Who destroyed the University?

@OmSigDAVID,

You are making an understandable error Dave. That I understand it, indeed I sympathise, does not correct the error.

"Challenging authority" is a relative expression. It goes from spelling a few words incorrectly at the lower end of the scale, just above making raspberries at the TV, to ---well---perhaps I ought not to mention the higher end. Yossarion being about mid-way.

It is a non sequitur to derive your conclusion of inaccuracy from your imagined premiss which is also false. Even if I was pissed, which I was not, any conclusions I make are not necessarily false because of it.

You cannot think for yourself. It is impossible. You have simply been programmed differently from the normal due to specific personal factors in your socialisation.

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@raprap,

Quote:

Apparently you didn't read the same link I did.

Anybody who read all through that tripe is short of something to do. 2 minutes were quite sufficient.

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@OmSigDAVID,

Being different is your game Dave. Try wearing your underpants outside your trousers. Or going to a republican fund-raiser dressed as an ostrich.

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@OmSigDAVID,

Quote:

boomer, what did u find in that platform
that led to believe that: "they do not want people to think for themselves" ??

Quote:

Knowledge-Based Education – We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values
clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based
Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging
the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.

http://www.texasgop.org/about-the-party

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@plainoldme,

The piece makes a lot of sense to me - reflects what I saw starting in the 1970's and 80's. The comments were probably more interesting than the essay itself.

I'll stick with what I posted a week or so ago on the Missouri thread - too many programs in universities that don't belong there (engineering etc). Get people back into trade schools and apprenticeships.

I see children of friends doing degree after degree in biology and think that's great for interest but who's going to hire all those aspiring forest rangers. Those jobs were disappearing over 40 years ago.

Universities need to be honest with people about what they can offer - and it's not jobs in academia or professions that existed in the 1950's and 1960's.

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@boomerang,

Frightening that they (Texas GOP) put it out there that they're against the teaching of critical thinking.

It's one thing to suspect it of American conservatives but seeing it in print is simply disheartening.

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@boomerang,

I read that book and raved about it later on a2k.
I worked with an immunologist who had gone to school at Reed - and raved about it. Glad it's still kicking.

A sad thing for me to read a year or two ago was that UCLA shut down its art library. I spent a fair number of hours there - and in that bunch of years I was only an extension art student who also worked on campus and inhabited the art library in my off time for pleasure.
I didn't follow up on it - don't know what happened to all those books.
In years two decades prior, I was a science student and inhabited the biomed library. I betcha that's changed - though I'm guessing for the better.

Haven't read Boomer's link yet.

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@boomerang,

Escellent . . . that's the kind of evidence which goes beyond polemic and offers clear cut proof of an agenda.

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@ehBeth,

It is frightening. What's even scarier is that Texas is one of the largest buyers of textbooks in America and they have Pearson Publishing in their pocket. They pretty much dictate what goes into every textbook available to schools across the U.S:

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/29/arts/textbook-publishers-learn-avoid-messing-with-texas.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

Texas and Pearson: http://www.texasobserver.org/cover-story/the-pearson-graduate

A few of the changes Texas has made: http://billmoyers.com/content/messing-with-texas-textbooks/

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@boomerang,

Quote:

boomer, what did u find in that platform
that led to believe that: "they do not want people to think for themselves" ??

boomerang wrote:

Quote:
Knowledge-Based Education – We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values
clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based
Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging
the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.

http://www.texasgop.org/about-the-party

Thank u, boomer.
I consider myself to be a very, very conservative
(meaning non-deviant from Constitutional principles) Republican.
As such, I have ALWAYS been very anti-authoritarian, since the earliest age that I can remember.
As a person who habitually challenges authority, I strongly support critical thinking skills
and I believe that thay shud be tawt in school.

Looking at the words of the platform, trying to figure out
what woud possess them to oppose teaching that,
I 'm guessing that maybe it is an effort to oppose indoctrination,
as distinct from convaying information ( ? ) I am uncertain that a school
shud be involved in "behavior modification" rather than just delivering information.

I called the Republican Party of Texas and I spoke to its Organizational Co-ordinator,
who informed me that the wording was defective and thay had intended to drop that plank
from the platform at their convention, but that thay were distracted from attention to that
by controversy over which electors woud be nominated.

He said that this plank will not appear in the Party 's NEXT platform.

As Individualists, conservatives usually want each citizen
to think for himself; in my opinion, that includes children.
When I was a kid: I did.

David

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@boomerang,

What does a teacher need a text book for?

1 Reply

@ehBeth,

Quote:

Frightening that they (Texas GOP) put it out there that they're against the teaching of critical thinking.

There are aspects to critical thinking Beth that I verily believe you would not want to know about. Being for critical thinking needs must include them in its agenda. If one doesn't critical thinking is compromised and then it isn't critical thinking at all. It is another agenda.

1 Reply

@OmSigDAVID,

OmSigDAVID wrote:

He said that this plank will not appear in the Party 's ]NEXT platform.

did he give you any indication when that change might come?

1 Reply

@OmSigDAVID,

Quote:

Knowledge-Based Education – We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values
clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based
Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging
the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.

They might have Behaviourism or philosophical materialism in mind. I would be opposed to that for 50 million kids unless the course is run by somebody who has no idea what is involved but knows that the words sound good. The Marquis de Sade, and his hero, Julien Offray de La Mettrie, were both outstanding critical thinkers.

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@ehBeth,

OmSigDAVID wrote:

He said that this plank will not appear in the Party 's ]NEXT platform.

ehBeth wrote:

did he give you any indication when that change might come?

Yes: at the next convention of the Republican Party of Texas.

David

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@spendius,

OK. U oppose the principles of the Marquis de Sade.

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@OmSigDAVID,

Yeah, the Texas GOP backpedaled furiously when people started questioning this. From my understanding they say they will change it in 2014. I think the message will be the same but they'll choose their words with much more care.

I don't really know what they mean by "behavior modification" here. The closest I can figure is that they don't want kids to question things that they are being taught and to challenge their assumptions via the Socratic method.

The HOTS program has an exceptional track record: www.hots.org/docs/NDN.pdf

Quote:

Most importantly, this is one of the few national programs with a consistent track record of
producing gains in Title I students in grades 4-6. This program is the only thinking skills
program designed specifically for Title I students, and that is designed to produce transfer to
measurable gains in basic skills. It is also the only program nationally that treats Title I
students as Gifted and which relies strictly on activities that challenge them intellectually.

There is no content remediation or worksheets. It is also the only Title I approach that views
lack of experience in linking ideas and generalizing as the major deficiency as opposed to other
programs which view a lack of content knowledge as the basic problem. In the view of HOTS,
the shortage of content knowledge at the upper elementary grade level is a direct result of the
student's lack of experience in engaging in the primary problem solving activities that the mind
uses to retain and extend new information

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@spendius,

What are you talking about?

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@spendius,

If you actually bothered to read up on them you'd know that isn't what they have in mind.

1 Reply

Boomer, I'm ignorant about how one texas publisher came to rule the u.s. textbooks. I surmise, just haven't read it all.
Isn't this a kind of monopoly? I guess not, or that would have been challenged and even I would have heard about it.
It's sort of embarrassing this has happened to the textbook world.

2 Replies

Who destroyed the University?

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