Florida wants your kids to be SMRT

A handful of Floridians have been fighting off the unIntelligent Design wackos who want your kids to actively resist learning sciece. That's not news, this fight has beeen going on for ages, but now there's a new wrinkle: we can save a lot of money, and keep Teh Kidz safe from Evilooshun, if we just stop paying for schools entirely!

It's not quite that bad yet, but according to this article in the St Petersburg Times, we're getting there. This next year will be the first time that a greater share of the public school budget will come from local property taxes than from state taxes.

Doesn't sound all that horrible on first reading, local control over schools and all that jazz, except that we've recently passed this pesky little amendment making it practically unconstitutional to pay property taxes, and in a market where property values are soaring like lead balloons, no less.

TYPING IN CAPS BECAUSE YOU ARE STUPID

THIS IS A CONSPIRACY OF THE EUROCRAZIES, THE COMMIES AND THE BERNIESANDERSALGORIANS TO TAKE AWAY OUR GOD GIVEN RIGHTS TO IGNORE PROBLEMS AND TO BORROW MONEY IN ORDER TO BUY GUNS.

THE FOUNDERING FATHERS KNEW THIS WOULD HAPPEN WHEN THEY COPIED THE CONSTITUTION FROM THE BIBLE.

THAT IS WHY THEY WROTE THAT "BANKS SHALL BE UNREGULATED AND POOR PEOPLE SHALL WORK THREE JOBS IN ORDER TO PAY FOR MADEINCHINA CRAPPY VERSIONS OF STUFF THEY USED TO GET PAID TO MAKE".

BUILD MORE PRISONS! KEEP AMERICA STRONG!

Posted by WHAT TIME'S THE GAME ON? 03/31/2008 @ 1:43pm | ignore this person

I rescued the above comment, by Frosty Zoom [my new favorite person on the interwebz], from the sea of comments on the blog post Finland Comes to Vermont over at The Nation. If that doesn't make you jealous of the Finns, then you should read the rest of the links in Senator Sanders' newsletter that arrived in my inbox just recently.

Issue April 01, 2008 - http://sanders.senate.gov

Speaking to a standing-room-only crowd of some 350 people at Burlington City Hall last night, Senator Bernie Sanders thanked Ambassador Pekka Lintu of Finland for visiting Vermont to discuss what Sanders called “one of the best economic and social models in the world.” The ambassador met with students and faculty at the University of Vermont, where he focused on education. He lunched with business leaders, and in the evening the senator and ambassador appeared at the packed town hall meeting.

“We should do our very best to learn as much as possible about the best kind of economic and social models that exist throughout the world and, where these models make sense, we should see how we can adopt them to this state and this country. This is especially true today when the United States faces so many difficult problems,” Sanders said.

To read the senator’s remarks, click here.

To read The Burlington Free Press coverage of the town hall, click here.

To read about the ambassador’s trip to Vermont in The Nation, click here.

To read about Finland’s education system in The Wall Street Journal, click here.

Finland, home of the Karelian bear dog [yes, you've met them before], the epic poem The Kalevala, and the just-barely-classifiable language that inspired JRR Tolkien. Also home of an apparently civilized society. I got an A in Turkish class, I could probably learn enough Finnish to get by if I moved there.

Is our childrens learning?

Florida, home of the lovably wacky and lightning rod for various and sundry wingnuts, is right now revising the state's standards for teaching science in the public schools, and predictably, the creationistas are frothing at the mouth. But then a miracle occurs and the Lakeland Ledger prints a good piece entitled Creationism — Evolution of a Flawed Notion [via].

Want to jump in? Here's a list of things you can do, or if you think you may fall under the rubric of Other interested person, have at it.

Meanwhile, is you smrter than our eighth grade science students? Take the test [PDF], check your answers [PDF]. When you're done with that, how do you stack up in math and reading?

This one hurts me.

I'm all for freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of religion, freedom from police harassment, freedom from religion. As one who has lived most of forty-something years trying to avoid being saved by the bible-thumpers, I value this last one highly.

It looks like it may be another case of school officials not knowing what to do about a mostly harmless situation [i know! let's call the police!] but I think I might be on their side this time. Ouch.


from Objective - Justice

I double-dog dare you!

Back when I was a 10-year-old child, of average-to-middling mischieviosity, in the Texas school system, the worst thing they did to you was make you stay in at recess and write sentences on the board. Ask me how I know this.

Nowadays, you get arrested and sent to court.


I have questions.

• Why are we arresting children?


• Do we really need teachers who can't control 10-year-olds?


• Why aren't we training police officers to refuse to arrest children?


• Why are we prosecuting children for momentary fits of mischief?


• A school official actually set off the alarm. Why are all the adults in this case getting away with blaming a child?

from Objective - Justice