there is a controversy about schooling these days. what should we learn in school? should we decrease scholastic skill learning to make room for finical education, or is it good the way it is? this is my last post on this found in "I heard a weird apocalypse theory"
in response to 13linds counter argument.

i understand that you need to be able to be flexible with your brain, but don't think that the books i read are about getting rich quick. it takes years even for them and what allot (not all but allot) of them recommend you do is contrary to what an employer would want you t do. ii easily understand your suspicion, but the encourage you to leave behind a secure job and take risks (the exact opposite of what a good employee should do) they will not gain if you win the risk game, they will not gain if you lose the risk game. and just to restate something, im more towards having more classes that teach you real world economics than against math and physics. if you read books like rich dad poor dad you find out that, no matter how you slice it, what they are telling you is to your own boss, they dont care what you do with the info and there is no big demand for workers so they would not really need to conspire to make us drones. and as for competition, almost all of the guys who right these books are retired (thus how they have time to right the books) the dont care about what opposition springs up to challenge their co.s because they are already set for life.

...


We should learn not Intelligent Design.

I wrote a Paper in 7th Grade on how our state should reject ID because the Flying Spaghetti Monster is not getting the same treatment.

It's fine the way it is.

Well, actually, scratch that. They should teach the English language. Other than that, it's fine the way it is. Why encourage the useless drones to try and rise above their station? It just makes everything much more awkward.


Well, yeah, but I don't think anybody really thinks teaching "intelligent design" [or Because God Said So] should be taught in science. Assuming, of course, the people who want it in science are incapable of thinking.

but what about the people who are above the regular cut of meat? if nothing else, we should at least have a few classes on who to balance a check book, proper spending habits, and how to buy assets. I would like to live in a country of employers not employees. competition is what drives capitalism forwards. and dont pull the old "if every one is an employer, then who are the employees?" there will always be employees! we have never had a shortage of those, and if that ever gets bad we can out source or take in more immigrants.

Intelligent Design is a belief. Incidentally, so is Evolution.

Consider this; what came before the Big Bang? The universe as we know it was contained in a singularity. Isn't a singularity where the laws of physics break down? If you follow that line of reason, then the scientific beginning of existence is in fact, non-scientific. Therefore, how is it true, if science dictates what is real?

Both should be allowed to be taught in schools, at the same time, with the same discretion. To teach but one side of the argument is to leave no choice in the matter. The freedom of religion is a universal freedom respected by most peoples, yet it is suppressed in education. Slight contradiction of that, I believe. Besides, it illuminates the path for future psychologists and sociologists how the human mind works in lieu of religion.

Also, for some reason, context seems to be ignored often. Logic and rationale are taught in schools, but the importance of context is glaring. Context changes the meanings of any statement made. "Don't put noodles on my head" makes no sense in English, but is culturally understood in Italy. "May you be covered in the dust of your teacher" makes no sense in English, but is considered the highest compliment to Jews. Context is so often ignored that it's painful to watch.

How many threads have you made in the last few days?


Kids need to learn more history.

While I think the curriculum definitely needs work, I think the more pressing problem with public schools has to do with overcrowding of students and a marked lack of qualified teachers. When you have one teacher trying to teach a class of upwards 30 students, it is entirely too hard for each student to get the attention they need to ensure they are actually learning what's being taught 9espescially given most students don't want to be there in the first place). I truly think that smaller class sizes would help tremendously. Also teachers need to find ways to make learning exiting and enjoyable. If History had been presented as a multileveled story of intertwining plots, I'd probably have been able to stay awae during those classes, but when you just have a mass of random names, dates, and places thrown at you to remember by wrote, its much more difficult to keep interest.

i agree with neomancer, and also i believe the biggest problem is the teachers themselves. my friend is in college to become a teacher and this is her 2 year into it and from what she says over 2/3 of the class has quit that subject because the course is so brittle and dry that they could'nt sit through it. since i just got out of high school i know that some of those teachers should not have been teaching. either because they just werent smart or they just didnt care. also the scores of the states tests (SOL in virginia) determine if your even able to fire a teacher based on the students scores on the test, so teachers mainly teach for these tests so they dont get fired. and because they are a part of a teachers union, they are ensured job security so you cant fire teachers even if a school wanted to. also just cuz the teacher is given a bunch of data, they could always find some inventive way to introduce it to the children.

I like the idea of a better group of teachers, they need to work harder for imaginative ways to teach.

Matthew 22:21 people, keep religion out of the school system, all of it. Otherwise you can't bitch once government starts gets involved with your religion.

Evolution is a theory and acceptable to teach in class and required knowledge for the federally mandated tests by the no child left behind act. So it has to be in school otherwise the students will fail.

Also, Neo Darwinism is the modernized belief in evolution. Evolution is a probable theory alone.

Isn't it our theory, though? I don't remember reading exactly how God created everything. Intelligent Design, Creationism, all that fun stuff, are our different interpretations of something we don't/can't (depending who you ask) understand. Most teachers tend to teach the Theory of Evolution as irrefutable fact. It's quite annoying, even when you're at least fairly open-minded, to have someone standing there preaching to you how you're the descendant of a monkey, when you don't believe that. I must say, though, some of the projects are fun. In the 8th grade we had to draw a three-step sketch of an animal evolving. Mine was a lobster, it was quite fun. It turned into some sort of large crazy lobster/angler fish hybrid. I got an A, even though the likelihood of that happening by the confines of evolution is nearly 0.

Yes it is our theory making it a religious theory, i am not saying it shouldn't be tought I am saying it should not be taught in government ran institution to honor the separation between church in state. The separation is to protect them from us just as much as it to protect us from them.

All apsects of religion are not specifically God's. I may be interpreting the verse wrongly, but it seems to me to be talking about God's laws/whatever, and Man's. Not necessarily non-religion and religion.

In my opinion, it should be all or none. Unless they can learn to teach the Theory of Evolution, not evolution the fact of all life. That, however, would be nearly impossible.

You're never going to completely seperate people from their beliefs, it's part of being human. If enough people believed Christianity was Truth, we wouldn't be taught evolution, we'd be taught creationism or intelligent design (probably others too). As it stands, evolution is being taught the same way the prior two would be. People always want more than one side to a story, well, then teach all the beliefs of life and how it came to exist as it is now, or teach none of them. Not easy to accomplish.

Going back a bit, usually it's not the teacher's fault their curriculum is boring and plain anymore. The educational system is tightening its grasp, and regulating what's taught, when, and how much more than they used to. I'd assume it's part of the "No Child Left Behind" thing, but I don't know much.

That "What came before the Big Bang?" question is one of my favorites, because religion answers that question so basically.

I like Obama and Hilary for thier changing/getting rid of no child left behind, its an unfunded pointless thing.

It isn't about separating people from there beliefs, no one is saying that. It is about separating the beliefs from the curriculum. I personally believe in the great spirit but I don't go around forcing my beliefs on others and that is what this boils down to, everyone trying to get their beliefs an theories recognized as fact by the government. Other wise it would be a non issue


I say we need to undo pretty much everything Bush did and agree and lit his legacy die.

That's exactly the problem! You can't! The curriculum is being taught by people with beliefs, and learned by people with beliefs. It would be near-impossible to remove the belief of evolution from being taught with the Theory of Evolution. You can't just take out evolution altogether, either. Since genetics an' all that jazz is its foundation, it leads up to evolution.

We seem to be stuck, at least to me.

It is only natural for people to believe a good scientific theory. How about we continue teaching evolution no one is going to stop us anyways, even believe it. Just don't get philosophical about it or claim something stupid like,"because there is evolution all religion is proven wrong." Many religious people are afraid of and even hate science. Partly because of ego but mostly because they fear that one day there religion will be proven wrong so much it is considered mythology.

i think no matter what you say your not gonna instantly believe what the teacher says to be true anyway. im sure that even if they told a kid to their face that evolution was right and every thing else is wrong, the most that would come of it would be for them to step back and look at their own religion and question it's plausibility, which i believe is a good thing because any kid i've met hasnt picked their religion, it was inherited by what their parents are.

I'd be fine with evolution being taught if, like I said, they could get people that don't preach it as the ultimate truth. I always end up thinking "And they complain about us forcing our beliefs on people? At least we don't make people to got church!" It does fill me with amusement, however. Silly close-minded people. You can't prove evolution, not really.

Religions that have joined the ranks of mythology are dead ones, not necessarily wrong ones. I can't think of a way to disprove a religion, except with another religion.

I think their is plenty of evidence that can prove evolution, over whelming amounts in fact. I don't expect you to agree with this, as for the "we don't make you go to church" bit history would prove otherwise. I honestly fear the separation of church and state being broken, nothing good ever comes from it.

The absence of evidence is the evidence of absence. If you can not prove something there is no reason to disprove it.

first of all evolution is a fact AS FAR AS animals are concerned. we have a great big record of things evolving. the confusion hits when you get to humans. we all know what cave men look like right? well the problem comes in with the fact that it would appear that we jumped right from cave men to regular humans, evolution cant explain it. some people say im wrong because tv shows show them a rack of 5 skulls going from ape to human. but to properly represent evolution (which takes a REALLY long time) we would need like ten thousand skulls lining up to show the gradual change. but if you were to do this you would find a gap in cave men (aka Neanderthals) and us, thus the missing link in evolution. no other animal has this its just us.

second of all you NEVER want to mix religion and government, EVER!!! it will cause one of two things. 1. the end of that government or 2 the persecution and all most always the genocide of the religions believers.

lastly we need to properly fund our schools, train our teachers, and shrink class sizes (as in the amount of kids in a class). the teacher problem wouldn't be so bad if we paid the educators that are teaching the next generation properly.

Well... It's not that I hate Intelligent Design... Just don't teach it as Science. Teach it as creationism, like this:


"Some Religions believe a God created the Universe and that it is currently ruled by God/s."

There. Just don't teach it as Science. Same applies to Evolution.

Creationism is a religious theory not a scientific theory and has no place in public schools. You can find it offensive but we are by no means limiting your beliefs in any manner by not teaching them in school. Evolution is a scientific theory with more evidence backing it up than gravity, they are not the same.

*points to above post*

One:
Make it mandatory to learn another language while learning english starting in Kindergarden to encourage an increased vocabluary. Since essentially kids are sponges for any type of knowledge at a such a young age, why not pump more knowledge into them?

Two:
More involving science classes. Let's face it people, America is pretty low on the science scale in the world. If kids do not get interested in the sciences, pretty much this country would be screwed because the rest of the world is attempting to become technologically advanced. This leads to the question of the scientific arts or the physical arts, but that is for another discussion...

Three:
I agree, the program "no child left behind" is stupid, I don't even know what the hell it is.

Four:
There is a need for classes in "common sense" or something because most of the kids in the classes I help teach are plan stupid in this regard. I mean, if the teacher needs you to quiet down so you can study for the important constitution test, that doesn't mean turn up the volume of your conversations!

Five:
Teachers need to get paid more, many of them have a passion for teaching but have the ignorance of the students who continue to put them down. If teachers were paid more, they would have more time to devote to creating improved lesson plans instead of getting a second job to keep a hold onto their place of residence (trust me, I've seen it happen, my teacher was a bagboy at a dominicks!).

I AGREE WITH NOMAD! and this is no child left behind, best i could find on it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_child_left_behind
I personnally think it's not good, not enough funding and the testing is a little much.

1-3 are great, I agree with your ideas. 4-5 are ideologically sound but improbable. I like Nomadic Warrior, can we keep him?

All "No Child Left Behind" is is that they make us takes tests every once and a while to make sure we aren't stupid... But they have such ridiculously low standards it doesn't matter anyway.

Our school district actually do teach Spanish since Kindergarten... It doesn't actually make a difference. We learn how to say

Numbers
Letters
Colors
Animals
Feelings (Mad, Sad, etc.)

They really just teach us all that and the odd noun for six years straight... But they never teach us verbs or how to construct sentences, so all this knowledge is supplementary.

Your right, we need a better Spanish Language class, maybe spanish immagrants who know the english language and a full education, they could pretty much redo what they learn in spanish speaking countrys at early age.

...And our teacher was also a Colombian immigrant...

Really? maybe just up the spanish class info stuff, make it a more important class in school. same with other launguages.

I think back then their reasoning was that our minds were too simple and puny to possibly comprehend...


...VERB CONJUGATIONS!


Dun Dun Dun!

WE LEARNT THEM IN THIRD OR FOURTH GRADE FOR CHRIST'S SAKE!

Really? Lucky you. We didn't learn 'til sixth...

I have no idea, maybe sixth, but just learn in highschool then, do a little more of introduction in MiddleSchool.

There is no need to disprove it. As long as something's not proved to exist, its existence cannot be stated by as a fact and thus cannot be used as a premise to any logical conclusion.

Do you see the flaw in this line of thinking?

The reality is that if you are a cut above everyone else (in any way) you tend to BE a cut above. Either you work harder, pick it up easier or learn how to learn better.

"Life classes" would not be for the people who are above the masses. They would be for the masses.


Evolution is a scientific theory. "Intelligent Design" is just creationism wearing a hat with SYENTZ written on it.

You want to teach Creationism in schools? I don't really care. I just don't want you teaching your theology in science. Pretty much for the same reason you don't teach physics in English classes. It doesn't belong there.


You want to halve class sizes? Double the number of teachers.

Of course, with the zero respect and relatively low wage they get (considering that some of them spend more time with peoples' kids than they do), it's not going to happen. We live in a culture that praises education but scorns educators.


How?

This is a real annoyance of mine. "God caused the Big Bang" doesn't explain anything at all. Sure, Big Bang theory doesn't do anything to necessarily disprove or even disrupt the course of religion but you don't explain nearly as much as you seem to think you do.

Okay, let's set this out logically (with a minimum of sarcasm for clarity's sake). There exists a God. This God is at least powerful enough to create the universe as we experience it. This God is more complex than the universe (because no single being can create something more complex than they are).

So instead of asking us to accept that the universe inexplicably [so far] came into being, you're asking us to believe that something more complex than the universe existed before the universe.

Where the fuck did God come from? Occam's Razor, people.


And I don't remember anybody paying to go to church and be taught subjects.

And imagine if that were true. Would somebody paying to be taught the Gospel according to Luke be perfectly reasonable to be upset that they wasted his time and money teaching Leviticus in that class?

If you don't like being educated in scientific theory then don't attend a class on science.


Yes, because we have a complete account for every single animal in the world.

The so-called "missing link" is not surprising or proof of anything. Things like fossils aren't made very easily. They're very, very rare. There are large gaps in just about every chain. Nobody cares about the chain of evolution for salmon but people who find evolution offensive like to point at the so-called "missing" link.

"What came before the Big Bang?" is a silly question.

If time does not exist, there can be no "before".

Unless time doesn't exist and our conception of time is simply an effective framework to perceive the world.

But that whole set of things aside, that kind of nonsense (not in the sense that it is silly, in the sense that it doesn't make sense, it is beyond comprehension) is irrelevant when seeking to answer a question of causation.

Exactly.

first of all God exists outside the illusion of time. please tell me if im going to fast. outside time. He is, always has been, always will be. the reason people have problem understanding this is because its outside our comprehension. We are from birth instilled with the thought of time being one of those big "It always applies" type of things. Its very simple, he has always existed. thats it. of course hes more complex than the universe! Hes an intelligent all powerful entity that transcends time.


Secondly, no we dont have a complete record of every animal, but the gab between humans as we are today and cavemen is very wide if you look at it, if your going to tell me that evolution (which i believe for the most part) is the reason for our creation, bring me Bigfoot, or at least, something that kind of fits in the middle.

Contradiction.

There cannot be an "always" outside of time. "Always" requires a frame of time as it's effectively a way of saying that something has taken place in the entire frame of time we're talking about...

I'm not going to go into the "Does God exist?" again, mind you, I've had enough of those debates to last me for a while...just saying that you can't use the world "always" if you're talking about an absence of a time frame.

To pass by the religious discussion quickly, I think that it is just fine to teach only Evolution if they state that this is just a theory and as such can still be disproven. There is the possibility that evolution was directed by a higher power. Now off of that topic.

I am boggled to hear people talk about where things are in the world. I have a Foriegn exchange student from Germany, and one of her American classmates asked if that was in Europe near Canada. Later, she took a test to name and locate all the states in America. The only people in the class that got over a "C" were the two exchange students. Another situation, I was moving from southern Georgia to Western Washington State and I had High School graduates asking me if that will put me near NY City. Those are just a few of many situations like that. Geography is barely even taught in the schools any more.

Foreign languages is another topic that has been lacking. I took 3 different languages in school (Spanish, French, and German) but I barely speak any of them. My oldest son is in 3rd grade now and taking a Spanish class along with his normal curriculum. So I would like to think that the schools are getting better, but I think that that is only because I live so close to the Mexican border that half the city speaks only Spanish.

Either we've had a slight miscommunication over what the general thrust of my point was earlier or you've skipped a bit of my post or you've latched on to my use of before for lack of a better conceptual fit.

Now, I'm not saying that there is no God and I'm not saying there is one. Personally, I really do think that it doesn't matter either way (although if I had to bet, I'd put money on not). The main issue I was taking happened to be with the blithe assumption that while science has not offered an explanation for the Big Bang [yet, at least] that the concept of a God (who is more complex than our universe, remember) explains where the universe came from.

Because where did God come from? It's all very well to say that God always was but it's no more rational to claim that than it is to claim the universe simply popped into existence for no reason.

Both of the claims have no real evidence for or against but according to Occam's Razor, the simplest answer is most often the correct one. It is simpler to believe in a spontaneous universe than it is to believe in a God who's even more complex spontaneously creating the universe. The God claim has a whole other step involved. A big, complicated step.


See, the trouble with that is firstly that you're requesting evidence on a subject that the predominant counter-theory has next to zero evidence (then again, how much evidence could really come up in six thousand years, eh?) and secondly, the stuff that connects us? It's all dead. What became us out-survived it.

Thirdly, the gap between us isn't really that large. When you look at them (their skeletons and reconstructions), there is a lot of physical similarities. I'm not sure how many thousands of years we're missing but it was a stroke of considerable fortune that we even found an ancestor so closely related as "cavemen".

I've no idea of the exact number but the percentage of things that die what leave a fossil is ridiculously small. We're talking tiny, tiny, tiny fractions of a percent. And then there are the potentially hundreds, maybe thousands of fossils that are never turned in because people don't realise they have a fossil. A lot of people have old rocks as mementos.

Hell, the "missing link" (probably all of them) could be neatly laid out in the soil beneath the pyramids of Giza and we'll never know because we never dig. Demanding that people show more evidence (because there's a lot more of that for the Evolution side unless God is a real chucklehead) is literally digging for rocks in the ground. Which is considerably harder than searching for a needle in a haystack. At least a needle is made of something different than the hay.


Yeah, but realistically, it's still only a theory that the sun rising is what makes the sky turn blue and be really bright during the day. It could still be disproved. There's just a massive wealth of evidence that says it's probably true.

Like it or not, evolution is the generally accepted scientific theory and it is something that needs to be covered about the same time as genetics. If you cite the Bible as proof that evolution should be kept out of schools, I would suggest you need to keep your children out of schools. You clearly have a problem with them being educated and I'm sure the righteous faith they will have after a bit of homeschooling will be a real boon to them while they're stocking shelves in the local supermarket.

This is not personally directed at anybody, mind. I just have nothing but contempt for Christians who persist in ignoring the word of Christ. Honestly, pay attention to your god.

Intelligent Design is Creationism. It's just our attempt at explaining something we don't understand.


Creationism is religious (thus, not everyone's) fact. No, they aren't the same. The theory of evolution is a scientific theory. Leave it at teaching it like that, and I'll stop caring.


There is no need to prove it. As long as something's existence is not disproved, its existence cannot be denied as a fact and thus cannot be used as a premise to any logical conclusion.

My definition of fallacy may be flawed, but; yay fallacies!


That it is. You have to give us credit, though. It's a pretty good argument. We don't know how everything got created. Attempting to explain it with science helped our cause.

I don't really care. I just don't want the Theory of Evolution being taught by preachers. It's a theory, not a proven fact. Until we can time-travel or live a really long time, I doubt we're going to be proving it. Sometimes it's actually very amusing the way some science teachers teach their belief in the evolution. My 7th grade Life Science teacher was very amusing when he taught evolution.

That depends on your side of the line. "God caused the Big Bang" explains everything for Christians. Logically, it makes no sense and has no evidence. My evidence is what I feel, it's not true evidence, but it's everything for me.

Yep. God exists, that's it. We aren't going to explain it, because we can't past that. He just does. Obviously that makes no sense to you, but it does for me. I don't know why it does, I just know it's right. For me.

Well, people don't pay to go to a church service to be taught things, but a lot of the bigger churches function as private schools as well as churches. Oh, don't misunderstand my meaning, I love scientific theory. I don't love being talked down to because my beliefs have no support. My previously mentioned 7th grade science teacher at least taught like that. At some point I began to find it hilarious, I'm glad I did. Otherwise my personal dislike for him would have been made worse, as it stands, I just didn't like him. Had nothing to do with beliefs. Now I don't really care.

The missing link is only missing because the fossil record isn't complete. I, too, find it mildly annoying when people use its nonexistence to support anything. Oh, no, we don't have all the fossils! Boo hoo. Just because you can't prove it existed, doesn't mean it didn't. The same basic principle applies to our beliefs of God.


Yay, limited understanding (I'm not insulting you, I'm using that to describe mortal understanding). We don't know if time is real, and God exists out of it, or if time is just a system we came up with.


Some might say the gap between the first beginnings of human and whatever we evolved from is bigger than the grand canyon. It doesn't mean anything in the slightest. So what if it's missing? Maybe evolution is just a misguided conclusion to a pattern of similar beings. Maybe we did indeed evolve from a common ancestor with monkeys and we're missing links in the who-knows-how-old chain. Some guy sitting on a cloud could have poofed us into existence with the history. He could have evolved us. There are more possibilities than I care to count. Whatever the answer is, we'll figure it out eventually.


That's what I've been saying the whole time. I doubt that's going to help us get off the topic, I think it's helping the topic of religion. We only feed it by mentioning it.

Oh, I wouldn't say that. After all, you have to have two years of foreign language to go to college. It works well enough he way I see it. It would definitely help to start teaching foreign languages in elementary school, though. Or telling us we'll need it eventually when we're in middle school. I didn't find out I needed to take it until High School.


I'm getting tired restating this. I said it multiple times yesterday and once already in this post; I'm fine with evolution, if they could keep it to teaching the theory. As for citing the Bible to keep evolution out of schools, I didn't know there was anything to do that in it. Granted, my knowledge of the bible is probably smaller than a lot of (Christian) six-year-old's because I only started attending church at around 13. I'd like to think this makes my case stronger, since I'm finding my own version of beliefs as opposed to my parent's. (Yes, singular possessive is correct.)

Silly people. Not paying attention? Tch. Maybe I shouldn't be alone in reading through the Bible.

my bad. i really dont want to argue about religion and beliefs, and your right for the most part. infact i believe that god created all of us through science, including evolution. its just i always get frustrated when it comes to this subject and my fingers start to type faster than my mind thinks and i get carried away. religion is a perpetual argument in which no one can truly win. sorry about losing my head there.

OMFG! WHY DOES EVERYTHING CHANGE TO RELIGION WITH YOU GUYS! NO MORE SCIENCE OR CREATIONISISM TALK! TALK ABOUT MATH OR SOMETHING!

Too much Caps Lock is bad for you. By you I mean your account.

As I mentioned earlier in the topic, you can't seperate people and their beliefs. Anything even remotely close is going to conjure it up.

i'm talking about constantly bringing up religion even when there is none to talk about, and srry about the caps, i'm just P.O.ed right now.

Okay, just to bring back topic, how would you improve math or social studies, personally i like the math, 9th grade Integfrated one(which i took in 8th grade) is perfect for most office owners and any buisness with profit, which defeats the purpose with no profit.