Shame On Them

"Elite universities have also produced a disproportionate number of senators and representatives from both parties. In fact, Republicans elected to the Senate over the last decade are more likely than their Democratic counterparts to have attended Harvard, Yale, Princeton, or Stanford.

"So how to explain Elise Stefanik, Harvard class of 2006, now the third-ranking House Republican, who recently called the January 6 hearings a “partisan witch hunt,” voted to invalidate the 2020 election, and has repeated Trump’s Big Lie of election fraud?

"Or Josh Hawley, Stanford class of 2002 and Yale Law class of 2006, now senator from Missouri, who in December 2020 became the first US senator to announce plans to object to the certification of Joe Biden’s victory, then led Senate efforts to overturn the Electoral College vote count, and fist-bumped the rioters on January 6?

"Or Ted Cruz, Princeton class of 1992 and Harvard Law class of 1995, now senator from Texas, who in late 2020 joined in John Eastman’s and Trump’s plot to object to the election results in six swing states and delay accepting the Electoral College results on January 6, potentially enabling Republican state legislatures to overturn them?

"And how to explain a new crop of Republican senate candidates?"

What the hell did they learn at Harvard and Yale?

Civics Education: A Necessity For A Great America

"I think about those 19 children who were murdered in their classroom on Tuesday, and feel the need to go back to basics — to the common good. Given the difficulty of enacting sensible laws to reduce gun violence — which reflects in part the deepening split between Americans who believe in democracy and those who are throwing in their lot with Trump authoritarians — the question I keep coming back to is: what can we do to rekindle a sense of common good?

"One of the most important initiatives would be to restart civics education in our schools."

Click on the link below for an in-depth presentation of the need for it:

Educating for the common good

Childhood Indoctrination: The Evil

I have posted many times on the harm of indoctrinating children into any religion (link). In essence, calling subjective experience/intuition evidence of a god to a young impressional mind blunts the reasoning ability of the child and makes the victim malleable to harmful ideology (link). 

Please take a half-hour of your time and click on the link below for a video exposing the thinking and actions of Christian apologists regarding how and why they poison young minds into unsupported and harmful dogma.

Brainwashing of children exposed

Children Are Not The Property Of Parents

To listen to conservative parents one would think that they have the right to indoctrinate their children into the same beliefs that they have (link). Such thinking is child abuse. Children are not the "property" of their parents (link)(link), in spite of the historical treatment of them as such (link).

Christianity: Education Or Indoctrination?

"As an apologist, J Warner Wallace uses his background as a former detective to give himself an air of credibility. This causes him to overreach and present on topics he doesn't have the first clue about. He most notably does this by pretending that cold case detectives are qualified to be ancient historians and textual critics - but he also delves into other topics from time to time. In this case, he gives a weird presentation on education (in what looks like a staged classroom to no discernable audience) more or less insinuating that Moses, Jesus, and Christianity are responsible for education as we know it in the world today. He shows an absolute lack of understanding of history and basic educational methodology, but unfortunately, much of what he says can ring true on an intuitive and be appealing to a lot of Christians. Even worse, his message reinforces a terrible fundamentalist misconception of what education should be in the first place." Click on this link for the video. 

After the fall of the Roman Empire, the following 1000 years were controlled by Christianity and were called The Dark Ages for a reason. Things did improve with The Enlightenment, but Christianity still had a cultural grip on education and politics, as can be seen within European Colonialization. The colonialization of the USA reveals the total Christian control of education until just before the Revolutionary War, when my Alma Mater, The University of Pennsylvania, was established as the first non-sectarian college and the first university. Unfortunately, Christian control of education continues to be a troubling fact at all levels of education in the USA.

The Purpose And Value Of Public Education

"Why have public schools become a setting for heated political debates? In this second installment of a special three-part series, Heather and Joanne weigh in on the current nationwide tensions over censorship and parental control in American public schools.

"Heather and Joanne look back on the founding concepts of American education, the rise of school reformers in the late 19th century, and the development of segregation academies during the 1960s."

Click on the link below for an in-depth look at public education historically and its value presently:

Bans, Schools, & Power: Public Education

Morality And COVID-19

Most religions have moral teachings. Claims by religions have not been verified by science. Morality is probably the result of biology and social interactions, and is subjective but informed by objective evidence. Morality regarding any particular issue is usually difficult to agree about, however, the better societies come up with the better choices.

Keeping the above in mind, click on the link below for an opinion regarding the best way to handle the issue of education in the face of COVID-19:

Smerconish: What have we done to our kids?

Motivated Reasoning

"Human beings are not always—in fact, probably not often—the objective, rational creatures we like to think we are. In the past few decades, psychologists have demonstrated the many ways people deceive themselves in the process of reasoning. Cognitive faculties are a distinguishing feature of humanity—lifting humankind out of caves and enabling language, arts, and sciences. Nevertheless, they are also rooted in and subject to influence, or bias, by emotions and instincts.

"One of the most significant ways information processing and decision-making becomes warped is through motivated reasoning, when biased reasoning leads to a particular conclusion or decision, a process that often occurs outside of conscious awareness."

Click on the link below for more and how to control it:

Motivated Reasoning (Confirmation Bias)

This Is Not Education, It Is Ignorant Ideological Reaction To Such

"The new University of Austin seeks to be higher education’s premier institution of monetizing moral panics."

In recent years, there has been a movement by conservatives and some misguided liberals to discredit the US Higher Education system by cherry-picking some inappropriate constraint on free speech. One manifestation of this reactionary movement has been the formation of the so-called "Intellectual Dark Web." Click on the link below to see a new manifestation of this faulty ideology:

Do We Really Need an Anti-Woke University?

Do Democrats Walk The Talk?

"It’s easy to blame the other side. And for many Democrats, it’s obvious that Republicans are thwarting progress toward a more equal society. 

"But what happens when Republicans aren’t standing in the way? 

"In many states — including California, New York, and Illinois — Democrats control all the levers of power. They run the government. They write the laws. And as we explore in the video above, they often aren’t living up to their values. 

"In key respects, many blue states are actually doing worse than red states. It is in the blue states where affordable housing is often hardest to find, there are some of the most acute disparities in education funding and economic inequality is increasing most quickly. 

"Instead of asking, 'What’s the matter with Kansas?' Democrats need to spend more time pondering, 'What’s the matter with California?'”

Click on the link below for some humbling truth for Democrats:

Liberal Hypocrisy is Fueling American Inequality. Here’s How. | NYT Opinion

How To Change The Discomfort Of Talking About Injustice

" - - - The only way to avoid the discomfort is to avoid the issues. If we can avoid talking about and reading about problematic matters, issues that might require us to rethink values and assumptions, then we won’t feel the discomfort that such difficult thought might entail.

 
"If we banish from our minds, our libraries, and our classrooms any examination of politics, religion, race, environment, sex, justice, and the like, we might protect ourselves from the possible discomfort we might experience. All we have to do is trivialize the curriculum to the point that few will be bothered by anything.

"If we can make instruction completely insignificant, utterly irrelevant to anyone’s emotional and intellectual life, then absolutely no one should rise up to protest the threat we pose to treasured beliefs, valued affiliations, or well-established habits of thought and action. We can teach kids how viruses are different from bacteria but avoid discussing why the health care system better serves the wealthy than the poor. We can teach what events led up to World War II and which countries fought on which sides and the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps but fail to mention our own concentration camps for American citizens of Japanese ancestry or consider why the 761st Tank Battalion or the 555th Parachute Battalion consisted solely of African American soldiers. We can give the facts of Brown v. Board of Education but never read what happened to the Little Rock Nine, never discuss how the integration of schools caused thousands of well-qualified Black teachers to lose their jobs because white parents refused to let their children be taught by a Black teacher.

"We can teach the definitions of “preposition” and “conjunction.” That will raise few hackles. “Onomatopoeia” and “zeugma” are unlikely to drive marchers into the streets, even if we require students to learn both definition and spelling. Better yet, we can teach penmanship—that will threaten the values of neither the conservatives nor the progressives, neither Republicans nor Democrats, neither those drilling for oil nor the sailors on one of the Greenpeace ships. Total irrelevancy, absolute insignificance, and unwavering stasis are effective strategies for avoiding the discomfort of thought and change.
***
"We cannot, dear teachers, ever give in to the demands of irrelevancy. So, Mr. Principal, you must be brave. You must steer the ship into tomorrow. Your teachers will be there with you. And students, they may shudder at past injustices - long past and recent past - and I hope they do. If they don't, we are in more trouble than I thought.

"I wish you all bravery. Stamina. And the knowledge that your hard work is the good work; the best work; the needed work. We need you.

"Kylene Beers"

(link)

What Is The Most Important Factor In Raising Happy And Successful Children?

One does not have to look very far to see the lengths that parents will go to in an effort to help their children (link). Click on the link below for recent research on the subject:

Teaching Kids Kindness Prepares Them for Success

This is consistent with what we know about the connection between evolution and empathy (link).

Critical Thinking/Skepticism: Brief But Important Points

What is critical thinking/skepticism and how it is valuable? Click on the links below for some brief and concise videos on such:

This tool will help improve your critical thinking

Skepticism: Why critical thinking makes you smarter

Why Schools Should Teach Skepticism Above Obedience

The Role Of Sports In Youth

When I was growing up and active in athletics, the world of sports was quite a bit different than it is today. For example, the Olympics was truly an amateur event, and even so-called elite sports colleges had strict rules regarding receiving payments outside of scholarships. With the exponential growth of media coverage of not only professional sports events, but elite college and even high school events, athletes at all levels are under tremendous pressure to perform in the face of physical and mental disability, and, in many cases, financial stress. One only has to look at how some misguided people are reacting to Simone Biles' withdrawal from this year's Olympic events to understand how out of proportion to what is really important in life elite sports have become. While this link is looking at the psychology of the Olympic athlete, it puts big-time sports in general in perspective. 

Click on the link below for a podcast expose of the problems within today's culture of the "student-athlete:"

The Myth of the Student-Athlete

Wokeness And Education

Wokeness used to mean a state of being aware, especially of social problems such as racism and inequality.  It now is another pejorative used by right-wing hate-preachers (link). Click on the link below for an article regarding the proper way of handling questions about it in the classroom:

Homeroom: I'm Concerned About Wokeness At My Child's School

Education: It Has Untruths

Among the many definitions of education is the process of gaining knowledge, which can be defined as justified, true belief. Unfortunately, many processes of education have not adjusted to the information gained through science. Click on the link below for a focus on 3 untruths found commonly in education:

3 great untruths to stop telling our kids - and ourselves

"Learning Styles" Debunked

"You are not a visual learner — learning styles are a stubborn myth." 

Click on the link below for a science-based opinion on education:

The Biggest Myth in Education

OTHER Countries Are Doing It

"So if we can’t regulate the 'news' or even stop trolls and foreign operatives from inciting Americans, how can we activate the 'immune system' of democracy?"

For as long as I have been out of college I have been actively promoting critical /science-based thinking. I look around me in the USA and it seems that NO organization is doing anything to improve the dismal display of magical thinking and ignorance. Click on the link below for a brief video presenting what OTHER countries are doing to improve the situation:

How Does America Solve Its "Fake News" Crisis?

Racism Education For The Young

"The children’s-book author Anastasia Higginbotham and I disagree about how to teach young Americans about police killings and racism."

Click on the link below for an intelligent and respectful interaction by two noted writers on a sensitive topic.

‘Nobody Wants White Kids to Feel Bad About Their Race’

A Political Lesson From Socrates

"We’re used to thinking hugely well of democracy. But interestingly, one of the wisest people who ever lived, Socrates, had deep suspicions of it."

The USA and other representative democracies talk about democracy being superior to more authoritarian political systems. However, Socrates, the founder of philosophy, was skeptical of it in practice. Why? Click on the link below to find out:

Why Socrates Hated Democracy