Church and State - Time to bring back together?

[DarkWing6]

good game guys!

Now if we could just get McCain/Obama to read this page.

And yes, good game. See we can all get along and have a decent thread if everyone actually wants to play and be nice.

Thanks for the good thread.



Farbin, what's next?

[eric (^__^)]

I really like what Obama has to say here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvKX16Eygs0

[Farbin Kaiber]

I don't know, this is all so hard for me to figure out when I'm stuck in the cloud of my Heeter assumed potheadedness. ;)

I just let the random news stories carry me.

[Old'n'Slow]

Yes, I do pray to BMW god before I go to sleep.

Me too. And the prayers are answered at about the same 50% rate as prayers formally offered to "God".

All I am asking is keep this forum clean of topics that would divide our community. it's enough that we all flame on each others cars.

It's in OFF TOPIC.....

.....you can exercise your "god given" free will and <not> click on these sorts of topics.....really.......

[Farbin Kaiber]

Me too. And the prayers are answered at about the same 50% rate as prayers formally offered to "God".



It's in OFF TOPIC.....

.....you can exercise your "god given" free will and <not> click on these sorts of topics.....really.......

You did see he got the Dunce cap, and the time-out chair, right?

[Schnitzer318is]

Unfortunately we cannot control all the sheep. We can try to guide them to think for themselves, but even without stepping out and saying "I'm voting Obama and you should too" or vise versa most of the sheep know which way their "leader" is voting and will vote that too.

OT: Because of the state of our educational system... alot of our country is no longer intelligent enough to think for themselves. We are becoming a country of "easily led automotons."

On topic: Church and State should be totally separate. Period. That is probably an impossible goal to achieve, but as Karbin pointed out... adding more religion by giving religious officials the ability to back a candidate would be a terrible idea. Talk about tipping the scales.

[DarkWing6]

OT: Because of the state of our educational system... alot of our country is no longer intelligent enough to think for themselves. We are becoming a country of "easily led automotons."

On topic: Church and State should be totally separate. Period. That is probably an impossible goal to achieve, but as Karbin pointed out... adding more religion by giving religious officials the ability to back a candidate would be a terrible idea. Talk about tipping the scales.

OT: No child left behind is a joke. All they do is let kids go on that should fail and put them into special ed. I taught a 1 day econ course to some 4th graders at a local middle school last year. There were 5 4th grade classes there. 3 were "special needs", 1 was regular, and 1 was for the smart kids. I ended up with one of the special needs classes and I would say there were about 2 kids in the class of 20+ that really should have been in there. The rest just misbehave and don't pay attention. Bad parenting and not allowing teachers to have control of the class (fear of law suits) is the cause of this. Not dumb kids.

On Topic: I think everyone agrees with Farbin on that. The pulpit should be used for religious speaking only. I wish we could trust that all information coming from pastors/priests/etc spoken from the pulpit was related to the religion, but like the money changers in the Bible, we have our own version today.

[Jordan325iC]

This thread is going to be a slug fest, seeing that most on here are atheist. But looking back and most should agree, that society has regressed the more that religion has been removed from society.

How exactly do you figure? Virtually every quantifiable measure of social progress has been steadily on the increase throughout the world. I believe this has more to with increased science and technology. Decreased religion is just a byproduct of this advance.

Crime is lower than it has ever been. Teenage pregnancy is also lower than it has ever been. The life expectancy is higher than ever.

The only social indicators I can think of that would indicate that society is regressing is maybe the proliferation of STDs and the obesity rate. Of course, from a religious standpoint it would certainly be reasonable to say that society is regressing. But of course religion views the slipping popularity of religion as synonymous with the regression of society.

[Erik]

I can has bible in schoolz?

[Turf1600]

Apparently palin wants creation in schools.

[DarkWing6]

I can has bible in schoolz?

Apparently palin wants creation in schools.

You two haven't actually read any of this thread, have you? If you plan on posting in a thread please actually read it and add something that is on topic.

kthxbye

[CorvallisBMW]

Apparently palin wants creation in schools.

ya, it's pretty f-ing scary. A whole country of kids being indoctrinated in to the christian faith while attedning public school science class; and they probably wouldn't even realize it was happening to them.

ninja edit: oh, wait....there's a different thread about that stuff.

[Schnitzer318is]

OT: No child left behind is a joke. All they do is let kids go on that should fail and put them into special ed. I taught a 1 day econ course to some 4th graders at a local middle school last year. There were 5 4th grade classes there. 3 were "special needs", 1 was regular, and 1 was for the smart kids. I ended up with one of the special needs classes and I would say there were about 2 kids in the class of 20+ that really should have been in there. The rest just misbehave and don't pay attention. Bad parenting and not allowing teachers to have control of the class (fear of law suits) is the cause of this. Not dumb kids.

OT: Agreed... dumb kids are just the result. My father is a teacher now (7 years now, retired military) and the kids are driving him nuts. I blame the parents for most of this. And agree teachers should be able to fail kids who deserve to be failed. I take it further and believe that kids who don't want to learn should be able to be kicked out of school so as not to hinder the education of those willing and wanting to learn. "Speacial needs" classes now are, as you say, more of a babysitter type thing than anything else.

Worst thing ever (for schools): Federal funding based on the performance of your students on standardized tests. Thank you Bush... you bastard (I live in Texas). Now schools actually just spend time teaching how to pass these tests. WTF!!! If you teach them a good curriculum it won't be a problem. I missed 1 question on the entire 3 day exam!!! And that's not a brag about how intelligent I am but rather how easy and stupid the exam is. The only standardized tests we should have is the SAT and ACT (Texas) which both serve the same function... college eligibility.

[Farbin Kaiber]

OT: Agreed... dumb kids are just the result. My father is a teacher now (7 years now, retired military) and the kids are driving him nuts. I blame the parents for most of this. And agree teachers should be able to fail kids who deserve to be failed. I take it further and believe that kids who don't want to learn should be able to be kicked out of school so as not to hinder the education of those willing and wanting to learn. "Speacial needs" classes now are, as you say, more of a babysitter type thing than anything else.

Worst thing ever (for schools): Federal funding based on the performance of your students on standardized tests. Thank you Bush... you bastard (I live in Texas). Now schools actually just spend time teaching how to pass these tests. WTF!!! If you teach them a good curriculum it won't be a problem. I missed 1 question on the entire 3 day exam!!! And that's not a brag about how intelligent I am but rather how easy and stupid the exam is. The only standardized tests we should have is the SAT and ACT (Texas) which both serve the same function... college eligibility.

The issues brought up in the last few posts make me think of the movie Idiocracy, w/ Luke Wilson.

[CorvallisBMW]

Worst thing ever (for schools): Federal funding based on the performance of your students on standardized tests. Thank you Bush... you bastard (I live in Texas). Now schools actually just spend time teaching how to pass these tests. WTF!!! If you teach them a good curriculum it won't be a problem. I missed 1 question on the entire 3 day exam!!! And that's not a brag about how intelligent I am but rather how easy and stupid the exam is. The only standardized tests we should have is the SAT and ACT (Texas) which both serve the same function... college eligibility.

QFT!

Both of my parents are teachers. In the last 5th grade class my mom taught, she spent 1 out of every 2 days preparing for, or taking, standardized tests. Great. So we end up with kids that are really good at taking tests but shitty at actually applying knowledge to the real world.

And tying teacher pay to student performance, while it may sound like a good idea, is just not reasonable. The teacher in a white, upper-middle class suburb is going to have higher performnnig kids than one in an inner city school with a high population of minority students. Plain and simple. Does that mean the inner city teacher isnt as good and should be paid less?
One of my mom's good friends ended up with 5 ADHD kids in her class of 25 students. Those kids really struggled to pay attention and pass the standardized test. In the end, it ended up brigning down the average test score of the class. Is that her fault that she had those kids? Should her pay get docked because her kids have ADHD?

There needs to be a way of ensuring that good teachers are rewarded for their work, it's very important. But tying pay to test scores is not it.