Libs destroying the education system: California mandates gay history be taught

[bodecea]

This will give the kids more material for new faggot jokes

The bullies, of course.

 

[rightwinger]

Interesting that Milk has been brought up. I actually taught sections about Milk in my history class. The information I conveyed to my students was his background as a gay activist and his rise to office due to the backing of the gay community. However, I pointed out that his murder was probably not motivated by his homosexuality since White targeted both Milk and Moscone. Moscone was not just "residual damage." He was specifically targeted by White and in fact upon entering the City Hall building he went directly to Moscone's office before even looking for Milk. Additionally, White was a harsh political opponent of Milk after Milk switched his vote on an issue regarding a mental health clinic. White and Milk had previously been allies on that issue and Milk withdrew his support at the final vote. It was a huge issue for White's district and after that they became political enemies.

White's decision to murder Moscone and Milk stemmed from Moscone refusing to reinstate White and Milk's political opposition. Homosexuality had nothing to do with it and in fact had Milk not changed his vote on the mental health clinic issue White probably would have further regarded him as a political ally.

And yes we discussed the Twinkie Defense.

I lived in San Fransisco at the time. Your description is pretty accurate.

The Twinkie Defense is overrated

 

[nitroz]

Honestly, I don't think this is appropriate.

Gay Rights or anything related to Gays should be in a politics/constitution class.
Because our constitution is made to let anyone be themselves regardless of religion, race, sex, orientation, etc.


We don't need a class to encourage people to be gay if they aren't gay.
You don't just choose your sexual orientation, you are born that way and/or more happier that way.

Of course it could be an optional class, but the wrong approach is being taken.
Schools should teach everyone to accept people for who they are, not have classes designated for groups. That will teach people to be biased.

 

[Katzndogz]

Schools should teach facts not opinions and not the opinions of the teachers.

 

[BluePhantom]

Schools should teach facts not opinions and not the opinions of the teachers.

For the most part I would agree with you, but to some degree it depends on the subject. There are a few circumstances where opinion is actually vital. My general strategy in those situations is to present all sides of an argument and all available information and then encourage discussion / debate on the merits of each. In that way students are encouraged to reach their own opinions based upon available and reliable evidence. Unfortunately, in my experience, most teachers don't do that, especially in college where I teach. Most of them pound their angle and woe be to any student who dares challenge it.

 

[JakeStarkey]

Any who can't agree with "My general strategy in those situations is to present all sides of an argument and all available information and then encourage discussion / debate on the merits of each" should put their children in private school.

You are exactly right, BP.

 

[Katzndogz]

A young friend of mine went to University of Santa Barbara. She learned that all children are genderless until they become adults. Boys and girls are a matter of nurture, not nature. There is no inherent "boy" or "girl" behavior.

She is now having a terrible time letting her female bulldog puppy know that it's okay for her to lift her leg to pee.

 

[FurthurBB]

Main article: Moscone–Milk assassinations

After his disagreement with Milk over the proposed rehab center, White frequently clashed with Milk as well as other members of the board. On November 10, 1978, White resigned his seat as supervisor.[5] The reasons he cited were his dissatisfaction with what he saw as the corrupt inner-workings of San Francisco city politics, as well as the difficulty in making a living without a police officer's or firefighter's salary, jobs he could not hold legally while serving as supervisor. White had opened a baked-potato stand at Pier 39, which failed to become profitable.[6] He reversed his resignation on November 14, 1978 after his supporters lobbied him to seek appointment from George Moscone.

Moscone initially agreed to White's request, but later refused the appointment at the urging of Milk and others. On November 27, 1978, White visited San Francisco City Hall with the later-declared intention of killing Moscone, Milk, and two other San Francisco politicians whom he also blamed for lobbying Moscone not to re-appointment him. He arrived that day by climbing through a first-floor window on the side of City Hall carrying a loaded gun and 10 rounds of ammunition. By entering the building through the window, White was able to circumvent the recently installed metal detectors. After entering Moscone's office, White pleaded to be re-instated as supervisor, but Moscone said no. White then killed Moscone by shooting him in the shoulder, chest, and twice in the head. He then walked to the other side of City Hall to Milk's office, reloaded his gun, and fatally shot Milk five times, the final two shots fired with the gun's barrel touching Milk's skull, according to the medical examiner. White then fled City Hall, turning himself in at the San Francisco's Northern Police Station where he had been a police officer. While being interviewed by investigators, White recorded a tearful confession, stating, "I just shot him."

Nothing about Milk being gay is there?

It also makes it seem like corruption was also not the issue either.

 

[FurthurBB]

Honestly, I don't think this is appropriate.

Gay Rights or anything related to Gays should be in a politics/constitution class.
Because our constitution is made to let anyone be themselves regardless of religion, race, sex, orientation, etc.


We don't need a class to encourage people to be gay if they aren't gay.
You don't just choose your sexual orientation, you are born that way and/or more happier that way.

Of course it could be an optional class, but the wrong approach is being taken.
Schools should teach everyone to accept people for who they are, not have classes designated for groups. That will teach people to be biased.

I think it will probably be included in a general US history class. My children already learn/learned about gay history. They have been teaching it for years at their school. It is a short snippet that takes less than 2 weeks in their general American history class. It does not turn anyone gay, does not lie about events, and is not rewritten watered down PC crap as some paranoid person assumed. Also, in their civics class they talk a little bit about the plight of gay rights, just like women's rights, and minority rights. I don't know how California is going to handle things, but I am no way opposed to the way it is taught in my children's school.

 

[FurthurBB]

Schools should teach facts not opinions and not the opinions of the teachers.

For the most part I would agree with you, but to some degree it depends on the subject. There are a few circumstances where opinion is actually vital. My general strategy in those situations is to present all sides of an argument and all available information and then encourage discussion / debate on the merits of each. In that way students are encouraged to reach their own opinions based upon available and reliable evidence. Unfortunately, in my experience, most teachers don't do that, especially in college where I teach. Most of them pound their angle and woe be to any student who dares challenge it.

I also teach at the university level and have actually very rarely seen a professor that will even tell you their opinion on an issue of debate, let alone pound that opinion home.

 

[JakeStarkey]

Good professors do not indoctrinate, and simply follow, instead, critical thinking skills and present the material.

 

[FurthurBB]

Good professors do not indoctrinate, and simply follow, instead, critical thinking skills and present the material.

Exactly! I will not even tell the students I advise which classes I think they should take. I only tell them what they can or have to take for their degree and give them the pros and cons of the rest so they can decide for themselves.

 

[BluePhantom]

Schools should teach facts not opinions and not the opinions of the teachers.

For the most part I would agree with you, but to some degree it depends on the subject. There are a few circumstances where opinion is actually vital. My general strategy in those situations is to present all sides of an argument and all available information and then encourage discussion / debate on the merits of each. In that way students are encouraged to reach their own opinions based upon available and reliable evidence. Unfortunately, in my experience, most teachers don't do that, especially in college where I teach. Most of them pound their angle and woe be to any student who dares challenge it.

I also teach at the university level and have actually very rarely seen a professor that will even tell you their opinion on an issue of debate, let alone pound that opinion home.

Well your experience and mine have been dramatically different. Hell I know one who tells his class right up front that arguing a conservative position will result in failure of the assignment. His point of view is that the students know his reputation and what his class is about and if they don't want to deal with it they shouldn't take his class. I will grant you that he is an extreme example but I know far more professors who bias their grading according to the degree to which the student's opinion matches their own than those who don't.

 

[BluePhantom]

Good professors do not indoctrinate, and simply follow, instead, critical thinking skills and present the material.

That's pretty much what I did, but as the dean told me "We don't want them to think for themselves, we want them to think what we tell them to think." That's a direct quote...word for word

 

[Zander]

Gay History 101.

Q- How did homosexuality get it's start?
A- Someone was sucked into it.

Q - How do you know if you are gay?
A - If your roommate's cock tastes like shit.

Q - How do lesbians have sex?
A - they buy an organ and ply hymns

Q- Why do so many gays have mustaches?
A - To hide the stretch marks

Q- What did one lesbian say to the other lesbian?
A- "you da man!"...no.."YOU da man!".

Q - What do you call 50 lesbians and 50 government employees in one room?
A- 100 people that don''t do dick!

Q -What''s the difference between a gay rodeo and a straight rodeo?
A- At a straight rodeo everyone yells, "Ride that sucker"

 

[BluePhantom]

here's what I mean about teaching opinions. It's easy enough to teach the "what" of a given historical event for example. It gets much harder to avoid opinion when you start examining the "why" and "how"s of it. Let's take the Great Depression. Now you can say it was triggered by the stock market tanking in late 1929 and that would be accurate. But the question then becomes "why did it tank?" Well shit....ask 100 different economists and historians and you will get 100 different answers and the answers the historians give will usually be dramatically different than those the economists give. By the same token we can talk about the New Deal. Well did it help or hurt? Again, it depends on what source of information you use. What ended the depression? Once again, it depends on what "expert" you ask.

So as an instructor you have two choices: A) you can look at all the theories on those things and encourage the students to make up their own mind and grade upon their grasp of those various theories, or B) you can focus on a couple or even one theory and profess that as "the one we are choosing to focus upon" and grade based upon the student's grasp of that smaller set.

Well teaching B is a hell of a lot easier than teaching A because when you teach A it takes more time and requires more flexibility from the instructor as well as more knowledge and more tolerance of views that contradict their own. You have to structure the entire section as well as evaluations completely differently. When you teach B the class becomes far more black and white and since the instructor is the one choosing "which theory we are going to focus on" they are obviously going to choose one that supports their own personal views.

Now I always taught A, but (again in my experience) most instructors choose to teach B.

 

[FurthurBB]

For the most part I would agree with you, but to some degree it depends on the subject. There are a few circumstances where opinion is actually vital. My general strategy in those situations is to present all sides of an argument and all available information and then encourage discussion / debate on the merits of each. In that way students are encouraged to reach their own opinions based upon available and reliable evidence. Unfortunately, in my experience, most teachers don't do that, especially in college where I teach. Most of them pound their angle and woe be to any student who dares challenge it.

I also teach at the university level and have actually very rarely seen a professor that will even tell you their opinion on an issue of debate, let alone pound that opinion home.

Well your experience and mine have been dramatically different. Hell I know one who tells his class right up front that arguing a conservative position will result in failure of the assignment. His point of view is that the students know his reputation and what his class is about and if they don't want to deal with it they shouldn't take his class. I will grant you that he is an extreme example but I know far more professors who bias their grading according to the degree to which the student's opinion matches their own than those who don't.

Wow! Well, I guess that in biology you really do not see a need to inject any of these kinds of opinions. Though, I have been a guest lecturer in a lot of criminology courses because I do freelance work for the FBI and police departments in forensic microbiology and some of those professors are like that. I had one tell me that I should move out of the city I live in because they are prejudice and I was supporting it by living there. I tried to tell him it wasn't prejudice against a type of person, just people that don't live there. So, he went and got a job as the chief of police there and ended up suing the city. I testified for the city about what he had said to me and so did several of his students. I guess no one ever knew his political leanings, but he had a real hang up about this city and talked about it all the time. There was another criminology teacher who was very conservative and would fail his students if he thought they were liberal leaning, he was fired for it. That one was a straight crazy person who was a detective and is now in jail for stalking and brutally attacking one of his female students. Those are the only two experiences I can remember having in all the years I attended and have taught university.

 

[JakeStarkey]

Good professors do not indoctrinate, and simply follow, instead, critical thinking skills and present the material.

That's pretty much what I did, but as the dean told me "We don't want them to think for themselves, we want them to think what we tell them to think." That's a direct quote...word for word

I have no doubt that deans at universities and directors of think tanks and executive vice-presidents at banks and so forth and so on, do indeed do that very thing.

The duty remains for us who are not ignorant to circumvent the would be masters and teach the would be subjects how to critically think, how to master Crap 101 so people can understand why communism, libertarianism, corporatism are to be avoided and classical liberalism to be embraced.

 

[rdean]

In addition, I'm sure that what will be taught is the fabricated PC version of gay history.

Anyone who sends their children to public school should be prosecuted for child neglect.

Yea because those Christian right wing schools are so good. They teach "alternate reality history" and "magical creation". They want 50 to a 100 kids to a class. They love their pregnant teens. And their drop out rate is so high for a reason. They tell their kids "education is just a piece of paper". Besides, who wants to be "elite". Right wingers have better ways to spend their money. Give it to rich people because they are creating jobs - in China.

 

[BluePhantom]

I have no doubt that deans at universities and directors of think tanks and executive vice-presidents at banks and so forth and so on, do indeed do that very thing.

The duty remains for us who are not ignorant to circumvent the would be masters and teach the would be subjects how to critically think....

You are absolutely correct right there and I really view my classroom far differently than other instructors. I have noticed most of them really are very narrowly focused on simply the subject matter they teach and usually only from a very narrow perspective. I view my classes as "preparing the students for life" and the subject matter is simply the medium I am using at the time to accomplish that.

When I discuss that point of view with my colleagues they look at me like I am speaking a completely different language, but then again it's also worth noting that teaching was something I started doing later in life after I had established a successful history in private business and industry. So my perspective is far different than those instructors who teach without having that real world experience to look at.

RDean states below:

They tell their kids "education is just a piece of paper".

Boy do I have news for her as a professor. Without actual experience in the subject matter education IS just a piece of paper and a worthless one at that.

It's a disturbing trend I have noticed where teachers without actual experience have to rely solely upon academic theory to provide information to their students. The problem is that academic theory is rarely very applicable to a real world situation (at least in the manner it's presented). So in essence they are teaching their students a lot of useless bullshit and because they lack real experience the teachers often don't realize it themselves.

I have concluded that teaching should mostly be a retirement profession where qualifications for the teacher are based upon their experience and history in business and industry.