Category Archives: Education

SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE: Zinnia Jones / “Governor Bryant, There Is No “Non-Denominational” School Prayer”

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“Without school-sponsored prayer, students are still free to pray on their own while in school. But where school prayer is mandated, students from all walks of life have often been required to acknowledge an “Almighty God” or “Heavenly Father”, whether through regulation or just social pressure. Such an arrangement is clearly antithetical to genuine religious freedom in schools.”

Video transcript: http://freethoughtblogs.com/zinniajones/2012/06/governor-bryant-there-is-no-n…

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EVOLUTION: In U.S., 46% Hold Creationist View of Human Origins

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The Most Religious Americans Are Most Likely to Be Creationists

Majority of Republicans Are Creationists

Those With Postgraduate Education Least Likely to Believe in Creationist Explanation

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APHORISM: “On Presidential Prerequisites” / Madison S. Hughes

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By Madison S. Hughes (05.22.2012)

Reality Check! During a press conference at the 2012 Chicago NATO Summit President Obama has finally spoken truth to the long-standing myth that executive business experience brings added value to the Presidency as he said, “when you’re president, as opposed to the head of a private equity firm, then your job is not simply to maximize profits. Your job is to figure out how everybody in the country has a fair shot.” Do not for one New York second believe that he, or any other political puppet of the corporate state, is not on the former sides of the conditionals in the post title. He also blew a whole in the myth of military experience being a significant factor in execution of Commander-in-chief duties (puns intended). Do not for one New York second believe that he, or any other political puppet of the corporate state, is not on the sides of the military industrial complex either. Need we discuss the industrial police state . . . neither did I.

EDUCATION: Op-Ed / Open letter to High School Grads

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Dear graduating senior,

I am begging your pardon for a somber reflection amid the joy of accomplishment: not to be a wet rag on the festivities of graduation, but a bright light on the realities of post-secondary education.

[…]

If you haven’t posted a good academic performance in high school, don’t believe a university, its leadership, advertisements or admissions officers who co-sign your promissory note with no responsibility for its payment obligation. They need paying students.

Stoking a deceitful dream on life support — an underappreciated, overfinanced, media-hyped charade — is the real deception, and the weight falls on your back, not theirs.

A shameful, elaborate sham, when one out of two college graduates this year are unemployable in their chosen field.

Look carefully at the costs and benefits of a university education. University officials may not tell you the truth: Enrollments could drop. Bankers will not tell you the truth: Interest income will fall off. Elected officials will not tell you the truth: Elections will be lost. Listen to those really concerned for you carefully.

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EDUCATION: How the Conservative Worldview Quashes Critical Thinking

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. . . High-stakes testing is an artifact of the conservative belief that education is about acquiring a required body of knowledge that’s been determined by experts. If it’s not in the book, you don’t need to know it. And the ultimate outcome — the purpose of this whole process — is to graduate with a credential that will certify your acceptability to the established hierarchies of the economic world.

In the conservative model, critical thinking is horrifically dangerous, because it teaches kids to reject the assessment of external authorities in favor of their own judgment — a habit of mind that invites opposition and rebellion.

[…]

Given this reality, the college-as-job-training model the conservatives are promoting looks patently insane. Subjects like logic and philosophy, anthropology and rhetoric, foreign languages and history provide the mental flexibility, deep perspective, and sharp critical thinking skills that allow one to make one’s own way on unfamiliar landscapes, a skill that’s useful when the world keeps changing around you. People with rich liberal arts backgrounds are also far better prepared for leadership roles, and better positioned to recognize and seize on whatever opportunities fate throws their way.

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It’s obvious that stripping these mind-expanding fripperies out of the curriculum — as conservatives are proposing, often with no push-back at all from liberals — serves the narrow, functional conservative view of education and citizenship very well.

[…]

The conservatives are not wrong: for 150 years, the schools have been the leading promoter and disseminator of progressive values. It’s precisely because they understand the power of education to preserve democracy that they’re now doing their best to dismantle that system, and replace it with one that produces followers, subjects and serfs.

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The Wretchedness of the U.S.’s Educated Workforce

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In the 1970s and 1980s, the US led the world on college enrollment. In fact, since the passing of the GI bill in 1944, America had been forging a path. That bill led to 2.2 million American infantrymen attending university in the 12 years in was in effect.

But a generation later, the US hasn’t changed at all, while the rest of the developed world has more or less caught up with it – and some of its key competitors have overtaken it.

The country could once boast the best educated workforce in the world. No longer.

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