Bone, Techno, that is a good point.

But, you know, that's really only one small section of one course. I think folks that make the teaching of evolution a major issue are perhaps all too ready to throw the baby out with the bathwater, ditch the whole system, and go out of their way to find alternatives.

Granted, kids accept what teachers and textbooks say implicitly, and it's usually later in life that they learn to question and think critically. (Personally, I'd like to see critical thinking taught earlyin school, but there's a maturity and control element)

I agree that the desire for "special religious"-based education tends to defeat the whole point of common experience. It's too close to trying to pick and choose your own facts for my taste.

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An employee gets trampled to death by a frenzied, greedy mob at a Walmart sale, and customers actually complained when the store closed. Yet, I'm the bad guy for suggesting policies that assume people act like retarded herd animals that need government nannying and control....

There you go again with your silly notions about the public good/the good of society. The Puritans tried that crap and we ended up with the Salem witch hunts. Choice is part of liberty and liberty is in everyone's best interest. When you take away choice, when you take away the right to self-determination, you take away part of our humanity.

The very idea of this thread does not allow for alternatives. Notice the thread title includes the words "mandatory and state-run." No private secular schools, no home schooling, no religious schools, no apprenticeships, only government mandated indoctrination centers where the government dictates to you what it wants you to know.

There are different kinds of education and not all kinds of education need to be accessible to all. This kind of socialist, equal outcomes, everybody-has-everything-the-same crap really pisses me off.

But it may be in the best interests of the people who make the choice; and, as I said above, there are different kinds of education.



Well, no, it isn't. My hatred of government comes from the way government has abused its powers and from people like you who insist that we must surrender ourselves to the will of government and have no individuality, no liberty and, thus, no humanity! John Taylor Gatto was a public school teacher and has some really good insights about what goes on in those government indoctrination centers (my term, not his).



Why must there be equal access?

We already have such a system just within the government indoctrination centers - or so your leftist buddies like to whine. They so often repeat the same old mantra about how schools in poor neighborhoods or the inner city aren't as good as the suburban schools because the suburban schools get more money. And just why the hell is it unacceptable for some people to get a better education than others anyway?

Society does not benefit from these damned government indoctrination centers. Society benefits when people get to make their own decisions about what, if any, education they want to pursue for their children. Society benefits when liberty is maximized and government power is kept to a necessary minimum (and, no, public schools aren't part of that necessary minimum).

Yes, it's a philosophical difference! I don't believe in taking parental responsibility away from the parents and giving it to the government - the education of children is a parental responsibility.

Then you really can't say the education is equal. And you know damned well that there are people on your side of the fence who believe that equality means equal outcomes and not equal opportunity.

But giving government the kind of control you want to give to government will lead to conformity. We already have a certain measure of it with all this political correctness crap.

No but I do value choice enough to insist on parents bearing the responsibility for the children they choose to bring into the world instead of the government taking that responsibility from them or trying to dictate to them how they are to carry out that responsibility (notice I said "how" they carry out that responsibility and not "whether" they carry out that responsibility). A certain minimum amount of government is necessary in any society. What I object to is that government getting so powerful that the members of society can no longer keep it subservient to the citizenry. I object to the citizens becoming subservient to the government.

Some speed limits can be oppressive, when they're set for reasons other than safety. Rights of way can be oppressive when a police officer puts on his siren long enough to run through a red light and then turns them off again.



You know full well that teachers don't always (or even usually) teach the textbook (not that the textbooks are necessarily good ones). I'm referring to things like schools teaching "situational ethics" or "values clarification" or promoting the military-industrial complex or all this political correctness and "tolerance" crap that only allows tolerance for politically correct viewpoints.

See what I said above about a certain minimum amount of government.

I wouldn't go quite as far as the anarchists.

And that is exactly part of the problem: government has become so big that the people can no longer control it but, instead, the government controls the people.

Again, there are different kinds of education and I derive more indirect benefit from a child being taught a trade than I do from a child being taught Shakespeare. As for what public education is now, it's bad enough to where it needs to be scrapped.



Well, I would settle for schools simply enforcing grade level, e.g. don't let someone graduate from high school that can only read on a sixth grade level.

They were never "on track" as long as the government was involved.



And you want to give even more power to government?????

Because they're the only ones that can afford to buy media attention and afford to bribe the American sheeple with all kinds of promises they have no intention of keeping.

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A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

In my part of the country we don't have that issue since people here don't get to vote on any but a small part of the school budget and, even with what we do get to vote on, a significant number of folks - particularly the old geezers in the suburbs - keep voting them down.

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A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

You might have a point, if I were a conservative. Since I'm not, your statement is just meaningless drivel. But, yes, I believe the parents should decide what their children should learn and not the government.

And why should they? Because you believe you're nothing but some damned animal that shares common ancestors with the monkeys?

Well, most parents would love to protect their kids as much as is humanly possible. Why the hell do you have such hatred for the idea parents raising their children as they see fit? Who the hell do you think you are to dictate to parents how they're going to raise their children?

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A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

Maybe because there are a large percentage of parents who do not have the background to effectively educate their children? Or maybe they are too busy or just do not care to do it? If you place the burden on the parents, then the children who MOST need public schooling are the ones who will be screwed the hardest. Yea, I am sure the alcoholic or crack addict will happily spend money to send their kids to school. We HAVE to have public education. If you choose to remove your child and pay out of pocket to educate them in another way that meets the standards, all the more power to you.

Basic education? Excuse me? Making worry dolls and statues of Ganesh is not "basic education." Promoting some damned leftist (or rightist) agenda is not "basic education." And you should know that "history" is not fact but, instead, spin that is put on events by those who write the history books. And, yes, government (which includes school boards) do dictate curriculum.

It isn't teaching him to read that's the issue (though, in a way it is an issue because the schools aren't doing a very good job of it), it's what the schools are dictating Jimmy must read - very often there's a hidden agenda involved in the selections and it has nothing to do with building reading comprehension skills.

Well, if what my daughter tells me about some of her classes is any indication, at least the high school kids have a pretty good grasp of it.

I want the parents to have the choice whether their kid will even learn geometry, not the kids and certainly not the government.

But since we're not talking about giving 12 year-olds the choice, your statement is meaningless.

You mean besides it not being taught very well? How about maps being drawn to make "culturally inferior" parts of the world like Africa and South America seem smaller than they really are in proportion to Europe and North America (though there is a move to correct this)? How about the large number of American high school (and even college) students that couldn't even find New Orleans on a map shortly after Katrina?

High school doesn't prepare students for life and many of them don't even do a good job of preparing students for college (given the number of students having to take remedial reading and/or math their first semester of college). The undergraduate degree today is the high school diploma of 30 years ago.

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A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

We had a $300 million bond election this year. It was overwhelmingly carried by the "over 65" crowd. Since their taxes can't be effected and don't have to pay the increase, they were more than happy to impose the taxes on the working parents.

One item consisted of a $73 million high school. Our high schools have gilded hallways and marble floors. Too bad their literacy rate and fundamental knowledge of mathematics and science sucks so much. But hey....they got one hell of a football team and can "study" in comfort. Who cares if building a $30 million Natatorium, greyhound buses for the rich kids and computer servers in the administration building by law should not have been on the measure. The "law" is for other people to obey, and not for the ruling corporate welfare queen blood sucking tick elites.

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The law perverted! And the police powers of the state perverted along with it! The law, I say, not only turned from its proper purpose but made to follow an entirely contrary purpose! The law become the weapon of every kind of greed! Instead of checking crime, the law itself guilty of the evils it is supposed to punish! - Frederick Bastiat

And who are you to decide what constitutes "effectively educate"?

Then they have no business breeding in the first place! There's no excuse for parents not carrying out their parental responsibilities.

It's their burden simply because it's part of being a parent. It's an inherent responsibility of parenthood.

No, actually they won't. But these are people who probably shouldn't breed in the first place.

Why? Why does it have to be government-run?????

Not good enough! Since it's my job to educate my kid, only I should be able to decide what the "standards" of educating my child should be.

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A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

Funny, it is the opposite here. It is the 'over 65' crowd who constantly vote down town budgets and demand that the Education Department go back and find places to cut so their taxes will not be raised needlessly. Funny how these same people happily put their own kids through school and demanded good schools... now when they are "good" and people move to town because the schools are good, they want to cut the school budget so that services are slashed. Think they would feel the same if we, the parents in town, demanded the senior center budget be slashed?

Chan's right. We should allow ignorant parents to decide just how ignorant their kids will be.