I can imagine young Oklahomans sitting at home this weekend plotting out how they will take advantage of this horrible law. Will they find a way to get out of completing a project by finding some tie-in to their faith and how the project goes against their beliefs?

They won’t really have to work hard to make it fit established religion. They only have to claim that their particular personal faith teaches them whatever nincompoopery they want to scribble on their finals:
“According to my faith, Columbus was the first to Roman to walk around the world. Cats are reptiles. Pi squared is the same as an adjective. The pyramids were carved from solid stone and then made to just look like they were assembled from millions of individual blocks. If Nancy has three apples and gives Johnny one, she’s a stingy bitch. The eight parts of speech are letters, numbers, punctuation marks, air and spit. The sun goes around Mars. (In Oklahoma “Mars” is pronounced more like “my ass.”) John Steinbeck wrote ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ on the back of an envelope and then he faked his own death. The speed of light is faster in solids than a car going east at the same speed. Benjamin Franklin invented the number 100 by rubbing two sticks together. School sucks.”

With all the talk about building a fence along the border with Mexico, maybe we should detour the fence north to go along the northern borders of Oklahoma and Texas before it reaches the sea.

I learned in my 400 level Philosophy of Education class that the second law of thermodynamics is racist.

What! How in the world did they come up with that idea?

With this you make the child actually THINK! Imagine that! an education that taught you to think for yourself instead of expecting you to memorize answers!

I don’t know about your school, but that IS what we did in my public school.

So I went back to school, got my master’s and a teaching certificate. Here are some highlights.

I learned in my 400 level Philosophy of Education class that the second law of thermodynamics is racist. In another class, the professor left the room during a mid-term and the student sitting next to me took out her notes and started copying. I was the only person in a group of 20 or so future English teachers who could diagram a sentence.

During student teaching – well that sucked so bad it was heartbreaking. Not all teachers are mean and stupid, but a lot of them are. And the drama around letting kids use the bathroom is absurd.

Life is short. Of all the things I might do with the time I have left, kicking this particular dead horse has lost a lot of the appeal it once had for me.

Homeschool people. It’s the only way to go.

And I suppose you think everyone lives in a two-parent environment, and that one income is sufficient to keep a family afloat? How are you going to afford food and shelter by depriving yourself of half your earning power?

Besides, homeschooling may save your children, but what about the rest of civilization? Fleeing the school system is selfish and short-sighted. Better to fix public education and further the good of all society than to hunker down in your Montanan survivalist shack, scoffing at the fall of man.

if everyone (religious and non religious) would understand that to educate means to “bring learning out” then the debate would go away. Instead if any “factual answers” like “the earth is 6,00 / 4.65 billion years old, would be moot.

The question should be “how old do you think the earth is and why?” answers must be supported, and referenced.

With this you make the child actually THINK! Imagine that! an education that taught you to think for yourself instead of expecting you to memorize answers! wouldn’t that be something?

For what its worth thats why we home school. So many people think (and for good reason) that Christians home school because they are protecting their kids from homosexuality and evolution. We do it because we want our kids to learn to think for themselves. Sure they get our own thought mixed in, but we teach WHY WE BELIEVE WHAT WE BELIEVE and how that influences the answers we come up with.

we have taught evolution, creation and our 8 year old knows all about homosexuality. it isnt about protection, its about learning to learn – not memorize. If this type of education were prevalent in public or private – believe me either one would be easier, but we think we can do better at home.

Don’t hear what I am not saying. Most teachers I know are excellent caring people. Its not their fault the system is broken.

And Oklahoma had just started to make a better name for itself. We do a lot of talking about how cutting edge and progressive we want to be, yet laced with a good dose of country common sense (like Will Rogers), but I guess not so much anymore. This is just utterly embarrassing.