Does America have a future? Education verses Mysticism

[rdean]

The majority of Americans don’t understand why we can’t “teach” the “controversy”. What is wrong with “alternate” theories?

The problem with that is that science is all interconnected. If you are going to change one theory, you have to change them all.

How will these theories and sciences change to fit into the perception of science influenced by “mysticism”?

Paleontology – The study of the forms of life existing in prehistoric or geologic times, as represented by the fossils of plants, animals, and other organisms.

Biology – concerned with the structure, function, distribution, adaptation, interactions, and evolution of all living organisms including both plants and animals. Biology encompasses a broad spectrum of academic fields that are often viewed as independent disciplines.

Physiology – The scientific study of an organism's vital functions, including growth and development, the absorption and processing of nutrients, the synthesis and distribution of proteins and other organic molecules, and the functioning of different tissues, organs, and other anatomic structures. Physiology studies the normal mechanical, physical, and biochemical processes of animals and plants.

Botany – covers a wide range of scientific disciplines that study the growth, reproduction, metabolism, development, diseases, and evolution of plants.

Astronomy – The scientific study of matter in outer space, especially the positions, dimensions, distribution, motion, composition, energy, and evolution of celestial bodies and phenomena.

Geology – The scientific study of the origin, history, and structure of the earth

Plate Tectonics – A theory that explains the global distribution of geological phenomena such as seismicity, volcanism, continental drift, and mountain building in terms of the formation, destruction, movement, and interaction of the earth's lithospheric plates.

Climatology – The scientific study of climates, including the causes and long-term effects of variation in regional and global climates. Climatology also studies how climate changes over time and is affected by human actions.

Understanding science has led this country to greatness. By changing understood and well thought out scientific theories, do we undermine what we have built? Our country has slid from first to the twenties and thirties in math, science and other learned and intellectual “elitist” skills. This has coincided with the forceful introduction of mysticism and the occult into our science classrooms.

Does America have a future?

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Only 6% of Rdean's thread are worth reading and this isn't one of them

 

[PoliticalChic]

The majority of Americans don’t understand why we can’t “teach” the “controversy”. What is wrong with “alternate” theories?

The problem with that is that science is all interconnected. If you are going to change one theory, you have to change them all.

Understanding science has led this country to greatness. By changing understood and well thought out scientific theories, do we undermine what we have built? Our country has slid from first to the twenties and thirties in math, science and other learned and intellectual “elitist” skills. This has coincided with the forceful introduction of mysticism and the occult into our science classrooms.

Does America have a future?

Deanie, I hope you don't mind my piggy-backing on this thread, but this seems appropriate here:

From “Against Mediocrity: The Humanities in America’s High Schools,” edited by Finn, Ravitch, and Fancher.

1. There is no sound education that does not include the teaching and learning of the humanities, the study of literature, history and languages. Forsaking learning in a particular discipline such as literature, history, or philosophy, eager “humanistic” zealots have imposed “humanistic education,” “humane studies,” and “values inquiries” upon the schools. In my experience, courses offered under these banners have largely failed to impart much knowledge; but they have succeeded in altering the public perception of the humanities. Now, thanks to educational sloppiness verging on intellectual anarchy, there is often a skeptical and distrustful attitude when one use the term “humanities.”

2. The College Board revealed in 1975 that scores on the SAT had fallen steadily and sharply since 1964. The College Board’s own blue-ribbon panel reported in 1977 that the most substantial score decline had occurred after the demographics of the applicant pool, expansion of the low-income and minority test takers, had stabilized. They acknowledged that the likely influence of the lowering of standards and the lessened emphasis on critical reading and thoughtful writing.

3. Without values and ethics, the wisdom and knowledge, the insight and context, the shared understanding and communications embodied in the humanities, we risk becoming a society that loses its balance. If the system only strengthens in science, math and basic skills, we risk producing no more than technopeasants, individuals who manipulate complex machines without any understanding of why, who depend on other machines for amusement and recreation, who have no real intellectual interests or cultural lives, whose behavior is defined by the interaction between hedonistic cravings and externally imposed controls, who have no valid basis for judging the claims of politicians, gurus, and cult figures, and who lack any sense of a collective past or any vision of a better future.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Here's your Progressive Educational System at work

Waiting For "Superman" | Trailer & Official Movie Site | Pledge Now

 

[Charles_Main]

Only 6% of Rdean's thread are worth reading and this isn't one of them

Hey he managed to make a post with out pointing out the the Rep Party is Confederate, 90% white, and mostly Christian.

personally I am impressed.

 

[Oddball]

The majority of Americans don’t understand why we can’t “teach” the “controversy”. What is wrong with “alternate” theories?

The problem with that is that science is all interconnected. If you are going to change one theory, you have to change them all.

How will these theories and sciences change to fit into the perception of science influenced by “mysticism”?

...

Understanding science has led this country to greatness. By changing understood and well thought out scientific theories, do we undermine what we have built? Our country has slid from first to the twenties and thirties in math, science and other learned and intellectual “elitist” skills. This has coincided with the forceful introduction of mysticism and the occult into our science classrooms.

Does America have a future?

Even when you think you sound smart, the inanity foolhardiness of your "thought" can be pierced with just a mere few examples and questions, not the least of which are:

Who is it that is now resisting real *ahem* progress and change, by claiming that the many should just blindly go along with the reputed "superior intellect" of the few?

How much peripheral science was changed when Fred Hoyle's steady state theory of the universe was disproved?

What's your direct and verifiable evidence that elite institutions of reputed higher science have been forcefully infiltrated and influenced by this mysticism you irrationally dread so much?

Answers: You...None...None.

Fortunately, blithering idiots like you are relatively few and far between. Therefore, prospects for America's future still remain fairly positive.

 

[Mr. Peepers]

Here's your Progressive Educational System at work

Our education system is not progressive. Montessori schools are progressive. Schools in Japan and Europe are progressive. We place very litte value (monetary or otherwise) into public elementary education. It's not as lucrative as war and corporate welfare and tax cuts benefitting millionaires. If there's no profit in it, this country doesn't care about it. We value education as much as we do the way in which food is grown and processed here - ie we don't.

 

[Tom Clancy]

Here's your Progressive Educational System at work

Our education system is not progressive. Montessori schools are progressive. Schools in Japan and Europe are progressive. We place very litte value (monetary or otherwise) into public elementary education. It's not as lucrative as war and corporate welfare and tax cuts benefitting millionaires. If there's no profit in it, this country doesn't care about it. We value education as much as we do the way in which food is grown and processed here - ie we don't.

Apparently Mr.Peepers is an expert in European Schools!

Ever been to one? I have, for 13 years. And no, It wasn't. Actually.. It all depends on what you classify as "Progressive Schools".

 

[Mr. Peepers]

Ever been to one? I have, for 13 years. And no, It wasn't. Actually.. It all depends on what you classify as "Progressive Schools".

No, I'm basing it on the experiences of my Irish and English friends who get an education FAR superior to ours - they are obviously doing something that we aren't. And I work for a Japanese company & can see the results of their education all around me.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Here's your Progressive Educational System at work

Our education system is not progressive. Montessori schools are progressive. Schools in Japan and Europe are progressive. We place very litte value (monetary or otherwise) into public elementary education. It's not as lucrative as war and corporate welfare and tax cuts benefitting millionaires. If there's no profit in it, this country doesn't care about it. We value education as much as we do the way in which food is grown and processed here - ie we don't.

What a fucking lie

Can Progressives ever say ANYTHING without having to lie?

We spend more per student that almost any other country on the planet and we graduate high schoolers who can't read or name 3 Founding Fathers if you spotted them Thomas Jefferson and John Adams.

Lies lies lies lies.

 

[PoliticalChic]

Here's your Progressive Educational System at work

Our education system is not progressive. Montessori schools are progressive. Schools in Japan and Europe are progressive. We place very litte value (monetary or otherwise) into public elementary education. It's not as lucrative as war and corporate welfare and tax cuts benefitting millionaires. If there's no profit in it, this country doesn't care about it. We value education as much as we do the way in which food is grown and processed here - ie we don't.

If you are referring to the system in the United States, you are incorrect.

Of course almost all schools are Dewey- Progressive, unless your district is in Boston, where content rich curriculum has a foothold.

Montessori is a form of Progressive Education.

1. Traditional education insists on a body of knowledge, as opposed to Progressive:
"The pedagogical point of Freire’s thesis : its opposition to taxing students with any actual academic content, which Freire derides as “official knowledge” that serves to rationalize inequality within capitalist society."http://www.city-journal.org/2009/19_2_freirian-pedagogy.html

2. Teacher's have the knowledge, and should be able to impart same. Not to Progressives:
"Pedagogy of the Oppressed resonated with progressive educators, already committed to a “child-centered” rather than a “teacher-directed” approach to classroom instruction. Freire’s rejection of teaching content knowledge seemed to buttress what was already the ed schools’ most popular theory of learning, which argued that students should work collaboratively in constructing their own knowledge and that the teacher should be a “guide on the side,” not a “sage on the stage.”Pedagogy of the Oppressor by Sol Stern, City Journal Spring 2009

3. E.D.Hirsch's traditional approach:
"Hirsch was also convinced that the problem of inadequate background knowledge began in the early grades. Elementary school teachers thus had to be more explicit about imparting such knowledge to students—indeed, this was even more important than teaching the “skills” of reading and writing, Hirsch believed. Hirsch’s insight contravened the conventional wisdom in the nation’s education schools: that teaching facts was unimportant, and that students instead should learn “how to” skills. …expanded the argument in a 1983 article, titled “Cultural Literacy,” in The American Scholar." E. D. Hirsch’s Curriculum for Democracy by Sol Stern, City Journal Autumn 2009

4. Traditional learning is knowledge-based, not 'process-based.' The progressives believe that 'an agile mind can always look it up.'
"[Hirsch] launched the Core Knowledge Foundation, which sought to create a knowledge-based curriculum for the nation’s elementary schools. A wide range of scholars assisted him in specifying the knowledge that children in grades K–8 needed to become proficient readers. For example, the Core Knowledge curriculum specifies that in English language arts, all second-graders read poems by Robert Louis Stevenson, Emily Dickinson, and Gwendolyn Brooks, as well as stories by Rudyard Kipling, E. B. White, and Hans Christian Andersen. In history and geography, the children study the world’s great rivers, ancient Rome, and the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, among other subjects....[But] . [T]eachers and principals had trained at Columbia University’s Teachers College, a bastion of so-called progressive education, and militantly defended the progressive-ed doctrine that facts were pedagogically unimportant. "http://www.city-journal.org/2009/19_4_hirsch.html

 

[California Girl]

Ever been to one? I have, for 13 years. And no, It wasn't. Actually.. It all depends on what you classify as "Progressive Schools".

No, I'm basing it on the experiences of my Irish and English friends who get an education FAR superior to ours - they are obviously doing something that we aren't. And I work for a Japanese company & can see the results of their education all around me.

Your friends are wrong.

 

[California Girl]

Here's your Progressive Educational System at work

Our education system is not progressive. Montessori schools are progressive. Schools in Japan and Europe are progressive. We place very litte value (monetary or otherwise) into public elementary education. It's not as lucrative as war and corporate welfare and tax cuts benefitting millionaires. If there's no profit in it, this country doesn't care about it. We value education as much as we do the way in which food is grown and processed here - ie we don't.

It is not money that the public education system needs, it is decent parents, engaged students, getting rid of 'tenture', and providing decent teachers with the back up to do the job well. Dumping more money into a bottomless pit does not fill it. Idiot.

 

[Mr. Peepers]

Your friends are wrong.

They know more about our history than 90% of dumb Americans do, I can tell you that much right now. Seriously. Have a conversation with someone from just about anywhere else. It is absolutely shameful how ignorant the majority of our citizenry are.

 

[California Girl]

Your friends are wrong.

They know more about our history than 90% of dumb Americans do, I can tell you that much right now. Seriously. Have a conversation with someone from just about anywhere else. It is absolutely shameful how ignorant the majority of our citizenry are.

Like hell they do. Most don't even know the difference between a state and a city, in my observations. I have conversations with Brits every day. I spend a lot of time in France, and have traveled extensively around Europe. They are not smarter than we are.

Now, if you had said Korea.... I'd have agreed with you. They are miles ahead.

 

[Tom Clancy]

Your friends are wrong.

They know more about our history than 90% of dumb Americans do, I can tell you that much right now. Seriously. Have a conversation with someone from just about anywhere else. It is absolutely shameful how ignorant the majority of our citizenry are.

So then, does this mean you're a "dumb American" as well?

 

[Mr. Peepers]

What a fucking lie

Can Progressives ever say ANYTHING without having to lie?

We spend more per student that almost any other country on the planet and we graduate high schoolers who can't read or name 3 Founding Fathers if you spotted them Thomas Jefferson and John Adams.

Lies lies lies lies.

No, it isn't a lie. 8 countries (including Japan) spend more on education than we do and consistently mop the floor with us, especially in math and science. The problem with this country is the over-valuing of capitalism concerning education - the education itself is not considered to be valuable. People only go to school to "get a good job". The learning is not the point. Imagine what we could have done for our schools if Iraq had never existed... maybe we could have fixed some of our crumbling infrastructure too. This country is money hungry stupid and (once again) has its priorities completely out of whack.

 

[PoliticalChic]

Your friends are wrong.

They know more about our history than 90% of dumb Americans do, I can tell you that much right now. Seriously. Have a conversation with someone from just about anywhere else. It is absolutely shameful how ignorant the majority of our citizenry are.

Sadly, I have to agree with the above.

"“The Dumbest Generation”
To Mark Bauerlein, a professor of English at Emory University, the present is a good time to be young only if you don't mind a tendency toward empty-headedness. In "The Dumbest Generation," he argues that cultural and technological forces, far from opening up an exciting new world of learning and thinking, have conspired to create a level of public ignorance so high as to threaten our democracy."

From Bookshelf- book review in the May 13, 2008 Wall Street Journal

 

[Mr. Peepers]

So then, does this mean you're a "dumb American" as well?

I wouldn't say so. Luckily, my family values continued learning and intellectual curiosity. I can hold my own.

 

[Mr. Peepers]

Like hell they do. Most don't even know the difference between a state and a city, in my observations. I have conversations with Brits every day. I spend a lot of time in France, and have traveled extensively around Europe. They are not smarter than we are.

Now, if you had said Korea.... I'd have agreed with you. They are miles ahead.

Yes, they are miles ahead... We're just talking basics here... reading, math, science and history. Stuff an 8th grader should know. Like I said, shameful. I was impressed by their knowledge of American history.