Sep 19, 2009
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BONUS: Whacko blogger is upset by poor treatment of practical virgin:
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56 year old, alcohol awareness, deborah parish, health, issues, p.e., school board, texas, texas education agency, virgin
“USA! USA! USA!”
75 Percent of Oklahoma High School Students Can’t Name the First President of the U.S.
Updated: Sep 17, 2009 8:30 AM PDT
OKLAHOMA CITY — Only one in four Oklahoma public high school students can name the first President of the United States, according to a survey released today.
The survey was commissioned by the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs in observance of Constitution Day on Thursday.
Brandon Dutcher is with the conservative think tank and said the group wanted to find out how much civic knowledge Oklahoma high school students know…
“They’re questions taken from the actual exam that you have to take to become a U.S. citizen,” Dutcher said.
A thousand students were given 10 questions drawn from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services item bank. Candidates for U.S. citizenship must answer six questions correctly in order to become citizens.
About 92 percent of the people who take the citizenship test pass on their first try, according to immigration service data. However, Oklahoma students did not fare as well. Only about 3 percent of the students surveyed would have passed the citizenship test.
Dutcher said this is not just a problem in Oklahoma. He said Arizona had similar results, which left him concerned for the entire country.
Comments Off 3 percent, america, citizenship, first president, george washington, high school, immigrants, oklahoma, patriotic, students, test, united states
This head-scratching started with digby’s post about a Santa Ana, CA, judge’s ruling. A Christian student in a Mission Viejo public school history class felt insulted by the teacher’s comments, felt they disparaged his beliefs. The student recorded the comments and filed a suit alleging that they violated the first amendment.
How is that possible? Because of the amendment’s establishment clause: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion“:
The establishment clause has generally been interpreted to prohibit 1) the establishment of a national religion by Congress, or 2) the preference of one religion over another or the support of a religious idea with no identifiable secular purpose. The first approach is called the “separationist” or “no aid” interpretation, while the second approach is called the “non-preferentialist” or “accommodationist” interpretation. The accommodationist interpretation prohibits Congress from preferring one religion over another, but does not prohibit the government’s entry into religious domain to make accommodations in order to achieve the purposes of the Free Exercise Clause.
So this means neither in support nor against the establishment of any religion, as far as I can tell (legal experts, feel free to jump in and tweak this assessment if it’s required). This would also include someone, a government official, from even saying ‘Your religion makes no sense.’ Or, ‘You Voodoo guys are out of your minds.’ As a government employee, it toys with what the government could presume to establish (to favor: ‘I dunno–but not yours, that’s for sure.’)
Okay, now the ruling:
California: Ruling Against Anti-Creationism Teacher
A federal judge has ruled that a history teacher at a Southern California public high school violated the First Amendment when he called creationism “superstitious nonsense” in a classroom lecture. The judge, James Selna, issued the ruling after a 16-month legal battle between a student, Chad Farnan, and his former teacher, James Corbett. Mr. Farnan’s lawsuit said Mr. Corbett had made more than 20 statements that were disparaging to Christians and their beliefs. The judge found that Mr. Corbett’s reference to creationism as “religious, superstitious nonsense” violated the First Amendment’s establishment clause. Courts have interpreted the clause as prohibiting government employees from displaying religious hostility. Mr. Corbett teaches at Capistrano Valley High School.
Okay–it’s not the craziest interpretation of the first amendment, at least on its face. This is the crazy part: Creationists passionately swear that Creationism is pure Science. Otherwise they could never ask it be considered for public school, right? We’d be right back to breaking the same establishment clause. The Christian kids are taught it as a ‘science’, but then they walk into public school and–presto–it’s a ‘belief’. How’s that for nuts? Mind you–of all the comments the teacher made, only the one about Creationism was found to violate the first amendment, and it was the only reason the suit was won by the plaintiff.
So public school teachers, when a student wants to discuss Creationism–can you, constitutionally? If you attack it as Bad Science, are you violating the establishment clause? Do you have to ask if a student believes in it as Religion or considers it to be Science? What if they say they ‘believe it’ either way? What if two students want to talk about it, but each has a different ‘belief’? You could end up engaging only one of them ‘legally’ for the identical discussion.
This is double-brain-melt crazy.
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UPDATE: Some pretty good commentary on this over at Oxdown Gazette.
Comments Off constitution, creationism, discussion, establishment clause, first amendment, lawsuit, public education, science, teachers
Kentucky High School innovation:
New class brings history home to students
Ernest Walker wasn’t expecting much when he first walked into his ninth-grade civics class this year at Iroquois High School — boring textbooks, droning lectures and lots of memorization about historical dates and figures.
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But the 15-year-old soon found himself debating 
about how genocide became state policy in a democratic country like Germany, what society was like leading up to the Holocaust and the civil-rights movement, and the importance of being a leader vs. a follower.
“The discussions we have are so interesting that you can’t help but participate,” he said. “It’s really a fun class; I’ve learned so much already.”
The course — Exploring Civics: Facing History and Ourselves — is a new offering this year for freshmen in Jefferson County Public Schools that has teachers and students raving about the hands-on lessons and discussions about tolerance, social justice and civic participation.
“Students are engaged in a social studies class in a way I have never seen them engaged before,” said Seth Pollitt, who has taught high school social studies for three years at Iroquois.
Superintendent Sheldon Berman, who pushed for the new class, calls it “the single best piece of curriculum that I know of because of its impact on students and its level of sophistication.”
“Tolerance” replaces civic history class in Jefferson County
A Courier-Journal article today announced that 9th graders in Jefferson County schools will be required to learn “tolerance” in the place of regular history and civics curriculum. While on its face the coverage of the holocaust in the course is important, questions remain about who gets to define what “tolerance” is for the students.
Comments Off civics, family matters, high school, holocaust, james dobson, jefferson county, kentucky, public education
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