Posted on 03/10/2010 6:42:04 PM PST by cradle of freedom
I am watching Michelle Malkin and Sean Hannity discussing the Texas school books debates. There is a struggle for the soul of America between traditional patriots and leftists as both sides try to influence the public school text book printers. Since Texas is such a large state whatever Texas decides determines what the text book industry will print. Many other states will follow in Texas' footsteps.
What is happening in Texas is of course very important but we do not have to just rely on the public schools for the education of our children. The churches could do much to teach our children about our country's history, our American faith tradition, basic economics and many other things that the liberal school system will not teach our children. What if the churches started having book fairs? Wouldn't this be great around Christamass time? Instead of buying more useless toys why not buy our kids books which will enrich their lives and strenghten them in their faith and patriotism. Books make the best Christmas gifts, not just for children but for adult friends and family members. We could all use a little more knowlege and wisdom.
I hope any pastors reading this will get together with other congregations to put together book fares for their churches. The enemy is always trying to deceive us with his lies. We need to defeat him with truth.
Also how about having discussions after church?
Get rid of textbooks to cut costs and make the material wholly online! That is the way to go. If this happens, schools will include material submitted by parents. All of us can contribute materials since it won’t be expensive to print books and participate in the process. Lobby for getting rid of printed textbooks.
. . too soon?"
Getting rid of textbooks will probably not help.
You might recall that last fall there was a special on Fox hosted by Tucker Carlson about textbooks.
Near the end of the hour, they focused on textbooks for colleges that were “digital”. Professors could choose to change the content of the digital texts, according to their needs.
What is happening in Texas is extremely important in that the outcome will determine the conservative right’s ability to effectively “fight” the left.
This isn’t just about textbooks.
Probably the best bet would be to create multimedia DVD presentations just as entertaining as James Burke’s “Connections”, but with an emphasis on “classical” American history and studies.
There should be an extra emphasis on history, as it is regarded as the greatest enemy of socialism, and they have long sought to pervert, distort, and destroy it.
Importantly, this needs to be stripped of every and any vestige of political correctness.
Just as important, it can’t be sanitized of the ugly and evil aspects of history and our nation, knowledge of which is essential to know the entire truth. Likewise it must be taught that Europeans and Americans were not usually, or even often, the bad guys; that other nations and peoples could be utterly rotten and vicious.
But though this is part of it, by far the emphasis needs to be on the greatness, of men, and ideas, that built an America that is unique and better in many ways, then any other nation that ever was.
Agree with you but textbooks are hard to change and if we can push for online materials alone, it will make our task a wee bit easier. You can't compare schools with colleges. College professors have academic freedom. Public schools have to take public input. The big problem for them is that they need to please the publishers as well and it is not easy to republish textbooks. If there were no publishers involved and we had only online material to deal with, the boards of education around the country would be more cooperative as changing such material is cheap.
Agree with you but textbooks are hard to change and if we can push for online materials alone, it will make our task a wee bit easier. You can’t compare schools with colleges. College professors have academic freedom. Public schools have to take public input. The big problem for them is that they need to please the publishers as well and it is not easy to republish textbooks. If there were no publishers involved and we had only online material to deal with, the boards of education around the country would be more cooperative as changing such material is cheap.
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I understand where you are coming from. I taught 4th grade in an online school. An online school will provide you with the curriculum, the teacher, and a computer. It is considered a public school
You can look for an online school in your area - just do a search.
Teachers created their own curriculum so there was academic freedom involved. We would like to websites - which were not always appropriate for 4th grade, but we managed to find many websites for children.
But even though I had academic freedom, keep in mind that 1. we had to follow the state standards content areas and 2. there are a lot of teachers who are not as conservative as I am.
This is about fighting the LEFT!
We would *link to websites.
Set up religious private schools within large church education buildings, which will bring down the cost of private schooling. Then all instruction can be along the parents’ beliefs.
EXACTLY! And publishers are their friends. Actually, Arnold Schwarzenegger suggested that California do away with printed textbooks to manage their budget problem. So this is not an outlandish idea but something doable if we push for it. Let public schools get digital copies of teaching material. Eliminate the publishers!
You should give your feedback and ask other teachers to give feedback that textbooks are worthless and you prefer using websites and other resources and that the state should help out by ridding the schools of printed textbooks.
You should give your feedback and ask other teachers to give feedback that textbooks are worthless and you prefer using websites and other resources and that the state should help out by ridding the schools of printed textbooks.
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It is not unreasonable to get rid of textbooks. I taught online without textbooks. If you get rid of the publishers, the one thing is that the publishers can NOT produce the software or DVD, etc.
Also keep in mind that Obama has plans to regulate the Internet, along with plans to monitor websites and track everything that is done on the Internet. He is tyrannical.
Many schools do not have computers that will run software or websites with intense graphics.
LOVE Connections.
Do you know of any schools that have switched to online learning materials?
At the very least using online books could save Christian schools lots of money and could therefore make them more affordable to parents.
I meant that public schools should be asked to do away with print editions. That way the publisher cartel will be eliminated.
I know that in California schools, parents give a lot of input and school teachers use these materials. Teachers also use a lot of stuff from online. In essence, the textbooks are rendered meaningless in subjects such as history. I also know that in NC (in the Raleigh area), there are teachers who use only online materials. A friend’s daughter did not even know which textbook that the school district had approved and purchased because her teacher never used it.
AMEN! AMEN!
Our church has begun a used book table. We resell the books for $2.00 each. We ask for donations from everyone . . . the money goes totally to ministry outreach efforts.
We insure a high quality list of titles. Others get tossed or given to the thrift shop down the sidewalk.
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