I am in a public school right now, and they are trying to tell me things I don't agree with, i.e. homesexuality is fine, all religions are fine to believe in (I, personally, no offense, do not like the Muslim belief system), etc. Once, a student was given several detentions and a phone call home for speaking out about homosexuality, saying that he felt it was abnoral. They try to instill a belief system in the students. They try to take a neutral stand on everything, saying every religion is fine, and sort of passively resisting any mention of religion at all, thereby making it feel "wrong" to be religious. They have requirements for community service and, while I have nothing against community service, I have to question the wisdom of allowing our government to force children to do it. Religion is a taboo at school, and, because of this, the schools, through their so-called tolerance, create an environment hostile to religion. What do you think about this? Should the government be allowed to teach the people what to believe?

Religion is hardly "taboo at school". While it is, especially in the more liberal and secular areas of the United States, an anathema to be taught in the classroom, there are no rules prohibiting the free exercise of religion while attending a public school. You are, for example, free to spend a moment in prayer before you eat your lunch. You can read the Bible during break. You can wear a necklace with a cross. Essentially, you are free to practice your religion.

While the government should not necessarily be "teaching children what to believe," I do believe it is the civic duty of the government to provide public education and in doing so instill a basic set of civic morals into our children. Among these morals should be respect for the laws and our system of government and tolerance of others. Why? It is in the best interest of society at large to raise a new generation that will work for the benefit of society, and tolerance is an important moral to have. You may not like Islam as a religion, but does that really mean anyone who follows it should be put to death? Forbidden to exercise their religion? I contend that there is no evidence that any single religion is better or more valid than another, and therefore the most ecumenical solution is to be as tolerant as possible of all beliefs.

You say "a student" was punished for "speaking out about homosexuality". In what fashion did he do this? There is a very noticeable line between hostile and abusive language that is intolerant of other groups, and the statement of an opinion such as, "The idea of homosexuality makes me feel uncomfortable". Our Constitution protects a right to free speech, but from a moral standpoint, this is really only right if it is not spitefully hurtful to others. In a school setting, abusive speech and behavior is therefore rightfully banned.

Our Founding Fathers established this nation with the belief that "all men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, and that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness". These are slightly modified from John Locke's Fundamental Rights of Man (life, liberty, and property), and I feel that a just legal system attempts to abridge these three rights as little as possible. Whether the liberty of one person to seek happiness infringes on the rights of another, a compromise must be made, and there falls the decisions of the judges.

The thing is, religion IS considered taboo to a certain extent.1 You may be free to to practice your religion, but not if you are getting up in class and saying something like,'According to the Bible, homosexuality is wrong and should be punished by death. I feel that gayness is unnatural and refuse to listen to you speak of it as normal.' and then walk out. You would be castrated for that, and told that you aren't being accepting of other's choices. Yet students everywhere are being taught not to look up to Jesus or Luther or other Christians. I'm not sure what schools would do if a Muslim stood up and said that all non-Muslims should be put to earth. Would be interesting.
Anyway, the schools don't mind if you practice your religion, as long as it isn't influencing OTHER students, or is a 'hate crime'. As the article I linked to said, they wanted the kid who wanted Jesus as his hero to do his speech or act or whatever in private, presumably so that the other students weren't influenced.

I disagree.. they are not being taught to look up to them, but not being taught not to.

Although some cases, like the one you cited, are taken too far. That's why we have a free press to report on such situations and a legal system that lets them be challenged.

They are simply educating you on equality, something that is very American. They aren't telling you to become a muslim, they are telling to that you are no better than he is because of your religion. They need to do this because it is already well known that the bible speaks of Christianity as exclusively superior, as does the Koran with Islam. The compromise is that you can believe that in your heart and preach it in your homes, but there are certain public places such as schools that you have to keep your "One True Way" idea to yourself or we won't get anything done because we can't agree on it.

The best way for you to grasp this issue is to put yourself in the shoes of the child going to school with 2 mommies or 2 daddies. Once again this is not them telling you to become a homosexual, this is them saying that if you are gay, you are not less of a person because of it. Just as with religion, we let Jimmy know he isn't better than Hagi because he reads the bible, and he isn't better than Sally because his parents are heterosexual.

They don't. Your parents instill a belief system on you via religion. School only instills the American idea of equality.

and then you contradict yourself when you say:
You can't have it both ways. Either you are making the case that schools discourage religion, or you are saying that they encourage all religions equally. They seem to engaging in religiosity only when convenient for your case. You can't have your cake and eat it too.
Unchopped up, in the sentence I just quoted you try to say that because schools are neutral on religion, they are implicitly condemning it. This simply untrue(I mean, neutral is called neutral for a reason, this is a false dichotomy), but I welcome seeing you post possible scenarios where it is illustrated.

This really has nothing to do with anything else in your arguement. I suggest you edit it out and make another separate topic because the two are not connected.

It gives people something to believe in.
I think this is really about Christianity not being the center of everything or a moral compass in a major aspect of your life, and this right now is coming to you as a shock. You have to understand that we all make compromises, and it probably has a lot to do with the things that make us great. For once groups of people come together and turn a blind eye to fundamental truths in their scriptures for the sake of progress and unity.

Good luck finding a government over 50 years old that doesn't teach propaganda in their education system.

Power is no longer based on how well a person can wield a weapon and strike another down, rather now based on the system of control known as school, media, entertainment, and such. This topic brings about a much larger discussion than just schools, rather the entire system at a whole. Power grips those with it stronger, and the thirst makes them do things to gain more. Our news has been proven to incorretly portray information (Some say its just Fox News, some will say the news is truth), our government teachs youths to hate other counties at a young age through history books, and then decides to tell the whole truth at a later date in their education (Civil War, Cold War, Pacific Theater with Japan, Korea and Vietnam Struggles). By that time the mind is too naive (Through media and entertainment as I belive) to understand what it is now being tought, and clings to the old information. Examples of such would be hatred for the Iran, Iraq, and other Middle Eastern countries, Islamic religion, Russia and due to the Cold War, Karl Marx and the Communist Style of government, China and other such countries that still practice the government style, and others. Some get so cought up in this that they continue to refuse the truth and think of their own country as "The Best", and others are inferior (If they are even tought to use the word) and continue to live their lives listening to the media, and entertaining themselves more. With that being said, these things that are brought up in schools, the sexuality discussons, religion, and others, are just a harrassment to your mind and just stalling ones form becoming truly thoughtful. As long as these distractions exist in school, we will never learn as much as we should, the standerds are lowered every day, and most imporntantly we are tought to hate those who oppose us. Propaganda is instilling people with a false feeling of Pride for this country, and will make those who are not yet capible of thinking for themselves belive anything they hear from this country. Open minded people are diminising, because less learn to become open and unbiased due to the distractions in school, and the falsehood of the education it provides.

Disclaimer: This information was gathered by my own personal experiance of living in a small town that has an exponential growth as of late.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Aug 14 2009, 8:33 pm by Vrael. Reason: we do not hide information in SD

I agree with a lot of what DM said. Governments are definitely feeding propoganda to the next generation, but the government probably doesn't think of it that way. Rather, they are teaching children what they think they should know. However, there are some very blatant coverups and propoganda around.
For example, I'm home schooled, and I live in New Zealand. A large part of my cirriculum(sp?) comes from the states, from a Christian company. Now, a lot of what they say is good, but in my history books, they tell me that the Gulf of Tonkin incident was caused by the US being fired on. What they didn't know was that wasn't what happened. In more recent times, its been revealed that the US was actually sending torpedo boats inland, and were fired upon because they had commited an act of war. I don't know how they explained why the ship was there anyway, but if even a Christian book, which tends to say it like it is, got that wrong, BECAUSE that was what the governmdnt had told them when they were growing up. It wouldn't surprisd me if its still being taught wrong nowadays.

As for a false sense of patriotism, even the bnet noobs I speak with think the US sucks generally. This surprised me a bit, because New Zealand and Australia, the two countries I know best, are highly patriotic. No one likes the government much, but we still love our countries.

The amount that people get taught in public schools is appalling. My sister who is 9 can read and write better than one of my mates, who is 14. He's not stupid, but school just doesn't teach him that much.

I think there can be a strong case to be made that these two apparently different points are one in the same, which lies much at the heart of this issue. If we take the source Zany provided for example, the student in question was denied the equal ability to report on his or her religious figure. To the student, this makes a separation between his report and the others, a separation both physical in that he had to report in private, away from the other students, and mental, because everyone else's choices were "okay" while his religious choice was "not okay", by means of having extra attention drawn to it. If no one is taught to look up to religious figures in school, in essence that sends the message "we do not accept religious figures as idols." This by itself is not necessarily the same as "religious figures are bad", but it could easily be misconstrued as such.

Zx's terminology and word usage is certainly not accurate for the message he's trying to portray, but I think in essence he means what I explained in regards to the quote from DT_Battlekruser above. I think another way to describe it would to be analogous to a numerical number line. For the example, let's say all "good" things are greater than 0, and all bad things are less than zero. In the case of these schools, they are making religion strictly "non-positive." So they certainly don't HAVE to be "bad", but by not allowing them to be "good", it's easy to mistake "less than zero" for "less than or equal to zero" on our analogous number line.

While I don't think this is intentionally ad-hominem, it is, CAFG.



Dark_Marine, this paragraph does not constitute Serious Discussion. I would have deleted it, but I think it would better serve the community to be called out for what it is as an example of what NOT to write. This is only an example of rhetoric in writing, does not address the issue at hand, lacks citations, is full of unsupported assertions, and lacks any argument for or against the topic at hand whatsoever.

This is either a propaganda statement or something very serious. It all depends on the answer to one question:
HOW exactly did this student go about speaking out against homosexuality? Did he say something like "I don't think homosexuality is natural because *insert reasoning here*" or did he say something more along the lines of "OMG YOU GAY FAGS UR GOIN TO HELL blah blah blah"?
I am (well, sort of. You can expect to have other students harass if you're "too religious," as if there's such a thing), but the teachers aren't. I've talked to teaches on this subject before. Simply put, they're afraid to talk about their religion. They're basically forced to teach what the government says to teach and only what the government says to teach. Now, I understand why people wouldn't want their science teachers teaching creationism, but the fact that, say, Bible Class isn't even an option kind of scares me (at least, I don't know of any American school that has religious courses, and I live in the Bible Belt, so it's somewhat safe to assume that they'd be here if anywhere).
Really? Last I checked, America was capitalist, with a strong materialistic culture. Not to mention that like 95% of the wealth is controlled by 1% of the population, or something like that.
Actually by trying to treat all religions equally, they end up discouraging religion. The general attitude seems to be "You shouldn't practice your religion in public because it might offend someone with a different religion." "Tolerance" means shunning and making fun of anyone who thinks that homosexuality is wrong, it means being forced to accept contradicting beliefs lest you offend one of them, it means keeping your mouth shut when you disagree with someone. It should not be this way. Tolerance should be... well, tolerance, not suppression. The solution to bigotry and intolerance does not lie in silencing of conflicting beliefs or the forced compromise of one's religion. While all religions have an equal chance of being correct (theoretically, anyway, I'm sure some have a higher chance than others), they cannot all be correct, for many of them preach conflicting beliefs (ie, "an eye for an eye" and the whole "forgiveness" thing. Ok, I know that wasn't a very good example, but that's all I can think of for now. Give me a break, it's 9:30 XD).
Well said. I'm having to go to college 2 years early just to keep up with foreigners.
Your experiences match mine rather well. Do I count as a source?
Well said. Why is it that everyone else can state what's in my head better than I can?
How does it not address the issue? The OP was about the government teaching students what to believe religiously, and DM's paragraph was about the government teaching students what to believe politically. He is not that far off topic.
As for lacking citations and having unsupported assertions, I'd say his experience and mine are pretty good support. Unfortunately, they are not sharable support, and you have no reason to believe either of us. While I do like it when arguments actually have citations, I find it rather ridiculous that they would be absolutely necessary for a good argument - Why is the word of some source better than the word of the poster? All a source does is provide claims and data that support the poster; a source can lie just as easily as the poster can if not more easily.
I guess what I'm trying to say is "Why is 'so and so said so' a better argument than 'I think so because *insert reasoning here*'?"

That was a REALLY bad example, as both of those are taught in the Bible. A better example would be Hinduism says that there are many gods, whereas both Islam and Christianity say there is only one God, and each says theirs is the true god.

This is an assertion without evidence. He provides no reasoning to show how power is created by schools, media, entertainment.

Again, an assertion without evidence. Regardless of whether it is true or not, it is a claim with no reasoning as to its truth or falsity.

Lacks citation. (despite the fact that it's likely true)

Lacks citation and is ambiguous, two unrelated ideas linked in the same sentence.
Unrelated ideas: "teachings of hate" and "whole truth"

Another assertion without evidence/reasoning.
Also ambiguous, allowing the reader to import his own bias: "By that time" does not have a reference earlier in the sentence, or the previous sentence.

Lacks citation.
Ambiguous: "Examples" of what? Hatred?

He should be providing citations of how people have been turned to hatred through history books at this point.

Ambiguous: "this" lacks a reference, again allowing the reader to substitute the most diabolical thing he can think of if he wishes.
Lacks citations of people refusing truth, and does not relate the refusal of truth to the topic at hand; again allowing the reader to substitute.

See a pattern yet?
Lacks reasoning/argument as to how sexuality discussions, religion, and "others" actually harass you from being thoughtful


The structure of this sentence again employs unrelated ideas: "lower standards" "taught to hate" and "distractions" are all used in the sentence, but never linked as part of the same idea through reasoning.

Again, lacks citations and reasoning.


Attempts to reason. This is the only sentence in the entire paragraph that is valid.



It is not.
'I think so because *insert reasoning here*' is a better argument because logic is universal to mankind. It can be broken down by anyone who knows how to use it, and when employed correctly based on correct premises, it will provide correct conclusions. 'so and so said so' is a terrible argument; in fact it is not an argument at all, it is an Appeal to Authority.

Because a source is not as able to lie as the poster. A cited source is supposed to be from a reputable organization; it is meant to imply a reasonable sense of validity in the material presented due to the reputable nature of the source. If we really wanted citations, I would require you to obtain sources from limited organizations which I (or the other moderators) held to be valid. In SD this is not the case; we require only that you have a source to show that you aren't completely bullshitting us, and that what you're saying isn't complete drivel. It's hard to publish 100% bullshit in a source like the NY Times or the Philadelphia Inquirer, or science websites that have standards for the material they publish.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Aug 15 2009, 4:38 am by Vrael.

Right, I've thought about this as well.

I really don't know anything about law, but I can see why everyone is required to gain some sort of education, be it homeschooling, public schooling, or private schooling. But what I don't agree with, is requiring people to gain an education and at the same time requiring to do "other things". Such as taking a urinalysis test for sports, or vaccinations, and so on. As far as I know, the government can not walk up to you without cause and ask for your urine, or home address, or require to say or not say anything. Although, we are required to be schooled. To go to school there are certain qualifications and rules that must be followed..

No matter what the education we receive is going to be flawed in some way because we ourselves are all flawed. If we are all flawed, then any creation that we make should inherently be flawed in same way as well, including our education system. So no matter what we do to improve our education, for some reason or another someone is going to be unhappy. This is where I take the stand that we don't even need public education to be required. I absolutely believe it should be offered, but required? I go to a highschool affected by George Bush's "No student left behind" program. In this program, the curriculum is set to allow the LAZIEST students to succeed, and to allow the students who have no drive to try in school to succeed. This means that anyone that wants to succeed in school is going to be muddled along inside of a joke curriculum conformed to allow morons to pass. About 80% of all problems in general at my highschool are generated from students failing due to a lack of will. What if school in general wasn't required? Then who would we have at school? People who want to be there, or people with parents or guardians who want them to be there. Public schools, IMO, suck. Why? Because the people there suck. Why? Because most of them don't want to be there. If the only students in school were students who want to work hard, or are forced to work hard by their family, then my life would be SO much easier.

So basically, if education wasn't required, at least middle school and beyond, life would be a lot easier for me.

Also, if schooling wasn't required, we wouldn't be able to complain about what is taught in them since we aren't forced to go ;o

All those things that you believe, you only believe because your parents or guardians instilled the belief in you before you were sapient enough to understand the moral pros and cons, as well as the consequences of everything you mentioned.

Do you honestly believe that the natural human condition is hating gays, or do you think maybe, just maybe, an outside factor may have contributed to you feelings?

I think it's a tad hypocritical, though not unexpected, that you believe your parents should be able to force you into belief of an unjust, non-existent god, but the government shouldn't be able to ask you to consider all possibilities.

In short, stop having such an autocentric mindset.

How do you know this? How dy you know that we haven't been brought up in families that taught us things totally different than what we believe now?
No, and I never said I did, nor did I say that I hate gays personally. Again, you are making unfounded assumptions as to what we believe.

Certainly (although those feelings aren't what you posted above). Do scientists make hypotheses without being influenced by what they have observed?
Again, unfounded. And I was never FORCED to believe anything.
Actually God seems pretty just to me. He even created a law system that has influenced and formed the basis of Western law systems.12 He also punishes sin, and I have yet to see an instance where God is unjust.
We never said there was something wrong with the government allowing ourselves to think for ourselves. The problem is they want us to think how they want us to think. If they are willing to let us make our own choices, why do they teach that gayness is OK? Why do they say that hetereosexuality is ok? Isn't it up to us to decide if they are ok, if as you say, they teach us to consider every possibility?
I'm not totally sure what you mean by autocentric, but it's against Serious dis. Rules to resort to personal attacks, and you are accusing us of being autocentric, so I won't bother answering that.

See the story of Job for details of god being unjust.

Autocentric means considering only yourself, and your world view, and thinking only you should have rights. Also, none of that was aimed at you, it was aimed at the OP.

OK.

And Job was deserving of hell, as we all are, as no one can obey God's law perfectly. So God had every right to destroy Job's life.

This topic is not about the justness or unjustness of the Christian God, unless you are willing to show its relevance to the topics the government does and does not allow to be taught in (presumably American) schools.
A relevant argument might be:
"Because God is just/unjust and we wish to teach just/unjust things, this should/shouldn't be allowed in our schools."

An off topic argument might be:
"God is just/unjust, because _______ and _______ and _______"

If you two wish to pursue the argument further, open a new topic.

Argument:
- America has separation of Church and State.
Conclusion:
- If you want to teach religion in school, all (major) religions must be taught.

They can be taught as examples of moral code in a philosophy or sociology class, but that's about it. If you want to study your religion, go to your place of worship/read your holy book.

Also, Vrael:

I'm pretty sure that a discussion about Government Education doesn't fall into formal logic, and thus arguments from authority should form the basis of the vast majority of the discussion.

This is a leap in logic, you need to show the intermediate steps that brought you to this conclusion. Simply because object A exists does not mean we should do things according to system B, otherwise known as the Is-ought problem.

Arguments from authority should never form the basis of an argument or discussion. They are useful for lending credibility to the premises of an argument; not to the argument itself. This is why we make citations; because certain claims may or may not be true, but if we show that other reputable organizations agree with our claim, and by reputable I mean honest, and capable of gathering the necessary data in order to draw the claim, then it is likely that our claim is true, because it is likely that the organization that backed us up is right. This is exactly what the quote from the Appeal to Authority page you just quoted means, but it does not lisence you to say "I am correct about argument A because organization/webpage/book B agrees with me."

Personally I disdain school education, to a certain extent. Just like parents, it depends who they are. Or in this case, where they are. If a school is more Conservative then they'll probably shove more traditional (or as I like to call them, utterly useless) beliefs. Meanwhile more open minded schools will often times have less biased opinions, and influence less biased beliefs on you.

an example, I once knew someone that had to write a report for his school, the report was against gay marriage, and he didn't have the privilege to support either side, he had to support that one side, Against gay marriage. Personally I find this is worth bitching to the school about.

It's the same as writing a racist paper, "Why Niggers should be slaves." An actual school, one which isn't retarded, should make the students at least CHOOSE the side they pick on. Just imagine a homosexual having to write a paper where he had to write against his very beliefs. Just as bad is an innocent child writing it, with them without the choice to support either side they'll probably grow up close minded, not being given the chance to choose them self.

What I'm saying is that someone should always pick the side of an issue they wish, writing should always be about getting your personal opinion involved, not some dumbass close minded bitter man who "thinks" he's teaching you something.

This opinion was submitted by a guy who never studied, missed half the school days and basically passed with flying colours.

So, they never educated me. Sorry.