BRING BACK CIVICS CLASS IN ALL AMERICAN SCHOOLS

You could not graduate high school in California, if you did not successfully pass the mandatory 6-month? year? civics class.

To be all-inclusive you'd have to make Sub-Compacts & Crossovers the mandatory course.

Stupid people

- make easy prey for snake oil salesmen,

- are obediant modern day slaves (who gladly work for minimum, or below minimum, wage),

- are afraid to challenge the status quo.

- make great cannon fodder for wars that suit the elite's agenda.

Thank you, OP! I agree whole-heartedly!

R3, I agree with you too. I'll take it a step further. The low information voter the GOP is so fond of exploiting, owes a lot to the war on organized labor. It has a lot to do with union busting. The fact that we've had labor unions who informed their workers about issues that affected their lives, and educated them about that stuff, who also explained the legislative process and analyzed the games the opposition plays with language, etc., also affects the level of stupidity we're witnessing.

My father was a member of a union. He never went to college, but he knew more about economic issues and trade issues than the average person. He understood the art of negotiating and rational expectations, he understood that you fought for what you needed long term, you didn't get disgruntled and walk away when you didn't get what you wanted. One of the missions of the Right was to break the unions. Republican governors all over the country have been embracing Right to Work legislation and demonizing organized labor for years. It's finally having an effect.

Liberals started rewriting history. They believed what Howard Zinn wrote.

In order to bring back civics class, the truth needs to be taught and liberals don't want the truth taught.

Do you have an example of that R5?

r6, the Constitution guarantees that religion is protected from government. Several instances of that no longer happening in the US. It's an inconvenient truth that liberals would need to address in civics class.

r5/r7, you still have not provided sourced examples.

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" comprises the religious clause of the First Amendment. It MEANS we will have no state church, like the Church of England. It MEANS people can worship freely without fear of, say, imprisonment or beheading.

What is does NOT mean is that citizens can impose their own religious beliefs on others. That's in case you plan to give the "example" of Obama care and birth control.

R7 - that's not an example. That's your conclusion. Here let me help you. The Texas Board of Education has established history requirements that minimize the role of slavery in the Civil War. Ignoring the fact the Confederacy made it very clear they seceded from the Union to guarantee their right to own slaves.

That would be an example of a political agenda corrupting public school curriculum.

Now it's your turn.

Bye R5/R7! Love the ignore button Muriel.

r8, what does "prohibiting the free exercise thereof" mean to you? Should Christian pastors who are against gay marriage be forced to marry gays? Should they go to prison if they don't?

"Should Christian pastors who are against gay marriage be forced to marry gays? Should they go to prison if they don't?"

No, and none ever would. Why do you idiots always bring this up as if this was an actual possibility?

R5 Please by all means elaborate. To what "truth" are you referring. How exactly are Christians being persecuted by the US Government? I must here more.

[quote]I must here more.

Before you can master Civics Class, you need to master Grammar Class.

It's been purposely killed, a glorious side-effect of the Republican war on education. How else would they get more of their dipshits in office?

R9, all over the South, mentions of evolution are removed from Science books and the standardized tests for those states. They haven't completely taken out slavery, yet, but they are getting there.

[quote]Before you can master Civics Class, you need to master Grammar Class.

So must you. That's not a grammatical mistake. It is a spelling error. Consequence of hurriedly typing on my phone.

You're asking the wrong person, r11, given that my own father-in-law-to-be, a Protestant minister, refused to marry his non-believing son and me (female).

So no, ministers, who ply their trade in tax-exempt institutions unlike private enterprise employers, cannot be compelled to join in holy matrimony ANYONE they don't want to. The government provides for a secular marriage ceremony (e.g., judges in a court-house).

But you suggest a hypothetical. We are still waiting for the claimed real examples of govt over-stepping.

Is it a hypothetical, r18?

What was your question again, r19?

"But the church is also registered as a for-profit business and city officials said that means the owners must comply with state and federal regulations."

R19 - you know you've been duped right? The entire thing is made up. Never happened.

[quote]"But the church is also registered as a for-profit business and city officials said that means the owners must comply with state and federal regulations."

Churches don't usually seek to be classified as for-profit businesses. They normally seek to be classified as tax exempt non profit organizations.

[quote]A 501(c) organization, also known colloquially as a 501(c), is a tax-exempt nonprofit organization in the United States. Section 501(c) of the United States Internal Revenue Code (26 U.S.C. § 501(c)) provides that 29 types of nonprofit organizations are exempt from some federal income taxes. Sections 503 through 505 set out the requirements for attaining such exemptions. Many states refer to Section 501(c) for definitions of organizations exempt from state taxation as well. 501(c) organizations can receive unlimited contributions from individuals, corporations, and unions.

[quote]The most common type of tax-exempt nonprofit organization falls under category 501(c)(3), whereby a nonprofit organization is exempt from federal income tax if its activities have the following purposes: charitable, religious, educational, scientific, literary, testing for public safety, fostering amateur sports competition, or preventing cruelty to children or animals. The 501(c)(4) and 501(c)(6) categories are for politically active nonprofits, which have become increasingly important since the

No kidding, r22. That was the point of the quotation from the article.

The only solution to the low quality of education in this country is to privatize all education at every level from pre-school to grad school. Throwing more money at these government-run idiot factories will not improve the quality of education, and we can not afford to fall any further behind the rest of the developed world than we already have. Imagine an educational system that is not subject to the whims of superstitious crackers in rural Texas or Kansas or opportunistic race-baiters in California or New York who hide behind their status as elected officials to dumb down your kids' education, in effect if not in intent.

The reason we have so many ignorant, stupid assholes is because we HAVE privatized education. That's the Extreme Right's playbook, you freeper pigs! Privatize everything, and get rid of government. Make everything, including police and fire protection pay as you go. Privatize prisons. Privatize armies. That's the corporate police state in action with no one accountable because it's PRIVATE. Well, we have home schooling, we have the diverting of public funds to charter schools, we have for profit diploma mills and we have franchised schools. We've seen the deliberate, systematic weakening of our teachers unions and now we're seeing the results. Today, people are ten million times dumber than they were 30 years ago. But if you have a service based economy, or if you've turned the U.S. Economy into a cottage industry you don't need an educated workforce. Educated workers are troublemakers.

I'm fucking sick of this phony argument that government is our enemy. We are the fucking government. It's not as if corporations and Big Business have it all figured out. It's not as if they have some superior, better way of doing things. They are greedy, inefficient, criminally dishonest and arrogant. They also have the ironclad conviction that they are not accountable ro anyone.

Agreed, R24/R25! I have watched our educational system go through a deliberate and planned destruction. When I went to public school a million years ago, we had the resources to have art, music, and literature programs. When we went on a field trip, all we had to worry about was getting a signed permission slip from our parents back to the teacher on time, My niece and nephew, however, either have to get their parents to pay for the trip, or the class has to hold a fundraiser, or my niece and nephew hit us up to buy the latest overpriced wrapping paper, magazines, or whatever some huckster company can foist off on school kids to overprice and guilt relatives into buying.

Most schools have cancelled arts and music classes. Of course, we have to fully fund the football team, but my nephew's school held a special money-bomb event to pay for the marching band to attend away games. My niece's school play performances were as expensive as any other local production; she told me that the drama club actually had to pay the school rent on the auditorium to put the play on.

If you read the New Yorker piece on Seattle's earthquake preparation problem, it gave another stunning example: all of Seattle's schools are located in areas that should an earthquake strike, that and the likely tsunami will literally put these school kids under a 45-foot high wall of water. So, they put a bond measure on the ballot in 2010 to raise funds to build a new school in an area that will be protected and give the community a shelter point... and the voters rejected the measure by 62% because it would have raised taxes by $2 per $1000 of home value. That works out to a one-time assessment of a whopping $1000 on a half-million dollar home.

So much for "the children."

Republicans figured out in the 70s that in order to win, they had to dumb down the population and push them into low paying jobs that keep them on the edge of bankruptcy. Look, if you're afraid that you're going to lose your job at any moment, the last thing you're going to do is rock the boat. The elite has taken this basic fear and turned it against collective organizing. Just look at the efforts of Wal-mart employees to unionize: stores that look close to achieving union protection suddenly develop "plumbing" problems that require the store to be closed. And no, they don't transfer the employees or even give existing employees priority status for jobs at nearby locations. And they don't even bother with the pretense of applying for plumbing permits; Wal-mart would rather lose the tens of millions of dollars invested in any one or two or five stores, than deal with a union.

If you look at the slow spiral of death of the middle class, and compare it to union membership, there is a striking parallel that even republicans can see. But as long as we have teevee and movies and sports to occupy the minions' minds, no one cares.

We're losing everything our grandparents fought for and died to attain.

They just shut down Washington School, the public school where I took civics and current events classes years ago. In its place are several quasi-religious and ultra conservative owned pop-up charter schools, which don't bother with civics and current events. Supported by my property tax dollars, amen! There's your fucking marketplace in action, R24.

[quote]It's not as if they have some superior, better way of doing things.

Um, actually they do. It's called serving consumer's interests. If they don't, someone else will. That's how competition works. Businesses learn through trial and error what sells and what does not. They're a damn sight more responsive than the government on any level. Public-sector monopolies have no incentive to improve their services and thus seldom do. They have tried pumping more and more money into the existing educational systems and they still have not improved services.

The government is the one trying to dumb down the public. The FCC is one means of doing so; its hypocritical, arbitrary standards of censorship have gradually cheapened the level of public discourse over the years and helped keep gays off the air prior to the 1970s. It is only by loosening those standards of censorship that the quality of television programming has increased. And if it wasn't for the deregulation of broadcasting, we'd still be stuck with three networks and their fetid propaganda for the status quo. The likes of [italic]Breaking Bad[/italic] and [italic]Mad Men[/italic] would likely not exist.

[quote] We're losing everything our grandparents fought for and died to attain.

All of that was built around systemic racism. And a lot of those jobs were dead-end ones in smoke-belching factories that discriminated against minorities, gays and the disabled.

[quote]In its place are several quasi-religious and ultra conservative owned pop-up charter schools, which don't bother with civics and current events.

The solution to that is to open another school. One with a secular curriculum.

The Mafia is real, and their involvement in organized labor is more than just a coincidence. Ditto the CPUSA.

[quote] The reason we have so many ignorant, stupid assholes is because the government has tried to monopolize education and turn it into a propaganda mill.

Fixed.

Oh, for fuck's sake, R29... you don't know what you're blathering on about. The private market is not the solution to everything, and in the case of education, it is the private market that has nearly destroyed what was once the greatest educational system the world has ever seen.

And regarding R30, everybody please note that the linked "source" is the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, aka the 1%.

Actually, R29 gives us the best reason for mandatory civics education I can think of. The system clearly failed him, and he's going to make sure we see just how badly.

Christ, you're an idiot, R29. Can't they do better than you at the Koch, er, Cato Institute social media boiler room?

The FCC has nothing to do with media censorship beyond enforcing the traditional 7 obscene words which might be heard inside the "Safe Harbor" broadcast hours. In fact, through their strong efforts in media consolidation, 6 owners now control over 90% of media outlets. Thought you guys liked that.

BTW, as an openly gay man, I came out on the air...in Flagstaff Arizona...during an afternoon drive shift in 1976. It was my patriotic duty.

R29 does not understand private property, business, corporations, or consumer culture. He doesn't understand government or civics. And what is most glaringly obvious is that everything he believes about history is a lie.

There is no 1%, just like there is no Illuminati, no International Jewish Conspiracy, and no Homosexual Agenda. Sorry to disappoint your paranoid little brains.

Fuck the middle class. They've perpetuated so much bad taste at the expense of natural resources, they're responsible for what's wrong with America. And the Koch Brothers have done more to advance marriage equality. In fact, 20 years ago when THE GOVERNMENT was passing DADT and DOMA, the private sector started offering domestic partnership benefits. They wanted to do what they can to keep gay employees happy. The public sector was demonizing us. And that same government school system you all have a hard-on for has systematically erased us from history and sex ed altogether. Kids would be better off under any other educational system.

Your assumption that things will not get done unless the government does them is wrong, both in theory and in practice.

Koch Brothers didn't do any of that R37. And private businesses only did that because governments like the City of New York and City of San Francisco made them.

Said union organizer Pauline Newman: "Even when things were terrible I always had faith. Only, now I'm a little discouraged when I see the workers spending their time watching television/trash. We fought so hard for those hours and they waste them. We used to read Tolstoy, Dickens, Shelley by candlelight, and they watch the Hollywood Squares...."

Hollywood Squares is the only one of those that had a union.

They should spend at least a full week teaching Freedom of Speech, since most people think it means: I can say whatever the fuck I want without any consequences.

Me telling you to shut up is also freedom of speech.

It's ridiculous to say that the solution for a school run by religious crackpots is to open a secular school. And what is going to happen to the kids that continue to go to the religious -brainwashing, the world is 6,000 years old, dinosaurs and Jesus were friends school? They are going to continue to go there because their parents want them to go there, because they are paranoid, badly educated suckers being ordered around by cult leaders.

Go to any fundie Christian website, they say education is evil and nobody needs to know more than how to read the Bible. They tell kids college is evil because their parents aren't there to segregate them from every other type of person, people have sex there, and college professors teach history and science, not superstition. They tell their kids they must make a choice between education and God.

I am not kidding, I've read it on many fundamentalist Christian websites. Also, that God doesn't want children to go to school, because it says in the Bible that nobody should teach your children or have any influence over them but you. Therefore, if you're illiterate then your kids must be too, because nobody else can tell them anything.

Public school used to protect kids from this crap. Once they lose their chance for an education they can't escape their parents nutbaggery, which is exactly why the cult leaders tell their parents this crap. A few generations of illiteracy, and you have a bunch of brainwashed illiterates that are too far gone to have any free will or know how to be a good citizen.

Remember good citizenship? That means get an education, get a job, pay taxes and pull your own weight. How can you ever do that if you're taught from birth that everyone not in your cult is the enemy, women are baby machines that have no responsibility to support themselves no matter what, and education is evil? Society itself needs to be protected from this crap, and so do innocent kids. Not everything is about money, greed, selfishness and profit uber alles.

R19, your example is a fake according to snopes, but then I strongly suspect you already knew that, now didn't you?

[quote]Society itself needs to be protected from this crap, and so do innocent kids.

Then do to them what they're trying to do to us before they do it to us first. Because if we don't, they will.

That's what it should be R41-42. You win no prizes because you institute fascism whenever you are in control.

The problem with classes is that teachers are only allowed to teach what the fucking government tells them they can teach.

Documents obtained pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act in 1993 disclosed the following:

When JFK became President after Eisenhower, the CIA and Cabinet members were all appointed by Eisrnhower.

In 1961 Kennedy was directed to launch a FIRST strike attack against Russia. Eisenhower's cronies thought Kennedy would follow the program.

Thank God JFK said no.

JFK was not exactly 'directed' to do so, R47. The Pentagon constantly does disturbing feasibility studies like the one you cite, exploring all options just in case. But remember this, American people: your vote for a completely rational, sane President is one of the most important things you can do every four years.

To most everyone on this board, that eliminates an entire political party.

I can assure you, those nasty little religious charter schools in my neighborhood aren't giving any classroom time to your FOIA story, either.

[quote]The Pentagon constantly does disturbing feasibility studies like the one you cite, exploring all options just in case.

They did one about the Canadians invading the US...

PS -- learned in Civics class

Well the state governments certainly play a role in dumbing down our education system and giving in to the fundies and the Extremists. They see two things at the state level. They give in to the pressure groups on the Right, to "protect our children" and they're anti government so they're privatizing education " to give parents more control" while they rake in the profits. At the national level they allow too much leeway. We need higher standards and requirements so that whether a school is public or private, it has a core curriculum it must teach and not some invention of a politicized minority.

I seriously agree. If you interview anyone under the age of 25, their knowledge of US government, civics, US history, et al. is atrociously, abysmally low. And I'm talking about people attending our top universities. It's like someone is trying to intentionally keep them ignorant in this way.

R51 Fundies and extremists of ALL political persuasions. Extremist lefties actually have far, more influence over our school programs because they are overwhelmingly represented in the SJW-laden teaching and social work professions.

God, I hate r53 and his massive bullshit.

R54 "Hate"? Come, now, is that any word for a totalitarian puritan of "Social Justice!", obsessed with imposed conformity, to use?

R54 Why don't you just report me for having WrongThink, like you always do and I'll be banned from responding to your one-sided arguments for a while. As usual.

R54 Also, who has taught the "White Privilege" BS, that's bullying little White kids into a state of insecurity for things they've had absolutely, nothing to do with? It's abusive. It's like places in The World where children are conditioned to hate Jews and blame them for all ills of The World. I have a real problem with these people abusing our society's kids by doing this to them. It's wrong.

Teach history, accurately. Do not single out one racial group and demonizing them, in front of the class because of the melanin levels in their skin.

It is easier to lead the sheeple if they don't know the destination.

R58 I have no problem with kids being taught the unpleasant history, warts and all. And yes, there will be some very unsympathetic White people in that history. But this has morphed into something else. This is about beating down White kids, psychologically, teaching them to submit to Racial Supremacist bullies.

I can't stand it. La Raza and The Black Panthers should not be designing kids' social science and history class programs any more than The KKK should.

[quote]It's like places in The World where children are conditioned to hate Jews and blame them for all ills of The World.

Like America? Because there sure are a lot of them on DL.

R60 Right? This topic addresses the problem.

Jeez, I'm so glad r55-r57 doesn't make gigantic judgments based on zero information like he thinks others do. He's not a hypocrite at all.

Sure, OP, and who will clean up all the feces?

I took a government class for ~6 months in high school.

Back in the day, both for high school and college, you could not graduate unless you took American Government and American History and passed them with at least a C. that was the state law. We had a Civics class (required) and a class on Foreign Relations (not required) in my high school, and we took field trips to the local City Council, to our state capital to watch a session of the legislature, and our Senior Class trip was to Washington D.C. not the Bahamas or Florida or any of that crap. This was in the 70's. U know it certainly helped me to be more aware, and to watch the news intelligently. My parents and grandparents came from a time where the TV news was always something important. It had credibility. If it was on the news, it had to be true. Which I find quaint.

They want the public stupid and undereducated which is why there has been an attach on our public education system since 2001. The demonizing of teachers, teachers unions,focusing on test cores rather than actual learning, and the elimination or bastardization of basic subjects such as geography, history, civics, science. They want the next generation to be less informed, less able to think for themselves, and less interested in voting.

One more thing to consider. When the economy is bad, or even if it's good and a person has very few job options, we see more and more that these young people join the military. National Guard or regular army. The military counts on that.

[quote]They want the next generation to be less informed, less able to think for themselves, and less interested in voting.

And absolutely NOTHING to do with schools that are little more than day care centers, helicopter parents who don't want their children challenged, who demand scrupulous equality and myriad concessions for their Princes and Princesses.

[quote]I can't stand it. La Raza and The Black Panthers should not be designing kids' social science and history class programs any more than The KKK should.

Then maybe Queer Nation should be doing it instead.

First of all, get off my goddamned gay freaking lawn.

Secondly, public schools are failing on all the basics, not just civics. Very complex challenge.

[quote]The demonizing of teachers

You don't need to demonize what is already demonic to begin with.

R71 Sorry to hear that, hon. It's horrible when adults violate a child's trust. I loathe adults who pick on kids and bully them, too. If they have an issue with a kid, they should take it up with parents and guardians, only.

And every time my parents talked to the administrators, they took the bullies' side EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. That's one of many reasons why we need massive reforms in the educational system, not just the source of funding and the means of delivering education to children.

Oh, hell. When did we get to be such delicate flowers. I'm not challenging you R71. Not at all. I 've seen and experienced bullying and abusive behavior from teachers. But I also think that we often say they're abusive when really they aren't. I mean, I had a piano teacher in Catholic school ( a nun) who rapped me HARD on the knuckles every single time I made a mistake. It hurt like hell. We had nuns who pulled your hair, slapped you in the face, on the head, the back, the hands, shit it was a combat zone. Especially for boys. Girls caught hell too, but mostly when they got older like maybe 6th grade. As we got older, say from the 7th or 8th grade on, public ridicule and public humiliation were the order of the day. I developed a nervous tick dealing with my Latin teacher. The nuns were horrible. But back in the day, it was also considered OK for a teacher to physically punish a kid. Parents used razor strops and we had one nun who found a new use for a ping pong paddle. Yard sticks weren't just for measuring. The psychological damage from that kind of stuff is hard to pinpoint, but I'm sure it had lasting effects. I did survive it, but I'm sure it gave me more than a few hang ups. That's how things were back then. Talking 1960's.

R74: You went to Catholic school, so I assume your parents paid for your education. That was not the case with me.

The freepers on this site are proof that closeted, conservative homosexuals are insane. How else do you explain people that vote and argue against their own interests and have so little sympathy for others?

And R25/27 thank you for restoring my faith.

Damn. That rant was pretty brilliant. It's all true too.

Get rid of school sports and there'll be plenty of money left for things students actually need.

R25's solution to everything is to tax the productive to keep the unproductive feeling justified in their laziness. And everyone I've ever known who mooched off the state in such a fashion was lily white.

I wish I had a Foreign Relations class in HS. It would be cool if students in HS today created their own after-school government classes. -- little 'socialist' groups all over the country, funded by our taxes. That would truly be radical. That would scare the shit out of the evil-doers.

But then we won't have time to learn about Transgender History and Culture.

Yeah, try teaching Civics to the children of Qanon jerks.