Golden sunlight filtered by tint softly invading your automobile with a great song on the radio at highway speeds. No traffic, just you, the road, and the music. I know I’m not the only one who’s had the feeling that all is right in the world while on the open road with a great track list. Some would say we come from the happenstance of random atoms bumping into one another but I’d bet dollars to donuts they’ve had the experience of pretending like the song on the radio is their soundtrack for the moment. But why? Could it be that there is a part of us longing for a real serenade really meant for us every moment of our lives? Quiet when the time calls for it and loud when nothing else will seem to do. The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; He will rejoice over you with gladness; He will quiet you by his love; He will exult over you with loud singing. – (Zephaniah 3:17) Why does every story have the weak in need of salvation or the unlo...
AMEN! The scariest thing about the public school system is that sometimes regional fundamentalists gain too much power in a local school board election and start printing idiocy masquerading as science. If they would just commit to "educating" their kids at home (or in Madrasas), we'd all be better off. :)
ReplyDeleteI agree. All those religious zealots and their evolutionary theory revisionist history.
ReplyDeleteExactly! If you believe that dinosaurs and Man coexisted, or can't handle the truth of evolution and twist yourself into knots trying to deny that the earth is billions of years old, keep your kid out of school and just teach him a trade. Leave the fact-based community to their crazy ideas about hypothesis-driven science.
ReplyDelete"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it." - Joseph Goebels
ReplyDeleteI love science, therefore, I find your assertions intellectually dissatisfying (no matter how oft' they are repeated).
Goebbels was absolutely right; people since the dawn of time have perpetuated a lie that some unseen man in the heavens created life on earth. Fortunately, science continues to shed light on the real process - and time scale - of diversification that happened here.
ReplyDeleteRational people will continue to prevail over those kooks that believe that vegetarian dinosaurs lived in the Garden of Eden and became carnivorous after the Fall. Because we control the schools.
Yes, fortunately science does continue to shed light on how this world is ordered and balanced on a knife's edge of precision. Unfortunately lots of people like you believe what you've been told to believe: that this all was a cosmic accident and despite not being able to prove (or even offer good evidence towards) a single iota of that to be true... you believe it anyways.
ReplyDeleteWhy? As you've said, they've got the schools and it doesn't matter whats true as long as they've got the schools.
Now after your indoctrination you are one of them so now you claim to have the schools.
And the perpetuation of revisionist history and standardized testing will keep producing dumber and dumber factory workers/drones/worker bees/mindless consumers.
Well, you can have A school, but you won't have MY school. I love my son too much to send him to a place where the status quo is more important than truth.
And then there's the fact that public schools just can't protect my kids as well as I can.
ReplyDeleteIt's not about "A" school vs your homeschool; it makes no difference to me if you choose to raise your kid believing the world sits on the back of a giant turtle...he'll enter the workforce at a disadvantage, but that's not my problem.
ReplyDeleteYou toss around the term "indoctrination" but are blind to your own hypocrisy. You're a fundamentalist who believes in a literalist reading of the Bible. I bet you're completely unwilling to open your mind and actually read "Why evolution is true" or, better yet, "On the Origin of Species." Most of us who've read those books, though, have also read the bible. And after careful consideration, we come down on the side of science. In other words: the opposite of indoctrination. The job of science isn't to prove things, it's to explain observations. And evolution explains speciation, and the general age of the Earth isn't in dispute.
You're making the assumption that indoctrination is a bad thing. It's not, when its in truth.
ReplyDeleteI will indoctrinate my son in how to THINK, something public schools don't (and won't) do because our public school system is built to "produce a workforce" (as you've alluded to).
By the time he is in the 8th grade he will be better educated than most seniors in high school, like most other home schooled kids.
Yes. And that's because indoctrination IS a bad thing (you were also quite clearly using it in that sense, too - don't try to change it up now); indoctrination is defined as being taught *not* to challenge material or think critically. That's hugely problematic. You know who indoctrinates "truth" ? Dictators.
ReplyDeleteTeaching someone how to think is teaching someone how to think. It's the opposite of indoctrination. And btw, even being able to think critically is somewhat difficult if you inculcate poor first principles. (Like that men and vegetarian dinosaurs - who then became carnivorous after the fall -coexisted in the garden of eden. For example.)
Also: you're part of the workforce. And so am I. So let's stop acting like "workforce" is a pejorative or socialist construct. The purpose of education is to foster an appreciation of learning, teach the skills to further learning and enable independent learning, and then to apply some fraction of that learning to earning a living. People who are gainfully employed are part of the workforce. We certainly don't want people on social services, after all.
Will a homeschooled kid be better educated in 8th grade than most seniors? Well, that depends a lot on socioeconomic status, public vs. private school, state, etc. And also, on the homeschool teacher. It's a pretty rare parent who's also able to competently teach english AND calculus AND science. We choose not to homeschool, but to supplement.
I really wish you would've just looked up the word indoctrinate before making this post.
ReplyDeleteDefinition of INDOCTRINATE
1: to instruct especially in fundamentals or rudiments : teach
2: to imbue with a usually partisan or sectarian opinion, point of view, or principle
Indoctrinate just means teach.
How do you teach some one to think?
You teach them logic. Pure logic.
"And also, on the homeschool teacher. It's a pretty rare parent who's also able to competently teach english AND calculus AND science. We choose not to homeschool, but to supplement."
Actually, homeschooled kids do better than public school kids most of the time regardless of the education level of the parent.
Ya know who teaches public school for 40 years? People who can't do anything else, usually.
Ya know why? Cause people got bills to pay, if you can do better you go an do it. I married an ex public school teacher, I know the unbelievable crap they have to deal with on a daily basis (mostly issues created by the govt).
No thanks. I won't have the lowest common denominator indoctrinating my children in how to be brain dead worker bees.
Even non-religious people are waking up to this and pulling their children out of these drone factories.
And I really wish you'd go back and read your own posts and see how you use that term, bc you're full of it. You like dictionaries so much? Here is the *top* Google result, not a cherry-picked one: Verb
ReplyDeleteTeach (a person or group) to accept a set of beliefs uncritically
You lose the argument when you go to the dictionary. Just makes you look snippy and small. Argue on real merit.
Uhm... I'm sorry if Merriam Webster doesn't live up to your scholarly critique.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/indoctrinate
Seriously, dude... are you trollin'?
Are you?
ReplyDeleteSure, stick w/Merriam-Webster:
Examples of INDOCTRINATE:
The goal should be to teach politics, rather than to indoctrinate students in a narrow set of political beliefs.
Oh, you mean an example of the definitions which I posted which you refuted which I then posted again proving my source?
ReplyDeleteYou're quite the mental gymnast. Is that tiring.