What are things that everyone ought to understand, but many don't?

Vida May said:
What lovely talking points. I see right off the word "education" needs to be clarified. I have been using the word to mean the defined purpose of education that the authority defines and then controls for the school meeting that purpose. Until recently, parents determined school policy and it was thought the federal government was forbidden to control our education by the constitution and I think you can understand why. In no country did minority groups have a say in education and the results were as horrific as you have said.

You have stated that education molds our thoughts of others and our behaviors. That is culture. Culture can encourage prejudice and injustice or make prejudice and injustice unacceptable. Textbooks support that culture, and parents should examine the textbooks the children are using and complain if the textbooks are found harmful.

Texas was requiring schools to teach Creationism as equal to the theory of evolution. At least one person here is a perfect representative of this education. The teachers took Texas to the Supreme Court and argued Creationism is not science and does not belong in science books and they should not be forced to teach it is equal to science. They won.

Another part of the teachers' fight in Texas is Texas Republicans made it their agenda to prevent the teaching of higher order thinking skills. That means Texas children do not learn the logic skills to judge if something is true or not. Someone here demonstrates the problem with that. Asking these people to think through what they believe is like asking them to fly. Their brains can not organize information and form arguments. The Republican argument was that teaching the logic skills made children disobedient and were a problem for their parents.

Finally, in Texas, the oil Industry is the greatest source of state revenue, so the Texas test books support this industry while suppressing annoying facts such as global warming.

Because Texas buys a lot of textbooks, the textbook producers are agreeable to teaching what Texas wants taught. Also because Texas has a lot of lobbying and voter power, it can control some things at the federal level. While in a state like Mississippi, lack of commerce and poverty can leave their children unprepared for the high-paying jobs in rich high-tech states. It could be argued oversight of education at the Federal level is a good thing, or because Federal control destroys parental control, it can be argued the Feds should stay out of education decisions, as some thought the Constitution does.

I want you to know, that without your thinking on this subject, I would not have a cause to say what I said. I know I said too much for a post but hey, these are the things we need to understand and talk about so we are prepared to act on what we know and be responsible for how children are educated, our culture, and the future of the world.

Education for technology prepares the young to rely on authority and this becomes a culture that relies on authority. That was what the US fought against when it fought the American Revolution.
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I agree with some of what you've said here Vida May. But a few points concern me. For example, I don't know how education for technology prepares young people to rely on authority. What does understanding technology have to do with bowing down to authority? Or was that a reference to the 'authority of following the science' as it were? Or maybe in some cases, following 'the facts of a situation'? If it's the latter, surely that shouldn't be a problem. I would hope that in any issues in question, science/facts would be the basis for decisions that anybody makes, whether young or old.

But also, don't you think there's a serious problem with allowing parent groups to decide curriculum? Considering how ignorant so many are of so many things (history, culture, science, maths) why on earth would you want parents controlling any part of that? To allow 'parents' to control what schools teach would surely educate kids into a specific type of culture as you pointed out, and that isn't necessarily a good thing as per your example of Texas education demonstrated.

As for the American Revolution, I looked it up and the Encyclopedia Britannica says that revolution was a rebellion against Great Britain's expectations that newly fledged America would pay them back for their support in fighting to defend them during the French and Indian war via taxes. If you want to characterize it as a fight against authority, yes, the argument is there, but the specifics was that it was a fight about money.

My personal feeling on education is that all of life is an education and that our schools should teach facts while providing a backdrop example of kindness for one another so that our kids learn to get along with others while seeking their best lives.
 

Debrah N. said:
Aware!!! of the issues??? They had slaves for goodness sake! Six of them had multiple slaves and even Ulysses S. Grant had one.Of course they weren't going to address the issue! Sounds like you're whitewashing their 'intentions'. Taking into consideration the time lag between that document, the freeing of slaves and women getting the vote, it seems pretty clear who they thought should be considered equal.
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I will try this one more time, and I'll put in caps so you can read it better. IT WAS A DIFFERENT TIME. TWO HUNDRED AND THIRTY YEARS AGO.

You clearly have a hard time understanding a basic concept, that being CHANGE. And the willingness to put off difficult issues to allow TIME to rectify them.

I make excuses for NOBODY. But I recognize how difficult problems 230 years ago couldn't be resolved immediately.
 
Buckeye said:
So, when did Canadian First Nations people get the absolute right to vote in your national elections? Hint: It was within my lifetime.
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They got the right to vote, 50 years ago. Goodness, even the last residential school (hell for native children) wasn't closed until 1997!). And you won't find me lifting up my own country as superior in the case of human rights for our indigenous people over America's. What my own country did for hundreds of years was all awful and I don't deny it. I also wish our education system did a better job of teaching our own culpability as a causal warning (is that the right way to say that???) to future generations. In my 12 years of schooling, I never heard anything about Canada's treatment of our indigenous. Nothing. And as I said before, I grew up with racist ideas that while not openly expressed, were always there just below the surface.
 
Eupher said:
I will try this one more time, and I'll put in caps so you can read it better. IT WAS A DIFFERENT TIME. TWO HUNDRED AND THIRTY YEARS AGO.

You clearly have a hard time understanding a basic concept, that being CHANGE. And the willingness to put off difficult issues to allow TIME to rectify them.

I make excuses for NOBODY. But I recognize how difficult problems 230 years ago couldn't be resolved immediately.
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The inference that I must be too stupid to understand it was a different time, is an interesting way to engage in discussion. And it wasn't me that said those founding fathers were aware of the issue of slavery but chose to put it off to 'another time' because of the difficulties of the question. Considering that those guys all owned slaves, suggests that it wasn't even on their radar because they thought it was okay.

It wasn't like they wrote the document after freeing their own slaves, but then chose not to open the can of worms at that moment because they realized that while it was an evil thing, it wasn't the right time. I'm saying they didn't care at all. They also believed that women had no right to vote, probably because they were too fragile/sensitive/stupid to understand about politics and rights of human beings.
 
Debrah N. said:
The inference that I must be too stupid to understand it was a different time, is an interesting way to engage in discussion. And it wasn't me that said those founding fathers were aware of the issue of slavery but chose to put it off to 'another time' because of the difficulties of the question. Considering that those guys all owned slaves, suggests that it wasn't even on their radar because they thought it was okay.

It wasn't like they wrote the document after freeing their own slaves, but then chose not to open the can of worms at that moment because they realized that while it was an evil thing, it wasn't the right time. I'm saying they didn't care at all. They also believed that women had no right to vote, probably because they were too fragile/sensitive/stupid to understand about politics and rights of human beings.
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You're wrong in your facts. But I'll be generous. In Virginia, Washington, Madison, and Jefferson owned slaves. As did several others. But not all did. I'll do you a favor, since you're apparently a great fan of Encyclopedia Britannica, and link an article that tells the entire story.

The Founding Fathers and Slavery | History, Impact & Legacy | Britannica

For a Canadian, you are certainly entrenched in your evident hatred of America. That's your prerogative. But your vitriol is something I really don't want to engage in every time you open your keyboard. So with all due respect, goodbye.
 
Eupher said:
You're wrong in your facts. But I'll be generous. In Virginia, Washington, Madison, and Jefferson owned slaves. As did several others. But not all did. I'll do you a favor, since you're apparently a great fan of Encyclopedia Britannica, and link an article that tells the entire story.

The Founding Fathers and Slavery | History, Impact & Legacy | Britannica

For a Canadian, you are certainly entrenched in your evident hatred of America. That's your prerogative. But your vitriol is something I really don't want to engage in every time you open your keyboard. So with all due respect, goodbye.
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I made a point of looking it up and found the following and my question was, 'which of the founding fathers owned slaves?' Now if there were more founding fathers and they didn't own slaves, all well and good, but that doesn't change the fact that some of them did and they are the influential men that history remembers:
Learn more

Many of the Founding Fathers owned slaves, including:
  • George Washington: Owned many slaves
  • Thomas Jefferson: Owned many slaves
  • James Madison: Owned many slaves
  • Benjamin Franklin: Owned a few slaves
  • Alexander Hamilton: Married into a large slave-owning family

    Some other people who owned slaves include:
  • Andrew Johnson: Owned a few slaves and freed them in 1863
  • Ulysses S. Grant: Owned one slave, William Jones, who was freed in 1859
That's what I was referring to and while I'm critical of your country when it comes to this issue, I'm also critical of my own and our history with the First Nations people of Canada, as can be seen in my reply to Buckeye. I should also include, that in my country, we women didn't get the right to vote until 1918 which wasn't a whole lot better than in the USA. I'm sorry that you're taking my 'affection' for facts so personally.
 
oslooskar said:
Basic geography. Most Americans haven't got a clue where any foreign country is located on the map, other than Mexico and Canada. In fact, the average American would be lucky to score the first five questions correctly in this quiz.
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I didn't do very good with your quiz. Got a few of the obvious ones but the African continent is definitely not something I've spent any time reading about.
 
Debrah N. said:
They got the right to vote, 50 years ago. Goodness, even the last residential school (hell for native children) wasn't closed until 1997!). And you won't find me lifting up my own country as superior in the case of human rights for our indigenous people over America's. What my own country did for hundreds of years was all awful and I don't deny it. I also wish our education system did a better job of teaching our own culpability as a causal warning (is that the right way to say that???) to future generations. In my 12 years of schooling, I never heard anything about Canada's treatment of our indigenous. Nothing. And as I said before, I grew up with racist ideas that while not openly expressed, were always there just below the surface.
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Close but no cigar. It was 64 years ago.

In March 1960, Prime Minister John Diefenbaker pushed the voting rights legislation through Parliament. It came into effect July 1 that year.

So, you've been, ah, "confused" about our Constitution vs Declaration of Independence, you mischaracterized the signers of the Declaration as "old white men", when they were mostly young to middle age fellas, and you are wrong about when your own First Nations folks got the right to vote. Hmmm. And you claim to be all about "facts"....
 
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Buckeye said:
Close but no cigar. It was 64 years ago.

In March 1960, Prime Minister John Diefenbaker pushed the voting rights legislation through Parliament. It came into effect July 1 that year.

So, you've been, ah, "confused" about our Constitution vs Declaration of Independence, you mischaracterized the signers of the Declaration as "old white men", when they were mostly young to middle age fellas, and you are wrong about when your own First Nations folks got the right to vote. Hmmm. And you claim to be all about "facts"....
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Oh my God, details that don't change anything regarding the point that I FULLY ACKNOWLEDGE the failings of my own country/government (unlike a whole lot of people!) which is the vote came only106 years ago for women and for FN people it was 64 BUT, the article that Google brought up was titled

First Nations right to vote granted 50 years ago​

and I didn't notice the date of the article which was in 2010. So, a mistake, reading too quickly and not a single malicious intent. Are you happy now?

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/first-nations-right-to-vote-granted-50-years-ago-1.899354​

 
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Debrah N. said:
Oh my God, details that don't change anything regarding the point that I FULLY ACKNOWLEDGE the failings of my own country/government (unlike a whole lot of people!) which is the vote came only106 years ago for women and for FN people it was 64 BUT, the article that Google brought up was titled

First Nations right to vote granted 50 years ago​

and I didn't notice the date of the article which was in 2010. So, a mistake, reading too quickly and not a single malicious intent. Are you happy now?

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/first-nations-right-to-vote-granted-50-years-ago-1.899354​

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lol - it's just that you keep claiming to be all about the facts, and, in your eagerness to disparage all things American, you get so many of them wrong.

But I'm just an "old white man" so whatta I know.
 
dilettante said:
In any case it hardly matters. It has been 100 years! Yes, I realize that's still within the memory of a lot of the old bats here but get with the times if you can and pull the sticks out of your asses. The coronaries you prevent may be your own.
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Things are not only in our memories, but we have the memories shared with us by parents, grandparents, etc. Their memories are embedded with our own. I know what it's like to not have electricity. I know what it's like to run from a pogrom. My grandma told me, enabling my memory to go far back to the late 1800s.
 
Pepper said:
Things are not only in our memories, but we have the memories shared with us by parents, grandparents, etc. Their memories are embedded with our own. I know what it's like to not have electricity. I know what it's like to run from a pogrom. My grandma told me, enabling my memory to go far back to the late 1800s.
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Aren't there enough serious issues today to wring your hands over rather than relitigating stuff that has long been dealt with?

Why beat people over the head about things your great grandparents may have done?
 
dilettante said:
Aren't there enough serious issues today to wring your hands over rather than relitigating stuff that has long been dealt with?

Why beat people over the head about things your great grandparents may have done?
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Just defining history and the role our memories play, nothing more. Remember: "The coronaries you prevent may be your own." Nothing to upset you, dear.
 
January said:
Gosh some people are taking any criticism of anything in their country very personally as well as nitpicking about dates and such that do not change a point being made.
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Of course we take it personally when someone who claims my 'affection' for facts in their criticism of America, but gets so many of them wrong. To keep beating the dead horse about American Slavery and some of our founding fathers being slave owners is just a feeble attempt at virtue signalling, and is tiresome. NO county is without sin in their past, or in the present time. Slavery here. Treatment of First Nation peoples in Canada, treatment of Indigenous Australians, etc. If you wanna point out our dirty laundry, be prepared to discuss your own, in painful detail. That's only fair.
 
Vida May said:
What lovely talking points. I see right off the word "education" needs to be clarified. I have been using the word to mean the defined purpose of education that the authority defines and then controls for the school meeting that purpose. Until recently, parents determined school policy and it was thought the federal government was forbidden to control our education by the constitution and I think you can understand why. In no country did minority groups have a say in education and the results were as horrific as you have said.

You have stated that education molds our thoughts of others and our behaviors. That is culture. Culture can encourage prejudice and injustice or make prejudice and injustice unacceptable. Textbooks support that culture, and parents should examine the textbooks the children are using and complain if the textbooks are found harmful.

Texas was requiring schools to teach Creationism as equal to the theory of evolution. At least one person here is a perfect representative of this education. The teachers took Texas to the Supreme Court and argued Creationism is not science and does not belong in science books and they should not be forced to teach it is equal to science. They won.

Another part of the teachers' fight in Texas is Texas Republicans made it their agenda to prevent the teaching of higher order thinking skills. That means Texas children do not learn the logic skills to judge if something is true or not. Someone here demonstrates the problem with that. Asking these people to think through what they believe is like asking them to fly. Their brains can not organize information and form arguments. The Republican argument was that teaching the logic skills made children disobedient and were a problem for their parents.

Finally, in Texas, the oil Industry is the greatest source of state revenue, so the Texas test books support this industry while suppressing annoying facts such as global warming.

Because Texas buys a lot of textbooks, the textbook producers are agreeable to teaching what Texas wants taught. Also because Texas has a lot of lobbying and voter power, it can control some things at the federal level. While in a state like Mississippi, lack of commerce and poverty can leave their children unprepared for the high-paying jobs in rich high-tech states. It could be argued oversight of education at the Federal level is a good thing, or because Federal control destroys parental control, it can be argued the Feds should stay out of education decisions, as some thought the Constitution does.

I want you to know, that without your thinking on this subject, I would not have a cause to say what I said. I know I said too much for a post but hey, these are the things we need to understand and talk about so we are prepared to act on what we know and be responsible for how children are educated, our culture, and the future of the world.

Education for technology prepares the young to rely on authority and this becomes a culture that relies on authority. That was what the US fought against when it fought the American Revolution.
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Your personal opinion. My personal opinion is based on knowing professionals from Texas and your stereotype Southern Back Woods.
 
Debrah N. said:
Aware!!! of the issues??? They had slaves for goodness sake! Six of them had multiple slaves and even Ulysses S. Grant had one.Of course they weren't going to address the issue! Sounds like you're whitewashing their 'intentions'. Taking into consideration the time lag between that document, the freeing of slaves and women getting the vote, it seems pretty clear who they thought should be considered equal.
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Name one country where slavery was/is not being practiced. Black, red, white. Thank you.

Then we can go into forced family separation and sterilization.
 
Vida May said:
And from time to time I have sheltered homeless people and I was not exploiting them. We were at the height of a recession when life was hard for everyone, especially teenagers who could not compete for jobs because they didn't have years of experience. A time when Oregon cut off welfare to two-parent families so fathers abandoned their families so the wives and children could get help and many teenagers left home because they didn't want to be a burden. I think my point of view is a little different from yours. I think circumstances need to be considered when judging what people do.

What else do you know of Jefferson other than he had slaves? Are you aware of his efforts to end slavery? Please share what you know of Jefferson so I can understand why you are against him.
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Please don't conflate admirable acts of sheltering homeless people with the abominable behavior of exploiting humans via slavery.

Jefferson's interests and actions toward ending slavery were fleeting, half-hearted and ended when he calculated the steady 4% return on his "investments" via the increase, i.e., birth of new slaves.
The Dark Side of Thomas Jefferson
 

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