U.S. Court Upholds Same-sex Teaching to Children

[Dardedar]

U.S. court upholds same-sex teaching to children

Reuters -

A federal judge in Boston has dismissed a suit by two families who wanted to stop a Massachusetts town and its public school system from teaching their children about gay marriage, court documents show.

The families last year filed the suit asserting that the reading of a gay-themed book and handing out to elementary school students of other children's books that discussed homosexuality without first notifying parents was a violation of their religious rights.

Federal Judge Mark Wolf ruled on Friday that public schools are "entitled to teach anything that is reasonably related to the goals of preparing students to become engaged and productive citizens in our democracy." (emphasis added)

"Diversity is a hallmark of our nation. It is increasingly evident that our diversity includes differences in sexual orientation," he said.
***

"Those damn activist judges!"

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

Do those wingnut parents actually believe they can get their kids to 21 without hearing about homosexual couples? That's almost as good as their belief in the bible in the first place.

[Hogeye]

While I have little (well, no) sympathy for puritanical head-in-the-sand bigoted parents, I am concerned with the the State getting jurisdiction over the minds of children rather than the parents. There is something wrong with forcing parents to pay taxes for schools, enforcing compulsory attendence laws, and then teaching their kids something they consider morally repugnant. Suppose the shoe were on the other foot: that the State wanted to indoctrinate your kids to be good Xtians, or to obey the fuhrer no matter what, or to give oaths of allegiance to the State (oops, they really do that).

So, like the ACLU lawyer who defends the free speech of nazis, I have to hold my nose and defend these people's right to educate their children as they see fit. It would have been more just if the judge had ordered Massachusetts to award a voucher equal to the per-student cost of govt education for each student, and let the parents seek education for their children elsewhere.

[Doug]

While I have little (well, no) sympathy for puritanical head-in-the-sand bigoted parents, I am concerned with the the State getting jurisdiction over the minds of children rather than the parents. There is something wrong with forcing parents to pay taxes for schools, enforcing compulsory attendence laws, and then teaching their kids something they consider morally repugnant.

DOUG
The teachers aren't endorsing gay sex. They just want to teach the kids what is going on. It's not like they are going to put in a plug for gay sex.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

Government's interest in education is to prepare its younger citizens to take a responsible place in society when they grow up. To this end more that the "3 Rs" (the very term speaks of illiteracy since 2 of those words don't start with R) - it includes knowledge of what makes up our society. Homosexuals are a fact of life in this and most/all other societies.

[Dardedar]

I have to hold my nose and defend these people's right to educate their children as they see fit.

DAR
If parents want to teach their children the stork theory of reproduction or to be little nazis then they need to do this at home (and undoubtedly do). What is taught in public school gets government oversight so the nonsense and bad science gets weeded out, as best as possible. Parents have a tendancy to want their children to be as stupid and bigoted as they are (how do you think I had five generations of JW's in my family). The government has an interest in combating ignorance and it's cousin, intolerance.

D.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

Darrel, are you ever right. When I worked with a literacy project in WI, and in KS, we continually ran across the problem of illiterate parents beating up their teenage-dropout children (especially girls) who came to us for help learning to read so they could pass the GED. The parents called it discipline on kids "tryin' to show up their parents". (You guys will love the rationale - it was based on the "honor thy father and mother" out of the more commonly quoted 10 commandments.) You won't be surprised the kids usually dropped out of the program.

[Doug]

Darrel, are you ever right. When I worked with a literacy project in WI, and in KS, we continually ran across the problem of illiterate parents beating up their teenage-dropout children (especially girls) who came to us for help learning to read so they could pass the GED. The parents called it discipline on kids "tryin' to show up their parents". (You guys will love the rationale - it was based on the "honor thy father and mother" out of the more commonly quoted 10 commandments.) You won't be surprised the kids usually dropped out of the program.

DOUG
I had a student last year, a beautiful, smart young woman, who would occasionally unload some of her problems on me in my office. One of them: Her own father would speak bitterly and hatefully to her because she was going to college. He would say things such as "You think you're so smart just because you're going to college!"

I could hardly believe my ears.

[Hogeye]

Government's interest in education is to prepare its younger citizens to take a responsible place in society when they grow up.

In theory (that they teach in govt schools.) But the reality is that govt schools started in order to indoctrinate "papist" immigrants from e.g. Italy to become good pietist Protestants, and has been used to indoctrinate children into the statist line ever since. It is used to create cannon fodder for wars, make docile taxpayers and unquestioning corporate drones.

What is taught in public school gets government oversight so the nonsense and bad science gets weeded out...

The government rulers' take on science and notion of nonsense, that is. If the State teaches eugenics, or creationism, or the existence of Gods like "the public good," or that mass-murder of foreigners is okey-dokey when the State says so, as it has done so often in the past, well, I guess that's fine by you, huh?

The government has an interest in combating ignorance and it's cousin, intolerance.

LOL!!! Yes, your glorious ruler Bush is such a hero in that regard. /sarcasm


Barbara and Doug, no doubt there exist such parents, but as a general rule most parents want their kids to be educated.

[Doug]

Barbara and Doug, no doubt there exist such parents, but as a general rule most parents want their kids to be educated.

That is no excuse to get rid of public schools and let stupid parents brainwash their kids, as would happen even more often if anarchy reigned.

[Hogeye]

The alternatives:

A. Some (few) parents don't educate their kids rationally.

B. The State indoctrinates kids to be cannon fodder, worship the State, and become good statist corporate proles. The State becomes more powerful and authoritarian.

Needless to say, I prefer alternative A. (Utopia is not an option.)

[Doug]

The alternatives:

A. Some (few) parents don't educate their kids rationally.

B. The State indoctrinates kids to be cannon fodder, worship the State, and become good statist corporate proles. The State becomes more powerful and authoritarian.

Needless to say, I prefer alternative A. (Utopia is not an option.)

DOUG
Professional educators are trained for years to teach our children and our country still lags WAY behind other industrialized countries in math and science. It would be a nightmare if untrained, home-schooled parents were the only ones who taught their kids. Our civilization would lie in ruins in only a few generations.

[Hogeye]

It would be a nightmare if untrained, home-schooled parents were the only ones who taught their kids.

Yes it would, but of course that is not a likely outcome. If you want to take a "maximin" approach - deciding on the basis of the worst possible outcome for (a) and (b) - then you must consider the worst possible outcome for (b) too, and then compare. The worst outcome for (b) is a totalitarian State with everyone totally brainwashed by the State to be dumbed-down expendable pawns. Thus, even with this maximin approach, (a) comes off better.

[Doug]

The worst outcome for (b) is a totalitarian State with everyone totally brainwashed by the State to be dumbed-down expendable pawns. Thus, even with this maximin approach, (a) comes off better.

DOUG
So either we have a totalitarian state with a brainwashed populace OR a bunch of ignorant home-schooled morons.

Well, you have committed the fallacy of false dilemma. In the U.S. we don't have a totalitarian state, despite Bush's best efforts. You pick the worst of a slippery slope that is in effect right now but which has NOT yielded the undesirable result you describe.

MY scenario of the populace being ignorant if home-schooled is not only possible, but can be shown to be very likely, given how ignorant most of the population is.

BTW, did anyone see that new game show hosted by Jeff Foxworthy called "Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?"?

See a promo clip here. The adults answer questions from 1st to 5th grade level. And they get help from 5th graders.



Case closed.

[Dardedar]

DAR
We accidentally watched two episodes noting that the world has finally become a Saturday Night Live skit. We watched one lady win $100,000 (with the assistance of the elementary kids) and then walk away from an additional $80,000 because she didn't want to risk it on answering this question:

"How many decades are in two millenia"

She was a computer software consultant.

Actually, the questions are cherry picked and put in such a way that they are not as easy as you would think.

And Foxworthy is a moron.

D.

[Doug]

DAR
We accidentally watched two episodes noting that the world has finally become a Saturday Night Live skit. We watched one lady win $100,000 (with the assistance of the elementary kids) and then walk away from an additional $80,000 because she didn't want to risk it on answering this question:

"How many decades are in two millenia"

She was a computer software consultant.

DOUG
The first person on the show was an idiot who said that if he won the million-dollar prize, he would buy a Lamborghini and have it painted camouflage. Foxworthy said, "This isn't a 'you may be a redneck,' this is 'you ARE a redneck.'"

The guy left with only 100,000 because he didn't know how to answer this multiple choice question:

What percentage of the Earth's surface is covered with water?
a. 70%.
b. 80%.
c. 90%.

I have known this since AT LEAST junior high, although I had heard estimates of 75%.

[Hogeye]

So either we have a totalitarian state with a brainwashed populace OR a bunch of ignorant home-schooled morons.

No, that is the choice given your maximin strategy. That was your comparison, not mine - the comparison you indicated by writing, "It would be a nightmare if untrained, home-schooled parents were the only ones who taught their kids." I simply pointed out that if you take the worst-case scenerio for home-schooling, to be consistent you need to compare with the worst-case scenerio for government schooling. It's not a false dicotomy to say if one is going to use the maximin decision rule, then here are the choices. Note that I did not endorse the maximin decision-making rule.

MY scenario of the populace being ignorant if home-schooled is not only possible, but can be shown to be very likely, given how ignorant most of the population is.

Yet most of the population goes to government school, and the home-schooled tend to win significantly more than their share of spelling bees, scholarships, and other competitions. Thus, I would say your estimation of the efficacy of home-schooling is quite mistaken.

[Doug]

I simply pointed out that if you take the worst-case scenerio for home-schooling, to be consistent you need to compare with the worst-case scenerio for government schooling.

DOUG
My scenario was not worst case, it is a very likely case. That was the point.

[Hogeye]

My scenario was not worst case, it is a very likely case.

Doug, I suspect that your opinion about the efficacy of homeschooling is based more on antipathy to fundamentalist religion (and association of homeschooling with such) rather than scientific evidence. The research clearly shows that homeschooling is better (i.e. produces better educated students) than government schools, based on objective measures such as standardized tests. Not only that, the results are less "racist."

In 1997, a study of 5,402 homeschool students from 1,657 families was released. It was entitled, "Strengths of Their Own: Home Schoolers Across America." The study demonstrated that homeschoolers, on the average, out-performed their counterparts in the public schools by 30 to 37 percentile points in all subjects. A significant finding when analyzing the data for 8th graders was the evidence that homeschoolers who are homeschooled two or more years score substantially higher than students who have been homeschooled one year or less. The new homeschoolers were scoring on the average in the 59th percentile compared to students homeschooled the last two or more years who scored between 86th and 92nd percentile.


This was confirmed in another study by Dr. Lawrence Rudner of 20,760 homeschooled students which found the homeschoolers who have homeschooled all their school aged years had the highest academic achievement. This was especially apparent in the higher grades. This is a good encouragement to families catch the long-range vision and homeschool through high school.
Another important finding of Strengths of Their Own was that the race of the student does not make any difference. There was no significant difference between minority and white homeschooled students. For example, in grades K-12, both white and minority students scored, on the average, in the 87th percentile. In math, whites scored in the 82nd percentile while minorities scored in the 77th percentile. In the public schools, however, there is a sharp contrast. White public school eighth grade students, nationally scored the 58th percentile in math and the 57th percentile in reading. Black eighth grade students, on the other hand, scored on the average at the 24th percentile in math and the 28th percentile in reading. Hispanics scored at the 29th percentile in math and the 28th percentile in reading. ...

The last significant statistic from the Strengths of Their Own study regards the affect of government regulation on homeschooling. Dr. Brian Ray compared the impact of government regulation on the academic performance of homeschool students and he found no positive correlation. In other words, whether a state had a high degree of regulation (i.e., curriculum approval, teacher qualifications, testing, home visits) or a state had no regulation of homeschoolers, the homeschooled students in both categories of states performed the same. The students all scored on the average in the 86th percentile regardless of state regulation.

...

State Department of Education Statistics on Homeschoolers
Arkansas
In Arkansas, for the 1987-88 school term, homeschool children, on the average, scored in 75% on the Metropolitan Achievement Test 6. They out-scored public school children in every subject (Reading, Math, Language, Science, and Social Studies) and at every grade level. For example, at the 10th grade level public school children scored an average of 53rd percentile in social studies, while homeschool children scored at the 73rd percentile. In science, an area in which homeschoolers are often criticized for lack of facilities, the homeschoolers scored, on the average, 85th percentile in fourth grade, 73rd percentile in seventh grade, and 65th percentile in tenth grade. The public school students, on the other hand, scored much lower in science: 66th percentile in fourth grade, 62nd percentile in seventh, and 53rd percentile in tenth.

These are just two excerpts from a long list of studies you can find here.

[Doug]

My scenario was not worst case, it is a very likely case.

Doug, I suspect that your opinion about the efficacy of homeschooling is based more on antipathy to fundamentalist religion (and association of homeschooling with such) rather than scientific evidence. The research clearly shows that homeschooling is better (i.e. produces better educated students) than government schools, based on objective measures such as standardized tests. Not only that, the results are less "racist."

DOUG
You don't see what we are discussing here. YOU entertained the possibility that it would be better if we did away with state schools and everyone was home schooled. There are no studies on this, except that it is known that most Americans are very stupid compared with people in other countries and compared to teachers.

So if everyone home-schooled their children (and few would be able to afford tutors), the result would be a disaster.