Christian churches who pay no taxes keep sticking their hands inside the pockets of taxpayers to fuel their indoctrination.
They want to groom children? Let them pay full boat. If they don't want to do that, then let them pray for their needs like Jesus told them. Or is prayer not all it's cracked up to be?
They aren't content with the government subsidy they already get with tax exemption. (I would bet that most wouldn't get the 501(c)(3) designation if they had to do it the way everyone else has to.) Nope, they need direct kickbacks. The more they undermine public schools, the better they can control and indoctrinate, and with the voucher scheme, they can pocket a bunch of tax money, too.
There are a few thousand “Youth Ministers” who have proven over the course of many years that your statement is not only incorrect, it is a million miles away from reality.
I would be curious to learn the racial demographics of these private schools. I have a feeling most would be majority white with a few token minorities.
Segregation was, after all, the reason for most of these schools existing in the first place even if the people running them won't admit that now.
We have a number of religious schools in the UK that are, shall we say, more extreme than the Church of England Schools (which the National Secular Society is working against).
Most of these schools are male only. If the schools do admit girls, then they treat them very differently to boys, teaching them more "feminine" subjects and keeping them separated from the boys.
As god willled it in its book of misogyny, homophobia,genocides, mass murders, mass abortions and mass rapes. A book of ghosts abnd goblins and demons out to control your life when god demands that.
It's a mixed up, bungled up shook up world. Except for Lola of course.
The UK and home country governments fund religious schools, these include Anglican (Churches of England, Scotland and Wales), Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh and Hindu schools.
However, since government funding means that the school has to follow the national curriculum and some social regulations, then a number of independent religious schools exist which allow them to follow their own curricula and avoid teaching about nasty things such as same-sex relationships. These schools tend to be of poor quality - https://www.secularism.org.uk/news/2025/11/ofsted-independent-faith-schools-more-likely-to-fail-standards
Oh, and I don't use the mealy-mouthed term "faith schools", these are religious schools.
When I was in high school, I was the only young woman in my math classes. The young men never spoke directly to me. If they had a question for me, they asked the teacher.
Those "private schools" that take these scholarships are not your old Episcopal Academy or Jesuit school. They're entrepreneurial start-ups guided by someone like Andre Agassi, whose business teaches them how to rip off parents and taxpayers to maximize profits. Sign the parents to a tuition contract, kick out the kid, keep the money. Say it's a charter school so the state will pay for it, then take it private. Etc. Very "Christian."
“In an Abeka history textbook, authors write that “slaves seemed to be better investments than indentured servants,” “
Wow, that’s like saying a hot shit sandwich is better than a cold shit sandwich. Both are a form of slavery, but chattel slavery is the most horrific type of slavery. Of course the slavers would prefer the chattel slavery since there’s less of an investment. I’m sure this curriculum also heavily implies the slaves were better off as slaves than dead, too.
Only people who wish they could hold slaves find ways to excuse the antebellum south as anything other than the blight on our history it is. Makes sense that they’re Christians (not that only Christians are supportive of slavery) since the entire religion revolves around completely enslaving yourself to God, by obeying his representatives on earth, aka clergy.
Those that wish for the return of the American slavery clearly assume they will be slave owners rather than slaves. They assume the version of the 'Old South' they've been told about where well dressed wealthy land owners have happy slaves working their beautiful plantation is something more than a pipe dream. They honestly think they'll be king of their own little kingdom, and everything about their lives will improve. Gone with the Wind is a dubious romance novel, not a historical text, but these folks will never admit that.
History tells us otherwise, ergo, they sugar coat and white wash it when they can't outright deny it. Slavery in the US was cruel and horrific, and anyone with honest knowledge of the institution is well aware; there are still photographs around that show it.*
*Example: Wikipedia's article on Peter, an escaped slave. Fair warning, though, the images on the page are heartbreaking or nausea inducing, possibly both. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_(enslaved_man)
We're talking about Alabama, here - a state that ranks at the bottom of all fifty states for public education. The Alabama legislature has no interest in smart kids - only winning the culture wars.
Stupid people are easier to control and manipulate! Plus, stupid people make great mindless workers/soldiers that don’t question anything they are told! The elite members of the MAGAS movement will make sure their kids are fully educated, so they (elite MAGAS) can take their place as leaders (nobility) of the rabble.
He loves the poorly educated because he's one of them. That's what happens when you're rich enough to pay your fellow students to do your homework and take your tests for you. Your education takes a nosedive.
"He loves the poorly educated because he's one of them"
It is said of our former Prime Minister, Boris Johnson (spit), "He went to the finest schools and universities in England. It's a pity he missed out on the education"
Swerve alert:
We moved up to Scotland about 5 years ago. While we were looking at houses, we were often asked why we were moving (from Manchester, England). "Did we have family up here?", to which we answered, "No". "Friends then?", to which we also answered, "No". When asked, "Why then?", my response was that I didn't want to live in a country that could elect Johnson as PM. In every house but one, we got nods of understanding.
Sometimes I marvel that I escaped from this kind of hell. It was YEC through 8th grade. A very fine public high school in Iowa. Then, thanks to ACT scores thru the roof, I got into a very competitive university where I discovered that a lot of what I believed was wrong. I was too smart to keep believing lies.
I remember this also. I also remember hearing that if the southern two tiers of counties left Iowa and joined Missouri it would improve the literacy rate of both states!
I went to school in Iowa during that enlightened time and received an excellent education. FF to to my first teaching job at what was supposed to be one of the best h.s. in Iowa. I left 5 years later partly because of teacher behavior. So many of them wanted to be the students' best friends. They would walk down the hall with their arms around students' shoulders while discussing the upcoming football game and even bet money on games with students. At one point, a student was $800 in debt to a teacher. Another teacher brought donuts for her students every Friday, even tho it was against the rules, and, of course, students loved her for it. I walked by her room one Friday at the beginning of class and heard her announce, "Let's talk about what we're doing this weekend. I'll go first." Yet another promised a C grade just for showing up for class, no need to do homework or take part in discussion. One spent his free hour perusing child porn online, until he was caught and asked to leave. The school didn't press charges, so he's now teaching in another state. And forget Casual Friday; many teachers dressed like slobs all week long. And all this was just in one wing of the school (there were 3). Schools reflect society, so I can't imagine what it's like to teach today.
I attended school in three different school districts and that wasn't my experience at all. I graduated in '79, casual Friday hadn't been invented yet. : )
Christian schools vary tremendously in quality. From excellent academics, to little more than Sunday school Bible classes. Giving money to private schools, religious or otherwise, takes money away from our already under-funded public schools. That students perform better in private schools is also highly deceptive. It’s easy to boast about great outcomes if you can choose who you’re going to admit, and retain.
Add to that the wealth redistribution upwards. The vouchers don't pay the whole tuition, so the ones who can afford it without the vouchers will use most of the voucher money.
That, and at the same time, more schools will pop up as the money increases. The "good" schools will have the higher tuition but some schools will just take the vouchers and run not much more than a babysitting service.
It’s incredible how much education in this country varies from state to state. There simply is no baseline or standard (bEcAuSe FrEeDoM?). A friend of mine who is a professor at NYU said she can immediately tell whether a new student is coming from somewhere like Alabama or Massachusetts. Sadly, most of these homeschooled or Christian indoctrinated students won’t even make it to college. Either the absurd cost or the fear of “woke ideology” will keep these folks right where they are in a never ending cycle of ignorance and poverty as if it were some kind of virtue.
1984 by George Orwell. I doubt the average MAGAS even read 1984, or for that manner any book. According to the MAGAS mindset reading/gaining knowledge/expertise is an elitist, socialist, woke, etc and is a sin (and to question faith in general), while ignorance and blind obedience (to the clergy and leadership) is a virtue (the more obedient and ignorant you are, that is a mark of a “TRUE BELIEVER”).
I have a unique perspective on this. I homeschooled my kids with what used to be the Gardiner Scholarship in Florida. This was a taxpayer-funded account for students with specific disabilities that prevented them from being able to attend school. Now, to be clear, I firmly believe that public schools are the foundation of democracy, and that with adequate special education funding and a more-creative classroom set-up, more of these kids could attend school. The reality, however, is service gatekeeping and gag orders on teachers.
Republicans are now trying to block special education even more--to fuel to the school-to-private-prison-slave-labor pipeline. Many parents of disabled kids, overwhelmed and exhausted, don't understand that private and Christian schools are not bound by federal law--and in Florida, many of them make promises of accommodations that they have no intention of keeping, sign parents to tuition contracts, and then expel the students. It's a very "entrepreneurial" business model thoroughly approved by White Christian Nationalist Jesus.
My kids spent time at a hybrid-homeschool program set up by a former teacher, where they were able to attend tutoring and have "classmates" in a sensory-friendly environment several hours a week, while recovering the rest of the week. Public schools could do this--with commitment and funding. From there, my kids moved on to dual enrollment at community college, which, again, allowed them to adapt their school schedules to their healthcare needs.
The Gardiner Scholarship *could* have been run by special education specialists who approved purchases based on a student's diagnosis and needs. For instance, a student with vision problems may need a large-screen TV to use an enormous typeface; a student who can only do seated exercise may benefit from a kayak or recline bike. But unfortunately, the Dept of Education was obliged to choose private "vendors" to administer the scholarship; these vendors tend to be unqualified political cronies, which is why social services in the state are so pathetic.
The organization that Florida chose to hire is corrupt. They run what's supposed to be a non-profit as if it were an insurance company. Instead of hiring education experts as processors, they subcontract overseas to the lowest bidder--so that they can maximize 6 figure salaries for their bloated senior staff, some of whom have job titles like [satire] "chief cheerleader to the boss" and "morale booster to exploited underlings." It is a CF of epic proportions.
Then Ron DeSantis, in cooperation with what, make no mistake, are for-profit Christian companies, expanded the tax credit scholarships, like these you describe for Alabama, and rolled the disabled kids' scholarship into it. This has hurt the very children this scholarship was supposed to help. Now we have entitled parents with perfectly abled children screaming "it's not fair that that blind/sick kid gets a large screen TV/kayak! I want MY kid to have a taxpayer-funded TV/kayak too!" So entire Best Buy and Fun N Function catalogs are approved for purchase by any scholarship recipient.
In the beginning, parents researched and made our own purchases to send in for reimbursement. But to better send money to Christian Nationalists, the organization made its own purchasing website, full of curriculum from Abeka, Timberdoodle, Memoria Press, etc. They try to force parents to choose those by delaying reimbursements up to the maximum 60 days. Now, imagine an exhausted family with multiple adopted and foster children with severe disabilities, living off SSI, forced to pay high credit card interest rates because they refuse to buy pre-selected Christian propaganda. "Enshittification" is the word, right? Instead of improving it, they made it worse, for money.
Anyway, go to the Timberdoodle catalog. There is not a single feminine pronoun in the entire thing, and the "ethics" lessons are not only infantilizing but portray women as gold-digging liars. Seriously, read about cult language (eg Lalich's Take Back Your Life) and then go back to read the Timberdoodle catalog. I can FEEL the cult language like molasses or tar or spider webs. For me, it's repellent; for some people it's magnetic; and I guess most Americans don't pay attention and just obediently swallow their "medicine." (And this is why I have to take 2 Nexium a day.)
WHAT a shitty bargain! Religiou$ Fanatics get Public Education funds. We get underfunded Public Schools, poorly educated children & children indoctrinated into obedient little MAGAsses that will turn on their parents in an instant to gratify the GOP's Trumptatorship.
We desperately need TOTAL & PERMANENT Separation of Religion & State.
1. I’ve been a rock and roll rebel for years, yet I made it through college, grad school and life with no help from a god. Did the devil make me do it? 🤔
2. Math, meh. I still don’t understand the process beyond addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. I do understand fractions though! :D
Studied algae in the bra in HS. Could never get quadrati equations. Finally one day teach was sick and the advanced maths teacher stepped in Well, I asked him and he said the sme things but it suddenly snapped into place. I was solving the as fast as he could put them on the blackboard.
I actually had a great tutor to help me get through algebra that way. Geometry was a bust, but I squeaked through. I had to take statistics in grad school and I just learned (via a tutoring lab) to recognize what the problem was asking me to do.
To this very day I wonder if those who "teach" that non-avian dinosaurs once lived alongside humans since they were created on the 6th Day of creation have been watching far too many sci-fi films and read far too many comic books and pulp fiction; all depicting dinosaurs, Permian reptiles, Cenozoic mammals, and cavemen living together in remote areas of the world side by side.
The difficulty of doing science is that it takes years to become good at it, and a good amount of background reading to understand it.
I mentioned last week that I went to a talk on Stac Fada, a geological formation in Assynt, on the west coast of Scotland.
One of the major themes of the talk was the dating of the formation (just under a billion years old). In addition, he covered why it is now thought that the formation is the result of a meteor impact rather than a volcanic eruption, and how it is the location of the earliest known non-marine eukaryotic microfossils.
The great beauty of the talk was how the consilience from multiple sources of evidence ties all this together.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion..." Why there should be any question that such an establishment should include religious schools is beyond me. Once again, I am reminded of Benjamin Franklin's famous quote regarding good religions versus bad religions and the fact that there are damn few of the former and too many of the latter. That religious schools wish to dip into the public trough to fund themselves is a primary indicator that the quality of what they have to offer is questionable at best.
And yet people continue to allow vouchers and other mechanisms to fund these pretenders of education, mostly because they think they should be somehow better when it is eminently clear that they are not.
“ they may be screwing themselves over when they get to college and realize they don’t know any of the basic material. And that’s assuming they even get into college.”
Well, that’s not being fair. At least they know the difference between the floor of a boat and an elephant. And they know what a boat or an elephant is. That’s four whole facts!
And besides, they’re not teaching education. They’re teaching stupidity. And that’s a whole accomplishment that you really have to appreciate.
DM was a rebel until her death. The last three concerts we went to were Rammstein, the Hu and Apocalyptica 😁
"But this slogan twists the virtue of love by disconnecting it from Scripture, using it to promote the LGBTQ agenda."
Love is older than the abrahamic religions. Were Khnumhotep and Niankhkhnum, who lived waaay before the Ancient Jews made their official apparition in history, promoting a gay agenda ?
Christian churches who pay no taxes keep sticking their hands inside the pockets of taxpayers to fuel their indoctrination.
They want to groom children? Let them pay full boat. If they don't want to do that, then let them pray for their needs like Jesus told them. Or is prayer not all it's cracked up to be?
They aren't content with the government subsidy they already get with tax exemption. (I would bet that most wouldn't get the 501(c)(3) designation if they had to do it the way everyone else has to.) Nope, they need direct kickbacks. The more they undermine public schools, the better they can control and indoctrinate, and with the voucher scheme, they can pocket a bunch of tax money, too.
Covetous bunch. I could swear there were not one but two commandments prohibiting covetousness.
Only about your neighbors ass. And if we’re talking about one of the Ryan’s, how could that possibly be sinful?
"There’s no critical thinking because there can’t be."
And by the way, AI is woke.
"And by the way, AI is woke."
Not if it is Grok, it isn't
You can be a pedophile trump supporter or you can be a Christian. You cannot be both. Period.
There are plenty who disagree with that.
So many Christians are both Trump supporters and pedophiles. Or just pedophiles. We see the numbers here constantly.
I respectfully disagree.
There are a few thousand “Youth Ministers” who have proven over the course of many years that your statement is not only incorrect, it is a million miles away from reality.
I would be curious to learn the racial demographics of these private schools. I have a feeling most would be majority white with a few token minorities.
Segregation was, after all, the reason for most of these schools existing in the first place even if the people running them won't admit that now.
Not just the racial demographics.
We have a number of religious schools in the UK that are, shall we say, more extreme than the Church of England Schools (which the National Secular Society is working against).
Most of these schools are male only. If the schools do admit girls, then they treat them very differently to boys, teaching them more "feminine" subjects and keeping them separated from the boys.
As god willled it in its book of misogyny, homophobia,genocides, mass murders, mass abortions and mass rapes. A book of ghosts abnd goblins and demons out to control your life when god demands that.
It's a mixed up, bungled up shook up world. Except for Lola of course.
Whoa! That's so surprising for the UK. Who is behind them? Who's funding them?
"Who is behind them? Who's funding them? "
The UK and home country governments fund religious schools, these include Anglican (Churches of England, Scotland and Wales), Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh and Hindu schools.
However, since government funding means that the school has to follow the national curriculum and some social regulations, then a number of independent religious schools exist which allow them to follow their own curricula and avoid teaching about nasty things such as same-sex relationships. These schools tend to be of poor quality - https://www.secularism.org.uk/news/2025/11/ofsted-independent-faith-schools-more-likely-to-fail-standards
Oh, and I don't use the mealy-mouthed term "faith schools", these are religious schools.
Interesting.
When I was in high school, I was the only young woman in my math classes. The young men never spoke directly to me. If they had a question for me, they asked the teacher.
Those "private schools" that take these scholarships are not your old Episcopal Academy or Jesuit school. They're entrepreneurial start-ups guided by someone like Andre Agassi, whose business teaches them how to rip off parents and taxpayers to maximize profits. Sign the parents to a tuition contract, kick out the kid, keep the money. Say it's a charter school so the state will pay for it, then take it private. Etc. Very "Christian."
“In an Abeka history textbook, authors write that “slaves seemed to be better investments than indentured servants,” “
Wow, that’s like saying a hot shit sandwich is better than a cold shit sandwich. Both are a form of slavery, but chattel slavery is the most horrific type of slavery. Of course the slavers would prefer the chattel slavery since there’s less of an investment. I’m sure this curriculum also heavily implies the slaves were better off as slaves than dead, too.
Only people who wish they could hold slaves find ways to excuse the antebellum south as anything other than the blight on our history it is. Makes sense that they’re Christians (not that only Christians are supportive of slavery) since the entire religion revolves around completely enslaving yourself to God, by obeying his representatives on earth, aka clergy.
His reps are in sore need of better training videos.
Those that wish for the return of the American slavery clearly assume they will be slave owners rather than slaves. They assume the version of the 'Old South' they've been told about where well dressed wealthy land owners have happy slaves working their beautiful plantation is something more than a pipe dream. They honestly think they'll be king of their own little kingdom, and everything about their lives will improve. Gone with the Wind is a dubious romance novel, not a historical text, but these folks will never admit that.
History tells us otherwise, ergo, they sugar coat and white wash it when they can't outright deny it. Slavery in the US was cruel and horrific, and anyone with honest knowledge of the institution is well aware; there are still photographs around that show it.*
*Example: Wikipedia's article on Peter, an escaped slave. Fair warning, though, the images on the page are heartbreaking or nausea inducing, possibly both. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_(enslaved_man)
We're talking about Alabama, here - a state that ranks at the bottom of all fifty states for public education. The Alabama legislature has no interest in smart kids - only winning the culture wars.
Stupid people are easier to control and manipulate! Plus, stupid people make great mindless workers/soldiers that don’t question anything they are told! The elite members of the MAGAS movement will make sure their kids are fully educated, so they (elite MAGAS) can take their place as leaders (nobility) of the rabble.
𝑆𝑡𝑢𝑝𝑖𝑑 𝑝𝑒𝑜𝑝𝑙𝑒 𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑒𝑎𝑠𝑖𝑒𝑟 𝑡𝑜 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑡𝑟𝑜𝑙 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑚𝑎𝑛𝑖𝑝𝑢𝑙𝑎𝑡𝑒!
𝐼 𝑙𝑜𝑣𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑝𝑜𝑜𝑟𝑙𝑦 𝑒𝑑𝑢𝑐𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑑.
-- Donald John Trump
He loves the poorly educated because he's one of them. That's what happens when you're rich enough to pay your fellow students to do your homework and take your tests for you. Your education takes a nosedive.
I agree with your assessment of Trump’s education. Trump is poorly educated and being manipulated by th real President of the United States (Putin).
He also relies on their ignorance, either consciously or unconsciously.
I still want to see the college transcripts of the students who wrote his papers and took tests for him.
So do I.
"He loves the poorly educated because he's one of them"
It is said of our former Prime Minister, Boris Johnson (spit), "He went to the finest schools and universities in England. It's a pity he missed out on the education"
Swerve alert:
We moved up to Scotland about 5 years ago. While we were looking at houses, we were often asked why we were moving (from Manchester, England). "Did we have family up here?", to which we answered, "No". "Friends then?", to which we also answered, "No". When asked, "Why then?", my response was that I didn't want to live in a country that could elect Johnson as PM. In every house but one, we got nods of understanding.
Sometimes I marvel that I escaped from this kind of hell. It was YEC through 8th grade. A very fine public high school in Iowa. Then, thanks to ACT scores thru the roof, I got into a very competitive university where I discovered that a lot of what I believed was wrong. I was too smart to keep believing lies.
I remember when Iowa was ranked #1 in education.
I remember this also. I also remember hearing that if the southern two tiers of counties left Iowa and joined Missouri it would improve the literacy rate of both states!
I believe that’s when I was in HS there. The Des Moines Register was winning Pulitzers regularly. A period of enlightenment.
I went to school in Iowa during that enlightened time and received an excellent education. FF to to my first teaching job at what was supposed to be one of the best h.s. in Iowa. I left 5 years later partly because of teacher behavior. So many of them wanted to be the students' best friends. They would walk down the hall with their arms around students' shoulders while discussing the upcoming football game and even bet money on games with students. At one point, a student was $800 in debt to a teacher. Another teacher brought donuts for her students every Friday, even tho it was against the rules, and, of course, students loved her for it. I walked by her room one Friday at the beginning of class and heard her announce, "Let's talk about what we're doing this weekend. I'll go first." Yet another promised a C grade just for showing up for class, no need to do homework or take part in discussion. One spent his free hour perusing child porn online, until he was caught and asked to leave. The school didn't press charges, so he's now teaching in another state. And forget Casual Friday; many teachers dressed like slobs all week long. And all this was just in one wing of the school (there were 3). Schools reflect society, so I can't imagine what it's like to teach today.
I attended school in three different school districts and that wasn't my experience at all. I graduated in '79, casual Friday hadn't been invented yet. : )
Was that back when Radar lived there?
🤣🤣
Not quite that long ago.
Christian schools vary tremendously in quality. From excellent academics, to little more than Sunday school Bible classes. Giving money to private schools, religious or otherwise, takes money away from our already under-funded public schools. That students perform better in private schools is also highly deceptive. It’s easy to boast about great outcomes if you can choose who you’re going to admit, and retain.
Add to that the wealth redistribution upwards. The vouchers don't pay the whole tuition, so the ones who can afford it without the vouchers will use most of the voucher money.
If memory serves, data shows that the private schools will increase tuition by a large fraction of the voucher.
That, and at the same time, more schools will pop up as the money increases. The "good" schools will have the higher tuition but some schools will just take the vouchers and run not much more than a babysitting service.
And we can surely predict more sexual abuse.
A catholic school in Tampa did that, and caught hell for it.
It’s incredible how much education in this country varies from state to state. There simply is no baseline or standard (bEcAuSe FrEeDoM?). A friend of mine who is a professor at NYU said she can immediately tell whether a new student is coming from somewhere like Alabama or Massachusetts. Sadly, most of these homeschooled or Christian indoctrinated students won’t even make it to college. Either the absurd cost or the fear of “woke ideology” will keep these folks right where they are in a never ending cycle of ignorance and poverty as if it were some kind of virtue.
War is Peace
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength
🤡
1984 by George Orwell. I doubt the average MAGAS even read 1984, or for that manner any book. According to the MAGAS mindset reading/gaining knowledge/expertise is an elitist, socialist, woke, etc and is a sin (and to question faith in general), while ignorance and blind obedience (to the clergy and leadership) is a virtue (the more obedient and ignorant you are, that is a mark of a “TRUE BELIEVER”).
The Geography book shows how to navigate the Piggly Wiggly and get home again
What more does a person need.
Thank You Orwell!
Well, ignorance and poverty are virtues…
For the people pushing the ignorance and poverty.
"Well, ignorance and poverty are virtues…"
Try asking Christians which book, chapter and verse are the "virtues" mentioned...
It’s the same book, chapter and verse that says to molest kids. Everybody knows that
Indeed. A tale as old as time.
𝑇ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒’𝑠 𝑛𝑜 𝑐𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑙 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑏𝑒𝑐𝑎𝑢𝑠𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑐𝑎𝑛’𝑡 𝑏𝑒.
They don't want children who can think. They want children to be obedient little drones so the indoctrination roots deep and they maintain control.
Belle façon de se tirer dans le pied. Infrastructures construction and maintenance need people with a solid science background at the top.
I have a unique perspective on this. I homeschooled my kids with what used to be the Gardiner Scholarship in Florida. This was a taxpayer-funded account for students with specific disabilities that prevented them from being able to attend school. Now, to be clear, I firmly believe that public schools are the foundation of democracy, and that with adequate special education funding and a more-creative classroom set-up, more of these kids could attend school. The reality, however, is service gatekeeping and gag orders on teachers.
Republicans are now trying to block special education even more--to fuel to the school-to-private-prison-slave-labor pipeline. Many parents of disabled kids, overwhelmed and exhausted, don't understand that private and Christian schools are not bound by federal law--and in Florida, many of them make promises of accommodations that they have no intention of keeping, sign parents to tuition contracts, and then expel the students. It's a very "entrepreneurial" business model thoroughly approved by White Christian Nationalist Jesus.
My kids spent time at a hybrid-homeschool program set up by a former teacher, where they were able to attend tutoring and have "classmates" in a sensory-friendly environment several hours a week, while recovering the rest of the week. Public schools could do this--with commitment and funding. From there, my kids moved on to dual enrollment at community college, which, again, allowed them to adapt their school schedules to their healthcare needs.
The Gardiner Scholarship *could* have been run by special education specialists who approved purchases based on a student's diagnosis and needs. For instance, a student with vision problems may need a large-screen TV to use an enormous typeface; a student who can only do seated exercise may benefit from a kayak or recline bike. But unfortunately, the Dept of Education was obliged to choose private "vendors" to administer the scholarship; these vendors tend to be unqualified political cronies, which is why social services in the state are so pathetic.
The organization that Florida chose to hire is corrupt. They run what's supposed to be a non-profit as if it were an insurance company. Instead of hiring education experts as processors, they subcontract overseas to the lowest bidder--so that they can maximize 6 figure salaries for their bloated senior staff, some of whom have job titles like [satire] "chief cheerleader to the boss" and "morale booster to exploited underlings." It is a CF of epic proportions.
Then Ron DeSantis, in cooperation with what, make no mistake, are for-profit Christian companies, expanded the tax credit scholarships, like these you describe for Alabama, and rolled the disabled kids' scholarship into it. This has hurt the very children this scholarship was supposed to help. Now we have entitled parents with perfectly abled children screaming "it's not fair that that blind/sick kid gets a large screen TV/kayak! I want MY kid to have a taxpayer-funded TV/kayak too!" So entire Best Buy and Fun N Function catalogs are approved for purchase by any scholarship recipient.
In the beginning, parents researched and made our own purchases to send in for reimbursement. But to better send money to Christian Nationalists, the organization made its own purchasing website, full of curriculum from Abeka, Timberdoodle, Memoria Press, etc. They try to force parents to choose those by delaying reimbursements up to the maximum 60 days. Now, imagine an exhausted family with multiple adopted and foster children with severe disabilities, living off SSI, forced to pay high credit card interest rates because they refuse to buy pre-selected Christian propaganda. "Enshittification" is the word, right? Instead of improving it, they made it worse, for money.
Anyway, go to the Timberdoodle catalog. There is not a single feminine pronoun in the entire thing, and the "ethics" lessons are not only infantilizing but portray women as gold-digging liars. Seriously, read about cult language (eg Lalich's Take Back Your Life) and then go back to read the Timberdoodle catalog. I can FEEL the cult language like molasses or tar or spider webs. For me, it's repellent; for some people it's magnetic; and I guess most Americans don't pay attention and just obediently swallow their "medicine." (And this is why I have to take 2 Nexium a day.)
WOW. There's no excuse for making education difficult for any child. Public education dollars are there to serve the students.
I hope you can rid yourselves of the government in FL.
WHAT a shitty bargain! Religiou$ Fanatics get Public Education funds. We get underfunded Public Schools, poorly educated children & children indoctrinated into obedient little MAGAsses that will turn on their parents in an instant to gratify the GOP's Trumptatorship.
We desperately need TOTAL & PERMANENT Separation of Religion & State.
1. I’ve been a rock and roll rebel for years, yet I made it through college, grad school and life with no help from a god. Did the devil make me do it? 🤔
2. Math, meh. I still don’t understand the process beyond addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. I do understand fractions though! :D
So, a fractional understanding of math. : )
Good way to sum it all up.
I am going to substrack myself from this pun thread.
Before the puns multiply?
And cause division among us?
And so much negative-ity.
Lol, exactly
Studied algae in the bra in HS. Could never get quadrati equations. Finally one day teach was sick and the advanced maths teacher stepped in Well, I asked him and he said the sme things but it suddenly snapped into place. I was solving the as fast as he could put them on the blackboard.
Geometry is mostly a logic course in disguise. I used a lot of trig as a machinist
Geometry is the worst kind of maths. I stopped trying to make sense of it in 7th grade.
About all I remember is the property of tweeniness. I had a friend who did non-Euclidian geometry for fun. She worked as aan auditor.
I actually had a great tutor to help me get through algebra that way. Geometry was a bust, but I squeaked through. I had to take statistics in grad school and I just learned (via a tutoring lab) to recognize what the problem was asking me to do.
A good teacher makes a hell of a difference.
So does encouragement. If I'd had any sort of actual encouragement from home, I might be a heck of a lot better at math now.
To this very day I wonder if those who "teach" that non-avian dinosaurs once lived alongside humans since they were created on the 6th Day of creation have been watching far too many sci-fi films and read far too many comic books and pulp fiction; all depicting dinosaurs, Permian reptiles, Cenozoic mammals, and cavemen living together in remote areas of the world side by side.
The difficulty of doing science is that it takes years to become good at it, and a good amount of background reading to understand it.
I mentioned last week that I went to a talk on Stac Fada, a geological formation in Assynt, on the west coast of Scotland.
One of the major themes of the talk was the dating of the formation (just under a billion years old). In addition, he covered why it is now thought that the formation is the result of a meteor impact rather than a volcanic eruption, and how it is the location of the earliest known non-marine eukaryotic microfossils.
The great beauty of the talk was how the consilience from multiple sources of evidence ties all this together.
Here I am, wading through "The Ends of the World." by Brannen. The story of the earth's major extinction events.
That’s a good book, lots of information about mass extinctions that literally changed the earth. Far more that that fictional goddybitch ever did!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2s13X66BFd8
https://ibb.co/7d5ZQWJ6
The link is good for one week only.
Today's earworm:
There's a man in the funny papers we all know
(Alley Oop Oop, Oop Oop Oop)
He lived way back a long time ago
(Alley Oop Oop, Oop Oop Oop)
Well, he don't eat nothin' but bear cat stew
(Alley Oop Oop, Oop Oop Oop)
Oh well, this cat's name is a Alley Oop
(Alley Oop Oop, Oop Oop Oop)
He's the toughest man there is alive
(Alley Oop)
Wears clothes from a wildcat's hide
(Alley Oop)
He's the king of the jungle jive
Look at that caveman go
He's got a chauffeur that's a genuine dinosaur
(Alley Oop Oop, Oop Oop Oop)
And he can knuckle your head before you count to four....
Paying taxes so churches can teach people to hate me using my money
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0867e4aa06dfad79f8a9f3389a598e3a266c7d3059b4f7aa704a032677e4db60.jpg
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion..." Why there should be any question that such an establishment should include religious schools is beyond me. Once again, I am reminded of Benjamin Franklin's famous quote regarding good religions versus bad religions and the fact that there are damn few of the former and too many of the latter. That religious schools wish to dip into the public trough to fund themselves is a primary indicator that the quality of what they have to offer is questionable at best.
And yet people continue to allow vouchers and other mechanisms to fund these pretenders of education, mostly because they think they should be somehow better when it is eminently clear that they are not.
“ they may be screwing themselves over when they get to college and realize they don’t know any of the basic material. And that’s assuming they even get into college.”
Well, that’s not being fair. At least they know the difference between the floor of a boat and an elephant. And they know what a boat or an elephant is. That’s four whole facts!
And besides, they’re not teaching education. They’re teaching stupidity. And that’s a whole accomplishment that you really have to appreciate.
Credit where credit is due.
"they know the difference between the floor of a boat and an elephant"
They know that elephants stood on the floor of the Ark during teh Flud.
And that the giraffes stuck their heads up into the little house on top of the ark.
And they told the peguins what they saw and heard. That is what got us Madagascar 3. Everyone knows the penguins are in charge.
...while the unicorns got left behind hiding, playing silly games.
Now we have five facts. What is everyone complaining about?
"floor of a boat and an elephant." - They both can have trunks.
You sound home-schooled, sir.
No, but my Dad was a science teacher and my Mom was an English teacher.
So woke!
Way back when, before I started school, my Dad was also the bus driver, so I would wake up early and get to go on his bus route with him.
See, I knew you were woke! Really early.
DM was a rebel until her death. The last three concerts we went to were Rammstein, the Hu and Apocalyptica 😁
"But this slogan twists the virtue of love by disconnecting it from Scripture, using it to promote the LGBTQ agenda."
Love is older than the abrahamic religions. Were Khnumhotep and Niankhkhnum, who lived waaay before the Ancient Jews made their official apparition in history, promoting a gay agenda ?
Still waiting for that official Gay/LGBTQ agenda to be printed. :)
It's all projection. It is Christians who clearly have the agenda.
https://ibb.co/8DM42D37
That sounds like an agenda I can support.
...but what about Wing Wednesday?! The straights don't own wings!
Good music 👍