Dover science teachers refuse to read ID disclaimer

You really don't understand, do you? The lady was teaching other people's kids using the State's money. She's free to teach other people's kids (who's parents don't mind) whatever she wants as long as she is not receiving government money to do so. It's really just that simple!

Yes dump the program, dump public schooling, so the taxes are lower, so people have money left over to organize education shared resource programs themselves. No state funding.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

Are you being obtuse? or do you really not get this?The U.S.A has seperation of Church and State - you cannot use public funds to promote one religion over another.Why is this so difficult for you to grasp?

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Yes dump the program, dump public schooling, so the taxes are lower, so people have money left over to organize education shared resource programs themselves. No state funding.

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Dump publically-funded education? No thanks.Anybody who wants to can send their children to private schoos, or they can also home school their children.However, even if they do this, they must also pay school taxes, just like everyone else.It is in the best interests of a country to provide a basic education to ALL of it's citizens, and since our government is secular, we don't indoctrinate people in any religion in public schools.This is similar to the idea that it is in the best interests of a country to provide for the common defense in the form of a national military. Individual citizens, or entire regions, do not always agree with what the president or congress has the military do. Similarly, individual citizens or entire regions do not always agree with what is taught in public schools.Do you then suggest that we should scrap the entire national military program, so that taxes are lower, so people have money left over to organize a shared resource program themselves?Would this work?

The location was irelevant. To give you a chance to understand, Syansu, I repeat: THE LOCATION IS IRRELEVANT!It is against the law in the US to take public education funds and then teach a religious doctrine. That is what the woman was doing and she was violating the law, not to mention common sense, good taste, and the principals of science.She can believe and advocate whatever she wants in her home What she cannot do is take public educational funds and teach religion. ID is religion, as has been found both by the scientific community and several different judicial jurisdictions.

Hey! Are you really Alaska Lieutenant Governor Loren Leman? Sounds remarkebly like him....You cannot be serious! First of all funding for education is such a relative small percentage of what our taxes are that removing it altogether would barely be noticeable. There are other, big big government expenses that are much more costly than education (and apparently have a higher priority).

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Doctor Bashir: "Of all the stories you told me, which were true and which weren't?"
Elim Garak: "My dear Doctor, they're all true"
Doctor Bashir: "Even the lies?"
Elim Garak: "Especially the lies"

I looked up the IDEA program on the web, and it has a definite bent towards being American Native friendly education. It is probable they dropped it like a hot-potato so not to have either Christian-fundamentalists, or nationalist controlfreaks, endanger the status of an American native friendly education program. I think this is just shortsighted of American Natives, cultural destruction is inevitable if you mix with secular government, as past experience has shown. Or rather then shortsighted, it may also be a choice based on poverty.I'm pretty sure that it carries legal difference for something that happens in the home, in stead of on public property. Government shouldn't control what goes on inside people's homes, that is in the general spirit of a free democracy.If you drop public education, it would reduce childlabour, because the volume of inane modern education curricula simply transgesses over into childlabour much by any reasonable standard of what constitutes childlabour. That is the proper role of government in education, a regulator, to enforce groundrules of basic humanity.I think if we would see the rise of some massive private-education consortiums, they would be entirely more reasonable, and more philantropic even, as current Western governments with their incredibly narrowminded progressivism. I shudder to think at some state-of-the-union address by Bill Clinton some years ago. He said that "our twelve-year olds must do better." Such an odd concept *our* twelve-year olds. I don't believe there exists such a thing as our twelve-year olds.Of course in Europe these kind of things are much worse even. After USA children leave highschool, and get to more private education institutions, the educationlevel of the USA pupil surpasses that of the European in a few years, simply because they actually learn what they want, and not what the government tells them to learn.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

Public funding is important for Native Americans as you stated...reservations are economically depressed areas in general. I think most of them work hard to keep true to their cultural roots considering the history of their treatment. A side note here is that Bush's new proposed budget drops 100 million dollars for new reservation schools. Where will private education help them?I hope you will expand on how private education will affect child labor, which I can't see as much of a factor in the U.S.As to private education being more philanthropic, I don't see it. IMO, the public education system has been one of America's greatest strengths by helping identify and educate the capable of all classes and not merely those who can afford it. This system helps to both broaden and deepen the intellectual capabilties of the whole nation which most see as beneficial, and perhaps a few see as a threat.As to your last point, thats the beauty of university. Once you have the fundamentals you can go down the roads you want. The problem for some is the opportunity to get there in the first place.Arkansas Banana Boy

They can try to lawsuit the money out of the government, as they seem to have done successfully in Australia, and Canada.All in all, at most you are arguing that public education is a neccessary evil for the Native Americans. In my opinion a vastly increased private education sector will pay up the tab for Native American education just as a matter of creating goodwill capital.A smart move Native Americans are making is to copyright Native American teachings, getting some basis in the private sector. I think that much more cost will go into copyrighted material in the future, which would be relatively more easy to be philantropic with, then paid professionals. Also there is a large contingent of parents and American Natives willing to partly volunteer, so the cost of private sector education can be quite low.Anyway, I think the basic problem is that this must all go against the Native American mindset, that government can only be trusted in a very limited way. No doubt in some years to come the native friendliness of the education program get's the axe, the "treaties" respecting parental choice in homeschooling found to be illegal.Maybe the private education sector is not ready yet to take in everybody. Maybe the laws of copyright need to be strengthened further still, before business can invest with security. In any case as far as I can tell the popularity of public education is quite low in general currently.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

I consider public education necessary for all who can't afford private education and not evil at all. I have little faith that a for profit system will out of the goodness of its heart fund the Native Americans, urban centers, or any other area without the economic base to justify it.The strength of the public system is that it potentially allows all to florish according to their abilities and not to their starting economic conditions. While it has its flaws, this system allows some of our best minds to transcend class conditions. Cliched as it may be, one wonders how many potential Einsteins are out there busting their butts for 2 or 3 dollars a day.Anyway, away the specifics of the Native American case, I still wonder about your opinion on child labor. It seems to me that a strictly capatalist system of education will only promote child labor as opposed to lessening it.As to public education being unpopular, I think its strengths outweight its weaknesses. The people who don't want to support it can either try to afford private education for their children or try to support the voucher programs that weaken the system by extracting money from an already weakened system. The process of governmental spending to me is to serve the public good where there is no immediate profit motive for the private sector to do so. Education, environmental controls,and protection of civil liberties make no profit, and yet are ultimately necessary to all.Historically education has been the province of the well off. Another advantage of the public system in America is that it compells all classes to mix at least for awhile before they go their seperate ways. This allows at least for some appreciation of how others live as opposed to highly stratified situations one gets in other countries where one rarely bump up against others of different means. An example is the English private system(ironically called the public system there). Those Eton and Sandhurst fellows see things in a different light generally speaking I would bet.Perhaps in other countries where education is still a rare commodity and where the maintenance of a largely unskilled labor force is perceived as desirable for the economy can I see where private education works. And as the Information Age continues to develop I think that the concept of obligate commercial private education will go the way of the buggy whip.ABB

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Of course in Europe these kind of things are much worse even. After USA children leave highschool, and get to more private education institutions, the educationlevel of the USA pupil surpasses that of the European in a few years, simply because they actually learn what they want, and not what the government tells them to learn.

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I am a European. Please offer your source for this statement or retract it.In Irish universities, first-year students choose their course to start with, i.e. I chose Earth Science. My first two years in university was spent getting a thorough grounding in this subject before I specialised in geology. Obviously, we do not have a major or minor system; once you chose your course, you must take the modules relevent to your course. You are also expected to take a certain number of basic modules - because I entered the faculty of Science, I, like every other science student regardless of their course, had to take chemistry or physics, and biology.Secondary schools are the same in that they concentrate on attaining a basic education in a wide range of subjects, rather than allowing students to focus on a few chosen areas. So, when I left school to go to college, I had a good education in several languages, several science subjects, mathematics and geography. I have yet to understand why the U.S. does it differently.If you mean that the government wants us to learn about a wide range of subjects, then yes, we learn what they want. I fail to see how this is a bad thing.The Rockhound

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Of course in Europe these kind of things are much worse even. After USA children leave highschool, and get to more private education institutions, the educationlevel of the USA pupil surpasses that of the European in a few years, simply because they actually learn what they want, and not what the government tells them to learn.

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I too would like to see evidence for this claim - can you explain to me where in the UK system (and the irish for IRH), the govt. tells us what to learn.

I don't know about other places in the US but you pretty much just described the exact process that I went through for my education. The US in general does have some problems though mainly in the requirements in secondary language and arts. Also, it seems like there is a little too much emphasis placed on the individual motivation of the student to do well which makes a high school diploma relativly worthless in the job market. My diploma which constituted an education in calculus, music, basic computer programming, spanish, etc was equivalent to someone who finished their senior year in basic math and who barely knows how to read and write in their own language. The system allowed me to achieve more as long as I supplied my own motivation but did not require much of anything substantial.

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By the way, for a fun second-term drinking game, chug a beer every time you hear the phrase, "...contentious but futile protest vote by democrats." By the time Jeb Bush is elected president you will be so wasted you wont even notice the war in Syria.
-- Jon Stewart, The Daily Show

I was told that in the US students do fewer subjects that they pick themselves. In comparison, Irish students can only choose very few of their subjects, and have to do a certain number of what are considered fundamental sunjects, like Maths, English and Irish.Maybe I was told wrong.This message has been edited by IrishRockhound, 02-15-2005 15:00 AM

Was this a mistype?: Isn't this the same thing? Perhaps you can clarify.In any case, in the US educational opportunities really seem to vary from district to district. I was able to take advanced science courses like organic chemistry at my public high school, courses not available at all public schools.Greater than half of high school courses were more or less predetermined for me, though I could choose what level of difficulty within those courses (I chose to take AP Calculus while others (in the vocational track) filled the same requirement with prealgebra.Truely "elective" courses were relatively few.