ScottFromWyoming wrote: 

And I have just as much problem with religious indoctrination in our schools, I think everyone here already is well versed on my opinions on religion.

 gypsyman wrote: 
The thing was, he was actually a really great physics teacher... but was making a political statement more than a science statement. Don't question the government, etc. Hippies don't understand the real world etc.
 
Now I realize that Sird and the original story are talking about 4th grade indoctrination/politics etc. and to that I say I pledge allegiance to the flag blah blah one nation UNDER GOD, blah blah...
 
 

My question is, which side is Beck on? I would be really concerned if my kid brought this home, but he is building an exclusive island where he controls everything that happens there. 

 gypsyman wrote:

 
You can label my reply to the original post however you like; I consider the original post (the one on the Blaze regarding the angry father) to be another example of manufactured outrage based on lots of speculation and assumption. If you don't agree with my position, fine.  I try to look behind the superficial message that is being thrown at me ("get mad!  They're out to get us/our kids!") to see if anything substantial might actually lie behind it, and to look at what motives, if any, underlie the people presenting the message.  I'm basically a card carrying skeptic, and I guess scrutinizing things closely might bother some folks who are eager to accept stuff at face value.

I have a pretty good idea what nihilism is, but I'm not sure what constitutes a "nihilistic approach"?

Having looked at some of the reactions on other conservative websites to this story, it seems clear that what has some people's panties in a twist is that they are convinced the teacher was somehow trying to brainwash her students into taking a position aligned with the statement she wrote.  I think that the notion that the "liberal left", through the schools, has been brainwashing children is a very popular conservative trope (see HERE) and has been for some time.  The notion that colleges are bastions of liberal mind poison has never really taken hold as an urgent problem for most Americans, and calls to suspend tenure generally got ignored; it seems that the argument is now shifting to K-12 schools being ground zero in the battle for the hearts and minds of the youth of America. This post from the Blaze seems to be in the same vein.

Let me ask you: Do you think it's plausible that school teachers can politically or morally brainwash their students by having them copy statements they write down on the board? By having discussions in class about various topics? By reading selected books? Does this fear of widespread brainwashing of students in schools strike you as far-fetched, or not?

 gypsyman wrote: 
Don't I know it!

 kurtster wrote: 
The people in Texas who write some of these textbooks have no interest in your civil rights. They are full of old world evangelical Christian BS, and this could be part of that.

 sirdroseph wrote: 
You're still lucky, you old so-and-so.

 sirdroseph wrote: 

Yes it is the wording that is critical.  I am willing ...  not would you or could you.  It is worded as an agreement or commitment, not a consideration or question.

Its conditioning.  Rote conditioning.  That is how young minds are shaped.  And when no counterpoint is offered, it is accepted as true.  This is how baseless beliefs are formed.  When these beliefs are formed at this early of an age, they become nearly impossible to become undone. 

What is even more important is the source for this teacher's lesson plan on this exercise.  That needs to be brought out.  Was it the teacher's individual idea, or part of a mass manufactured lesson plan.  An individual idea would be one thing.  To have it as part of a premeditated mass lesson plan is what we should really be concerned about.  That is unless one agrees with the statement.

And no, I would never give up some of my CR's to be safer or more secure.  Doing so creates the opposite.

 ScottFromWyoming wrote: 

Holy crap!  I guess I got lucky where I went to school!

 ScottFromWyoming wrote: 
This really points out the differences in geography, I think. I grew up in New England. Messrs J and K would never have been hired there, or, if they had, wouldn't have lasted long enough to put anyone in detention more than once....as far as Three Mile Island, well, my father owns (jointly) patents on nuclear reactor container suspension systems. I doubt that Mr. Y really knew much about anything pertaining to nuclear energy. But, if you really think you remember high school all that well, all I can say is "I love you, man"!  

 sirdroseph wrote: 


7th Grade, a kid called Mr. K a Jesus Freak (it was 1974 after all). Mr. K gave him detention and after school he and several other teachers surrounded him at his detention-desk, loomed over him and explained, "We're ALL Jesus freaks." (Implied threat not lost on the boy.) Then the next day Mr. K, Mr. S et al made sure to tell their classrooms about the incident and we all better not dis the christ jesus. Oh incidentally a couple years later Mr. K went to the state mental facility after being convicted of repeat rapings of his high school daughter.

11th Grade Mr. Y spent the day after Three Mile Island explaining how that episode was as bad a nuclear accident as we could possibly ever see, and it wasn't that bad was it? That people against nukes were ill informed troublemakers. That not only did the system work as designed, other safeguards were in place to make it impossible for a "meltdown," which was a fiction created by Hollywood that had no basis in reality, the physics just didn't support the feasibility of a "meltdown." Mr. Y was my physics instructor.

As I mentally walk the halls of my high school and Jr. High, I can come up with a dozen more examples. If you want me to dredge up one about the Bill of Rights I'm sure I can do that, I just haven't walked down the right hall yet.

 gypsyman wrote: 
Good point.  Perhaps most nine year-old kids could reason out stuff like that - I was thinking in relation to a seven year-old.  That kid probably did have a bunch of crusty, old stuff in his backpack, though.

What a windy bunch of bastards we are.  

 Proclivities wrote: 

I don't think he understood at all, that is the problem.

 sirdroseph wrote:  
It's pretty clear to me that this has a lot to do with Glenn Beck and his hatred of the ACLU.  Beck's site, the Blaze, features stories that hew to his principles, one of which is that he does not like the ACLU one bit, and jokes with a caller on his radio show about threatening a neighborhood petitioner with a shotgun for asking the caller to sign a petition protesting the ignoring of habeas corpus.

The sentence quoted in the article is a paraphrase of Benjamin Franklin, who is supposed to have said, "people willing to trade freedom for temporary security deserve neither".  This kind of provocative statement is probably the kind you might find on an ACLU pamphlet.  Using such statements is a pretty common way of initiating a robust debate over the bill of rights, and whether these rights help or hinder the wars we engage in.

It's like if a teacher writes the statement "The Korean War helped halt the spread of communism in Western Asia" on the board and then lets the students debate whether the statement is true or not. The only kind of indoctrination that typically goes on in these sorts of debates, IMO, is indoctrination into the small minority of people who question authority and learn to think for themselves. 

Who said it's OK for Obama to infringe on the bill of rights? Wasn't me.

 Proclivities wrote: 
I honestly don't quite buy that. Look at what it took to pass 6th grade during the revolution. We are just dumbing our kids down. A little more de Tocqueville, please.

 Proclivities wrote: 
So true! Never stick your nose in the backpack of a boy, it's STANKY

 sirdroseph wrote: 
Nine year-old boys probabaly have all kinds of stuff in the backpacks for months; he could still have had Halloween candy or open, three-month-old Poptarts in there.  It does seem that such philosophical concepts seem more likely to be better understood by children who are a few years older.

I would be interested in Miamizsun's opinion on this, we seem to have similar takes on the issue of individual rights vs. governments agenda.  To me that exact quote is quite troubling regardless of the political persuasion of the person dictating it.

 Proclivities wrote: 

Good point, but this kid was carrying around this quote for months, why? Why would he keep it for so long?  This does not bother you?  I would like to have more details about this though. Again, I do not see a conspiracy on a grander scale, I certainly don't remember having such a controversial opinion being dictated to me in grammar school though. At the very least makes you wonder what the Hell is going on in our public schools between this, being taught that evolution is false and who knows what else??