Comments on: Cold Front Moves Through Hell

By: Charles S

Charles S — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 19:26:23 +0000

I’d like to ask Ben F a question: Do school-children today learn anything *positive* about the Church? My impression as a public librarian is that students are exposed *only* to the “dark chapters” in American and Christian history. If my impression is correct, then Reason has not prevailed: Political Correctness has. A common national curriculum (which would include the lucent as well as the dark chapters in the history of Western civilization) would be great if we could wipe out PC first.

By: Kevin Killion

Kevin Killion — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 19:59:37 +0000

I can’t think of anything that would better prevent Core Knowledge from being available to more families than to have national standards.

Every anti-knowledge, anti-fact, process-obsessed, project-centered fun-and-games fuzzy progressivist education group in the country would be demanding the kinds of programs that have already devastated our schools.

There have been some 50 attempts at statewide standards; most have led to miserable conclusions. It’s a complete mystery why anyone in their right mind would think that just one more attempt, but this time national in scope with all the fuzzies pulling out all the stops on lobbying, could possibly be successful.

By: Paul Hoss

Paul Hoss — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 00:17:51 +0000

Read Monty (Fair Test) Neill’s fraudulent comment under the article. He goes on and on about how “absurd” the entire proposal of national standrads is – in his opinion, anyway.

By: Ben F

Ben F — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 01:11:04 +0000

Good to hear. One of my colleagues, a Catholic school alum, said he’d never heard about the dark chapters in the Church’s history.

By: Babbie

Babbie — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 00:40:52 +0000

Nonsense. Even Catholic schools teach about “the myriad abuses of the Catholic Church in the Late Middle Ages.” I know. I teach in one.

By: Ben F

Ben F — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 22:30:44 +0000

Sounds promising to me.

The conventional wisdom is that we’ll never get agreement on a common curriculum, but I wonder. Today I was teaching my seventh graders about the myriad abuses of the Catholic Church in the Late Middle Ages. To put it mildly, it was not flattering to the church. Yet teaching about church corruption is mandated by the California state history standards. Somehow, in this state with a lot of Catholics, we managed to ratify statewide standards that probably don’t please a lot of Catholics. Reason, it seems, prevailed.