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What should K-12 kids learn?
1.
To be extra brief, the students absolutely have the right to complain, but we should be extra choosy about when we listen. Political slant in a classroom, whether by the teachers or the texts, is in the eye of the beholder. Since when did the complaints of hormonally charged and typically hyper-idealistic teenagers determine high school policy? Would you let a sixteen year old teach driver's ed? Let 'em sue.
2. We should not teach any dogma of any group. We should teach kids how to detect bias and mendacity in published materials.
3. This story reminds me of the many liberals I know who bash Fox News for being biased but then turn around claim with a straight face that CNN, MSNBC, PBS, the New York Times, the Washington Post, etc. aren't. The best solution is to present both sides of controversial topics and then allow students to make up their own minds. That would be true education rather than indoctrination...
4. Materials should be as free from bias as possible - PERIOD.
5. Consider the shift in the discussion's context when the label "student," which is their role in the class room, to "taxpayer" and "citizen," which is not a label, but the legal status of the student in and out of the classroom.
6. Original sources for original research form a foundation of education. When textbooks are written they are, by necessity, written from a cultural perspective. The culture of the author obscures the original sources and the fact that the original document or event was written from another cultural perspective or represents another culture. The problem with textbooks is that they are written for profit. They become invalid when they do not admit the motives of the corporation promoting them. Objectivity is lost when it becomes unmarketable or expensive to produce.
7. The article falsly claimed "none of the journalists who reported on LaClair's identification of a conservative bias bothered to mention its doppelganger and ask, are we suppose to believe that politically liberal textbook authors are somehow more objective in their presentation of "just the facts"? They aren't" James Q. Wilson and John Dilulio are conservatives, not liberals. I read the book in question in high school, and I found it incredibly informative. These two men are very insightful on government, but they do have a slight conservate viewpoint
8. We should't pay to miseducate kids in anti- science Creationism, since they won't be prepared for college or the world. It's sad to see kids being taught Creationism to "explain" how dinosaurs co-existed with humans, etc. This is religion and to be done on private time and money. Just as certain leftist teachings should: anything that attempts to depict "old white guy and gal lit" as bad, irrelevant to today. Maybe in the days before TV/computers when people all read and wrote, they achieved a high status we need as examples, instead of choppy Internet prose. Classics unite a people as does culture and language.
9. 2) This school is among the lowest-performing in the district in basics like math and English, with students, teachers and parents deriding the Calif, Curriculum altogether as "anglo-centric" and 'irrelevant to Chicanos. They teach INSTEAD Mayan dancing and astronomy, etc., and that they were peaceful agricultural peoples invaded by the vicious Spanish white man. Truth, as you can even see IN MEXICO but not in CA is that Aztecs/Mayans/Olmecs etc. were very warlike, their gods demanding sacrificing virgins and disemboweling, and their societies disappeared in a frenzy of ritual murder.
10. Michael gives a good example of how the left whitewashes and rewrites history for the worse: claiming that American Indians were all pacifists living in harmony with nature, that Christopher Columbus was an oppressor from the evil "Old World" instead of the Discoverer of America we were taught as kids. Maybe that was too simple, but getting rid of Columbus Day in L A years ago while wanting to replace him with Cesar Chavez is pure P C pandering to Mexicans. We pay for elementary schools that carry lies further, like Semillas del Pueblo/ Lincoln Heights.
Submitted by: Ryan Hardin
2. We should not teach any dogma of any group. We should teach kids how to detect bias and mendacity in published materials.
Submitted by: Dick Beldin
3. This story reminds me of the many liberals I know who bash Fox News for being biased but then turn around claim with a straight face that CNN, MSNBC, PBS, the New York Times, the Washington Post, etc. aren't. The best solution is to present both sides of controversial topics and then allow students to make up their own minds. That would be true education rather than indoctrination...
Submitted by: Crimson Wife
4. Materials should be as free from bias as possible - PERIOD.
Submitted by: John Middleton
5. Consider the shift in the discussion's context when the label "student," which is their role in the class room, to "taxpayer" and "citizen," which is not a label, but the legal status of the student in and out of the classroom.
Submitted by: cfell
6. Original sources for original research form a foundation of education. When textbooks are written they are, by necessity, written from a cultural perspective. The culture of the author obscures the original sources and the fact that the original document or event was written from another cultural perspective or represents another culture. The problem with textbooks is that they are written for profit. They become invalid when they do not admit the motives of the corporation promoting them. Objectivity is lost when it becomes unmarketable or expensive to produce.
Submitted by: randy
7. The article falsly claimed "none of the journalists who reported on LaClair's identification of a conservative bias bothered to mention its doppelganger and ask, are we suppose to believe that politically liberal textbook authors are somehow more objective in their presentation of "just the facts"? They aren't" James Q. Wilson and John Dilulio are conservatives, not liberals. I read the book in question in high school, and I found it incredibly informative. These two men are very insightful on government, but they do have a slight conservate viewpoint
Submitted by: Ian Fromme
8. We should't pay to miseducate kids in anti- science Creationism, since they won't be prepared for college or the world. It's sad to see kids being taught Creationism to "explain" how dinosaurs co-existed with humans, etc. This is religion and to be done on private time and money. Just as certain leftist teachings should: anything that attempts to depict "old white guy and gal lit" as bad, irrelevant to today. Maybe in the days before TV/computers when people all read and wrote, they achieved a high status we need as examples, instead of choppy Internet prose. Classics unite a people as does culture and language.
Submitted by: jill
9. 2) This school is among the lowest-performing in the district in basics like math and English, with students, teachers and parents deriding the Calif, Curriculum altogether as "anglo-centric" and 'irrelevant to Chicanos. They teach INSTEAD Mayan dancing and astronomy, etc., and that they were peaceful agricultural peoples invaded by the vicious Spanish white man. Truth, as you can even see IN MEXICO but not in CA is that Aztecs/Mayans/Olmecs etc. were very warlike, their gods demanding sacrificing virgins and disemboweling, and their societies disappeared in a frenzy of ritual murder.
Submitted by: jeff
10. Michael gives a good example of how the left whitewashes and rewrites history for the worse: claiming that American Indians were all pacifists living in harmony with nature, that Christopher Columbus was an oppressor from the evil "Old World" instead of the Discoverer of America we were taught as kids. Maybe that was too simple, but getting rid of Columbus Day in L A years ago while wanting to replace him with Cesar Chavez is pure P C pandering to Mexicans. We pay for elementary schools that carry lies further, like Semillas del Pueblo/ Lincoln Heights.
Submitted by: jeff
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