Discussion for article #225026
If they teach the book as part of the mythology curriculum, fine. Thatâs all it is, mythology easily refuted by historical and factual analysis. It is an excellent example of how a little bit of information in the hands of someone with an apriori agenda can be turned into pure, worthless crap.
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Move over math and science and make room for a bible study course developed by the billionaire owners of Hobby Lobby.
Hopefully when students get to college theyâll be prepared to study the philosophy of Ayn Rand and Moral Foundations of Capitalism developed by the Branch Banking and Trust Company.
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Worth keeping in mind: nut jobs like Skousen are not just a distraction with their flying saucer stuff and their obsession with sin and other theological marvels. (The guy was Police Chief of Salt Lake City, a hard-line anticommunist, and a conspiracist.)
They also have real-life consequences. Because they are taken seriously by a weak-minded minority of Americans, they create an environment in which bad policy takes hold. The War in Vietnam, Americaâs greatest defeat of all time, was only possible because of the poisoning of the American mind by people of this type.
This is not some low-grade school scandal: this is the serious business of whether America allows itself to have a future.
-dlj.
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Required reading has never posed a major threat to a high-school studentâs intellectual well-being; forcing them to attend a conservative charter school in Arizona, however, can have serious consequences. That said, the best solutionâas with most educational quibblesâis to build strong fundamentals, offer qualitatively superior alternatives, and encourage better performance from both students and teachers. Simply trashing someone elseâs curriculum, for whatever reason, is generally counterproductive and petty.
Big Deal.
My PUBLIC High School (in 1972) REQUIRED me to read Ayn Randâs âAtlas Shruggedâ (and I laughed all the way through it) and lots of other books. Hell, we read and discussed âMein Kamfâ too (also a source of much laughter.) Then again, this was a LITERATURE class where we ALL disussed the pros and cons of a book, and politics was restrained to âCIVICS Classâ back then. So we got a pretty good, rounded education.
Sunshine is the best Disinfectant after all.
If the founding fathers used ancient Israel as a model, as Skousen argues, then it could only have been as an example of how NOT to set up a government, i.e., as a theocratic monarchy.
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Doremus,
Let us all give thanks to the Bush Administration for bailing that Branch Banking and Trust Company out with $3.3 billion. With a B. Free enterprise in actionâŚ
Without that help from the taxpayers they would not have been able to spend the $500,000 they paid to Virginia academics to encourage their use of that course of morality you mention.
-dlj.
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Foreword, not forward.
Charter schools have become the tool of the extreme right right to promote their revisionist theories from everything from evolution to math to science to biology to sociology. Thatâs why the extreme right wing wants to get rid of all public education.Charter schools are purely for profit not education of the nationâs children. Story after story shows how poorly structured charter schools are in giving anything close to a true education. They exist for the profit of the backers and the extreme right wing is only too happy to keep throwing money their way.
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I understand next year, Arizona will try to incorporate the Con & Bagger RepubliKKKlansâ absolute faveâ work which is a life springboardâŚa guide to their very souls: Mein Kampf
Way past time to get rid of these âCharterâ schools. Arizona spends $4800 of my tax dollars PER STUDENT at charter schools. So weâre all paying them to teach their lies, vile and hatred.
Welcome to 'Merica!
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It appears Arizonaâs âmodelâ school system is well on the way to being realized____ an American equivalent of the Saudi Arabian Wahhabi madrasa system.
The irony abounds in Babbleâ thumpinâ Baggerland!
Ya, know, Glen Beck is one of the scouts for team BONKERS.
Forcing students to read anything written by Glenn Beck is promoting disinformation. If I was a prisoner in solitary confinement and a voracious reader, I would put a match to his book no matter which one is is.
He was also fired as police chief, and kicked out of the John Birch Society for being too extreme, even for them.
Skousen serves a strange brew to tea partys indeed.
And once the pictures are colored in, they will have to buy a new batch of books. But BY GOD the children of Arizona will learn to stay inside the lines.