John Taylor Gatto – The Underground History of American Education
In this clip the former New York State and New York City Teacher of the Year reviews the epigraphs from the chapters of his book, The Underground History of American Education. I’ve been reading the book (a heavy 388 pg. textbook), and find his writing much more exciting than his speaking.
Utah Eyes Slashing Senior Year Of High School To Save Money
By Sahil Kapur for Raw Story:
Imagine being forced to skip your senior year of high school. Or having the option.
If you live in Utah, that could become a reality. In an effort to bridge a $700 million budget shortfall, Republican state Sen. Chris Buttars has put forth a plan to eliminate 12th grade in high school, the Los Angeles Times reports.
Facing a wealth of criticism from parents, teachers and students alike, Buttars defended a scaled down version of the idea wherein students simply had the option to exit before their final year, claiming the proposal could save the state about $60 million…
[continues at Raw Story]
The Coming Christianizing Of Public School Textbooks
The New York Times asks, “How Christian were the Founding Fathers?” The Texas State Board of Education will be rewriting the standards for public school textbooks, and there’s a good chance that the resulting books (used across the country) will teach that America is a “Christian nation”:
The Christian “truth” about America’s founding has long been taught in Christian schools, but not beyond. Recently, however, some activists decided that the time was right to try to reshape the history that children in public schools study. Succeeding at this would help them toward their ultimate goal of reshaping American society.
As Cynthia Dunbar, a Christian activist on the Texas board, put it, “The philosophy of the classroom in one generation will be the philosophy of the government in the next.”
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California Schools Ban The Dictionary
The Guardian reports that schools in Southern California have removed the dictionary from classrooms because it contains dirty words. No, really. I think this is how civilizations collapse:
Dictionaries have been removed from classrooms…after a parent complained about a child reading the definition for “oral sex.”
Merriam Webster’s 10th edition, which has been used for the past few years in fourth and fifth grade classrooms (for children aged nine to 10) in Menifee Union school district, has been pulled from shelves over fears that the “sexually graphic” entry is “just not age appropriate.”
The dictionary’s online definition of the term is “oral stimulation of the genitals”. “It’s hard to sit and read the dictionary, but we’ll be looking to find other things of a graphic nature,” district spokeswoman Betti Cadmus told the paper.
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