Tag Archives: Education

Religious Message Delivered to Iowa Public School Students

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In the form of song.

High school students in Dunkerton, Iowa were expecting an assembly about bullying and making good choices. What they got instead was the Christian rap/hard rock band called Junkyard Prophet delivering an anti-gay and anti-abortion rant.

After the band played, they broke the students up into gender-based groups and then lectured them.

“They told my daughter, the girls, that they were going to have mud on their wedding dresses if they weren’t virgins,” said Jennifer Littlefield, whose 16-year-old daughter, Alivia called her in tears after the event. Reportedly, one of the band members led the girls in a chant pledging purity and encouraged them to be submissive to their husbands after marriage.

Here’s part of the presentation:

And another:

Let me tell you two things about this: 1) It is an outrage; and 2) This kind of thing happens in high schools across the country on a regular basis; it is not that frequent, but it happens.

Hat Tip: Gwenn Smith Olson

Vote for Something Good for Kids to Do

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Budget Travel is running one of those ill-fated Internet Polls to help make a list of the top 15 places to go for kids before they are 15. Sort of like bucket list but instead of dying you turn 15. One small problem is that the Creation Museum of Kentucky has been intruding in the top ten, even top five, of this list. You need to go there and vote for something else! Like, all the attractions that you happen to like that are lower than the Creation Museum at the moment.

Click here to help save the Youth of North America from certain doom!

Ten States Will Get No Child Left Behind Waivers

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My State is better than your state! (Or Province or District.)

The No Child Left Behind Law, for better or worse, is a Federal program to make states to a better job in education. It is a fairly specific plan. But many states came up with their own plans which are different, yet in some cases, still considered effective. A state can apply for a waiver of the NCLB regulations if they have come up with an alternative that is as good or better.

The Federal government is reported to be prepared to grant waivers to ten states and they are, alphabetically: Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, Oklahoma and Tennessee. New Mexico also applied for a waiver but will not receive one, but may manage to do so with a few changes that are currently in negotiation. A majority of other states, DC, and Puerto Rico plan to seek waivers as well.

Republicans seem ready to fight this granting of waivers to states, which is interesting (but unsurprising) because Republicans are all about States Rights. I assume that the Republican resistance to this has to do with their dislike of anything Obama does, and I attribute this to a combination of Partisan politics and racism.

It will be interesting to see how the Republican governors of Florida, Georgia, Indiana, New Jersey, Oklahoma and Tennessee, react to their compatriot’s lack of support for their state’s waivers.

For the NEA’s take on this, click here.

The State of State Science Standards

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The vast majority of American public school students are not proficient in the level of science learning expected for their age group. The Thomas B. Fordham Institute has issued “The State of Science Standards 2012” as part of an effort to assess the causes of this dismal state of affairs. Here’s a map summarizing their results:

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State Science Standards Grades, 2012

Notice that some of the battleground states for the “Evolution-Creationism Controversy” have reasonable ratings. Notice also the vast regions of D and F states. In fact, in order to convey the meaning of it all, I’ve created a new version of the map that signifies all states with D and F rankings with one color, and all states with C or better grades with a different color (The “Pass/Fail” version of the test!):

Continue reading The State of State Science Standards →

$4 Million Raised for Kentucky Ark Park

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Unfortunately, the fundraising goal for this creationist project was $24.5 million. The groundbreaking of the park has been delayed numerous times.

LEO Weekly tried to find out from the state Tourism Cabinet what was going on, and their representative claimed that they’d heard nothing from Ken Ham’s organization. But, they lied. Emails obtained via the Freedom of Information Act indicate that there has been communication, and that the situation for the Ark Park is not good: Continue reading $4 Million Raised for Kentucky Ark Park →

Forbes’ Gene Marks Needs To Check His Priv

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Gene Marks, you wrote an essay for Forbes that has gotten a lot of people rather upset. People are upset because you display insensitive unchecked privilege and, essentially, you blame an entire class of people as the victims of what is mostly not their fault but rather, your fault and the fault of the modal Forbes reader, as well as society more broadly, history, culture, economics, racism and all sort of other things that are largely beyond the control of the Poor Black Kids of the Inner City of whom you write.

I think you meant well, but you did not do well. There are many ways in which you display a marked lack of a clue about your topic. How so? Let’s start at the beginning of your essay: Continue reading Forbes’ Gene Marks Needs To Check His Priv →

The problem with our system of science education is …

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Teachers teach facts instead of concepts. Teachers teach from the textbooks and barely understand what is in the book anyway. There is not enough hands-on learning. All teachers really do anyway is to show videos most of the time. What should really happen is that a teacher should learn how to do science, intensively, with one project and that way, really understand how to teach it.

And so on and so forth.

If you find yourself agreeing with everything I just said, then I have one more thing to add: Get a brain, moran!

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OK, maybe I’m being a little hard on you, but you were asking for it.
Continue reading The problem with our system of science education is … →

Evolution Surrounded By Creationism? Arm Yourself with Books!

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Suppose you are an intelligent, thoughtful person with a thirst for information, a desire to be challenged, and a tendency to not accept received knowledge at face value. You are embedded in a traditional Christian culture where most of your family, your child’s teachers and friends and those friends’ families, the people where you and your spouse work and most people in your social circles assume that Evolution is “only a theory” and should be taught, if at all, along side alternative theories such as that the earth is 6,000 years old and was created in seven days. But you don’t want that. You want your children to be educated using modern ideas, or at least, ideas that date to the mid to late nineteenth century and later, about how life works, where it comes from, and how it has changed over time both in terms of details (what was when and where) and process (how). But despite the fact that you are well educated and well read, you’ve not been exposed to that body of knowledge.

This will be a struggle, a fight even, against academic indolence, against strongly held opinions; An invasion across a sea separating two worlds … two world views. You might have to land on a beach somewhere. You hope, however, that this can be a surgical strike. You need to educate yourself on the basics of evolution. You need to find a way to talk your way out of confrontation should that happen. You need resources for your children. You may not realize it now, but you may also need training in Defense Against the Snark Arts, should you encounter paraprofessional creationists.

You need to arm yourself. With books.
Continue reading Evolution Surrounded By Creationism? Arm Yourself with Books! →

Ooops… we left all the children behind

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“No Child Left Behind” was doomed to be a failure, because it was ill concieved, politically cynical, and underfunded. But like the War in Iraq, the Patriot Act and Tax Breaks for the Rich, and all the other initiatives of the Bush Administration that never should have happened, we have been saddled with this melt down of a policy for over a decade. “NCLB” was one of the first policies implemented by Bush.

The evidence that the approaches developed under this policy have failed has been mounting for years, and the supporters of NCLB have been dropping like flies on no-pest strip. The latest and perhaps most important policy related statement to date has just come out, and it is a study published by the National Academies of Science: Incentives and Test-Based Accountability in Education by Michael Hout and Stuart W. Elliott, Editors; Committee on Incentives and Test-Based Accountability in Public Education; National Research Council.

And the study says …
Continue reading Ooops… we left all the children behind →

I need your help to CRUSH all the other bloggers!!!!

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The competition is fierce. This isn’t only Free Thought Blogs vs. other blogging networks. This is also blogger against blogger. I need you to visit my donation page and GIVE MONEY TO WORTHY SCHOOLS.

Remember last summer’s tornado in North Minneapolis? North is one of the more challenged neighborhoods in the region, with a high poverty rate and where the schools are struggling against all odds. One of the schools in North Minneapolis that needs your help is one of the schools damaged by that tornado. So they got a double hit. I’ve hand selected all of the schools based on my interaction with local and regional schools, with a focus on supporting doable project related mainly to science or math. In addition, DonorsChoose carefully inspects budgets and proposals to make sure they are reasonable.

Please visit my donations page and give a few bucks to one of these schools. Or more than one. The X Blog is already behind some of the other blogs in donations! Get in there and show them we aren’t going to be left behind!!!!

Thank you very much. Please pass this on to rich people you may know.

Good news from the evolution-creationism front

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Florida Senate Bill 1854 would have required a so-called “thorough presentation and critical analysis of the scientific theory of evolution” which is code word in US state legislatures these days for “taught along side Intelligent Design Creationism as an alternative to established scientific reckoning of the nature and history of life on earth.” Whe the state legislature adjourned a few days ago, that bill died a quiet death .

In 2009, before introducing a similar bill, SB 1854’s sponsor, Stephen R. Wise (R-District 5), announced his intention to introduce a bill requiring “intelligent design” to be taught in Florida’s public schools. In 2011, discussing SB 1854 with a reporter for the Tampa Tribune (March 13, 2011), he asked, “Why would you not teach both theories at the same time?” According to the Tribune, he was referring to evolution and what he called “non-evolution.” Wise further explained, “I think it’s a way in which people can have critical thinking … what we’re saying is here’s a theory, a theory of evolution, a theory of whatever, and you decide.”

Senator Wise, with all due respect … well, actually, what you deserve instead of respect is to be asked this question: Why do you hate America? You’ve tried to trash the first amendment. Do you also oppose the second? What about the others? Or do you pick and chose. All educational and business interests is Florida with a concern for quality science education ought to contribute to whoever is running against you next election. It would be a good time to do that because the word on the street is that there will be a sea change in the electoral landscape in Florida this fall.

In other news, Baton Rouge high school senior Zack Kopplin continues to kick creationist butt…
Continue reading Good news from the evolution-creationism front →

The Nation’s Science Report Card is out. Everything is going fine.

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The Science component of “The Nation’s Report Card” was released today and clearly indicates that we have moved one step closer as a nation in two of our most important goals: Building a large and complacent poorly educated low-pay labor class, and increasing the size of our science-illiterate populace in order to allow the advance of medieval morality and Iron Age Christian values.

Continue reading The Nation’s Science Report Card is out. Everything is going fine. →