Tag Archives | Education

14 Wacky “Facts” Kids Will Learn in Louisiana’s Voucher Schools

By on August 23, 2012 in News 22

Picture: Scott Kinmartin (CC)

Thanks to Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindall’s extensive voucher program (which many other Republicans want to establish on state and national levels), state funds will go towards indoctrinating youth with religious programming in privatized education centers. Taxpayers will dish out an anti-science message in texts and teaching materials, all under the guise of helping the poor and middle-income students. And they’ll be learning some pretty ridiculous nonsense, served up as facts (and not faith).

Won’t somebody please think of the children!?

via Deanna Pan at Mother Jones:

  1. Dinosaurs and humans probably hung out: “Bible-believing Christians cannot accept any evolutionary interpretation. Dinosaurs and humans were definitely on the earth at the same time and may have even lived side by side within the past few thousand years.”—Life Science, 3rd ed., Bob Jones University Press, 2007
  2. Dragons were totally real: “[Is] it possible that a fire-breathing animal really existed?

    3. … Read the rest

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How to End Oppression

By on July 8, 2012 in News 17

Education should aim at destroying free will so that after pupils are thus schooled they will be incapable throughout the rest of their lives of thinking or acting otherwise than as their school masters would have wished … The social psychologist of the future will have a number of classes of school children on whom they will try different methods of producing an unshakable conviction that snow is black. When the technique has been perfected, every government that has been in charge of education for more than one generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need of armies or policemen. – Bertrand Russell quoting Johann Gottlieb Fichte, the head of philosophy & psychology who influenced Hegel and others, Prussian University in Berlin, 1810.

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Louisiana Schools To Teach That Evolution Is False, Loch Ness Monster Is Real

By on July 3, 2012 in News 62

Publicly funded bible-based high schools in Louisiana will teach biology students that dinosaurs were created six thousand years ago, and that one still lives in a lake in Scotland, the Scotsman is amazed to report:

Thousands of American school pupils are to be taught that the Loch Ness monster is real – in an attempt by religious teachers to disprove Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. Pupils attending privately-run Christian schools in the southern state of Louisiana will learn from textbooks next year, which claim Scotland’s most famous mythological beast is a living creature. Thousands of children are to receive publicly-funded vouchers enabling them to attend the schools – which follow a strict fundamentalist curriculum.

One… textbook called Biology 1099  reads: “Are dinosaurs alive today? Scientists are becoming more convinced of their existence. Have you heard of the Loch Ness Monster in Scotland? ‘Nessie’ for short has been recorded on sonar from a small submarine, described by eyewitnesses, and photographed by others.

… Read the rest

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Has A Bachelor’s Degree Lost Its Value?

By on June 18, 2012 in News 13

Writes Lee Lawrence on the Christian Science Monitor:

The children of white middle-class, college-educated parents, Hugh Green and Turner Jenkins are just the kind of kids everyone would expect to be stepping out into the world one sunny June day, bachelor’s degrees in hand. But they both veered from the traditional American educational route.

One decided that a bachelor’s was never going to be enough, while the other concluded it was unnecessary.

Mr. Green enrolled in an accelerated program that will keep him at Emory University in Atlanta for a fifth year and earn him a master’s degree. Mr. Jenkins is immersed in a culinary training program in Gaithersburg, Md., that he hopes will launch his career as a chef.

Once the hallmark of an educated and readily employable adult, the bachelor’s degree is losing its edge. Quicker, cheaper programs offer attractive career route alternatives while the more prestigious master’s is trumping it, making it a mere steppingstone…

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Logical Fallacies (Video)

By on June 17, 2012 in News 15

A great primer for the emerging auto-didactic class.

“Sorta on the side of evil, if you want to persuade people, mastering fallacies is a very useful skill. If you want to defend against being emotionally manipulated, knowing about fallacies is very useful.” —Dr. Michael Lobossiere

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Noam Chomsky On The Purpose Of Education

By on June 15, 2012 in News 31

Maria Popova of Brain Pickings highly recommends this Chomsky lecture video, saying:

In this talk based on his presentation at the Learning Without Frontiers conference in January, philosopher, linguist, and cognitive scientist Noam Chomsky — easily one of our time’s sharpest thinkers — discusses the purpose of education.

Despite the slow pace and the cheesy AfterEffects animated typography, the video is a treasure trove of insight on everything from the role of technology to the pitfalls of policy.

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Peter Thiel Will Pay You $100,000 To Drop Out Of College (If You Have An Idea He Likes)

By on June 8, 2012 in News 0

Considering student loan debt is now a trillion-dollar industry, maybe this PayPal co-founder is on to something. Via 60 Minutes:

One of the wealthiest, best-educated American entrepreneurs, Peter Thiel, isn’t convinced college is worth the cost. With only half of recent U.S. college graduates in full-time jobs, and student loans now at $1 trillion, Thiel has come up with his own small-scale solution: pay a couple dozen of the nation’s most promising students $100,000 to walk away from college and pursue their passions. Morley Safer takes a look at Thiel’s critique of college.

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The War on Kids (Trailer)

By on June 2, 2012 in News 15

Via The War On Kids:

The War on Kids is a documentary on Public Education in America. While several documentaries on schools have come out since The War on Kids, these films tend to be either propaganda for charter schools or look at symptoms without any appreciation or understanding of underlying issues. To be a great documentary, it is essential to do the necessary work and dig deeper to uncover the heart of the problems observed. The numerous failures and pathologies associated with school are predominantly due to it autocratic structure. Because no one wants to voluntarily relinquish power, this fundamental problem is never addressed or even recognized.

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