Out of interest, what's your position on teaching of history broadly? I, personally, have zero interest in it. Don't care about the dates, the kings, the queens, definitely not the wars or any of that depressing stuff. I'm just not interested enough in it to keep that info in my brain (and that's not an insult to people who are, I'm sure my interests (Torx screws) are equally dull to some of you). But I appreciate that it has a place in education (those who forget the past are doomed etc.)
So what should education look like? I don't need to know the angle to lean a ladder on a wall, because I'm not a fucking idiot and I can tell if a ladder will fall when I get on it. Oxbow lakes? Who cares, the lake is there or it's not there, me knowing that a meander led to it doesn't change anything (you'll not find a British schoolchild who doesn't know how oxbow lakes are formed, it's part of the syllabus for every subject).
I'm (now) aware of my ignorance in many areas, and I do wish my education had been broader, including things like black history and other religions (even in my non-Catholic secondary religious education was basically Christian Studies) and worldviews. I honestly think if I'd had a more rounded education, and seen the world through others' eyes a little more, I might have been a bit less of a dick in my teens and twenties (this may not be the case though, I maybe just be inherently a dick).
Anyway, what important skills for adulthood do you think are getting, or would be, missed? (You do not need to reiterate that all young people are thick, I've already explained that your parents' generation think you are thick and shit at practical tasks. What provable lack is there in the younger generation?)
I'm not a fan of remembering specific people and dates overall. Learning what happened in history and how society got to the point it is now is important IMO. Not saying you can't teach specific historical figures as giving names does make stories more memorable. Knowing Greece was the first democracy is more important than knowing the exact year it happened. I think teaching all the wars (not literally all of them) is important to know how violent we used to be. Knowing how the great depression happened is more important than knowing the exact years it was as well. I think giving a once over of stuff like an oxbow lake or fjord is good to know. It kinda shocks me how I remember stuff like a fjord and whatnot from school like 20-30 years back.
I think critical thinking is sorely lacking as kids are pushed to learn stuff like people and dates vs the whys and hows of events. Something you can look up in like 2 seconds on Google shouldn't be prioritized, but the stuff you'd actually have to read about to understand should be prioritized. I think a current events type class would be great to teach how to be critical of media and not only listen to the one side you like more. The class could go over actual current events along with recent events so you can see how something was covered by say CNN vs FOX pointing out the facts/points both sides ignore and the ones they exaggerate. And, of course, with the recent past events, you can go over how the story changed over time from initial reporting to what we now know happened. Also, a class about going over government, politics, and policy would be great as people really just vote for their team and don't really pay attention to most things political as the average voter is not very knowledgeable about the candidates or policies/issues. Covering other countries and what they do in comparison to the US (system/policy similarities/differences) would be very useful knowledge as well.
The 14th amendment of the federal or state Constitution? 'Cause I looked up the federal one and no it doesn't. Demonstrate that it does.
Then enlighten me.
Just because one person says something does not mean you also need to talk about it.
Possibly they could use the knowledge of the struggles of their fellow human beings to be more empathetic, compassionate and open-minded human beings. You know, progressive stuff that you claim to support but actually don't.
It was in the news segment that you wouldn't watch...
You enlighten me on how the law does the stuff you claim it does. It's on you to prove your point, not for me to disprove it.
They brought it up to be talked about...
That's already covered...
Lots of that stuff isn't objectionable in the slightest. It's just right-wing pricks with no credible understanding of the topic whinging about discussion points that upset them and demanding it be censored. That's all this is.
Example: a bunch of these objections are just, "includes an author who's a communist/has some social opinions we don't like, and they said XYZ objectionable thing in the past!!" -- so the fuck what? Aren't these the same people who'd scream bloody murder if various American slavers or Founding Fathers were omitted, because that would be unforgivable censorship? Big surprise: there's no consistency or principle with regards to protecting problematic free speech, and they actually just want to insist that everything on the curriculum is amenable to mainstream conservatism, and if it doesn't fit that mould it can get fucked.
So, you're OK with 14th amendment violations when you like them?
Why is a section about overthrowing capitalism in fucking black history?
It's worth remembering that many civil rights icons were political radicals. Beyond all the racism, the right wing doesn't want anybody learning that socialists done good.
What about how good those soviet socialists did?
But it's not dumb: it's a valid logical riposte to your argument. The problem is with your argument, because it's so easy to demonstrate as deficient.
No, it isn't. Too much fruit juice is bad for you.
Okay, just in case you haven't yet clicked, I don't disagree that slowing the absorption of carbohydrates can be beneficial to reduce the increase in blood sugar (and thus insulin, and thus risk of insulin resistance) when eating. What I disagree with is the absolutism with which you present your case and thus inaccuracies in what you claim is bad for us: for instance, you've said before things like that table sugar is "poison", which is an absurd exaggeration.
The obvious issue here is "how much are you eating?"
Let's take this idea of blood glucose. If you eat a teaspoon (5g) of purest, refined, white, table sugar every 30 minutes, you are going to have very little problem with high blood sugar glucose and thus insulin... because you're just not absorbing a large quantity of glucose at any one time. Eating 32 teaspoons of sugar in one go... that's a very different issue. Obviously, this is not a recommendation for anyone to eat a teaspoon of sugar every 30 minutes, it's just to illustrate a point.
Anyway, the next problem is simply failing to think of how other people think. We all know perfectly well lots of people are rubbish at eating foods that are good for them. The point of public health advice is to give simple, straightforward and credible advice. No-one gives a shit about whether you individually like orange juice or oranges, they're thinking about the millions of people for whom eating the most basic fruit is a stretch: and I can assure you, there are many millions of them out there. Telling them to eat stuff they are never going eat like nothing but fresh veg and brown rice is wasting valuable public funds. Getting them to consume foodstuffs that are not perfect but at least an improvement on the utter junk they might otherwise do is a win. Such is the nature of public health.
How is an avocado vastly different in it's composition than an apple that would cause a human digestion system to have issues with the avocado? Straight sugar is digested very differently than sugar with it's natural fibers.
You do realize I'm not arguing you can't ever drink juice or pop or eat a cookie. Drinking/eating such stuff regularly is very very bad for you. People just aren't having a pop or juice as a treat every once in a while. Drinking just 10 ounces of this apple juice (first label on google images searching 'apple juice label') is more sugar than you allowed to have in a whole day. And you think getting kids to drink a juice for X amount of vitamins will have actual medical benefits than just feeding them good foods or fortifying other good foods with said vitamin?
www.martinellis.com
Table sugar is basically slow acting poison unless you're having very minute amounts of it. Why do you think so many people have having chronic diseases like diabetes and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease? That is now the #1 cause of chronic liver disease and it's cause by eating too many sugars/carbs. Sugar is also a very important element of heart disease as well. When just a single normal size of one drink that people drink regularly at least once a day (usually more) is well over double the amount of sugar you can have in one day (that's not even mentioning any of the added sugars in most everything else), you see what has happened to obesity rates and diabetes and other diseases.
Yes, I forget the exact amount of sugar your body can actually handle at one time, it's pretty low like maybe 4 grams or something, so if you're having all those daily sugars (the recommended amount) all at once in a drink, it's much different than if you spread it out among the day. And also, most people are eating/drinking several things a day very high in sugar in a single meal at once.
Yes, exactly why I said you should eat good foods that YOU like; you act like I've outlined some very specific diet and I never have. I don't like many vegetables for example so I don't eat them. That doesn't mean I should eat fries everyday because I don't like vegetables. Nobody should eat fries everyday. I simply eat real food that I like and haven't said that anyone needs to eat exactly these very specific foods because forcing people to eat stuff they don't like doesn't work. That's what people associate with your standard diets, being forced to eat foods they don't like. I'm not forcing myself to eat broccoli or carrots, I'm eating bananas and oranges instead because that's what I like. Wasting public funds to the extreme is telling people obesity is mainly to do with genetics vs diet and lifestyle.
How would they know that if they weren't shown the differences in how past generations were treated? How, precisely, do you think Critical Thinking is cultivated?
So every kids takes Band? Because it's not elective, yeah? Why teach history *at all*, it doesn't help people Get A Job. Or trig, or calculus, hell most people don't need anything more than basic algebra and a smattering of geometry. Outside of speialized fields, does it actually matter if people know the earth is an oblate spheroid or how evolution works, you know, Job Wise? Literature and culture is right out, most people don't engage with Civics at their job or ever besides casting a vote once in a while. And why bother teaching how economics works, it's not gonna stop you from losing your job because the line went down. Don't need physics beyond "Pan Gets Hot" and has it *really* advanced your life to know that the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell?
That's already taught. Most everything else I basically said in my response above to Baffle.
www.theguardian.com
www.mynews13.com
