Especially mine<\/a>.\u00a0 Anyone who voted against that resolution can rot in hell.\u00a0<\/p>\nEmphasize rote learning – 2 for; 130 against: <\/strong>Not sure what Blue means by this; he doesn’t favor us with a link to any original context.\u00a0 Most of us agree “Rote Learning” – regurgitating factoids on command – is a Bad Thing.\u00a0 But students today are <\/em>woefully deficient in some just plain basic facts; I learned the multiplication tables by “rote” – as in, endless hours of drills in fourth grade; my kids did not.\u00a0\u00a0 Are they better off for having to find a calculator to find that 9 times 7 is 63?<\/p>\nImplement phonics reading – 8 for; 94 against. <\/strong>It seems to work for many kids.\u00a0 So sue us.<\/p>\nTeach principles of patriotism – 13 for; 88 against<\/strong>.\u00a0 THE HORROR.\u00a0 Seriously –\u00a0 would it kill kids to know that there’s a reason most of the world wants (or wanted, until 2008) to come to the US?\u00a0 The changes we wrought and the good we brought to this world?\u00a0 It’d spawn fewer little DFL drones, but other than that, what’d be the problem?<\/p>\nOh, wait.<\/p>\n
Implement abstinence – 7 for; 95 against<\/strong>.\u00a0 Wouldn’t wanna stop encouraging teenage effing pregnancy, would we?<\/p>\nSeparate classes by gender – 16 for; 86 against<\/strong>. Never mind that it works<\/em>.\u00a0 There are not a few charter, and even public, programs that get excellent <\/em>results by separating the genders.\u00a0 It’s a politically inconvenient truth that boys and girls are differnet.\u00a0 They learn differently<\/em>.\u00a0 Girls are verbal and social; boys, spatial and competitive.\u00a0 Both genders do better <\/em>when they learn in environments that play to those strengths.\u00a0\u00a0 The only reasons not <\/em>to separate genders, indeed, are the inconvenience of teaching teachers who came up through the feminized education academy to deal with boys as boys<\/em>, and the PC imperative.<\/p>\nTeach fallacies of macro evolution – 7 for; 100 against<\/strong>. <\/strong>That’s one of those extreeeeeemly broad subjects where, again, context might be useful.\u00a0 Does it mean “teach creationism?”\u00a0 Or does it mean “show them that the scientific method really has nothing to say about philosophy”, and “science still has no idea how life as we know it really originated”?\u00a0 We dont’ know.\u00a0 Is it because the original resolution really was the single line “Teach fallacies of macroevolution”, or was it because Blue didn’t bother to favor us with the original context?\u00a0<\/p>\nIt’d be fun to know.<\/p>\n
All children are gifted – 12 for; 89 against<\/strong>.\u00a0 Again, not sure about specifics.\u00a0 Clearly, all children are not “gifted”.\u00a0 But all children have some “gift” or another.\u00a0 The public schools aren’t interested in “gifts” that go much beyond “sitting on ones seat and doing homework really really well”, other than tolerating a well-regulated interest in music or art or sports.\u00a0 The kid whose “gift” is mechanics?\u00a0\u00a0 Cooking?\u00a0 Raising his\/her siblings while the parents are at work, and doing it really really well?\u00a0 Not as much.<\/p>\nBlue:<\/p>\n
At his best, 14% of school board association members supported his proposals. And this guy is going to get things done for Greater Minnesota?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Looking at the eight “extreme” resolutions, I’d almost respond “I wonder who the real extremists are…”<\/p>\n
…until I remember that in Saint Paul, the monolithic politburo that is the Saint Paul School Board probably would have voted a straight ticket against all of those – and most Minnesotans on the street would have supported five or six without breaking a sweat.<\/p>\n
If you’re not an EdMinn\/SEIU\/DFL drone, your mainstream is <\/em>what they call “extreme”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If A Conservative orders a pizza in the woods, and no liberal is there to hear him, is he still an “extremist?” Over this past eight years or so, the Minnesota DFL has deprived the word “extremist” of all meaning. “Blue Man In A Red District” writes about Glenn Gruenhagen, who won a close race […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108,16,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chanting-points-memo","category-conservatism","category-education"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15288"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15288\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15289,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15288\/revisions\/15289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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