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| Dumbing Down Of America, 2 | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: May 12 2006, 11:46 AM (5,625 Views) | |
| cmoehle | May 12 2006, 11:46 AM Post #1 |
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Chris - San Antonio TX
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What do you want in the curriculum? Evolution's Bottom Line
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Politics is the art of achieving the maximum amount of freedom for individuals that is consistent with the maintenance of social order. --Barry Goldwater | |
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| tomdrobin | May 12 2006, 09:03 PM Post #2 |
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Member
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Chris While it seems to be a big issue with you. IMO the teaching of the possibility of creation alongside evolution is not the big problem in our schools today. The problem as I see it is lack of accountability, lack of sufficient classroom time, lack of sufficient funding. All, of these are attributed IMO to the rationalized greed of educators, who are more interested in maintaining their own lifestyles than doing the job they are being paid to do. |
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| bikemanb | May 12 2006, 09:20 PM Post #3 |
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Liberal Conservative
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Tom, I think it is more basic, the administrator to working educator ratio is way out of control. |
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Bill, Rita and Chloe the Terror Cat For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged, by better information or fuller consideration, to change opinions, even on important subjects, which I once thought right but found to be otherwise. Benjamin Franklin | |
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| tomdrobin | May 12 2006, 09:40 PM Post #4 |
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Member
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bikeman Where do those administrators come from? They come from the rank and file teachers mostly. And, as such carry the same predjudices and opionions that they had with their former peers. I think some sort of system should be developed whereby all educators, rotate in and out of the system. Rotating between private enterprise and the education system. Those locked in acadamia for years loose their perspective of the real world. And, tend to get caught up in the idea of self importance and conception beyond reality. I belonged to a club (not related to education in any way), that had a high percentage of teachers as members. They always seemed to congregate together to share and bemoan how tough their jobs were. Others, such as myself on occassion challenged their perceptions as limited by their association primarily with other teachers. Mostly they didn't take the challenges constructively and preferred to listen to the complaints of their peers. My observation was, they may have known the subject matter they were teaching. But, they had no conception of what an individual in private enterprise had to do to be successful. They would often bemoan having to spend time out of class, correcting papers etc. And, seemed to think the idea of casual overtime was peculiar to their profession. Also, I noticed the mindset seemed to be that academic degrees and time should determine pay, rather than performance. Which is contrary to most other professions. |
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| cmoehle | May 12 2006, 09:41 PM Post #5 |
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Chris - San Antonio TX
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Tom, Creationists want to remove Evolution not teach it side-by-side. It takes, what, five minutes to read the two stories of creation in Genesis 1 & 2? Years to learn biology to the degree you can create something useful. How do you put that side-by-side. Not disagreeing that there are plenty other problems with the public school system, most in some way or another brought about by some special interest group. |
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Politics is the art of achieving the maximum amount of freedom for individuals that is consistent with the maintenance of social order. --Barry Goldwater | |
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| bikemanb | May 12 2006, 09:49 PM Post #6 |
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Liberal Conservative
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Great idea, at one time Japanese companies practiced this for their executives, they would go back and do real work for a few weeks so they did not lose touch with reality, don't know if they still do this but it is a great idea. In a former job we found that the tech support people that worked in corporate became semi-worthless except for the most basic problems if we did not rotate them in from the field on a periodic basis. The old group knew how to cure problems that were no longer problems. |
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Bill, Rita and Chloe the Terror Cat For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged, by better information or fuller consideration, to change opinions, even on important subjects, which I once thought right but found to be otherwise. Benjamin Franklin | |
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| tomdrobin | May 12 2006, 09:50 PM Post #7 |
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Member
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Chris That should be obvious. You spend the 5 minutes. Let's give them a day or two, to state the possiblity of this being all set in motion by a greater power than mankind. Then, you go on and spend the rest of the year teaching evidence based theory. I don't see where the brief mentioning of creationism is going to dummy down science. Only, if it is continually introduced time and time again. Or if creationism is taught in lieu of regular science. This may very well be a non issue from a pragmatic point of view. |
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| cmoehle | May 12 2006, 10:11 PM Post #8 |
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Chris - San Antonio TX
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Nor do I, but that's not what the article is about. Creationists would remove evolution if they could--and have in the past. ID is just a Trojan Horse. |
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Politics is the art of achieving the maximum amount of freedom for individuals that is consistent with the maintenance of social order. --Barry Goldwater | |
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| DocInBird | May 13 2006, 12:52 AM Post #9 |
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Chris: if you are going to open the door and teach creation myth in the public school system, you cannot be so biased as to only teach Genesis. You must also teach the others, if only to be fair. I am part Navajo and we have a wonderful creation myth. Many cultures do. To teach only the Hebrew myth is to show favoritism for one religion. Who is to say that one myth is superior to the others? It has been decades since the US had a religious monoculture. But could you teach a class on creation myths without the background of related myths? Wouldn't you need to discuss the flood myths and salvation myths, just to provide context? There is a course that covers these things, but it is not usually taught until college. It is called Cultural Anthropology. |
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--doc Just Doc and Orson (German Shepherd) wandering around North America. | |
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| TexasShadow | May 13 2006, 05:15 AM Post #10 |
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Jane
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now there's a thought! I wonder what the christian fundamentalists will say when that issue gets raised? |
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| Colo_Crawdad | May 13 2006, 07:41 AM Post #11 |
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Lowell
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I can tell you that the very system proposed was forced upon many of us older and/or retired teachers. We spent the time necessary for full time employment plus overtime in education and additional time in the private sector working part time jobs and summer Jobs just in order to feed our families. That, for years was an economic fact for the vast majority of us. I realize that, to some, is is just greed to desire to spend full time in teaching rather than have to juggle those second jobs for survival. |
| "WE HAVE MET THE ENEMY AND HE IS US." --- Pogo | |
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| Newarts | May 13 2006, 08:27 AM Post #12 |
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A person who has not compared religions in a structured, unbiased way is ill prepared to function in today's world and is ignorant in a fundamental sense*. The public schools should logically include such instruction, be it called "Cultural Anthropology" or "Comparative Religion". Unfortunately, in a world in which people are desperate to justify their own views of reality and belief systems such a goal is way too hard to reach. Can you imagine the uproar that would insue if a course were introduced in your school system that gave 1/2 as much time to the fundamentals of Islamic sects as to the fundamentals of Christian sects? Yet, how can we hope to combat Islamic Fundamentalism if we don't even know what it is? Dave * this includes me unfortunately. |
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| cmoehle | May 13 2006, 08:43 AM Post #13 |
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Chris - San Antonio TX
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Includes most everyone, imo. Creationism (the Genesis version, or the newer ID version) does have a place in school in the sort of classes you all are suggesting. But as Doc indicates, that won't fly, as exampled in some just kicking Wiccan kids out of the BSA. |
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Politics is the art of achieving the maximum amount of freedom for individuals that is consistent with the maintenance of social order. --Barry Goldwater | |
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| teryt | May 14 2006, 10:44 AM Post #14 |
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Missing in Action Member
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I really don't see the issue in teaching both theories, evolution & intelligent design. We can point to holes in both systems, and both system theories have some very good points. In fact, ID supports a lot of things in evolution. To me, the biggest stretch of evolution is the original assembly of chemicals, etc. that somehow produces life. It appears to me that there has to be a certain amount of faith involved to believe this could happen. We can see signs of evolution all around, that is, natural selection over time. But me thinks there is just too much that evolution, as a whole system, hasn't been able to explain. For instance, when one looks at the billions of codes in DNA, that all perfectly give the map to create the larger organism, it seems to me to smack of someone who has had to put this system together. Too, too many things perfectly line up. It's too much of a stretch of faith (for me) to say that all of these things lined-up perfectly, and therefore produce life, no matter how much time is involved. Just too much for me to accept. ID doesn't state who the designer is, but rather says that there was some intelligence - that there was a design - that produced the system that produces life. ID leaves this open for speculation; it could be God, could be a superior alien race, could be . . . Personally, I believe evolution is one of those things that has been taught so much that it takes on the appearance of wholly indesputable fact. Yes, many scientists seem to have proven the natural selection part, but many questions remain about the life creation part - there is a big hole here. (perhaps another thing to consider is whether there is a deeper motive to pushing evolution) I actually think there is fairly good compatibility with the two theories, in many ascpects - just not the designer part. Shalom |
My Boast is Christ ![]() Soon to have MBA (I'll perhaps be smart then) Recovering Perfectionist Christian Hedonist | |
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| Colo_Crawdad | May 14 2006, 10:50 AM Post #15 |
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Lowell
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Neither do I see anything wrong with teaching both, as long as evolution is related to science classes and ID is relegated to philosophy classes. Science (and evolution) attempts to explain how while philosophy (and ID) attempts to explain why. Two very different questions belonging in two very different curricula. |
| "WE HAVE MET THE ENEMY AND HE IS US." --- Pogo | |
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1:27 PM Jul 11