Good news from California

Hmm, but how long before someone uses part (f) to have Huck Finn banned? I think it could have been worded better.

That's great news. Now will other states follow suit...

Wait, I take it back. Part (f) just summarizes another pre-existing law, which hopefully is worded better.

Great! California's working to redeem itself.

Still a lot to do, but that's one step.

@#4--

Yeah, and this is the sort of improvement that California can do on the cheap, which is also good!

It's not a huge step, and I imagine publishers will be scrambling to produce books that fit Texan demands without being blatantly right-wing…

Yeah, but it'll still be okay to omit lots of history because it doesn't fit the right-winged view of the world. California is moving the right direction, but what needs to be done is to all states to put pressure on the publishers to not use any of the books they make for Texas (even watered down versions) in their state. I still call for a boycott (by us scientists and educators) of publishers who are willing to rewrite history to appease the texas board of education.

California used to have a system under which textbook publishers competed for statewide public school adoptions. The selected books were then printed at low cost by the State Printing Office for distribution to California's public schools. Schools got the books at a discount because of state printing and publishers did well because of the size of the California market. Republicans, however, decided that the state was improperly competing with private enterprise and gradually reduced the role and scope of the State Printing Office to nearly nothing. Now we buy our books directly from publishers at significantly greater cost.

I suppose it's too much to hope for the major text book publishers to decide to just not sell their books in Texas, right?

Sadly though to many of the idiots here in TX this will only validate the actions of our Board of Ed. "If California is ag'in it, then it must be good."

Thank you Cali. I still can barely afford to live here, but at least this TEXbook revisionism will be somewhat impeded.

@robert #8

Yeah, it's too much to expect them to not sell their textbooks in Texas because of principle, but if they take major losses elsewhere because of that decision (other states, college campuses, professional organizations) they might make that choice.

Indeed its a start, although I'm not sanguine of the bill passage simply because it is too good of an idea, and good ideas are of late...bad politics.

One of the members of my Toastmasters club works for one of the big three textbook manufacturers. She claims that since No Child Left Behind, Texas isn't the book-shaping powerhouse it used to be.

Here's why.

Before NCLB, there were two categories of state: states where the Department of Education decided which books to use (a category that includes Texas, California, Florida, and much of the South) and states where each district decides for itself. Centralized states generally had a known rotation of subjects: this year they decide on social studies textbooks, next year history, and the year after that, science, and so on. Publishers could predict the books that needed to be polished well in advance, and they knew that large markets were buying. The rest of the country was much more erratic; one county would be buying new math books, and the next county would be buying English books. So, understandably, publishers focused their efforts on larger markets. This, of course, meant Texas and California (and to a lesser extent, Florida). If a book was good enough for the large markets, it would qualify as a 'nationwide book'.

Then came NCLB.

One of the requirements of NCLB is that each state have standards. (It doesn't require anything specific *about* the standards, only that they exist.) Many states, apparently, specify a maximum of extraneous content as part of their standards. Today, books are created by picking from a list of prewritten chapters, so that each state can get the topics it requires, and only the topics it requires. There is no 'nationwide book' anymore.

So, Texas and California don't hold the same power they once did, because almost every state must have a book custom-made.

(Apologies if I missed something important; she spoke on this a couple of weeks ago and I'm working from memory.)

Hmm, but how long before someone uses part (f) to have Huck Finn banned? I think it could have been worded better.

It's already banned. It's been on the banned book list since 1984.

From http://www.banned-books.com/bblista-i.html :

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885)
by Mark Twain
The word "nigger," which appears many times in the novel, was the cause for the removal of this classic from an eighth-grade reading list. In the 1950s, the NAACP objected to the book's perceived racist tone. In 1984, the book was removed from a public high school reading list in Waukegan, Illinois, because a black alderman found the book's language offensive.

If you go to that site, you'll see that a it's actually very easy to have a book banned... sad really.

mxh/Robert:

Textbooks are modular now. Each state gets its own textbooks assembled from prewritten chapters. Portions of the curriculum that Texas doesn't completely pooch can be shared between states, but something tells me they're going to have to write completely new versions of the history chapters for Texas.

What I'm trying to say is this: they already have multiple versions of each chapter. There's no reason having one more should be a significant problem.

It's a start and a good start. In the long run this would also be good for those of us from Texas too. Maybe with less access to real power via Texas some of us Texans can actually hope to have a voice in our own state.

Quick O/T: PZ, your ad sidebars are triggering Kaspersky's antivirus proggie -- they say you've got a Trojan therein.

I work for a division of a leading textbook publisher. Our CEO has promised us that we will not cave to the demands in Texas.

States should just standardize on a K-12 equivalent of OpenCourseWare and be done with it. It's not like science, history, math or English change significantly from year to year at that level, and if they do the state just needs to hire someone to write or re-write the necessary chapters once. This would allow the states to provide their materials in a variety of formats (web-based books if you forget yours at school, for instance), and print new copies for cheap whenever they need it.

And if Texas decides to change history, nobody needs to use their material.

I'd love to think that California's actions might help improve textbooks, or at least prevent the Texas abominations, but it's important to keep in mind that textbooks for elementary and high schools are astonishingly bad, even without the crappy Texas standards. The AAAS evaluates textbooks and gives almost all of them low or failing grades. I tried to use some official science textbooks with my homeschooled Spawn a couple years ago, figuring that they should learn to learn from a textbook. I got told, more or less, that they were boring and confusing, and could we please go back to PBS documentaries, field guides, and Richard Dawkins. This obviously can't be replicated in a school system, though, so I don't really have a great solution.

We have returned to textbooks as we start homeschool high school, but we've moved on to texts designed for introductory college courses, which, according to the Spawn, are way more readable and informative than the high school versions.

California is moving the right direction, but what needs to be done is to all states to put pressure on the publishers to not use any of the books they make for Texas (even watered down versions) in their state.

IMHO, what really needs to be done is that we need serious, high-quality, mandatory national curriculum standards for public schools.

Of course, accomplishing that requires a federal government too large to be drowned in a bathtub, so suggesting it must make me a nazi-commie Kenyan muslim socialist, right?

Hmm, but how long before someone uses part (f) to have Huck Finn banned? I think it could have been worded better.

You are one tough literary critic Gus, if you think Huck Finn could have been worded better.

One of the requirements of NCLB is that each state have standards. (It doesn't require anything specific *about* the standards, only that they exist.)

<headdesk>

NCLB? TSIB.

@ Bill Dauphin #21

Not only do we need national standard textbooks & curricula, but said textbooks & curricula need to be compiled with ABSOLUTELY ZERO input from the jeezoids, faith-heads, political fringe groups, and any other such nutcases. Completely exclude such people from the process of textbook writing.

Home schooling either needs to be done away with altogether or tightly regulated with regard to content. Homes schooled kids who flunk the standard tests automatically go to regular school, and the parents sanctioned (make them pay for tuition or something).

Regarding "teaching the controversy": Teach evolution first and teach it well. Then have a chapter that systematically debunks creationism from every angle.

Home schooling either needs to be done away with altogether or tightly regulated with regard to content. Homes schooled kids who flunk the standard tests automatically go to regular school, and the parents sanctioned (make them pay for tuition or something).

Already done, depending on what state you're in. The states without oversight are the ones that you'd expect, including (surprise) Texas. Several states require standardized testing. Still doesn't fix the school textbook problem, which was pretty bad even before the Texas BOE and NCLB developments.

Excluding people from commenting on textbook standards runs into a bit of a First Amendment problem - you're not seriously advocating ditching it, right?

@25

people are allowed to comment on it all they want. I think he's suggesting only having experts in the relevant fields involved in creating the curriculum (which makes perfect sense) and letting the zealots rage about it in their proper place: as far from our children's education as possible.

Well, how do we take larger steps?

Toleration of stupid ideas is assignation.

How is this any different than what Texas does? As a resident of California who is familiar with state politics, I can guarantee the same thing will happen, just with different specifics. It will be heavily-laden with topics chosen by special-interest groups with only minimal concern with the level of education these topics provide (imagine McDonald's being put in charge of school cafeteria menus).

The best teachers I ever had were ones that used several books instead of one textbook.

@28

"How is this any different than what Texas does?"

they didn't specifically outline a curriculum based on one political ideology with blatant references to that ideology, perhaps?

The best teachers I ever had were ones that used several books instead of one textbook.

I think this is the best solution as well, but I'm not sure how to deliver this to all kids.

My comment above was on the inherently political nature of compiling textbooks. Like it or not, education and science are both political, which is why the right and the theists get so TinglyBalled about it. It's also why many people who comment here get so tweaked at the scientific community's many accomodationists.

Unfortunately I'm not particularly sure how to get out of the bad and overtly right-wing-theist-teach-the-controversy state of contemporary textbooks.

This kind of problem is the most visible one, but after reading Lies My Teacher Told Me, it's apparent that this is just one of many problems with textbooks.

The Texas thing disgusts me because it's another example of how some right-wingers believe that continuing to tell a lie, particularly to children, makes it true.

I'm familiar with the influence of the Texas textbooks board and now understand why so few of my upper undergraduate faculty members used a book to guide class discussions. Instead, they took a wide variety of scholarly journal articles and chapters from edited books that combined the work of many different authors as chapters in the book. Science classes still use textbooks, because the science involved is largely noncontroversial. There is also a body of scientific knowledge or mathematics to be learned and mastered. I am left wondering why the textbook industry has remained centralized with a national model? More than that, I wonder how it has survived.

How can we learn to get along and cooperate as fellow countrymen and women when there are such conflicting viewpoints? What is left as a source of gravity that can pull us together as a group of countrymen and women? Perhaps textbooks and classes could be centered on learning the main differing cultural narratives of our country. Can textbooks be a base of knowledge from the two sides that leads to informative and healing dialog? I don't know what the answer is, but don't we need to learn to have a dialog and be unafraid of that. It is too easy to learn to treat each other as liberal and conservative enemies if we cannot at least have a dialog about the religious and cultural issues dividing our country.

Perhaps textbooks and classes could be centered on learning the main differing cultural narratives of our country.

There is no cultural narrative you can bring up that makes the idiocy that the Texas School Board has tried to do to science (and now history) to make it resemble what we know about science and history.

Trying to explain that as a cultural difference unfortunately gives the lies they would like to spread some illusion of legitimacy.

We could make the federal government so big and strong and permanently rational to make Texans and dumb jeebus-heads heel to our demands. This could never backfire where the jeebus-faces get control of this power, because atheist liberals will always run the federal government, as the electorate will always vote for us when they rationally assess our educational advancements, that are sure to come.

Or, we could let people decide for themselves what education is important.

The country will survive if no evolutionary biologists come from Houston. And im sure former creationists who are otherwise good students can still get into a decent medical/science college if they had an epiphany.

The author of the Gettysburg address had 18 months of formal education. He walked in the woods for days on end reading Homer and the King James version. Talk about home-schooling!

Actually because Texas is so big publishers cater to Texas. They dumb down the books for the kooks. It affects the entire country.

We could make the federal government so big and strong and permanently rational to make Texans and dumb jeebus-heads heel to our demands. This could never backfire where the jeebus-faces get control of this power, because atheist liberals will always run the federal government, as the electorate will always vote for us when they rationally assess our educational advancements, that are sure to come.

The law isn't really that powerful, though you're trying way too hard with your sarcasm, what with Texas being right there in the topic.

The country will survive if no evolutionary biologists come from Houston. And im sure former creationists who are otherwise good students can still get into a decent medical/science college if they had an epiphany.

So it's okay to just let the kids get subpar educations.

The author of the Gettysburg address had 18 months of formal education. He walked in the woods for days on end reading Homer and the King James version. Talk about home-schooling!

Would this be an appeal to authority or an appeal to emotion?

Really, it's way past time to kill off the traditional publishers and to collaborate on freely available electronic versions of school books, especially these days when the cost of a decent computer is far less than your annual textbook costs.

I think we ought to wall Texas off, much in the fashion that they're always calling for some elaborate wall between the US an Mexico. Maybe there could be some kind of freeway corridor to Austin and Dallas, but that's it. All the rest of Texas can stew in its own crazy juice.

Should've directed the federal snark at Bill Dauphin's educational uniformist post @21.

Just once id like to hear an explanation as to why we need to further strengthen the Department of Education when test scores have consistently decreased since it came into existence. How did Americans educate themselves before 1980? Why do we need to increase the power/budget for an educational apparatus that doesnt actually teach anybody anything?

Evolution is both true and important and people who value truth ought to fight for it in the curriculum everywhere. Those who teach their kids lies ought to be discriminated against at places where those lies matter, in this case, university science and medical schools.

In the end though, im not sure how much it matters. Yankee smartypants never tire ragging on the south; didn't E.O. Wilson come from Mississippi? I'd bet 7/10 college educated liberals couldn't explain natural selection from a cold start.

EO Wilson came from a fairly nomadic childhood in Alabama and credits the Boy Scouts of America and in particular the merit badge system with providing him the structure and education that made his later success possible. So basically he was self-educated while keeping a very low profile in public schools.

Would this be an appeal to authority or an appeal to emotion?

Nah, Rutee, common sense, so let me explain it for you. People find a way to educate themselves about what matters to them. The intellectually curious will stuff information into their maw all their lives, national education standards or not.

Just once id like to hear an explanation as to why we need to further strengthen the Department of Education when test scores have consistently decreased since it came into existence.

because correlation is not equal to causation?

perhaps, if you looked into why the dept. was formed to begin with, you might begin to see some value to it.

meh, you're too convinced to bother, I'm sure.

I'd bet 7/10 college educated liberals couldn't explain natural selection from a cold start.

I would happen to sadly agree with that.

now let's see YOU do it.

The country will survive if no evolutionary biologists come from Houston.

and you would be OK with the additional handicap, eh? what about Oklahoma? Lousiana? Florida? Mississippi? shall I go on?

frankly, we don't need you in this fight.

I'd bet 7/10 college educated liberals couldn't explain natural selection from a cold start.

This is stupid. It would be hard to find 7 Teabaggers that even had a college education.

Teabaggers are known for being uneducated and dumb so I doubt if 5 out of hundred could give even a grade school level explanation of natural selection.

now let's see YOU do it.

Certain traits in organisms gives them advantages for a specific environment by allowing more of their offspring to survive versus competitors without those traits. These traits are the result of genetic mutations/recombinations/drift. Genetic mutation is random but the environment that selects for these mutations is not random, thus natural selection is not a random process.

I think I got that part right.

perhaps, if you looked into why the dept. was formed to begin with, you might begin to see some value to it.

Enlighten me, Ichthyic. And then show me how its accomplished its mission, or at least made some progress towards it. It has been 30 years.

Certain traits in organisms gives them advantages for a specific environment

define "environment". define "trait".

allowing more of their offspring to survive

please elaborate, and include and define the term "fitness" when doing so. (hint: it's not just an individual's offspring that matter, necessarily).

These traits are the result of genetic mutations/recombinations/drift.

incomplete. Development?

Genetic mutation is random

define random in this usage. Do point mutations always show a random distribution statistically, or do you mean random with respect to something else?

environment that selects for these mutations

again, define environment. define "select".

meh, I would give that a B, if you spouted that in a high school biology course.

It would garner a C+ in a college freshman level biology course.

a C- grade for any upper division course in ecology or evolutionary biology.

My point is that your evaluation of "liberal education" is meaningless, given your own proposed standard.

Would you judge your own education against a "liberal college educated" person?

if so, I say you would find yourself right in amongst the average.

Enlighten me, Ichthyic.

this is where I say that since you don't already know, your complaints are irrelevant.

...for example, have you ever even actually READ the act forming the Dept. of Education?

start here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_of_Education_Organization_Act

which of the following goals do you disagree with:

# Strengthen the Federal commitment to assuring access to equal educational opportunity for every individual;
# Supplement and complement the efforts of states, the local school systems and other instrumentalities of the states, the private sector, public and private nonprofit educational research institutions, community-based organizations, parents, and students to improve the quality of education;
# Encourage the increased involvement of the public, parents, and students in Federal education programs;
# Promote improvements in the quality and usefulness of education through Federally supported research, evaluation, and sharing of information;
# Improve the coordination of Federal education programs;
# Improve the management of Federal education activities; and
# Increase the accountability of Federal education programs to the President, the Congress, and the public

which of those would be better served by allowing the states to manage these things themselves, given what we ARE IN THIS THREAD pointing out about Texas, for example?

What about Oklahoma's attempt to rewrite the very definition of science itself a few years back?

I really don't think you have really examined your beliefs on this very carefully.

People find a way to educate themselves about what matters to them. The intellectually curious will stuff information into their maw all their lives, national education standards or not.

This is true but irrelevant. The reason why Lincoln could get by on 18 months of formal schooling is that he had, IIRC, a mother who read to him incessantly and encouraged his desire to learn. Lots of scientists, as children, have used their curiosity about the natural world to escape, at least psychologically, from very difficult situations. The problem with much of our educational system is that it can systematically discourage a child's curiosity and sense of wonder and instill a belief that learning is something that occurs when someone in a position of authority is doing something to you. I see it all the time in kids as young as 8 and it's awful. Are you willing to write off all those kids who aren't lucky enough to have good parents, teachers, or school districts? If you're willing to abandon the unlucky, you may well be the Mother Theresa of education.

National standards will only work if there's also a concerted effort to identify and train skilled teachers and pay them more. (Ever talked to students majoring in education? Can be either inspiring or frightening.)

@Ichthyic - I'll have to paste your response into my biology notes for the Spawn next year, so thanks. Now go back to the merino chastisement.

I answered off the top of my head in much the same manner as Id imagine someone on the street would react if someone put a camera in their face and said "quick, natural selection test time!" You'll just have to believe me I know what environment, selection, and fitness mean.

I did get the part right about natural selection not being random, right? Isnt that where most people go wrong?

I answered off the top of my head in much the same manner as Id imagine someone on the street would

exactly my point.

You'll just have to believe me I know what environment, selection, and fitness mean.

doesn't matter now, does it?

I did get the part right about natural selection not being random, right?

yes, selection itself is not a random process, in that you see directionality enforced by the very definition of it.

mutation we say is "random" not because of the statistical distribution of it (which often isn't), but because it is random wrt to the fitness of the organism involved.

Nah, Rutee, common sense, so let me explain it for you. People find a way to educate themselves about what matters to them. The intellectually curious will stuff information into their maw all their lives, national education standards or not.

Certain exceptional persons have overcome a lack of formal educational opportunities, so who cares about quality education? Those who want it will find it somehow.

How utterly stupid. One thing an effective education imparts to young people, ideally, is precisely intellectual curiosity. Education should be approached as teaching how to learn. Texas nutjobs want to make it a venue for their preferred superstitions and prejudices. They should be resisted by all persons of conscience.

And yeah, the country will get along fine if no biologists come from Houston. What another pathetic loser of an argument. How about you forget about the country for a minute, and contemplate a curious girl in Houston, right now. Just one little kid. Do we justify giving her a crappy education because the country didn't really need her to be anything other than an ignorant wage-slave with no opportunities for intellectual development and discovery?

Mattir,

Abe Lincoln's mother died when he was 9.

Education, like most human affairs is an irregular process. There isn't any one perfect approach.

Your comments about discouraging learning are apt. Think of the risk of a national education policy discouraging an entire young populace. Best have a bunch of competing districts, distributed networks, if you will, sharing triumphs and distributing failures, rather than having an all or nothing monolithic policy. Remember, your political enemies will one day be in charge of that monolith, you want them lording over you, or confined to their baptist backwater?

"In a Democracy, aim not for the government you would choose if you were in power, but the government you could live under if your worst enemy was. He will be." --- someone smart

This argument is larger than over evolution. Much of what Texas is fighting over is history, which will always be politically fraught. As you can imagine, local Texas history will be more important to Texans than the trials and tribulations of Eugene McCarthy and other Gopher state luminaries. No doubt Minnesotans don't have more than a few minutes for Sam Houston either. As a country we can survive both.

I forget, was there a relevant conversation before the smugertarian showed up? Let's continue that.

I forget, was there a relevant conversation before the smugertarian showed up? Let's continue that.

[Hubert Farnsworth]

Good news, everyone!

[/Hubert Farnsworth]

So... does anyone familiar with the large publishers actually have an informed opinion on how this will all shake out?

what actual impact will this decision have wrt to textbook content?

will it override the impacts of Texas' legislative "efforts", be ignored, what?

I keep wondering just how much influence these things actually have on resulting textbooks, and just how easy it will be to teach around any specific issues?

Wow Ichthyic you quoted lengthy passages of a bureaucratic mission statement and positively none of it sounded bad at all. Id bet you and could sit down over the Soviet Constitution and pull our hair out trying to find anything terrible in that document either.

Its where the rubber hits the road that these things matter.

I played your evolution game. Be a sport, play mine. Show me where the Department of education has done anything, you know results, evidence, of value with their 70,000,000,000 dollar a year budget. Have the Dept. of Ed. improved American education or not? Show me.

GWB, remember him?, increased the departments budget by some 70% when he was in office. Results? Nada, as far as I can tell. My parents, both fine public school teachers and one more liberal than you Id bet, even said bad words against Teddy Kennedy when he supported No Child. Local educational funding is another matter.

...the comment at 13 was interesting.

this is news to me. has NCLB changed textbook influence that much at the secondary school level?

I guess I never much noticed, since I never relied much on texts for teaching college level courses.

any secondary school teachers that have been in the system a while see that pattern?

My parents, both fine public school teachers

say, now that could actually be relevant.

why don't you ask them if they have seen a pattern shift in textbook publishers after NCLB?

then you might be able to contribute something useful to this thread?

Home schooling either needs to be done away with altogether or tightly regulated with regard to content. Homes schooled kids who flunk the standard tests automatically go to regular school, and the parents sanctioned (make them pay for tuition or something).

Seriously, noooo no no no no.

This would be a gross abuse of civil liberties, and would hopefully be ruled unconstitutional.

mfd512, you are without a doubt the most sadsack motherfucker I have ever run across. Yes, we know D. of Ed is dysfunctional. And so is just about every schoolboard in the frigging country. Did it ever occur to you to fucking ask why, or are you just having too much fun blaming it on the Gubmint?

My favorite teacher from high school used to say he always wondered how the students in his classes got so screwed up...at least until parent-teacher conference night, and then all was clear. The problem is that nobody wants to tell parents they're fucked up. And no one wants to tell parents their devil spawn are lazy, sullen louts. No, it can't be parents or students. It must be the teachers! We'll hold them "accountable"--and that's how we get No Child Gets Ahead.

So don't tell us how screwed up the government is. Dude, it's a frigging democracy. YOU ARE THE FRIGGING GOVERNMENT! If government is not working it is not because government has failed America, but rather because Americans have failed democracy. Figure out how to make it work!

Dilbert I almost agree with your entire FRIGGING post, except the part 'about every' schoolboard, and last sentence.

Plenty of local school districts do just fine in America.

The government is not a social worker's leatherman. It fails because we ask it to do things it cannot.

Dilbert I almost agree with your entire FRIGGING post, except the part 'about every' schoolboard, and last sentence.

good.

now that you agree with the first sentence of that post, could you please toddle along unless you have something of actual interest to contribute?

that's a good lad.

Still waiting on that D of Ed. cost effectiveness study, Ichthyic.

You've made an assertion, back it up.

I'm a fairly radical homeschooler, and even I think that mfd512 is a clueless troll. He has his (education, social status, medical care, whatever) and doesn't care if anyone else gets theirs. Fuck that. Mr. M and I have opted out of institutional schooling for the Spawn for a variety of reasons detailed in other threads, but even I think that free, high quality public education must be available for all children. What sort of monster would figure that some kids should just be jettisoned because of their bad luck in school districts or parents?

Still waiting on that D of Ed. cost effectiveness study, Ichthyic.

still waiting for you to speak with your parents to see if they/you have anything of value to offer this thread.

even I think that free, high quality public education must be available for all children

Free? And you call me clueless. Any idea where your property taxes go Mattir?

Show me again where I said I'm against public education.

Yawn, liberturds are sooo predictable. And boring. And stoopid

One of the things I hate most about looneytarians, besides their economic and historical illiteracy, is their constant proselytizing.

mfd512, please take your selfish, hateful ideology and shove it up your ass. Nobody here buys your anti-social fantasies. We're normal humans, not whiny little children angry that someone says "no" to us.

Tis, your frothing. Wipe your monitor and read my comments. Tell you what, I'll sum them up.

Public education is a wonderful idea and actually works in many localities. (What Works is important in my pragmatic ideology. Discard what doesnt work, like the National Dept. of Education) National standards across a large and varied country are a bad idea. Many teachers (the ones who work in actual classrooms, not the PhDs at their make-work jobs program at the D of E), who politically skew Democratic, agree with me.

mfd512: http://perimeterprimate.blogspot.com/2009/07/history-lesson-about-sandi…

Interesting Link, Phoenixwoman. Thanks for that. Heard of those reports but not seen it summed up in quite that way.

Lots to glean from that history but at least one piece seems to buttress my concerns: the ReaganBushies buddied up with the McGraw family to scare people, influence education, and sell textbooks. A large national educational apparatus makes this much easier. Good luck to the localities resisting it.

OK, so you think education is a good idea but that nationwide efforts to improve education is doomed to failure. So what, exactly, can one such as myself, living in an adequate school district that meets the needs of most kids (even if it doesn't provide services that my kid needs), do to help kids in rural Mississippi get a decent education? Or do we just abandon those kids to some perverted social darwinism loser bin? Should we do the same thing with the Department of Health and Human Services? How about the Environmental Protection Agency?

Haven't you ever heard of the economic concept of externalities? Poorly educated people, just like air and water pollution, can and do cross political boundaries. Those kids in bad school districts who have dedicated parents will do fine via official or afterschool homeschooling, everyone else can work at the local slaughterhouse or something. You truly are the Mother Theresa of education.

mfd512 says, "Show me again where I said I'm against public education."

Ah, well, it's a natural mistake, as you seem to be against EVERYTHING. You haven't had a single positive suggestion about anything since you oozed in here, sadsack. How about it, genius. Got any actual ideas, or are you too cowardly to actually advocate for anything positive?

Liberturds, long on attitude, short on evidence for their theories. So short we can't see it with optical microscopes. Almost like they avoid it because it doesn't back up their inane and morally bankrupt philosophy. And they pretend we can't notice their failure to present anything meaningful.