Our state board of education director: "What good does it do to put a Chinese story in an English book? That's not going to help you master ... English. So you really don't want Chinese books with a bunch of crazy Chinese words in them. Why should you take a child's time trying to learn a word that they'll never use again?"
I actually think this is a great argument - if you're a student. How many times have you heard a high school student bitch about have to learn trigonometry, because they'll never use it again? I'm a lawyer; I never use trigonometry. Think of all that time I wasted learning! Or history - The Executive apparently doesn't need to learn from it; why should we? Who needs spelling tests when our computers have spell-check? And "Science." Really. Who needs science? After the rapture, none of us are going to have to worry about biography or oceanography or kinesiology or astronomy or anthropology or any of that crap.
We just needs to learn how to pump gas and point guns so that America can be free.
Showing posts with label education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label education. Show all posts
Monday, March 24, 2008
Friday, September 21, 2007
The Bitter with the Sweet
One of the downsides to supporting First Amendment rights is that you need to support them for everyone. This, of course, is part of what leads people to thinking groups like the ACLU are evil, because they dare to take up causes for oppressed groups or demographics who lack the means to represent themselves. But I digress.
The particular incident to which I refer involves public schools and students therein. It seems a school in New Jersey instituted a mandatory school uniform policy. A couple students took offense to said policy. Those students then went to school wearing "buttons depicting a Hitler Youth assembly" to protest the policy. The school district did not care for such a protest, and the school board, in their infinite wisdom, wrote a letter to the children's parents threatening to suspend the students because the district found the buttons objectionable and offensive (a bit of irony, one might suggest, since the students were objecting to school uniforms and the buttons depicted students in uniforms). The parents then filed suit against the school district.
Now the judge at the injunction hearing said something that is very important for school districts (and others) to hear: "A student whose protected expression is stifled suffers an injury that cannot be undone."
It is important to note that the students depicted in the picture were innocuous (I wouldn't be surprised to read that one or more of the students' parents were lawyers); there were no markings indicating the boys in the picture were Nazi children, and this was a key point in the case. The judge noted that if there were swastikas or confederate flags, or something similarly inflammatory, that would be different. To that end, he cited Tinker v. Des Moines Indep. Cmty. Sch. Dist., 393 U.S. 503 (1969), "A student may not be punished for merely expressing views unless the school has reason to believe that the speech of expression will 'materially and substantially disrupt the work and discipline of the school (emphasis mine).'" There was nothing the school district presented (or could probably present) that could show how a button depicting boys sitting at desks would disrupt the school.
Now, I think this was the right decision. While I support the idea of school uniforms (I really don't see them as functionally any different than school clothes and after school clothes like we had as children), I believe that a student does have a right to voice his objection to the same. To teach children the concept of freedom (or do we? Is civics covered in No Child Left Behind?) while denying them the same is the ultimate in hypocrisy.
The particular incident to which I refer involves public schools and students therein. It seems a school in New Jersey instituted a mandatory school uniform policy. A couple students took offense to said policy. Those students then went to school wearing "buttons depicting a Hitler Youth assembly" to protest the policy. The school district did not care for such a protest, and the school board, in their infinite wisdom, wrote a letter to the children's parents threatening to suspend the students because the district found the buttons objectionable and offensive (a bit of irony, one might suggest, since the students were objecting to school uniforms and the buttons depicted students in uniforms). The parents then filed suit against the school district.
Now the judge at the injunction hearing said something that is very important for school districts (and others) to hear: "A student whose protected expression is stifled suffers an injury that cannot be undone."
It is important to note that the students depicted in the picture were innocuous (I wouldn't be surprised to read that one or more of the students' parents were lawyers); there were no markings indicating the boys in the picture were Nazi children, and this was a key point in the case. The judge noted that if there were swastikas or confederate flags, or something similarly inflammatory, that would be different. To that end, he cited Tinker v. Des Moines Indep. Cmty. Sch. Dist., 393 U.S. 503 (1969), "A student may not be punished for merely expressing views unless the school has reason to believe that the speech of expression will 'materially and substantially disrupt the work and discipline of the school (emphasis mine).'" There was nothing the school district presented (or could probably present) that could show how a button depicting boys sitting at desks would disrupt the school.
Now, I think this was the right decision. While I support the idea of school uniforms (I really don't see them as functionally any different than school clothes and after school clothes like we had as children), I believe that a student does have a right to voice his objection to the same. To teach children the concept of freedom (or do we? Is civics covered in No Child Left Behind?) while denying them the same is the ultimate in hypocrisy.
Saturday, September 15, 2007
The wrong kind of ged
One of my favorite Cheers episodes revolved around Cliff going in for an appendectomy. After none of the Cheers gang comes to visit, he decides it's because of his obnoxious behavior, and decides to try to change. In order to fix himself, he seeks out electroshock therapy, and tests it out at the bar, where, of course, hilarity ensues, including a scene where he has the electroshock buzzer, points it at the therapist, and then, shocks himself - because the electrodes are still connected to him. You have to be there - it's funny. But it was funny because it's what he asked for.
It would be a completely different story if I took my kid to a school and that school "handled" their discipline problems by electrocuting them. I would have a bit of a serious problem with that. But, apparently, that is the approach of one school - to shock kids into behaving using a "Graduated Electronic Decelerator" or ged. This is disturbing to me, and I'm not surprised one of the parents filed a lawsuit against the Rotenberg Center. You can read pieces of the article here, an education-oriented blog that I happened upon yesterday while searching around. I'm also not surprised, though, that there are parents who not only laud the program, but are there to defend it in the wake of the suit.
I won't go into any detail - you'll have to read the article yourself, but it's shocking, if you'll pardon the pun.
It would be a completely different story if I took my kid to a school and that school "handled" their discipline problems by electrocuting them. I would have a bit of a serious problem with that. But, apparently, that is the approach of one school - to shock kids into behaving using a "Graduated Electronic Decelerator" or ged. This is disturbing to me, and I'm not surprised one of the parents filed a lawsuit against the Rotenberg Center. You can read pieces of the article here, an education-oriented blog that I happened upon yesterday while searching around. I'm also not surprised, though, that there are parents who not only laud the program, but are there to defend it in the wake of the suit.
I won't go into any detail - you'll have to read the article yourself, but it's shocking, if you'll pardon the pun.
Friday, September 14, 2007
Maybe I should start reading the Galveston County Daily News
Or at least read a few more Michael A. Smith articles. What he wrote regarding the new Texas Religious Viewpoints Antidiscrimination Act is spot on. I don't think I could have said it any better, or with any better placed sarcasm.
From the article:
Read the article.
From the article:
Texas House Bill 3678 is an important law. It's meant to prevent religious students from being dragged off to gulags by federal marshals for such crimes as praying over cafeteria hotdogs and saying "I love Jesus" in class. The trouble is, such never happens anywhere except in the mythological world of religious conservatives, and yet the law also applies to those of us living in the real world.But wait; he goes on:
Proponents say the bill clarifies studetns' rights under the U.S. Constitution to express personal religious beliefs at school. In the mythological world of religious conservatives, those rights routinely are trampled on by roving bands of ACLU lawyers and anti-religious educators. Pressed for examples, they provided two lawsuits filed in the past few years. Considering there are about 1100 Texas school districts, that's hardly an epidemic of litigation.He then gets to the crux of the problem and says what many have been trying to say for so long:
What the Supreme Court understood in 2000, but our lawmakers still don't get, is the other half of the expression exchange. It's not just a matter of who gets to speak but who is compelled to sit there, captive in the classroom or auditorium or stadium, and listen.Now people will probably say that there's nothing "making" these students stay there; that they don't have to go to the football games, and can leave the assemblies, but as any of you have ever been in high school probably know, that's not just easier said than done, it's taking the fish out of the fishbowl while everyone is watching - and remembering. This new law results in forced coercion of religious beliefs and, since the school district gets to pick who will be giving the sermons, will result in state endorsement of religion - which of course, is unconstitutional. At least, until this comes up on Cert in Scalia's court...
Read the article.
Saturday, June 16, 2007
Leaving all the other children behind
The state's Constitution says, "no public money or property shall be appropriated for or applied to any religious worship, exercise, or instruction," and elsewhere bars the use of public funds "in aid of ... any private or sectarian school."
The program allows government-issued vouchers, paid for out of government tax dollars paid from the state's treasury, to be used at parochial schools for education.
The judge hearing the case decided that the program was not a violation of the Constitution. Of course. The logic behind the decision was that the funds were for the benefit of the parents, not the schools, and that the parents had the choice as to whether or not to use the funds.
Of course this is nonsense. The fact is, government funds are being used to fund private education for a few students, while stripping those same funds from the masses of students who don't qualify for the vouchers. The judge and the defendants take the position that the vouchers do not qualify as government funds because they are provided to the parents, but in actuality, the parent is little more than a holding company for the check between the school and the state. The parent has the choice of what private school to enroll his or her child in (perhaps), but the funds are not to be used to pay for parochial education, per the constitution.
Consider this - these vouchers are for education - in other words, there is no other way for the parents to use the funds except to pay for private school. They have no property right in the money, they have a property right in the education. If they choose not to spend the voucher on private school, they may not use the funds for anything else. There is no real way to view this other than a government check for private education, and in the majority of cases, that equates to a religious education. It strikes me funny that the judge somehow managed to convince herself that this in no way violated the First Amendment or the Arizona Constitution.
I'm not opposed to parochial education, and I'm not opposed to a voucher program, per se. I think everyone should have the right to attend private school if they want, at their own expense. However, I am opposed to a program where the state gives money to some individuals at the expense of the majority of individuals so that those students don't have to pay for a religious education (and resulting in fewer funds to help the majority of students left behind). I think any program that results in a masked government funding program for religious education is violative of the First Amendment, and in this case, the state's constitution, and that this needs to not happen.
The program allows government-issued vouchers, paid for out of government tax dollars paid from the state's treasury, to be used at parochial schools for education.
The judge hearing the case decided that the program was not a violation of the Constitution. Of course. The logic behind the decision was that the funds were for the benefit of the parents, not the schools, and that the parents had the choice as to whether or not to use the funds.
Of course this is nonsense. The fact is, government funds are being used to fund private education for a few students, while stripping those same funds from the masses of students who don't qualify for the vouchers. The judge and the defendants take the position that the vouchers do not qualify as government funds because they are provided to the parents, but in actuality, the parent is little more than a holding company for the check between the school and the state. The parent has the choice of what private school to enroll his or her child in (perhaps), but the funds are not to be used to pay for parochial education, per the constitution.
Consider this - these vouchers are for education - in other words, there is no other way for the parents to use the funds except to pay for private school. They have no property right in the money, they have a property right in the education. If they choose not to spend the voucher on private school, they may not use the funds for anything else. There is no real way to view this other than a government check for private education, and in the majority of cases, that equates to a religious education. It strikes me funny that the judge somehow managed to convince herself that this in no way violated the First Amendment or the Arizona Constitution.
I'm not opposed to parochial education, and I'm not opposed to a voucher program, per se. I think everyone should have the right to attend private school if they want, at their own expense. However, I am opposed to a program where the state gives money to some individuals at the expense of the majority of individuals so that those students don't have to pay for a religious education (and resulting in fewer funds to help the majority of students left behind). I think any program that results in a masked government funding program for religious education is violative of the First Amendment, and in this case, the state's constitution, and that this needs to not happen.
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
On Intelligent Design
Last year, I took a seminar class called "education law." I loved that class, so much, in fact, that part of me wanted to become an education law lawyer. Maybe I still want to, I don't know.
Anyway, my paper earned me a B+ in the class, which may have been a little higher than I deserved; I wish I'd have put in a little more time to make a stronger paper. Being that I think many people don't understand the idea of Intelligent Design, or why people are opposed to its teachings, I thought I would do a piece by piece posting on my blog. So, without further ado, here is the introduction, and I apologize in advance for the cites:
Anyway, my paper earned me a B+ in the class, which may have been a little higher than I deserved; I wish I'd have put in a little more time to make a stronger paper. Being that I think many people don't understand the idea of Intelligent Design, or why people are opposed to its teachings, I thought I would do a piece by piece posting on my blog. So, without further ado, here is the introduction, and I apologize in advance for the cites:
In 1927, John Thomas Scopes went on trial for teaching that humans evolved from monkeys. In what was a very controversial issue, the Supreme Court decided that the state was not wrong by refusing to allow the instruction of evolution in public schools. Though
This paper will discuss the history of Intelligent Design in schools, from its roots in creationism through creative science up to intelligent design. It will explain the tests used to determine whether or not an Intelligent Design program violates the Establishment Clause, how the country reached the position it has regarding intelligent design, as well as where Intelligent Design might stand in Texas. Finally, it will offer a proposed curriculum that incorporates intelligent design into public education while surviving First Amendment muster. First, we will discuss the Constitutionality of teaching evolution.
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