One of the reasons I love Twitter is that I find it a great source of information and stories. People send me links to stories in newspapers across the country and to magazine stories they know will interest me. I got several tweets today with this story.
It is one of the best portrayals of what is taught in at least 19 of the schools that will get voucher students and about $4 million of taxpayers’ dollars.
Every one of these dollars will be subtracted from the minimum foundation budget for public schools, which will be poorer so that children can learn that the Ku Klux Klan was a benevolent society and slavery wasn’t all that bad and the Loch Ness monster is real and people co-existed with dinosaurs.
This is John White’s idea of good education for the children of Louisiana.
This is Bobby Jindal’s idea of education reform.
Friends, the only way this era of idiocy will end is to laugh. Someone said the other day that when the noose is tightening around your neck, it’s hard to laugh. I get that. But when the guy with the noose is wearing a clown suit, it’s funny. There is a novel by Nabokov, I think it is called Invitation to a Beheading, where the main character is behind marched right up to the scaffold, and he stops, turns around, disbelieving, and freeing his mind from the oppressors. And they melt away.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Can you provide any factual information to back this up?
I’d also warn that the voucher schools are private schools. Whether we like them or not, the LAST thing we want is the Govt. dictating what can be taught.
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Actually we do. If you don’t like it. Home-school.
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The link in the article gives examples from the materials being used. You can also type in “Nessie a Plesiosaur ” and get a newsletter called Talk to Action that has the article with screen cuts from the curricula. One the link does not talk about is ACE, Accelerated Christian Education, which Talk to Action does reference extensively.
I saw a few materials from ABEKA Book a few years ago and they were REALLY bad. The books were extremely plain and they seemed to be more like busy work than actual educational materials. ABEKA was started as a home school curriculum but went into the “Christian” schools as a curriculum because those schools often do not hire real teachers or sometimes not even college graduates (ok under Jindal’s law) and pay the desk warmers they do get around minimum wage. I visited a school once that used ABEKA and it was clear that the “teachers” did not know what they were doing. Any time you have 3 year olds standing in line doing jumping jacks for PE there is a problem. Not a few minutes of jumping jacks,the whole class doing organized calisthentics instead of playing! And this was in Atlanta. They are not as backwards as Louisiana and should have known better.
A teacher in one of those schools in New Orleans brought up briefly how bad the curriculum was and said that a colleague at the school told her that a person cannot be a Christian unless they are also a Republican. The teacher who told me this was a real teacher, certified, but she had been assigned to a high school in New Orleans and was afraid of the students. So she left. She had not taught inner city students previously. Therefore, she took a huge pay cut and went to a private.
No, the government should not dictate what is taught, at least not specifically, though their must be standards of literacy and numeracy as well as certain concepts of government and science, but regulating what is taught and also how it is taught is what standardized testing does.
But, in education, as in most professions, there is what is known as Best Practices. Best Practices are methods and materials that are known to work with various varieties of children of different age and ability groups. It is the same thing as what has come out medically about not giving antibiotics for viral infections. Best practices are used in hospitals when patients are turned over frequently or gotten up to walk in order to prevent bedsores and pneumonia. Best practices tell engineers ways to build bridges so they won’t fall down and painters how to mix paint for houses.
One thing that needs to be recognized is that there is a scientifically researched body of knowledge in education. This is why teachers go to college, to learn that science based body of knowledge. And like in every field, that knowledge is updated and changed as new discoveries are made. That is why teachers need to have degrees in Education and why schools that are run by non-professionals are scary.
If this privatization of education continues, we could end up with a whole generation of either semi-literate Americans or Americans who have not been taught history or science, but only a watered down version of conservative politics spoonfed by the Religious Right. They won’t know that there is anything but what they have seen and heard unless they are literated enough to read the newspapers or watch national news on another station after they listen to Fox.
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Sorry for any typos, sometimes I type faster than I think and misspell words or use the inappropriate homonym And I am having trouble spelling today.
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Here’s another link for you……http://www.talk2action.org/story/2012/6/11/102521/762/Front_Page/_Louisiana_Voucher_Students_Headed_to_Schools_using_A_Beka_Bob_Jones_and_ACE_Curricula_Video
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Dinosaurs co-existed with people, and having a constantly churning population of 23 year-old teachers working in educational sweatshops is the Civil Rights Movement of our time!
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There are still dinosaurs on earth: they run the Louisiana education privatization movement.
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Brilliant!
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Ok I see what you are talking about now. Mother Jones?? No bias there. LOL
Let me guess, they have NO problem with the indoctrination going on in public schools though!!
Taxpayers are forced to pay for lousy textbooks in public schools and indoctrination at the expense of academic knowledge and that’s ok for Mother Jones. However NOW they have a problem if this is done in a private school? Where parents make the decisions rather than the “state”.
You have an organization like Mass Resistance who criticize the public schools for pushing a social agenda on kids too: http://www.massresistance.org/media/video/brainwashing.html
Why did you fail to offer this information, Diane?
WHat about all of those errors in those history text books: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/22/professor-approved-virgin_n_976069.html
The question is, do you want the STATE to decide what is best for kids (remember when you give them this power, they take it to the next level and apply it to teachers) OR do you want parents to decide what is best for their kids?
I hear the cries of “FOUL” when the STATE believes they can run schools better than the teachers. Now when parents choose a school that others may not approve of, all of a sudden the STATE knows better.
You can’t have it both ways. If you want to empower the nanny state, empower them. Just don’t complain when they believe they know better than the teachers too.
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Mother Jones does have a slant. But in this case the article recites “facts” from books that students in various Louisana voucher/bible schools will be using. These private schools are/will/may be funded with my tax dollars (federal- lets not q
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(federal- lets not quibble about my residency) I have no problem with parental decision making. I have a problem with you imposing the views of a group that promotes values antithetical to common decency, sense and democratic values. One that I believe borders on hate.
AS for the errors in history books. I agree. For the most part they do have more than a few errors and well- they’re plain boring, dull and uninspiring. The blame for that lies on everyone except perhaps the students using them to learn.That’s why I use hand-outs and primary sources. I also design projects that allow students to conduct reasearch. My solution to that problem.
Lastly, your fixation on the omnipotent ‘STATE’. You do realize that government derives its power from the consent of the governed (us- the people). If you don’t like it you can always work on revoking it. Until then, realize you don’t have to send your child/ren to public school. You do have options. Exercise them.
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When your child breaks his leg, are you going to set it yourself and put a cast on it or would you go to your cashier at Walmart and ask for help? Your plumber maybe? Or would you go to a professional doctor who will make sure it heals right and does not get gangrene?
If you would take your child to a doctor when he needs professional lmedical assistance for his body, why would you leave your child’s education— 13 formative years of their life or more where they spend over half of their waking hours to AMATEURS? Is a child’s mind somehow less important than his body?
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Yes, Mother Jones does have a slant, but if there was nothing to slant they would not have anything to slant. The problem at this point is that the mainstream media has not come out screaming as much as the liberal media has. And the conservatives are apparently fine with what is being done to our children. Just because a group has a reputation for being liberal does not mean it is wrong. You just need to get to the primary materials and find out what is really being said. That is why they have links. Conservatives, the same way. Look at the primary sources. You entitle yourself “mom with a brain”. You have one. Do the research and see what you find.
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Here’s a few wacky items a friend of mine suggested from the public school where he resides:
Don’t have time to list all of the “Wacky Facts” they are learning in our public schools but how about the Constitution is a living document, 4 + 4 = 9 is close enough and if you need it to be exact grab a calculator, and reading informational texts such as how to setup a DVR is just as good as Shakespeare.
🙂
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You know that part about informational texts is being pushed by the Common Core backers, right? The Common Core pushers are the corporate reformers, and on the same side as Bobby Jindal.
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This is really comical and funny, until you realize it’s some people’s truth/beliefs or you teach and/or attempt to teach a student science or history who believes in this and the “young earth theory”. Then it ceases to be funny. But there is hope.
I take great comfort in a young student from Louisana who is pushing back against this abject stupidity. His name is, Zack Kopplin and he is definitely worth following..
He is on FB: https://www.facebook.com/#!/RepealCreationism
On Twitter: @RepealtheLSEA
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Mom I think you left out a word on your screen name. I find it hilarious that anyone would try to troll on Diane Ravitch’s blog. Is it because you are smarter than she is or you have enough looney talking points in your quiver to withstand even the most withering assault of fact, research and logic ? I would LOVE for you to stroll into my classroom of urban high schoolers with psych issues and get them to explain the indoctrination they have been subjected to in Buffalo Public Schools. Are you serious? The only indoctrination they are exposed to comes from a right wing/Christian mental health nurse who tries to preach his talking points which are very similar to yours. Afterward they ask me to go over the things he told them and they are usually laughing as they repeat what he said. You must not have much respect for the intelligence of American kids if you think they don’t know when someone is feeding them a line of garbage. P.S. when there are only 5 comments and 3 of them are yours it’s time to stop talking and try listening for a while.
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Just leaked from the Louisiana Department of Education: new test question for LEAP high-stakes test (thanks to Julian Assange):
1. Dinosaurs:
a. Make bad pets
b. Became extinct 65.5 million years ago (before the earth was made)
c. Walked the earth with humans 4,000 years ago (right after the earth was made)
d. Should have school choice
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If you ever look at a green anole or chameileon lizard, you know that there are still dinosaurs. We don’t have room today for a tyrannasaurus rex, but anoles and fence lizards can take down their weight in houseflies. They have just EVOLVED to a suitable size and configuration for the modern world. Can you imagine how hot a wooly mammoth would be in most of 21st century America or Africa? They couldn’t survive. So they adapted. That is what evolution is. It is changing to suit the living conditions of the world around you. Even the extreme right should be able to understand that if they would just look at history. Evolution is not scary and it is not anti-biblical.
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I completely understand the point you are trying to make, but as a science teacher I had to hang my head. The reality is that birds are the dinosaurs of today, and the wooly mammoth didn’t evolve but became extinct. Yes, evolution is a “changing” but the organisms have to have the genetics already in place for them to survive and reproduce, thereby passing those same genes to their offspring.
I’ve had a number of students leave “testimony” books on my desk when we talked about the earth’s age and evolution in my class, but I never debated the issue with them. Instead, if they wished to do so, I would speak with them about my faith and religion and how what I was teaching did not go against that, but made it stronger. Some of them got it–others didn’t. And we have the Creation “Museum” and soon the “Ark Park!”
I do feel for the students of Louisiana. The part of education that I have always loved is the learning of new, and open, ideas. I fear these students will learn the “new” ideas, but not the open. I do hope that they begin to question what they learn.
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Jindal, the Irritator: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irritator
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HA! HA! Good link!
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I just read where a charter school in Louisiana forces girls to take pregnancy tests, and kicks out pregnant students. Now, that’s one way to control who gets into your school.
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/08/07/647221/louisiana-school-forces-students-to-take-pregnancy-tests-kicks-out-girls-who-refuse-or-test-positive/
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Thanks for supplying that story. You beat me to the punch. Here is the link from Slate: http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2012/08/07/delhi_charter_school_mandating_pregnancy_tests_and_banning_pregnant_students.html Since La. also allows religious charters to use tax money, I am not sure if this charter is religious or not. But if
it takes public money, then this is truly disgusting. What’s more disgusting is what charters can get away with if students don’t measure up to their standards like expelling them if they think they won’t score well on a standardized test.
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Also want to add that Jindal wants to punish parents who don’t attend parent/teacher conferences, but has no idea how exactly to go about it. I think having to spend a few hours watching videos of Jindal’s speeches would be punishment enough. There is seriously something wrong with a majority of the people running the State of Louisiana. One of the Republican state reps was upset after learning that religious-based charter schools also included schools that were not Christian. I think her head exploded.
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I believe that some have suggested that parents be arrested for not attending PTA’s and conferences.
If politicians keep this horse mess up, when the people rebel and rise up, it will make the French Revolution look like a bar fight.
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Quotes from texts that some of the voucher schools will use were just shown on MSNBC’s “Hardball”.
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Thanks for the tip. Here’s the link:
http://once.unicornmedia.com/now/od/auto/3aaae01e-e0f4-439d-aa7a-8d5e3e774105/db6630fb-4bb5-45b9-ba6e-04014bcf7f30/n_hardball_4texts_120807/n_hardball_4texts_120807.once?UMADPARAMsite=17258&UMADPARAMzone=53171
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Thanks for this link. Saved me from trying to find it.
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Thanks for posting. I’ll DVR it.
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And I saw Jindal on a list for possible Vice-President. Ouch.
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He has been flitting all over the country promoting himself. He keeps getting on and off the short list. Depends on who you read and listen to.
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In Bobby’s schools – probably nothing. That’s why I’m thinking of opening up my own Louisiana Virtual Voucher School here in suburban DC. I’ll design a program that will empower and encourage students to chart their own learning events and experiences with minimal adult/teacher interference. As an added bonus, I’ll let them decide how they want to demonstrate that learning. I believe that beats the alternative. Unlearning what they were taught in some of the voucher ‘schools’
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Invitation to a Beheading is my favorite book of all time.
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