Hi John: I’d like to propose a third option. Given that I know almost nothing about the regulations schools must follow, and the certification process (does the state monitor the curriculum or just state standard test scores, or both, to certify a school?), my proposal might be easily discounted. However, I think, if it is viable, a third option should be considered. How about…An alternate public school teaches a “balanced” curriculum - balanced being the state curriculum plus additional topics and subjects. The primary added subject would be critical thinking. Other subjects could be taught as necessary for a well-rounded education. And, state ordained subject material could include (be infected by) CT. The student would learn the state-sponsored subject matter (to pass state-sponsored tests), have a thorough knowledge of the principles of CT, and the real world benefits it would bring, enhancing their own education. By building students that seek the truth, it would effectively blunt the ideological educational system that the state mandates, and enrich our society as these students live out their lives in pursuit of truth. On a parallel track, new curricula could be developed and distributed to schools such as getting real climate science in schools currently being done by the Heartland Institute. I think getting school choice turned on would be easier than trying to sway the behemoth that is the Teachers Union.
Dan: TY for being creative. Unfortunately (for several reasons) it simply would not be practical to do... You also misunderstand the School Choice issue, as that is adamantly opposed by teachers' unions. On the other hand there is not that type of opposition from unions regarding the curriculum matter. Please read my Report, above.
Penny: My Report (see above) goes into the whole education situation like no other report that I'm aware of. It also spells out what needs to be done to fix the curriculum mess we are in. Let me know any questions on my Report after you have studied it.
So, which state in the nation has the best board of education and the best curriculum? And how do we get our state boards to up their game and educate our kids so they get the proper math and science and can graduate knowing how to read and write? How do we get teachers to stop programming kids how to think they way they do, and instead to think critically?
I think there are good curriculums available that do teach how to think. However, the road to change, unless the change is a totalitarian (Maoist) change, is through freedom. Without liberty, great ideas will never be tolerated. Have you sent me your CV? Bob@OCPACFoundation.org Thanks!
Bob: One more time. The K-12 subject area where critical thinking is taught, is Science. 45 states have adopted the NGSS (see my Report) which teaches the OPPOSITE of critical thinking. Please focus your efforts on that travesty. School Choice is not "liberty" if the primary options available are corrupted.
PS — I'm a physicist, but my CV is irrelevant to this matter.
Of course, under the conditions you describe, freedom to choose would have been for naught. I'm not sure you have proven that given the freedom to choose, parents would continue, in the same numbers, to choose stupid (curriculum).
I am not arguing that good curriculum is not important. Good curriculum and good teachers and foundations in the transcendent are, of course, the ideas behind freedom of choice.
Politically speaking, however, nothing changes until the market makes alternatives available. Until the Hebrews were freed from Egypt, Moses could have proposed all kinds of programs for occupational diversity for Hebrews, but Pharaoh, after very careful and thoughtful consideration, would have decided that it was best that Hebrews focus on the brick making industry. Government (SDE) has no interest in what you think until what you think can in short order impact the government.
1) No matter what "choice" parents choose, they will be choosing a corrupted curriculum.
2) Additionally, parents have little idea what is in the key, Science, curriculum — so there is no "choice" in that either. For example, how many parents know what "critical thinking" is, and how it is being taught (and should be taught) in public or private schools?
School choice has some value but it pales in comparison of the importance to having the curriculum to be appropriate.
John...once again you have nailed the central issue of America's Education system which is demonstrated by America's global ranking in the 30's for math, reading and science. As you know, my wife and i attended Heritage's 50th Anniversary last week. It was a great conference but, as i worked the crowd and many of the important speakers your observations of the issues is confirmed. Virtually everyone is complaining about our education system, but absolutely no one is pointing to the flawed curriculum that is being used by nearly every state to indoctrinate instead of educate our kids. This is fight that we have to win. Thanks for articulating the issues and solution. It is absolutely astounding that the left understands the curriculum, and pedagogy, are the keys to capturing the minds of our kids. Many of our indoctrinated kids, 4 million each year, graduate into adulthood and vote for nutty people. I'll be sure to get your post to important people...Don Runkle
My point is that SCHOOL CHOICE , NOT CURRICULUM IS the #1 issue, as freedom represents the key that enables the general public (not government/SBOE) to begin dictating curriculum. Without freedom, we are howling at the moon. I love your curriculum ideas. I am simply saying that in terms of a political strategy, freedom precedes restoration of all else.
Bob: I understand your opinion, but from the real-world reasons I explained above, the Curriculum (i.e., WHAT is being taught) is easliy 10x more important than School Choice. What good is such a choice if your kid is still being fed baloney — by a better teacher, iin a nicer setting?
While I await the arrival of your CV, I will go ahead and make a comment. CHOICE IS the fuel that drives competition and innovation. Without CHOICE, the structure that has been empowered by its authoritarian position has no incentive to cooperate with ideas from those outside its small group of tyrants. Certainly, the government is in a great place currently as it is able, through economic strangleholds, to educate the next generation of voters. Borrowing form G.K. Chesterton, since the guillotine, it has never had such power over us as it dose now that it can send us to kindergarten. Choice is the foundation for a return to sanity in discipline, theology, ethics, and, of course, content.
Bob and John: I really hope you guys can get past this initial tension. The solution isn't either/or but both/and. Bob, consider: If you get to choose between Tylenol and acetaminophen but no other pain reliever, you have no real choice--the active ingredient is the same. John, consider: If you develop Naproxen but the government forbids you to market it or the public to buy it, or forces you to buy Tylenol even if you don't use it so you're stuck paying for two pain relievers when you only want one, your alternative isn't going to get to many consumers. We need school choice AND better curriculum. People aren't going to see the value of choice till they can see the value of the better curriculum. And people aren't going to see the better curriculum if it's not developed and offered. You're allies, not competitors.
Bob: No one is arguing against the merits of School Choice. I made it very clear that it is a good thing.
However, School Choice will have almost zero impact on curriculum (content), as that is determined on a state level, by the SBOE. Please read my Report.
Curriculum is everything. In 1960's Curriculum was guided by the Physical S inces Study Committee. Its purpose to educate to meet the goal of JFK to get3 a
man on the. moon, and to build
nuclear reactors. What is the goal for study today?
I completely agree with your conclusion, but it appears as if changing the curriculum is an impossible task. Corruption and bureaucracy are so firmly entrenched within the public school system that the only viable option is removing your child. Homeschool or pod schools with good intentions are more important than credentials from questionable sources.
Nancy: TY for your support. it may seem like fixing the curriculum is an impossible task, but it is not. To begin with the main curriculum issues is in Science — so skip the others for the moment. Secondly, there are about ten changes that need to be made, and none of them are complicated (see my Report, reeferenced above). Thirdly, once one state does this, most others will quickly follow along, as they are al looking for leadership.
John, I appreciate that, as a physicist, you focus mainly on science. And science--real science, not the fake stuff (like "post-normal science") that masquerades as it today in so many academic communities--has brought us thousands of marvelous discoveries and inventions that have made our material lives much better. But science (from Latin scire, to know, for which the Greek is pistein) rests on epistemology, and the undermining of science originated there, in epistemology, a subset of philosophy, not right in the main departments of science like mathematics, physics, chemistry, geology, biology, etc. The whole curriculum needs reform, not just science.
TY. I'm sure that there are parts of the curriculum outside of Sciece that need reform. I've chosen Science as: 1) this is my area of expertise, so I AM in my lane; 2) the Left has focused on Science standards, so some of the most problematic Woke parts are in the Science standards; 3) the single most important element that needs to be fixed is properly teaching Critical Thinking. Science is the most approprate subject area to do that. FYI, in K-12 academic system there is no epistemology. 4) We need to start somewhere! Focusing on ONE subject area make more sense than saying: "let's reform the K-12 curriculum."
I hope you're right. Since many of the woke agendas are anti science, I think it's going to be difficult. Finding teachers that haven't been brainwashed is challenging too. So much of what people believe just isn't true; it's just popular in the media and mainstream society.
As a lifelong scientist, I am a very realistic, practical person. As my Report explains, the Science currioculum is fixable, and doing so would have profound implications — like producing critical thinking graduates!
We’ve reached a tipping point where reality is going to abruptly shift for the worse if we continue to do nothing. The fulcrum of this tipping point is the control the elites now have over the minds of the children. While parents were going through their day to day, oblivious, Common Core and CRT – rotting cancers of mass manipulation – have overrun the schools and have been planting tangled dark jungles of subversive dysfunction directly into their kids' defenseless minds.
The following is from 2013. It is faaar worse now:
That ^ is called abusive emotional learning. It deliberately dis-empowers the student and shifts their mind into a victim mentality making them dependent on the state. Rather than empowering and teaching them to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, it instead instructs them that they are the victims of an oppressive system, and as a result there is no reason to even try to succeed - and every reason to lie, defraud, and manipulate the "unfair" system to their advantage. This destroys society at its base level: the next generation.
Pol Pot did this in Cambodia. Lenin and Stalin did this in the USSR. And now, just as Yuri Bezmenov warned, it is right here on our soil and in our classrooms.
“The predominant value system of an entire culture can be overturned in one generation, or certainly in two, by those with unlimited access to children.”
-Dr. James Dobson
“Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have planted will never be uprooted.”
-Lenin
“We’ll get you through your children!”
-Roger Kimball
CRT Removes the Reason to Try, This is Not Theoretical – Black Lawyer Excoriates Critical Race Theory [2mins]:
Incredible Breakdown of How the WEF is Using A Two Pronged Vanguard of ESG from the Top Down and Abusive Emotional Schooling from the Bottom Up to Demoralize Everyone into Demanding a New World Order [8mins]:
Hi John: I’d like to propose a third option. Given that I know almost nothing about the regulations schools must follow, and the certification process (does the state monitor the curriculum or just state standard test scores, or both, to certify a school?), my proposal might be easily discounted. However, I think, if it is viable, a third option should be considered. How about…An alternate public school teaches a “balanced” curriculum - balanced being the state curriculum plus additional topics and subjects. The primary added subject would be critical thinking. Other subjects could be taught as necessary for a well-rounded education. And, state ordained subject material could include (be infected by) CT. The student would learn the state-sponsored subject matter (to pass state-sponsored tests), have a thorough knowledge of the principles of CT, and the real world benefits it would bring, enhancing their own education. By building students that seek the truth, it would effectively blunt the ideological educational system that the state mandates, and enrich our society as these students live out their lives in pursuit of truth. On a parallel track, new curricula could be developed and distributed to schools such as getting real climate science in schools currently being done by the Heartland Institute. I think getting school choice turned on would be easier than trying to sway the behemoth that is the Teachers Union.
Dan: TY for being creative. Unfortunately (for several reasons) it simply would not be practical to do... You also misunderstand the School Choice issue, as that is adamantly opposed by teachers' unions. On the other hand there is not that type of opposition from unions regarding the curriculum matter. Please read my Report, above.
Thanks John. Clearly I need to do more reading and research.
Penny: My Report (see above) goes into the whole education situation like no other report that I'm aware of. It also spells out what needs to be done to fix the curriculum mess we are in. Let me know any questions on my Report after you have studied it.
So, which state in the nation has the best board of education and the best curriculum? And how do we get our state boards to up their game and educate our kids so they get the proper math and science and can graduate knowing how to read and write? How do we get teachers to stop programming kids how to think they way they do, and instead to think critically?
Penny: The few states that have NOT impemented NGSS are generally better. The answers to your other good questions are in my Report (see above).
I think there are good curriculums available that do teach how to think. However, the road to change, unless the change is a totalitarian (Maoist) change, is through freedom. Without liberty, great ideas will never be tolerated. Have you sent me your CV? Bob@OCPACFoundation.org Thanks!
Bob: One more time. The K-12 subject area where critical thinking is taught, is Science. 45 states have adopted the NGSS (see my Report) which teaches the OPPOSITE of critical thinking. Please focus your efforts on that travesty. School Choice is not "liberty" if the primary options available are corrupted.
PS — I'm a physicist, but my CV is irrelevant to this matter.
Of course, under the conditions you describe, freedom to choose would have been for naught. I'm not sure you have proven that given the freedom to choose, parents would continue, in the same numbers, to choose stupid (curriculum).
I am not arguing that good curriculum is not important. Good curriculum and good teachers and foundations in the transcendent are, of course, the ideas behind freedom of choice.
Politically speaking, however, nothing changes until the market makes alternatives available. Until the Hebrews were freed from Egypt, Moses could have proposed all kinds of programs for occupational diversity for Hebrews, but Pharaoh, after very careful and thoughtful consideration, would have decided that it was best that Hebrews focus on the brick making industry. Government (SDE) has no interest in what you think until what you think can in short order impact the government.
Bob: I apologize for not being clear.
1) No matter what "choice" parents choose, they will be choosing a corrupted curriculum.
2) Additionally, parents have little idea what is in the key, Science, curriculum — so there is no "choice" in that either. For example, how many parents know what "critical thinking" is, and how it is being taught (and should be taught) in public or private schools?
School choice has some value but it pales in comparison of the importance to having the curriculum to be appropriate.
John...once again you have nailed the central issue of America's Education system which is demonstrated by America's global ranking in the 30's for math, reading and science. As you know, my wife and i attended Heritage's 50th Anniversary last week. It was a great conference but, as i worked the crowd and many of the important speakers your observations of the issues is confirmed. Virtually everyone is complaining about our education system, but absolutely no one is pointing to the flawed curriculum that is being used by nearly every state to indoctrinate instead of educate our kids. This is fight that we have to win. Thanks for articulating the issues and solution. It is absolutely astounding that the left understands the curriculum, and pedagogy, are the keys to capturing the minds of our kids. Many of our indoctrinated kids, 4 million each year, graduate into adulthood and vote for nutty people. I'll be sure to get your post to important people...Don Runkle
My point is that SCHOOL CHOICE , NOT CURRICULUM IS the #1 issue, as freedom represents the key that enables the general public (not government/SBOE) to begin dictating curriculum. Without freedom, we are howling at the moon. I love your curriculum ideas. I am simply saying that in terms of a political strategy, freedom precedes restoration of all else.
Bob: I understand your opinion, but from the real-world reasons I explained above, the Curriculum (i.e., WHAT is being taught) is easliy 10x more important than School Choice. What good is such a choice if your kid is still being fed baloney — by a better teacher, iin a nicer setting?
While I await the arrival of your CV, I will go ahead and make a comment. CHOICE IS the fuel that drives competition and innovation. Without CHOICE, the structure that has been empowered by its authoritarian position has no incentive to cooperate with ideas from those outside its small group of tyrants. Certainly, the government is in a great place currently as it is able, through economic strangleholds, to educate the next generation of voters. Borrowing form G.K. Chesterton, since the guillotine, it has never had such power over us as it dose now that it can send us to kindergarten. Choice is the foundation for a return to sanity in discipline, theology, ethics, and, of course, content.
Bob and John: I really hope you guys can get past this initial tension. The solution isn't either/or but both/and. Bob, consider: If you get to choose between Tylenol and acetaminophen but no other pain reliever, you have no real choice--the active ingredient is the same. John, consider: If you develop Naproxen but the government forbids you to market it or the public to buy it, or forces you to buy Tylenol even if you don't use it so you're stuck paying for two pain relievers when you only want one, your alternative isn't going to get to many consumers. We need school choice AND better curriculum. People aren't going to see the value of choice till they can see the value of the better curriculum. And people aren't going to see the better curriculum if it's not developed and offered. You're allies, not competitors.
Bob: No one is arguing against the merits of School Choice. I made it very clear that it is a good thing.
However, School Choice will have almost zero impact on curriculum (content), as that is determined on a state level, by the SBOE. Please read my Report.
Curriculum is everything. In 1960's Curriculum was guided by the Physical S inces Study Committee. Its purpose to educate to meet the goal of JFK to get3 a
man on the. moon, and to build
nuclear reactors. What is the goal for study today?
The goal for school study today seems to be to produce compliant citizens who go along with what they are told is politically acceptable.
I completely agree with your conclusion, but it appears as if changing the curriculum is an impossible task. Corruption and bureaucracy are so firmly entrenched within the public school system that the only viable option is removing your child. Homeschool or pod schools with good intentions are more important than credentials from questionable sources.
Nancy: TY for your support. it may seem like fixing the curriculum is an impossible task, but it is not. To begin with the main curriculum issues is in Science — so skip the others for the moment. Secondly, there are about ten changes that need to be made, and none of them are complicated (see my Report, reeferenced above). Thirdly, once one state does this, most others will quickly follow along, as they are al looking for leadership.
John, I appreciate that, as a physicist, you focus mainly on science. And science--real science, not the fake stuff (like "post-normal science") that masquerades as it today in so many academic communities--has brought us thousands of marvelous discoveries and inventions that have made our material lives much better. But science (from Latin scire, to know, for which the Greek is pistein) rests on epistemology, and the undermining of science originated there, in epistemology, a subset of philosophy, not right in the main departments of science like mathematics, physics, chemistry, geology, biology, etc. The whole curriculum needs reform, not just science.
Cal:
TY. I'm sure that there are parts of the curriculum outside of Sciece that need reform. I've chosen Science as: 1) this is my area of expertise, so I AM in my lane; 2) the Left has focused on Science standards, so some of the most problematic Woke parts are in the Science standards; 3) the single most important element that needs to be fixed is properly teaching Critical Thinking. Science is the most approprate subject area to do that. FYI, in K-12 academic system there is no epistemology. 4) We need to start somewhere! Focusing on ONE subject area make more sense than saying: "let's reform the K-12 curriculum."
I hope you're right. Since many of the woke agendas are anti science, I think it's going to be difficult. Finding teachers that haven't been brainwashed is challenging too. So much of what people believe just isn't true; it's just popular in the media and mainstream society.
I didn't say we shouldn't try, but I try to be realistic.
As a lifelong scientist, I am a very realistic, practical person. As my Report explains, the Science currioculum is fixable, and doing so would have profound implications — like producing critical thinking graduates!
John, love your work sir. Here is some of mine:
"WHAT our children are being taught!"
We’ve reached a tipping point where reality is going to abruptly shift for the worse if we continue to do nothing. The fulcrum of this tipping point is the control the elites now have over the minds of the children. While parents were going through their day to day, oblivious, Common Core and CRT – rotting cancers of mass manipulation – have overrun the schools and have been planting tangled dark jungles of subversive dysfunction directly into their kids' defenseless minds.
The following is from 2013. It is faaar worse now:
https://youtu.be/FSHoxWaVeto [11mins]
That ^ is called abusive emotional learning. It deliberately dis-empowers the student and shifts their mind into a victim mentality making them dependent on the state. Rather than empowering and teaching them to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, it instead instructs them that they are the victims of an oppressive system, and as a result there is no reason to even try to succeed - and every reason to lie, defraud, and manipulate the "unfair" system to their advantage. This destroys society at its base level: the next generation.
Pol Pot did this in Cambodia. Lenin and Stalin did this in the USSR. And now, just as Yuri Bezmenov warned, it is right here on our soil and in our classrooms.
“The predominant value system of an entire culture can be overturned in one generation, or certainly in two, by those with unlimited access to children.”
-Dr. James Dobson
“Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have planted will never be uprooted.”
-Lenin
“We’ll get you through your children!”
-Roger Kimball
CRT Removes the Reason to Try, This is Not Theoretical – Black Lawyer Excoriates Critical Race Theory [2mins]:
https://bitchute.com/video/DaS25FLR8ktR
Incredible Breakdown of How the WEF is Using A Two Pronged Vanguard of ESG from the Top Down and Abusive Emotional Schooling from the Bottom Up to Demoralize Everyone into Demanding a New World Order [8mins]:
https://bitchute.com/video/vS0ykC9Y20Vt
TY for your support and good comments. I'm in agreement.