Public Schools - Indoctrination Centers

Pandora said:
One of our local high schools had a mandatory viewing by the kids AND their parents of AlGores movie. A few walked out in protest, it made the news, the kids didnt pass the class. That same school (and its not even close to the most liberal in our area) had a play that basicly trashed republicans, the kids who walked out of that got all kinds of heat from the teachers. That sort of stuff is comon place here. Kids being sent home or forced to change their shirt if it was pro Bush during that election. The college is even worse. You were only counted in class if you went to the anti war rally but if you went to the pro troops rally you were considered absent. So either you went to their rally or missed a day at class or lied.
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Now, that is outrageous. The parents should pack the school board meeting and demand changes. Schools don't have a right to do anything like you are describing.


Anti war rally? Are you talking 1960's? Where have there been anti war rallies lately?
 
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PLC1 said:
Now, that is outrageous. The parents should pack the school board meeting and demand changes. Schools don't have a right to do anything like you are describing.


Anti war rally? Are you talking 1960's? Where have there been anti war rallies lately?
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the anti war rallys that were every place when Bush was president. The Iraq war...

Lots of parents were angry but I dont think it went anyplace. I have not heard that school doing it again so that at least is a good thing. We have Lars Larsons program in Oregon and Washington When schools do stupid stuff he tells everyone about it. Schools dont do as many stupid things since he airs the dirty laundry :) At least here in the peoples republic :)
 
dogtowner said:
I tend to agree though I think the degree of rare more than you guess and less than the others.

I'll reiterate that I feel its the central administration who pick the texts and set the curriculum who are most responsible. and thats a direct conclusion from the stories I heard from the many teachers I know personally (my step mother for example). as an example, if you put up a picture including people there HAD to be the approved assortment of types of people or it could not go up. the teachers hated it but could do nothing about it.
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Here, curriculum is set by the State of California, and textbooks selected statewide.

I've never heard that you can't put up a picture of all white males. That would eliminate a picture of the founding fathers, wouldn't it? Now, had I put up a picture of my class the last few years of my career, there would have been very few, and sometimes no, white faces in the picture.
 
Pandora said:
the anti war rallys that were every place when Bush was president. The Iraq war...

Lots of parents were angry but I dont think it went anyplace. I have not heard that school doing it again so that at least is a good thing. We have Lars Larsons program in Oregon and Washington When schools do stupid stuff he tells everyone about it. Schools dont do as many stupid things since he airs the dirty laundry :) At least here in the peoples republic :)
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Things must be very different in the People's Republic of Oregon.

Don't you have local school boards that decide if the kids can go to an anti war rally? We do, and the answer would most certainly be no, except perhaps, in Berkley.
 
PLC1 said:
Things must be very different in the People's Republic of Oregon.

Don't you have local school boards that decide if the kids can go to an anti war rally? We do, and the answer would most certainly be no, except perhaps, in Berkley.
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We of course have a school board but they do not decide what each teacher does or does not do. At the high school a class was given credit for attending the anti war rally, A few kids said they would not go to the rally and instead wanted to go to the pro troops rally, they were told by their teacher they would be marked absent that day if they did it. I would guess some of the parents called the school board complaining. The teacher did not do that again in the rallys that followed. It made news for a day or so then faded away. In Calif the school board decides each teachers class rules and what will or wont be accepted as credit? No wonder that pit of a state is so far in debt :)
 
Pandora said:
We of course have a school board but they do not decide what each teacher does or does not do. At the high school a class was given credit for attending the anti war rally, A few kids said they would not go to the rally and instead wanted to go to the pro troops rally, they were told by their teacher they would be marked absent that day if they did it. I would guess some of the parents called the school board complaining. The teacher did not do that again in the rallys that followed. It made news for a day or so then faded away. In Calif the school board decides each teachers class rules and what will or wont be accepted as credit? No wonder that pit of a state is so far in debt :)
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No, the school board would do what it sounds like yours did: Tell the administration to tell the teacher that his practices are not acceptable.

One teacher telling a class that they had to attend an anti war rally, then backing off because of either bad PR or the school board, or both, does not mean that the school has a policy of indoctrinating students. It sounds like quite the opposite to me. It sounds like one teacher out of many stepped over the line, and was made to back off. What's wrong with that?
 
PLC1 said:
No, the school board would do what it sounds like yours did: Tell the administration to tell the teacher that his practices are not acceptable.

One teacher telling a class that they had to attend an anti war rally, then backing off because of either bad PR or the school board, or both, does not mean that the school has a policy of indoctrinating students. It sounds like quite the opposite to me. It sounds like one teacher out of many stepped over the line, and was made to back off. What's wrong with that?
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Thats the same school that forced every kid to watch AlGores movie and would not give the kids credit if at least one of their parents did not watch it also. different teacher, same school. There is more of a problem than one lone teacher.
 
Pandora said:
Thats the same school that forced every kid to watch AlGores movie and would not give the kids credit if at least one of their parents did not watch it also. different teacher, same school. There is more of a problem than one lone teacher.
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What was the reaction of the parents to that one? I'd think they would have packed a few school board meetings and straightened them out.

but, maybe not.

How does the school have the ability to force all of the kids to watch a movie, let alone parents? They really stepped over the line with that one.
 
PLC1 said:
What was the reaction of the parents to that one? I'd think they would have packed a few school board meetings and straightened them out.

but, maybe not.

How does the school have the ability to force all of the kids to watch a movie, let alone parents? They really stepped over the line with that one.
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This was a few years back when the Iraq war was going on. The AlGore thing, I know some parents complained. I wouldnt say they packed the school board but probably did the PTO. Things are much more local it sounds like than where you are from. We pack the school board when they talk funding and cutting, but if a school makes parents mad the PTO is the place that gets packed. It made the local paper and news and was eventually resolved. Ill try to remember to look it up and see if I can find the final results from the archives of the local paper. My point is though that there are more than one or two rotten apples in the bunch and even those are only talked about when they do really stupid stuff.
 
PLC1 said:
Here, curriculum is set by the State of California, and textbooks selected statewide.

I've never heard that you can't put up a picture of all white males. That would eliminate a picture of the founding fathers, wouldn't it? Now, had I put up a picture of my class the last few years of my career, there would have been very few, and sometimes no, white faces in the picture.
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so your administration is even more centralized among fewer people (possible unelected even).

needless to say there are not many pictures up around here. one exception is student art. cant attempt to make sense of it as it makes no sense. and naturally irks the teachers. we do pack the school board meetings but there are so many fires to fight its hard to win them all.
 
Pandora said:
This was a few years back when the Iraq war was going on. The AlGore thing, I know some parents complained. I wouldnt say they packed the school board but probably did the PTO. Things are much more local it sounds like than where you are from. We pack the school board when they talk funding and cutting, but if a school makes parents mad the PTO is the place that gets packed. It made the local paper and news and was eventually resolved. Ill try to remember to look it up and see if I can find the final results from the archives of the local paper. My point is though that there are more than one or two rotten apples in the bunch and even those are only talked about when they do really stupid stuff.
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Sometimes administrators and teachers do really stupid stuff. A few incidents, however, do not a trend make. While there may be a few schools where there are examples of actions that shouldn't be tolerated, there really is no generally accepted practice of indoctrinating students into any particular political ideology. There are thousands of classrooms all over the country in which the agenda is reading, writing, math, science, and history. There are thousands of teachers all over the country teaching children reading comprehension, how to use math in everyday life, how to write a paragraph that calls more attention to its content than to the errors it contains, and how to apply analytic skills.

When a teacher insists that students (and parents!) see a controversial film or attend a political event, that makes news, and then everyone thinks that schools are all about some sort of political agenda.
 
PLC1 said:
It is my opinion, based on extensive experience, that stories about teachers engaging in indoctrination are rare, often exaggerated, and in no way representative of the public schools at large.
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How many times would the film need to have been shown in public schools for you to think it is a problem? Would 500 times count? How about 1000 times? How about 99 thousand?

The al gore movie was just one single and one highly publicized example. There are numerous small daily examples of indoctrination going on all the time. No doubt any one of them would appear to be inconsequential but collectively they add up.

Re the gore movie:

There is an organization called The Climate Project whose sole purpose is to show the slideshow in the movie to audiences and it still operates today. Today there are over three thousand five hundred presenters and in total they have shown the presentation to over 7 million people mostly in the US. If the presentation has been given 7 million times how many of those times has it been in a public school? Could it be that the presentation has been given only 99,000 times in schools? If of those 7 million presentations only .0014% of them were in public school then how many public school do you think would have had the movie presented? Answer: all of them because there are only about 99k public schools in the US total. OK I don't think the movie has been shown in public schools that many times but the math does show us that even if of the total number of times it has been shown the percentage were very small it would still have been shown many times.
 
Dr.Who said:
How many times would the film need to have been shown in public schools for you to think it is a problem? Would 500 times count? How about 1000 times? How about 99 thousand?

The al gore movie was just one single and one highly publicized example. There are numerous small daily examples of indoctrination going on all the time. No doubt any one of them would appear to be inconsequential but collectively they add up.

Re the gore movie:

There is an organization called The Climate Project whose sole purpose is to show the slideshow in the movie to audiences and it still operates today. Today there are over three thousand five hundred presenters and in total they have shown the presentation to over 7 million people mostly in the US. If the presentation has been given 7 million times how many of those times has it been in a public school? Could it be that the presentation has been given only 99,000 times in schools? If of those 7 million presentations only .0014% of them were in public school then how many public school do you think would have had the movie presented? Answer: all of them because there are only about 99k public schools in the US total. OK I don't think the movie has been shown in public schools that many times but the math does show us that even if of the total number of times it has been shown the percentage were very small it would still have been shown many times.
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If the viewing was voluntary, then that does not constitute an example of indoctrination. So, how many times have students been required to see this, or any other controversial movie? Seems to me to be a pretty rare occurrence.
 
PLC1 said:
If the viewing was voluntary, then that does not constitute an example of indoctrination. So, how many times have students been required to see this, or any other controversial movie? Seems to me to be a pretty rare occurrence.
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I just looked up the definition of indoctrination and there is no requirement that it be involuntary. A common element in definitions of indoctrination is that the subject being taught is partisan or political or unbiased. perhaps this is why you have not seen many examples of it in schools?
 
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Dr.Who said:
I just looked up the definition of indoctrination and there is no requirement that it be involuntary. A common element in definitions of indoctrination is that the subject being taught is partisan or political or unbiased. perhaps this is why you have not seen many examples of it in schools?
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Partisan or political or unbiased?
Maybe you meant biased?
Sure, that's probably why I haven't seen many examples in t he schools. Schools tend to avoid partisan political subjects.

as well they should.
 
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