some good news

Ah, mistake! I have the wrong thread.

But now, the thread I was reading has disappeared?!

The thread was called "Thr jihad against the textbooks.

Where did it go?





The thread has been re-opened.

GySgt James

Today at 01:44 AM chickenman said this in Post #1

http://wvgazette.com/news/Today/2003022022/



the IDists never give up with the wedge strategy; If you can't support it scientifically, then indoctrinate the children - i'm glad they failed this time

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chickenman,

Thanks for posting this article.  You've really helped to reinforce my decision to homeschool next year.  Gee, and I was almost tempted to just send him to public school again next year.  Thanks, chickenman! 

Today at 06:13 PM Tami said this in Post #23 (http://www.christianforums.com/showthread.php?postid=671801#post671801)

chickenman,

Thanks for posting this article.  You've really helped to reinforce my decision to homeschool next year.  Gee, and I was almost tempted to just send him to public school again next year.  Thanks, chickenman! 

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Why? Because he might learn about evolution? Seriously, if learning about evolution is something that you fear might make him lose his faith, what does that say about his faith in the first place?

Bravo to that school board!!!

This is where separation of church and state really means something. Evolution is science, with and without all it's shortcomings, just like any other science course.

Creationism is a religious based account of origins and the existance of life and the universe. And, the specifics of those, vary greatly and are even in opposition to each other, among the different world religions.

Today at 02:25 PM datan said this in Post #16

it has been proven ...

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So, how long out of date am I? Who found the proof?

Let's just say, for arguments sake, that it hasn't though, unless you have a good unproven theorem to stick in place of it...

Today at 02:09 PM Pete Harcoff said this in Post #15

I don't know about this Jerry. I mean, this "choice" thing may have merit. For example, all my school life I was indoctrinated into believing France exists. They even tried to make me learn the "French" language! But now that I'm out of school, I'm starting to have serious doubts. I mean, it's just incomprehensible to me that such a thing as "French culture" could possibly exist. And that language! Nobody in their right mind could speak such a thing!

But in school it was all "France this" and "France that". Atlases, maps, globes... you name it. Of course, if I ever asked a teacher, they'd say something like, "Well, no, I've never actually seen France... but it's in all these books and maps, it must be true!".

And don't even get me started on the Roman Empire...

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You're right Harcoff. I guess I got a little ahead of myself. I like to give kids the choice & let them use their reason to figure it out. When I was in 3rd grade a guy came in from the dentist office (how unbiased is that?!) and told us about how sugar promotes tooth decay (yeah, right!). Fortunately, our teacher exposed us to another theory - that sugar is actually good for your teeth and brought a guy in from the candy store to give a class about it. He showed us all manner of problems with the theories dentists used and showed us all kinds of mistakes that the founder of modern dentistry made. It really opened my eyes. I guess its obvious which theory I chose.

Now, if I could just find my dentures, I'm going to go have supper.

interesting fact i was told by a lady who is very high up in NY state eddept.:The majority of home schooled student s nation wide are no longer home schooled for religous reasons only.

These dentist fellows are real tricky.

One of them tried to take out my wisdom teeth, but I told him "No way!"

Today at 05:30 PM Pete Harcoff said this in Post #24

Why? Because he might learn about evolution? Seriously, if learning about evolution is something that you fear might make him lose his faith, what does that say about his faith in the first place?

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No, not because he'll learn about evolution.  I don't have a problem with evoultionary theories being taught.  I have a problem with them being taught as fact.  Don't worry.  I'll teach him about evolution.  I can't have him going into the world not knowing about all the wacko ideas there are out there without him knowing how to combat them.




 

Today at 09:42 PM Tami said this in Post #30 (http://www.christianforums.com/showthread.php?postid=672246#post672246)

I have a problem with them being taught as fact.

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Do you have a problem with gravity being taught as fact? How about quantum mechanics? Magnestism? Wave dynamics?

Why only evolution?

I can't have him going into the world not knowing about all the wacko ideas there are out there without him knowing how to combat them.

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Why should he have to "combat" evolution, pray tell?

Today at 06:05 PM Jerry Smith said this in Post #26 (http://www.christianforums.com/showthread.php?postid=671899#post671899)

So, how long out of date am I? Who found the proof?

Let's just say, for arguments sake, that it hasn't though, unless you have a good unproven theorem to stick in place of it...

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Continuum hypothesis? Axiom of choice?

The Fermat proof was a year or three back, and there was an early proof, and then a problem with the proof, and it got corrected.

We still haven't found the "elegant" version, and I suspect people will be looking for some time.

I personally think this is probably the right decision. Evolution is the current best theory, just like gravity, or quantum mechanics. It's a foundation of modern biology, and continues to predict the results we get with such regularity that it's not even newsworthy now. It's just normal; of *course* most diseases only infect one species, but if they infect others, it's generally related species that are most susceptible. Of *course* men have nipples. Everything fits together pretty well.

Most of the "holes" in evolution I've seen trumpeted have been no less than ten years out of date, and many are much worse. It's rather depressing.

I am not a big fan of homeschooling. I like the *idea*, but in practice, it doesn't work well. Most people are simply not competent to teach most subjects, and this borders on abuse; how would you like to be 20 years old and have crippling deficiencies in your education - which it's too late to correct, in any practical sense? Early formation is *crucial*.

Today at 04:13 PM Didymus said this in Post #28

interesting fact i was told by a lady who is very high up in NY state eddept.:The majority of home schooled student s nation wide are no longer home schooled for religous reasons only.

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Is she including the total number of students in yeshiva, under the category of "home schooled"?  That might account for such a shift in the reason for homeschooling. 

Today at 06:42 PM Tami said this in Post #30

No, not because he'll learn about evolution.  I don't have a problem with evoultionary theories being taught.  I have a problem with them being taught as fact.  Don't worry.  I'll teach him about evolution.  I can't have him going into the world not knowing about all the wacko ideas there are out there without him knowing how to combat them.




 

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The first thing to know about evolution is that it is both a fact and a theory.  This is a point you don't appear to understand; the tone of your response indicates you think that "theory" means "good guess".  It does not mean that, you know. 

Before you teach your child about evolution, it might be wise if you brushed up yourself first.  One cannot teach a subject that one doesn't know, after all. 

Yesterday at 08:56 PM seebs said this in Post #33 (http://www.christianforums.com/showthread.php?postid=672272#post672272)

I am not a big fan of homeschooling. I like the *idea*, but in practice, it doesn't work well. Most people are simply not competent to teach most subjects, and this borders on abuse; how would you like to be 20 years old and have crippling deficiencies in your education - which it's too late to correct, in any practical sense? Early formation is *crucial*.

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Seebs, I'm surprised that you would make such a blanket statement. Homeschooling has come about due to the disastrous conditions in many public schools nowadays. Homeschooling is often the parents last hope at providing a thorough education for their children. My daughter-in-law homeschools her 6 year old son, only because the public school was allowing his brain to turn to mush. This kid was using a computer when he was 4 years old, and knew the basics of reading, writing, and math. When he went to public school, he was bored to tears. Homeschooling allows him to develop at his own pace, and he receives one on one instruction. Last Christmas, I asked his mom for suggestions as to what I should get him for a gift. She said "anything that has to do with geography, he is really hungry to learn geography".

You are completely correct, early formation is *crucial*, so very crucial that it is almost irresponsible to allow a child to languish in a public school setting, while he could be home gaining knowledge.

As a side note, I recently read a post where a young member of this board said she didn't know that Israel and Iraq were two different countries. She attends public school. With that in mind, the study of evolution is the last of our worries. Public schools are failing to teach the very basics of education. I can't remember the figure, but a good percentage of kids are graduated from high school WITHOUT the benefit of knowing how to read.

Okay, I found some percentages:

".....more than one third of all high school seniors and more than two thirds of black seniors don't have even a basic competency in mathematics. This means, for example, that they don't understand elementary algebra, have little conception of probability and can't make simple measurements of the kind required of a beginning carpenter.

A similar Department of Education study on reading showed that 23 percent of high school seniors tested in 1998 lacked rudimentary reading skills. These students could sign their name and read road signs, but they had difficulty with such tasks as filling out a 1040EZ tax form or comprehending a relatively simple passage from a book.

Although the tests of math and reading ability conducted by the Department of Education do not directly measure the ability of 12th-graders to function in adult jobs, they clearly indicate that a substantial minority of students are unprepared to hold them. This conclusion is consistent with a 1999 study by the American Management Association, which found that more than 38 percent of job applicants tested for basic skills were deficient in reading, writing or math and hence unlikely to be hired.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0002514E-D727-1C6E-84A9809EC588EF21

Today at 01:34 AM Auntie said this in Post #36 (http://www.christianforums.com/showthread.php?postid=672625#post672625)
Seebs, I'm surprised that you would make such a blanket statement. Homeschooling has come about due to the disastrous conditions in many public schools nowadays. Homeschooling is often the parents last hope at providing a thorough education for their children.

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There are two very different sets of reasons for homeschooling. One is because the public schools are awful; the other is because they teach things the parents don't want the kids being exposed to. They have very different qualities.

You are completely correct, early formation is *crucial*, so very crucial that it is almost irresponsible to allow a child to languish in a public school setting, while he could be home gaining knowledge.

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It depends on how much knowledge the parents have.

Unfortunately, there is a crucial problem: Most people who are ignorant have *no idea* that they're ignorant. If you test a hundred people at a skill, and ask them to self-evaluate themselves, the bottom 25% of people (ranked by *actual* ability) will evaluate themselves as being just as good as the *top* 25% of people do. In other words, they're so ignorant of the field that they think what they know is the whole field.

So, we do face a serious problem: What do you do when the parents lack the basic skills to teach mathematics, for instance?

(stuff about problems with the schools)

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Agreed that the public schools are awful, but something very important: One of the strongest predictors of academic performance in school is home background. The kids who are flunking in the public schools most often have parents who couldn't even teach them *that* much!

There is a grave and underlying problem here. I don't think homeschooling is a sufficient solution, although it may help in some cases. There are, however, also many cases in which it is very harmful, because the parents are incorrect in their belief that they're better qualified than the schools are.

Yesterday at 11:34 PM Auntie said this in Post #36

Seebs, I'm surprised that you would make such a blanket statement. Homeschooling has come about due to the disastrous conditions in many public schools nowadays.

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Let's also be clear about one thing:  the issue is not public schools.  Why do I say that?

1.  You know the German, French, Korean and Japanese kids that are outscoring our own students in basic tests of math, physics, chemistry, etc.?  Well, those same foreign students are products of a public school system.  The difference is that their school system is set up correctly. For example, they don't summer vacations. They have four quarters around the year, with four to six-week breaks between each quarter.  That way, kids get into the habit of school and don't forget half of what they learned over the summer vacation.  Most US public school teachers will tell you that they spend September and October re-hashing everything the kids already learned the year before, but forgot over the summer.  Another difference is that kids are tested early, and based upon their aptitudes, their courses are chosen to reflect those aptitudes.  Not everyone has to to go college - and there's no shame in not going.  Tradesman and blue-collar work is highly admired in many of these other countries, and it's not considered to be "second class" if someone is on the tradesman track in high school.  But in the USA, we shoot ourselves in the foot by a ridiculous summer vacation that started during our farming years but in reality is no longer needed.  And we seem to think that all kids "deserve" a chance to go to college - when in reality, our economy would collapse if everyone did that.

2.  Moreover, the children of immigrants - usually Chinese or south Asian - the ones with the large families, who are doing so well in our school systems.  Guess what - they also are products of the public school system.  How is that possible, if the public schools are so bad?  They arrive here with little or nothing except the clothes on their backs, and have a language barrier to overcome as well.  Yet if you check the valedictorian, salutatorian, and top 10 lists of many senior graduating classes, you'll find these immigrant children there. The difference is the family's emphasis on education, and the home environment.  The parents stress education from the time they're old enough to toddle, and the older brothers and sisters all help with the homework.  But us ordinary Americans produce latch-key kids that rarely see their parents, who don't sit down and work with them on homework, and who aren't involved on a daily basis with their education.  Then they expect to drop those kids off at the public schools, and expect to school system to undo all the damage and lost opportunities that the parents visited on their own kids.  And lastly, we dont' want to pay anything for this service - a good waiter or bartender makes more than a public school teacher in many states.  So after all this, if the public school system fails to create a little Einstein out of our kids, then well - OFF WITH THEIR HEADS! 

Unfortunately, this is yet another situation where the American public has no one to blame but itself for the state of public education.  But it's taboo to confront the public with their own contradictory demands and ask them to take responsibility for their own bad choices. It's a lot easier to just blame the school system, and so we lose more good teachers every year who just quit because the game is stacked against them so badly.

Great observations.

I think also that if people knew more about the Finnish public school system they would realise that the problem lies with their own public schools and not with the institution itself.