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The copyright cartel's plot to indoctrinate California kindergartens

theguardian.com

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Re: The copyright cartel's plot to indoctrinate California kindergartens

#41

Post by mistercow »

VLM wrote: post #33
Ygg2 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure that's Australia, right? America started as land of religious zealots.

The people who were here thousands of years before Puritan nutcases started getting dumped here to get them away from the civilized people, would beg to disagree, if they hadn't mostly been genocided away. Thats probably what OP was referencing. America started as a bunch of vaguely Asiatic foragers crossed over more or less in Alaska a couple thousand years ago. The noob bible thumpers arriving a couple centuries ag…

>Thats probably what OP was referencing.

You think OP was calling American Indians thieves?

Re: The copyright cartel's plot to indoctrinate California kindergartens

#42

Post by VLM »

anigbrowl wrote: post #40
VLM wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not as simple as "can't/won't". There's also "not allowed to". If the only purpose of education is to teach to a test, and the board selects the book which was written for the test... it does kinda destroy teacher's individuality, but since that seems to be a goal... Some other examples of rather finely defined lesson plans nearly to the point of reading a teleprompter are "human growth and development" which is fine…

I should have included school boards along with teachers in that broadside. I don't think the 'state as laboratory' idea has worked out well wrt education.

Don't forget common core is about 40 of about 50 states, so you've got state and almost national standards all deserving broadsides. The whole system is completely messed up, top to bottom. One PR distraction method over the past decade or two to keep the scam running has been to pretend the problem is a matter of taking aim at just one or another failed level, where $failed_level varies from year to year.

One interesting thing rarely discussed about "classes over the internet" is its always assumed it'll be Americans taking classes from Americans. I think it interesting to contemplate that since local USA .edu is bottom of the barrel, "going to school online" to almost any other country in the world would be a net win. Perhaps the end result of online .edu, is my kids will graduate from a Canadian high school.

Re: The copyright cartel's plot to indoctrinate California kindergartens

#43

Post by derleth »

ars wrote: post #29
seiji wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love to see people stand up to Big Religion, but... how? Religion is institutionalized mental and physical child abuse and everybody seems a-okay with all of it.

> everybody seems a-okay with all of it. Because it's not abuse. Since when did it become socially acceptable to be bigoted in public? If you want to be intolerant at least keep your nastiness to yourself.

So telling little gay kids that they were born broken and are going to Hell isn't abuse?

Don't you dare say that it doesn't happen or that it doesn't matter. Don't you dare.

Re: The copyright cartel's plot to indoctrinate California kindergartens

#44

Post by derleth »

Ygg2 wrote: post #26
foobarbazqux wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What have we become? A nation of thieves. Actually, seems we started that way.

I'm pretty sure that's Australia, right? America started as land of religious zealots.

Mostly, we started as a land of commercial opportunists taking advantage of royal grants. The religious zealots just played better in the history books of 100+ years ago, so they get most of the attention.

Re: The copyright cartel's plot to indoctrinate California kindergartens

#45

Post by aric »

rayiner wrote: post #35
emiliobumachar wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Cartel" seems like a distortion to me, too, but "indoctrinate" seems like a perfectly valid label for the attempt to systematically teach small children to support a political stance. If you wouldn't call that true indoctrination, what would qualify?

Respecting a widely acknowledged property right isn't a political stance. Nor is it indoctrination to teach kids to respect other peoples work.

It is exactly indoctrination.

Re: The copyright cartel's plot to indoctrinate California kindergartens

#46

Post by drdeca »

derleth wrote: post #43
ars wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> everybody seems a-okay with all of it. Because it's not abuse. Since when did it become socially acceptable to be bigoted in public? If you want to be intolerant at least keep your nastiness to yourself.

So telling little gay kids that they were born broken and are going to Hell isn't abuse? Don't you dare say that it doesn't happen or that it doesn't matter. Don't you dare.

To me it seems like calling that the fault of "religion" seems roughly analogous to blaming the concept of "government" for the actions of a specific city or state/province government? (that is, either 1 or 2 levels below a national government , though I might have made a mistake with the analogy there)

Not all religions/versions of a religion are the same.

I acknowledge that an analogy is not always a particularly strong argument, but it was the first responce I thought of, and it seemed an acceptable responce to me.

Also, it might have made more sense to respond a few levels up, not sure what would have made the most sense to reply to.

Re: The copyright cartel's plot to indoctrinate California kindergartens

#47

Post by drdeca »

rayiner wrote: post #35
emiliobumachar wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Cartel" seems like a distortion to me, too, but "indoctrinate" seems like a perfectly valid label for the attempt to systematically teach small children to support a political stance. If you wouldn't call that true indoctrination, what would qualify?

Respecting a widely acknowledged property right isn't a political stance. Nor is it indoctrination to teach kids to respect other peoples work.

If I remember correctly, on the last day of student senate my junior year of high school(the only day I have been to it), they described their plan for the first one or two days of the next year using the term indoctrinate wrt "school spirit".

They didn't seem to see anything strange about that.

It's possible they used a slightly different word, but I am probably more than 90% sure that at the time I thought they had just said indoctrinate.

(note:I am only a senior in highschool, just in case that is useful in explaining why I think things or why I don't have as much experience with things, etc.)

Re: The copyright cartel's plot to indoctrinate California kindergartens

#48

Post by jcromartie »

3825 wrote: post #17
mav3r1ck wrote: post #10

I know javajosh would agree, but seriously, is no one else extremely disturbed by the clear implications of this 'plot'? So basically, a group of corporations can't get people to behave the way they want them to. So their idea is to literally influence the educational curriculum in the hopes that future generations will behave exactly the way they want them to. This is probably just the tip of the iceberg on our alre…

How would we enforce a separation of corporation and the state? From what I know, the separation of the Church and the state is to stop the government from interfering with matters of the Church. We don't even have a mechanism to restrict the Church from interfering with the state besides taking away a privilege of tax-exempt status. I am not restriction is a bad idea. I am just not sure how it is achievable.

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion"

This is a protection from an official state religion. Lobbying for near-monopoly positions, favored status, and regulatory capture might be a sort of "establishment" of special corporate status over the people.

Re: The copyright cartel's plot to indoctrinate California kindergartens

#49

Post by jcromartie »

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #4

We should be far more worried about religious indoctrination than this.

I don't live in the South so I don't really know how much that is happening. However, I would imagine that allowing well-funded corporate interests to write curriculum is far more insidious than creationism in the classroom.

Religious indoctrination (like Creationism) comes from the community, and only exists in schools in places where the community enables it (like the South). Lobbying has no boundaries.

Re: The copyright cartel's plot to indoctrinate California kindergartens

#50

Post by harshreality »

jcromartie wrote: post #49
lawnchair_larry wrote: post #4

We should be far more worried about religious indoctrination than this.

I don't live in the South so I don't really know how much that is happening. However, I would imagine that allowing well-funded corporate interests to write curriculum is far more insidious than creationism in the classroom. Religious indoctrination (like Creationism) comes from the community, and only exists in schools in places where the community enables it (like the South). Lobbying has no boundaries.

Good News Clubs are more invasive than that. Those clubs are not started by each community as a whole, but by a radical Christian subset of the community. They are encouraged and supported by a national organization, which gives the clubs legal support when anyone complains.

The organization seeks to rip apart secular school communities or convert all children, specifically ages 4-14 because they know children of those ages are least able to reason about what they're told (they would phrase it: "most easily saved"). They are prohibited from trying to brainwash kids during school, but the distinction between normal school clubs and Good News Clubs is essentially non-existent. They try to blur the lines between school and Good News Clubs, in some cases setting up for the club during classes, so that students associate the adults running the clubs with school. They use food, candy, games, and other fun activities to lure kids in. Kids who get indoctrinated end up pressuring other kids, outside of and even during school. This is acknowledged by the organizers of these clubs, and they're thrilled. Paraphrasing, "we can't reach kids who don't join the club, but we can't stop kids from reaching other kids."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04gTo31uLiw (Interview with the author of a book about these clubs)

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13132235-the-good-news-cl...

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