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jcd writes:
"The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the primary backer for the inBloom educational grading and service (which also acts as a platform for third-party applications), is catching flak for its role in encouraging the outsourcing of US Education. The article (cited by RMS today) argues that though the Common Core is a scary new concept that takes power away from state and local school governance, the real danger is allowing corporate enterprises to have so much control over our classrooms. The Washington Post also reports a case where Pearson included corporate logos and promotional materials inside its test booklets."
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Backlash for Gates Foundation's Education Plans
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(Score: 1) by janrinok on Wednesday February 19 2014, @09:59AM
In some European countries, the amount of time spent teaching a specific religion is (very roughly) proportional to the number of adherents worldwide (where known). A proportion of religious instruction is spent on teaching 'religion' in general without looking at any particular religion. This seems to be to be a fair distribution of time.
This way proponents of, say, Divine Creationism, do not get the chance to persuade young (and relatively easily persuaded) students of their particular belief to the detriment of any other.
As for your comment on political party support in education, I think that we are both arguing on the same side - perhaps I misunderstood something earlier. There should, in my opinion, be NO political left- or right-wing bias in education.
It's always my fault...
(Score: 1) by Thexalon on Wednesday February 19 2014, @12:31PM
In the US, the problem is that religious instruction varies between:
A. Steering completely clear of it and trying to pretend it doesn't exist or isn't important.
B. Teaching fundamentalist Christianity, complete with young-Earth Creationism.
Very rarely, you'll get a history or geography teacher that will do brief mentions of "This is what the Puritans of Massachusetts believed" or "This is why Mecca is important". What there definitely isn't in most American high schools is extensive and in-depth examination of the history, meaning, and belief structures of even the 5 largest world religions, because both fundamentalist Christians and atheists would be outraged and vocal about it.
And yes, we're mostly on the same side about this.
Every task is easy if somebody else is doing it.