Betsy Devos and God's plan for public schools

So terrible that people have faith. So terrible that people express their faith. So terrible that the faithless based approach to education that has coincided with the increase of cost and the horrific decrease in academic performance will be jettisoned for something that works to improve choice and performance for the children.

nittany ram wrote:

It’s terrible when a educational system tries to shove its religious beliefs down my kid’s throat. Secular education is not why American schools may be failing. The countries with the highest achieving students get a secular education too.

Shove down their throat? Like the 10 commandments? Or a Christmas Party? Oh the horror!

“may be failing”? Wow. Wanna share your data? But only from your safe space!

• This reply was modified 7 years, 10 months ago by bnw.
• This reply was modified 7 years, 10 months ago by bnw.

nittany ram wrote:

The countries with the highest achieving students get a secular education too.

Exactly.

Hmmm. Secular education versus religiously based.

An analogy . . .

The secular version is kinda like this:

Kids get to pick any of the 32 teams in the NFL to root for, in any way they choose, or not root for any. There is no official position on the matter.

Faith-based:

“You must choose the 49ers. That’s the official position on the matter from on high.”

And to make it even worse, cuz Devos and company want to propagandize and indoctrinate young people with just one, extremely narrow, reactionary version of Christianity:

“You must choose the 49ers, and adhere to our rigorous examples on how, exactly, to worship them. Our official book on the subject details the right way versus the wrong (read, evil) way to worship our one and only team.”

bnw wrote:

nittany ram wrote:

bnw wrote:

Shove down their throat? Like the 10 commandments? Or a Christmas Party? Oh the horror!

No. Like teaching creationism in science class.

I’m sure that if your kid’s school was teaching that Christianity was wrong and was immersing them in Islam, you’d be fine with it.

Yeah, this is what I want my kid to learn…

Way to leap to the absurd. I remember when in public school we recited the pledge of allegiance and the Lord’s Prayer (protestant version) every day at the start of the day. No one was forced to participate. No creationism was taught. No “immersing” involved.

bnw,

It’s not an absurd leap in the slightest. The Christian Right is on record calling for exactly what Nittany is talking about, and more. I live in the state that houses the Fallwell indoctrination machine. Liberty University doesn’t try to hide any of this, nor do the other folks mentioned in the article. They’re actually loud and proud about it all. They seek theocracy in America, and they’ve been doing their best to ram that down our throats since the early 1970s, with some success.

Hell, during the campaign several GOP candidates often held political gatherings with top hard-right Christian zealots, and they always talked about the need for America to put “biblical law” ahead of our own. Rubio, Cruz, Huckabee among others said this or cheered the statements. And in one of those gatherings, a couple of the speakers said gay people should be executed. Literally. They weren’t talking about just denying their civil rights. They were calling for their execution.

These are sick, sick people, and if they get their way, America will become a theocracy. It’s what they want.

Another article about Devos and the Christian Right:

By Julie Ingersoll December 5, 2016 Shades of Christian Reconstructionism in Trump Education Pick, Betsy DeVos

Excerpt (There are several links within the article as well):

Education is arguably the most important front in the battle to bring the Kingdom of God to bear on contemporary culture. For the religious right, this means promoting alternatives to public schools including Christian schools, charter schools, and home schooling, with the longstanding goal of replacing the public education system with private Christian education. I wrote about the efforts back in a 2012 essay here on RD but those efforts date as far back as the 1960s and the work of R.J. Rushdoony.

Framed as “school choice,” vouchers, charter schools, and tuition tax credit plans serve this goal by shifting public funds toward religious schools with little to no accountability to the public. In Building God’s Kingdom: Inside the World of Christian Reconstruction I wrote about one such school in Florida that teaches creationism, dominionism, women’s submission, and so forth, with public money.

Opposition to public education for the religious right is rooted in a worldview in which education is solely the responsibility of families (and explicitly not the civil government), and in which there are no religiously neutral spheres of influence. There is no secular sphere that can function as a neutral space; only the Kingdom of God, and “the world” to be influenced by Christians for the Kingdom. (For our religion nerds this is Van Til and Kuyper, key architects of the Reformed tradition from which DeVos comes.) These views were popularized in the work of Rushdoony and the Christian Reconstructionists and became dominant in the religious right, which is not to say that everyone who holds them is a Christian Reconstructionist.

Religions Dispatches is typically very good when it comes to the intersection of public policy and religion. Very good reporting.

nittany ram wrote:

That’s a good article, Billy.

I don’t like the idea of vouchers for religious education. I don’t care for any voucher system, religious or not. In the 60s vouchers were used in the south to keep black kids from getting a good education. Public schools were shut down and the vouchers allowed access only to private segregated schools.

Paint it anyway you want but vouchers are exclusionary. If we want to improve the education of our students it has to be with everyone in mind. Not a select few. We have to improve public schools. A voucher system would just perpetuate the widening gap between the rich and the poor.

Agreed. I can’t stand vouchers. As you say, it’s just a backdoor way to screw-over the non-rich, and has deep roots in racist policy.

Again, I already knew Devos was a nutcase about vouchers. I just didn’t know she was also a religious zealot, or related to Erik Prince. From everything I’ve read about him, he’s one of the most despicable human beings in America, and Blackwater was in reality a for-profit “terrorist” group.

The more we learn about the people Trump is surrounding himself with, the more it becomes impossible to claim it didn’t matter who won.

Two rotten choices — I voted for neither of them (Stein). But the one we ended up with is significantly worse than the other candidate from the duopoly.

nittany ram wrote:

This isn’t about the pledge of allegiance or the Lord’s Prayer (although I’m opposed to students being asked to recite either in a public school…).

This is what it’s about…

Ms. DeVos is a chip off the old block. At a 2001 gathering of conservative Christian philanthropists, she singled out education reform as a way to “advance God’s kingdom.”

She wants to use education to forward the religious right’s agenda.

That is HER opinion. You vote for YOUR school board accordingly.

bnw wrote:

nittany ram wrote:

This isn’t about the pledge of allegiance or the Lord’s Prayer (although I’m opposed to students being asked to recite either in a public school…).

This is what it’s about…

Ms. DeVos is a chip off the old block. At a 2001 gathering of conservative Christian philanthropists, she singled out education reform as a way to “advance God’s kingdom.”

She wants to use education to forward the religious right’s agenda.

That is HER opinion. You vote for YOUR school board accordingly.

She’ll be setting federal policy, bnw. So that makes it a national problem on a huge scale.

Trump has brought in a host of swamp creatures, including the most billionaires, lobbyists, CEOs and Wall Street big wigs in our history. And most of the people he’s tasked with running this or that agency have a long record of battling them (in order to increase their own wealth), undermining them (in order to increase their own wealth), suing them (to increase their own wealth), or seeking their destruction. Devos is easily one of the worst possible choices for the job she’s going to hold. She wants to do away with public education itself, and privatize it to make way for a theocracy instead.

That’s like the Rams hiring a football coach who hates the NFL, hates LA, hates football in general, and hates team sports.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 10 months ago by Billy_T.

bnw wrote:

She hasn’t testified to anything yet and the crybabies are already wetting themselves

Guess whether or not that kind of antagonistic language is permitted according to board rules.

If you want to slug it out in name-call fests, there are boards for that.

And again, as in all mod declarations to move on, just move on. No arguing about it.

bnw wrote:

She hasn’t testified to anything yet and this is not directed at posters but at the crybabies who are already wetting themselves. Can’t do any worse than what we have now.

And who are these crybabies you refer to.

bnw wrote:

zn wrote:

bnw wrote:

She hasn’t testified to anything yet and this is not directed at posters but at the crybabies who are already wetting themselves. Can’t do any worse than what we have now.

And who are these crybabies you refer to.

Sore losers unwilling to await the confirmation hearings. And bedwetters. Definitely bedwetters.

And why can’t that be taken as applying to posters here who you disagree with? I know you say otherwise, but still. If you mean someone NOT here, say who there are.

That is, good discussion is always helped by directness and clarity.

For example, if called anyone crybabies, I would immediately add that it;s the Trump staff members who get so bothered about being criticized. And, I would say that.

It’s a fair question my friend.

bnw the mod rule is you move on when asked to move on.

If you have issues take them to pm or email.

You fail to do that when asked one more time and my patience will be snapped.

Up to you.