "wrong?" |
| Reshaper256 Posts: 57/196 |
Originally posted by SilvershieldAnd this is where I suppose we will continue to disagree. I believe that we should teach tolerance of people's beliefs in schools regardless of the "values" of any group of parents. For me it's not even a question of how "questionable" the beliefs are, the issue I'm more concerned with is the teaching of tolerance. I believe that the obligations of a teacher go beyond that of teaching academics - and that the teaching of tolerance *belongs* in schools. You believe that every parent should have the right to choose what their child is not exposed to in school, and to you this supercedes the importance of teaching tolerance to students in schools. This is a view I can understand. You do not believe that the teaching of tolerance belongs in schools, but is rather the sole responsibility of the parents, which I can also understand, but don't agree with. Although I doubt we'll ever agree on this, I hope you can see where I'm coming from. |
| Silvershield Posts: 266/587 |
Originally posted by drjayphd[Also in response to Reshaper256] There's a difference between removing utterly subjective content and removing content that has objective value. Evolution, while rejected by many extreme rightists, has scientific academic value. Huck Finn (and similar literature), while objectionable due to racial issues, has literary academic value. Christianity as a reason for Pilgrims to emmigrate to America has historical academic value. Homosexuality as an impetus for legislation has academic value in regards to civil law. Teaching tolerance, while unnecessarily "good," has no academic value; it does not belong in schools. You shouldn't have the right to force parents to teach their kids specific values - such as tolerance of homosexuals - even though those values are virtually unquestionable. Because, unquestionable as it may be when framed in the context of our society, it is impossible to draw the line at which values should be allowed and which shouldn't. And if I were more familiar with human child development, I'd propose an age at which this whole system should fall apart - once students are of a certain stage of maturity, there's nothing wrong with introducing material that is open to interpretation rather than sticking to the hard facts. But not for seven-year-old kids. |
| Reshaper256 Posts: 54/196 |
Originally posted by Silvershield You see - that's where I have to disagree. It's impossible to please every parent, or even a majority of them. If we only allowed subject matter that parents didn't object to, we could teach no science, because many parents feel that the world is only, what was it... 6000 years old? What you run into is religions/beliefs begin to overlap and add up, and eventually you can't teach anything, or if you don't teach a certain thing a certain way, you're not going to please a certain group of parents. And it *is* the role of a teacher, to some extent, to teach "life skills" as long as they don't go into the realm of promoting a religion - which is why I pointed out that teaching tolerance toward homosexuality isn't the same as teaching religion. Teaching tolerance of those different than you is one of the primary goals of a teacher, especially in areas of the country where the entire class is largely mainstream, and doesn't have much contact with people different than themselves. Ask yourself what it's saying about what the school promotes, if tolerance toward homosexuality, or mere *facts* about religions can't even be mentioned in the classroom. It would be hard to teach a lot of history, if you couldn't even *mention* Christianity. Why did the pilgrims come over on the Mayflower? It is not the right of a group of parents to govern what is taught in the public school system according to their beliefs. The government already has laws in place to prevent the promotion of religion in schools, which is good enough. I hate to say it this way, but the usual solution for a parent who doesn't agree with what the school is teaching their child is for them to home school the child. I know that sounds harsh, but the entire school - and the law - shouldn't bend to suit which facts some parents do or do not want their children to hear. |
| drjayphd Posts: 536/1170 |
Originally posted by SilvershieldOriginally posted by Reshaper2563. (something else) Only problem with the "allow any subject matter that student's parents do not object to" approach is then it gets to the point where you can't really teach much of anything. That'd rule out plenty of books which, say, the wingnuttier types might regard as dark-sided, so you're not getting the full English spectrum. And besides, kids may not necessarily have the same beliefs as their parents. Probably not at that age, but down the line, they might very well have formed their own opinions on those subjects. |
| Silvershield Posts: 265/587 |
Originally posted by Reshaper2563. (something else) Specifically, allow any subject matter that student's parents do not object to. If a parent does not want his kid to learn about homosexuality, the child should not learn about homosexuality. If the parent does not want his child to learn about Christianity, that shouldn't be mentioned either. Kids are in school to be educated in academic matters - the basic science, math, history, English deal - not to learn "life skills." Those are the parents' domain, and include any sort of beliefs, whether for better or worse. |
| Reshaper256 Posts: 52/196 |
So, in your opinion, should we...?
1. Disallow any discussion concerning sexual orientation/religion in schools. 2. Allow discussion of such in schools, promoting tolerance toward the beliefs and orientations, and those who believe or are oriented in such a way. or... 3. (something else) |
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