Texas Republicans Oppose Teaching Kids Critical Thinking in School Because It ‘Undermines Parental Authority’

Thinking Skills don’t have to be Higher Order for them to be against them

“have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.””

The purpose of education IS  to challenge students fixed-beliefs.  If the student holds incorrect beliefs, they’ll be relieved of their ignorance.  If they happen to hold correct beliefs, they’ll come to understand WHY they believe what they do.  How is this not obvious?

This is not spam.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZzCLSUl8ew#t=0m54s

I just can’t wrap my head around how those people think.  Why would you want your kid to become a blind follower?  I taught mine to question everything.  I’m very glad I can’t understand their ways though.

We can’t have THINKING going on here! That’s a cornerstone of the Liberal Agenda! If they start THINKING, who knows WHAT that will lead to!

This was in part explained to me by a “recovering Republican” family-member-through-marriage. He’s an independent now. After a lifetime of membership with the GOP he abandoned the party several years ago when things started going truly bat-shit and all Jesusland under the Baby Bush administration.

His observation was that “those people” have built an intellectual (a loose use of the word) and emotional cocoon of safety. They’re comfortable in that cocoon. They abdicate all responsibility to their imaginary buddy and revert to a child-like state of relying on an all-powerful parent. This also allows them to act like total douchecanoes, and when taken to task they lay it at the feet of their authority figure in the sky.

So anything that threatens this cocoon is evil and scary and needs to be destroyed. Not neutralized or pushed away, DESTROYED. He felt many of the parents were doing their kids a huge good by keeping them in the cocoon, away from Satan’s scary questioning and lies. And so it goes. I knew this, but it still didn’t diminish my astonishment when I read this article this morning.

She said she supported his platform for one issue only: Healthcare, which was the industry she worked for before the Secular Coalition. She didn’t support (or care about) the rest of the platform. You can criticize that all you want, but don’t imply she supported the rest of the platform.

My thoughts exactly. The core of scientific development is precisely to challenge your fixed beliefs. If people didn´t do that, we would still believe we live in a plane world.

Seems we are in the pre-nazi stage. I wonder when will it be too late to stop it. I remember my mom telling me about anti-nazis in the small german town she lived in. The ones they took away but managed to come back were good or quiet little nazis after that.

That’s how *non-xenophobic* humans learn. I laud your attitude.

Where in Missouri? I heard the big cities like St. Louis aren’t that bad, but once you get into the small towns I’ve been made to understand it’s xenophobia 24/7. If you aren’t local, white and kneeling before Jesus, you’re nobody.

True

I live in a small town about 40 miles from Kansas City.  I drive to Kansas City to work because I get paid a lot more and I get away from the small minded bigots in said town lol  I live there because the rent is cheap and it’s relatively safe.

Most people avoid me because they either don’t know me or they know me and know my beliefs.  That’s the way I like it 🙂

Why do they object to the word “cult” when it’s applied to them? 

 Yep.  I live in St Louis, but take a 35 minute trip south and it gets scary.

Rush-BU2B. That is all.

“how those people think”? They don’t. They’re very much ant-thought. That was made abundantly clear years ago and has been reaffirmed several times, including now.

That’s one scary document.  This section caught my eye too:

Free Speech for the Clergy – We urge amendment of the Internal Revenue Code to allow a religious organization to address issues without fear of losing its tax-exempt status. We call for repeal of requirements that religious organizations send the government any personal information about their contributors. Government Regulation of Religious Institutions – The state should have no power over licensing or training of clergy. The State should withdraw all imposed regulations.  -page 12

Blind followers don’t question the church or God. They don’t question the “Godly” Republicans. And they don’t become Liberals. 

In short, True Americans(TM) are blind followers. 

Not true. Some of us get out. I ran as fast as I could at 18, and my half-sister is slowly coming around. 

With the extreme divisiveness and the tenor of current political rhetoric you may get your chance once more before too long.

Just remember, not everyone below the Mason-Dixon line fits a particular stereotype.

I know that. But as most rational people below the Mason-Dixon line know, far too many people do. And it seems like the most extreme end up in positions of political power.

There is some outright crazy stuff in this document. It’s interesting that on the same page as the “Knowledge-Based Education” point (pg 12), there is this:

“Controversial Theories – We support objective teaching and equal treatment of all sides of scientific theories. We believe theories such as life origins and environmental change should be taught as challengeable scientific theories subject to change as new data is produced. Teachers and students should be able to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of these theories openly and without fear of retribution or discrimination of any kind.”

 So they want their children to “think critically” about things they disagree with….

Wow.  I think I just threw up in my mouth a little.  I didn’t know that Texas had rules actually mandating ignorance – but now that I know, all those little things I’ve noticed about my Texan relatives starts to make sense.

Ironically, I learned a lot of basic rhetoric and logical fallacies from fundamentalist Baptist high school. They wanted me to apply those things in such a way that it undermined evolution.  But it ended up backfiring rather badly. 

I too think most people are pretty moderate. The batshit loonies may not be a majority, but they sure as hell are the loudest group. They also have power and influence.

If you’ve bid intelligence adieu,
and think that our progress is through
let your mind decay
just kneel down and pray:
“Today I will learn nothing new!”

And underneath it’s turtles all the way down….

50 years from now our country will resemble the world portrayed in Mike Judge’s movie ‘Idiocracy’. It appears that Mr. Judge is a prophet.

It’s amazing.  They screech about the “sanctity of life” while the fetus is inside the woman.  Then once it’s out they demand the right to abuse it in any manner they want under the guise of “parental authority”. 

I’m definitely bookmarking this article.

I’m still registered as a Republican in Oklahoma.  Why?  I’ve decided I can vote for the ‘least of the worst’ and keep out the theocracy as best I can.  In my district, for US Senate/US House/State Senate/State House, the ONLY candidates were Republican.  Registering as a Democrat (or Independent, Libertarian, etc) means by state law I cannot vote in any Primary elections unless I am Republican (must vote one’s party in primaries).  But in the November elections, I can vote for whom I want.  It’s still sad though, and I certainly would switch my party in a minute if there were candidates to vote for.  In this area, because of the money, the Dems won’t even fund a candidate because it would be a losing battle.

Me too.  It is customary at the school where I teach to give class gifts to teachers at the end of the year (yes, I work at a private school).  In the card from one grade, was written, “Thank you for teaching our children to question everything and to demand and supply proof”… or something like that.  It was the nicest card I ever received.  As a science teacher, these are the things I try to drive home with my students.  Under the GOP of Texas’ platform, I don’t think I could do my job.  How can you possibly teach science without first teaching students how to think critically?

 What happens is they realize it, and realize also that they will be ostracized if they are not like the parents, so they join the very party that the complete idiots belong to.

The GOP advocate’s argument is the

that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority. 

The GOP think the schools are trying to indoctrinate their kids and undermine parental authority by teaching kids a bunch of stuff that just isn’t true, like every sperm is sacred and people who choose to be gay will burn in hellfire etc

So they’re not really against critical thinking, they’re against undermining parental authority and calling it critical thinking.  They really do want critical thinking.  Like the teaching all theories and then letting the kidsparents decide what the bible really says.

 Re: your point #2

There IS no rational reason to vote Republican!

Dancing?

 I will not think.  I will not think!  I will not think!!

Ahhhh…that’s better.  The moment passed when I might actually have a thought of my own.

There’s a problem with that.

Suppose we have the radical realists, who are saying “gravity is a physical force which can be described mathematically and effects all matter, so everyone is standing on the floor unless aided by machinery”, and then we have the radical levitationists, who are saying (while obviously standing on the floor) “I am floating 10 feet in the air, and we ought to spend a billion dollars on studying commercial applications of levitation.”

In the modern U.S., a “moderate” would either be someone who says “both sides are wrong” — even though the radical realists are verifiably right — or else someone who says “let’s take a position halfway between the two: the levitationists are only floating 5 feet in the air, and only spend five hundred million dollars on studying levitation”.

I would certainly agree that the U.S. is filled with “moderates” by these two definitions. We have lots of people who either refuse on principle to accept reality out of a ridiculous feeling that all statements should be given equal credence. And we also have lots of people who think that being exactly halfway between the two presented endpoints is wise, even if that makes you just as loony as one of the two endpoints.

And this is a big problem because of the way things are framed. We are told that the Democrats are “the left”. Well, the current Democratic president has repeatedly offered to gut Social Security and Medicare while protecting the banks from the fallout of their own criminal behavior; the only thing which has prevented the former part from happening is that the Republican party has gotten so entrenched in childish denial that they turned him down automatically. A “moderate” position by the definitions used in the U.S. means taking a position between these two, which are both actually fairly far-right.

This is the case on a whole slew of issues. Both the right and the “left” want to increase military spending. Both the right and the “left” want to reduce the number of abortions if at all possible. Both the right and the “left” want to meddle with Iran up to and including fighting a “hot” war with them if Israel demands it. Both the right and the “left” want to continue spending billions on our failed and violence-inducing “war on drugs”. The position held by “moderates” has moved accordingly.

This is the case because what you approvingly describe as “moderate” is all too often a desire to shirk the trouble of learning about an issue, or taking any kind of action which might alter the status quo.

 Though here in Texas you can vote for anyone in office, the district that I’m in (due to Gerrymandering) happens to be very conservative and though not too much of a surprise, heavily Republican.  Also, I don’t have the satisfaction to paying out my vote for great results, Texas is probably always going to vote conservative, it’s why down here party power shifted to accommodate the conservatives.  So as a liberal and most likely Democratic voter (though I will identify myself as an independent or something like it, the Democratic party isn’t the perfect party for liberals either) I’m disgruntled by the fact that simple votes don’t count in national elections due to the electoral college system and so my vote won’t matter – but I will still vote for Obama, I’m only a liberal and support him for personal reasons and I still want to show my support.

And I have faith in humanity to be progressive, but sorry about your issue, it would suck to have to be in that kind of predicament.

 No, they really ARE against critical thinking. They don’t want kids to think critically about creation vs. evolution – they just want them to be able to continue to believe in creation. They only pretend to be in favor of critical thinking if it allows kids to continue to believe what they grew up believing.

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 Yessiree!  It’s got oil, just like the Saudis.

No, I think if both sides were presented, this wouldn’t be addressed.   Outcome Based Ed does not present both sides.  It’s a way to manipulate children’s beliefs and values.  That can work against YOU as a parent if that conflicts with your beliefs.  Be careful what you wish for, this can come back to bite you as a parent.