An Olive Branch

Peter Duniho wrote:

"Alexis Carlson" wrote in message
...
Oh please. The Democrats have been working hard to woo the
Religous Left vote for decades.

So what? First, they haven't done a very effective job (or the "religious
left" is very tiny), since those who state a religious preference of any
sort of Christianity are strongly in the Bush camp (again based on
polls...I'm not interested in any more crap about "well the polls are
wrong"...they are almost always quite close to the truth).

But regardless of what the Democrats have tried, the fact remains that the
Republicans continue to enjoy strong support from the evangelicals and
fundamentalists.

So, did you have a point, or what?

The point is you're wrong with respect to Democrats. As was pointed out in
the Wall St Journal today, Senator Kerry won nearly half of the Catholic votes
and more than three fourths of Jewish votes. If the Democrats could not
appeal to the moral values of people, that fact must have been lost on the 48%
of the voters who supported Sen. Kerry.

"Alexis Carlson" wrote in message
...
The point is you're wrong with respect to Democrats.

Please quote my incorrect statement.

All I said is that the *REPUBLICANS* have shifted to being a very
pro-evangelical / fundamentalist party over the last couple of decades. I
don't see how you can sit there as write "you're wrong with respect to
Democrats" since my entire contribution to this section of the thread has
been about Republicans.

On Mon, 8 Nov 2004 14:51:25 -0800, "Peter Duniho"
wrote:

"Corky Scott" wrote in message
.. .
What courses in school would teach critical thinking skills?

Any course can. That's one of the beautiful things about critical
thinking...it's relatively independent of the subject in question.

Can you give me an example of what you mean by critical thinking? How
would you see it being taught in, say, math class? Reading?

But when schools simply teach you that you have to memorize facts, but don't
need to know how to put facts together to create new knowledge and insights,
there's no real education going on. Unfortunately, that appears to be the
norm in education of all levels.

Well like it or not, there are some things kids just have to memorize.
The alphabet, spelling rules, vowel sounds, vocabulary, addition and
multiplication tables, and so on. These are building blocks for
further education.

Bush is a great believer in accountability in schools. How does he
assess accountability? By making schools give their students
standardized tests and telling them that if their students don't show
improvement, the school will loose funding. It's very important for
the schools that their students show improvement in these tests so the
inevitable result of "No child left behind" is rote memorization of
facts...

Corky Scott

Bush is a great believer in accountability in schools. How does he
assess accountability? By making schools give their students
standardized tests and telling them that if their students don't show
improvement, the school will loose funding. It's very important for
the schools that their students show improvement in these tests so the
inevitable result of "No child left behind" is rote memorization of
facts...

It's not "inevitable" -- but it might be a side benefit. It would be nice
if at least *some* of our students knew a few of the important dates in
history, or memorized a soliloquy.

"No child left behind" isn't perfect, but it's the first program in my
lifetime that holds out any hope for fixing the utterly broken inner city
schools -- which is what the program is really targeted at.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

On Tue, 09 Nov 2004 14:09:07 GMT, "Jay Honeck"
wrote:

"No child left behind" isn't perfect, but it's the first program in my
lifetime that holds out any hope for fixing the utterly broken inner city
schools -- which is what the program is really targeted at.

Unfortunately, here in Vermont the smallish size of many of our
schools causes them to be the "collateral damage", so to speak, of
this program aimed at inner city schools.

With small schools and small classes, students with learning
disabilities have a disproportionately large affect on the test
results. And guess what, they aren't going to improve much regardless
how effective the teacher is, so the test results won't go up from
test to test. Vermont is studded with small schools and pretty much
all of them have learning disabled students. No dodging this one, the
Feds say all students must be tested regardless their actual ability
to learn.

These schools are getting warnings that they are not in compliance
with the standardized testing and there's little they can do to
improve things, other than convince the parents of the learning
disabled kids to move away from their district.

So far the Feds are not aknowledging the impossibility of the
situation or indicating understanding: do the testing, show
improvement or loose funding.

Corky Scott

Corky Scott wrote:
I'll be interested in seeing Peter's responses, but here are some of
my thoughts.

On Mon, 8 Nov 2004 14:51:25 -0800, "Peter Duniho"
wrote:

"Corky Scott" wrote in message
. ..
What courses in school would teach critical thinking skills?

Any course can. That's one of the beautiful things about critical
thinking...it's relatively independent of the subject in question.

Can you give me an example of what you mean by critical thinking?
That's a tough one. It's about like saying "define a liberal arts
education. But you should see it all around you. My son went to a
school in the same league as the one with which you are associated,
and found lots of students with degrees in history or literature
getting good jobs, not in literary analysis or historical research,
but in unrelated fields because of the critical thinking abilities
they had learned and demonstrated.

How would you see it being taught in, say, math class?
The very nature of mathematical proof is critical thinking. Proof by
induction or by assuming the negative and showing a contradiction are
very generalized critical thinking skills.

Reading?
Literary analysis is an example of critical thinking in practice, and
the literature itself can expose the reader to the critical thinking

But when schools simply teach you that you have to memorize facts, but don't
need to know how to put facts together to create new knowledge and insights,
there's no real education going on. Unfortunately, that appears to be the
norm in education of all levels.

Well like it or not, there are some things kids just have to memorize.
The alphabet, spelling rules, vowel sounds, vocabulary, addition and
multiplication tables, and so on. These are building blocks for
further education.

Bush is a great believer in accountability in schools. How does he
assess accountability? By making schools give their students
standardized tests and telling them that if their students don't show
improvement, the school will loose funding. It's very important for
the schools that their students show improvement in these tests so the
inevitable result of "No child left behind" is rote memorization of
facts...
I think that is a very great danger, and what can be scary about
testing. But testing that is not of facts, but rather of skills, is
much harder to "prep" for without actually getting educated.

--
Alex -- Replace "nospam" with "mail" to reply by email. Checked infrequently.

Corky Scott wrote:

On Tue, 09 Nov 2004 14:09:07 GMT, "Jay Honeck"
wrote:

"No child left behind" isn't perfect, but it's the first program in my
lifetime that holds out any hope for fixing the utterly broken inner city
schools -- which is what the program is really targeted at.

Unfortunately, here in Vermont the smallish size of many of our
schools causes them to be the "collateral damage", so to speak, of
this program aimed at inner city schools.

With small schools and small classes, students with learning
disabilities have a disproportionately large affect on the test
results.
I don't understand this one. Why is that? Fresh air leads to learning
disabilities, or is it too much maple sugar?

And guess what, they aren't going to improve much regardless
how effective the teacher is, so the test results won't go up from
test to test. Vermont is studded with small schools and pretty much
all of them have learning disabled students. No dodging this one, the
Feds say all students must be tested regardless their actual ability
to learn.

These schools are getting warnings that they are not in compliance
with the standardized testing and there's little they can do to
improve things, other than convince the parents of the learning
disabled kids to move away from their district.

So far the Feds are not aknowledging the impossibility of the
situation or indicating understanding: do the testing, show
improvement or loose funding.

Corky Scott

--
Alex -- Replace "nospam" with "mail" to reply by email. Checked infrequently.

alexy wrote:

Sorry. Itchy "send finger".

How would you see it being taught in, say, math class?
The very nature of mathematical proof is critical thinking. Proof by
induction or by assuming the negative and showing a contradiction are
very generalized critical thinking skills.

Reading?
Literary analysis is an example of critical thinking in practice, and
the literature itself can expose the reader to the critical thinking
of some of the great minds of history. When my kids were reading Kafka
in high school, the old man had to renew his critical thinking skills
to be able to discuss it with them.
But when schools simply teach you that you have to memorize facts, but don't
need to know how to put facts together to create new knowledge and insights,
there's no real education going on. Unfortunately, that appears to be the
norm in education of all levels.

Well like it or not, there are some things kids just have to memorize.
The alphabet, spelling rules, vowel sounds, vocabulary, addition and
multiplication tables, and so on. These are building blocks for
further education.

Bush is a great believer in accountability in schools. How does he
assess accountability? By making schools give their students
standardized tests and telling them that if their students don't show
improvement, the school will loose funding. It's very important for
the schools that their students show improvement in these tests so the
inevitable result of "No child left behind" is rote memorization of
facts...
I think that is a very great danger, and what can be scary about
testing. But testing that is not of facts, but rather of skills, is
much harder to "prep" for without actually getting educated.

--
Alex -- Replace "nospam" with "mail" to reply by email. Checked infrequently.

alexy wrote:

Corky Scott wrote:

With small schools and small classes, students with learning
disabilities have a disproportionately large affect on the test
results.

I don't understand this one. Why is that? Fresh air leads to learning
disabilities, or is it too much maple sugar?

If you have one disabled child in a school that has 500 students, it doesn't affect
the average performance of the school. If you have one disabled child in 500
students, but these students are spread out over 10 schools, the performance of the
one school that kid is in will show up as disproportionately poor.

George Patterson
If a man gets into a fight 3,000 miles away from home, he *had* to have
been looking for it.

"G.R. Patterson III" wrote:



alexy wrote:

Corky Scott wrote:

With small schools and small classes, students with learning
disabilities have a disproportionately large affect on the test
results.

I don't understand this one. Why is that? Fresh air leads to learning
disabilities, or is it too much maple sugar?

If you have one disabled child in a school that has 500 students, it doesn't affect
the average performance of the school. If you have one disabled child in 500
students, but these students are spread out over 10 schools, the performance of the
one school that kid is in will show up as disproportionately poor.

Oh, okay. I didn't realize that the incidence of learning disabilities
was so low. In that case, I agree that a few VT schools would have a
harder time meeting the requirements, while most VT schools would have
an easier time of it than would larger schools.
--
Alex -- Replace "nospam" with "mail" to reply by email. Checked infrequently.