Ugh

[nettiger]

There are so many things wrong with this... I don't even know where to begin.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/17/AR2006021700397_pf.htmlI reserve a special little ball of disgust for people who feel the need to keep children purposefully ignorant and ill-informed

Comments

Part one of my thoughts...

[racethecoon]

I would like to think I have a rather unique view point to this issue, since I attended some of all three main school types - Catholic, fundamentalist Christian, and public - during my years as a kid. To be honest, the Catholic school I attended was essentially a public school with a half hour of a "religion" class every day. We learned about science from the Silver Burdett and Ginn curriculum and not some "Bible-based" pseudoscience. I remember that our little classroom was in my ways more diversified (I had friends who were Hindu, Muslim, atheist, etc.) than the local public school system that was almost completely split between racial lines. Yes, there was a Mass every week and you were required to go, but there was very little "preaching" involved in the manner of, "If you don't think this way, you're doomed to hell." Notre Dame, the Catholic university I attended, was even moreso welcoming. Although there was a considerable local protest to such events, they did have annual Queer Film Festival and showings of the Vagina Monologues, and there was no Mass attendance policy, only a required six credit hours of a "religion" class. I realize that for some of you that might be six hours too much, but for this being a Catholic university I felt that the spiritual aspect was there but it wasn't intrusive enough to be proselytizing. The attitude was more one of, "Okay, it's here if you want it, but if you don't that's okay too." I'm not saying that -all- Catholic schools and universities are this way, but just saying that my experience with them was mostly a positive one. Notre Dame is a Top 25 institution whose degree is named in the same reverent tones as degrees from Duke, Vanderbilt, and some Ivies, so they must be doing something right.

Now, my high school years were spent at a fundamentalist Christian school, and this was a little different. I think the most telling part of this school was when we had a survey in my senior class of 52, and only two kids raised their hands and said they would vote for Al Gore rather than George W. Bush (for those curious, I was NOT one of the two). There was a definite bit of proselytizing that went on here. I remember that my biology book was called "Biology for Christian Schools," as was the chemistry book and most other science books. It really depended on the teacher, though, as to the amount of "alternate theory" (In this case, secular science) that was discussed. My chemistry teacher was very fundamentalist but my biology teacher was not. The religious requirement was a weekly attendance of a chapel, which was boring and non-stop preaching of fire and brimstone most times. As a Catholic attending the school, I had to deal with more than my share of having my religious beliefs questioned on a sometimes daily basis. Although I liked my friends at the school, I did not enjoy the curriculum terribly much. The whole time I was there, I remember thinking, "This is a bunch of bullhockey that's not going to prepare me for college much at all." Even so, the state of our local public high school system was so bad that this local Christian school was still the best academic choice and that was the reason my parents sent me there.

I believe that while a certain amount of "brainwashing" goes on at the private Bible-based school system, you would have to be blind to not notice that the same thing happens at public schools. What is education, after all, but a way of telling you what to think about certain issues? I can remember explicitly all my early-year social studies books subliminally making the claim that, "Taxes help everyone and we should be all so happy to pay our taxes because they make our roads straight and the firemen help everyone and you want to help the firemen, don't you? Don't you?" As kids, we received the Weekly Reader, which was a pocket sized advertisement for all sorts of liberal causes, ranging from environmental issues to feminist issues to issues about animal rights, all given with no alternate viewpoint. It is a false argument to try and suggest that one kind of schooling is akin to brainwashing and the other is not.

And part two...

[racethecoon]

I have been, and always will remain, a PROponent of school vouchers. The public school system is in many communities a dead-end route for a variety of reasons, usually at least partially associated with a disinterested teaching base, a lack of community involvement in the school's mission, the irongrip of a teacher's union that often does not have the child's best interest at heart, and misappropriated funding. Private schools have been proven to consistently outperform public schools even despite often having a tenth or less the funding of those private schools. My Catholic elementary school was 80 years old, falling apart, and are computer lab was full of Apple IIe's (This was in the middle-1990's), yet on the academic charts we were consistently beating the rich magnet public schools with their shiny new desks and computer equipment. TThe second reason I think that there should be a school voucher system is because the most vocal opponents of the system are hypocrites of the first degree. Chelsea Clinton, the Pelosi children, and others have all been educated in private schools even while their parents politically laud the virtues of the public school system. What blatent and obvious hypocrisy! Let's give those kids in failing public school systems a chance to improve their education, because it's obvious that the public schools in many places simply do not care anymore.

The people running these museum tours are certainly intellectually unsound in many ways, but it is unfair to blanket the entire private school system in America as acting this way. I am a product of that system, and I've turned out all right, right?