Posted on 06/02/2005 8:09:10 AM PDT by EarthStomper
I realize that - it is just a sore subject with me, because some insist that it occurs in EVERY public school.
i realize that, but unfortunately, it is a very real problem in many public schools. not your's, and for that you are lucky.
No doubt there is a problem in some, and that should be dealt with in thoe localities. But broad brushing all public schools because of a few bad apples is wrong.
rural areas are going to be ok, but large urban centers are typically much more PC and will then have more stuff like this going on. It is equally wrong to minimize a very real problem.
I am not tryig to minimize a serious problem. My issue is that this is being used as the standard for which the anti-public school contingent uses to describe ALL public schools. You know the type I am talking about.
ROFL! That one line is almost enough to redeem the author's sneering condescension towards people of faith.
Glad to see that this article was a parody, but it raises an important point. Public schools should teach classical mythology because it was an important part of shaping the Western world we now inhabit. Likewise, schools should teach kids the Bible as literature, because it too has been enormously influential on shaping our modern world.
But because of PC-ness and multiculturalism, many educators are of the mind that Western civ is unimportant or downright evil. Thus many students come out of high school with a very poor knowledge of the history of their culture. They are especially ignorant of the role of Christianity in Western history, which is just inexcusable. Public schools wouldn't dream of teaching kids about the human body in biology class and not mentioning the skeletal system. But they do the exact same thing in history and literature classes when they try to give a picture of the last 2000 years in the West w/o mentioning Christianity.
Case in point: last summer mr sassbox and I were working part-time at a warehouse. We did very mindless tasks like light assembly and packaging orders for the mail, so we were able to chat while we worked all day. We were talking about religion and mr sassbox said something about Martin Luther. A co-worker overheard us and said "are you talking about Martin Luther King?" I said no, we meant the "original Martin Luther." He said in amazement, "there were two Martin Luthers??" I said yes, that the other Martin Luther started the Reformation. He had no idea what the Reformation was. I tried to explain it as the period when Protestants broke away from the Catholic Church. This didn't help much; he seemed to have no understanding of what the terms "Protestant" and "Catholic" meant and the important distinction between them. Just unbelievable....
This fellow was not from a disadvantaged background. His family was well-off and encouraged education (his older sister was a lawyer). He had been in public schools his whole life and was about to be a senior at a public university, with a major in the humanities. Yet in all this time, he had never learned about the Reformation. Now one can certainly debate about whether the Reformation was a good thing, a horrible thing, or just two superstitions squabbling amongst themselves. But one cannot deny that it, along with other events in the history of Christianity, has had an enormous impact on shaping the world we live in today. For better or worse, the modern world would not be the same if not for Martin Luther. So one has to at least know about the Reformation if they want to understand history and today's world. It is just shameful that a lifetime of public education could leave this young man still so ignorant.
For anyone wanting to know what all the hoopla is about, Robert Fagles' translation of the Iliad (and Odyssey) is a truly wonderful read, and for a devastating critique of Greek and Roman polytheism you need look no further than Cicero's On the Nature of the Gods, or St. Augustine's City of God (which draws heavily on Cicero, but others as well).
One thing I noticed was that a lot of courthouses have statues of Justice, Justice was a roman diety.
Please! Tell us this is all a joke.
To make such an arguement in court not only fails the Red Faced Test, it requires a mental stretch that even Plastic Man couldn't manage.
Does anyone know if Alabama courts ever order drug tests on lawyers filing such suits?
Take a deep breath, then read the first sentence in the second paragraph.
Ain't no such thang.
Surely this guy knows that objectivity and rationality are sometimes even more hated than monotheism in American universities; many despisers even link the concepts together. He's a "freethinker" right out of the nineteenth century.
Ouch I fell for that, hook, line, and sinker. And me without my trusty disgorger.
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