Also, I've done some more research into this, and the issues the legislators have a problem with were things like internment of Japanese Americans or persecution of American Indians, while not including anything about the founding fathers, the war of independence and the bill of rights. The issue is, the old framework didn't mention those issues, either.
I find that hard to believe but I can't prove. I learned all about the founding fathers, the war of independence, along with the Bill of Rights. I went to a regular high school history class so I'm sure those would be covered in AP History if only because the AP History Exam is rather rigorous and that's an important aspect of U.S. History.
The claims coming from the Oklahoma legislature is seeming like a thin AND weak excuse. Lastly this is an AP Course so I'm thinking this is more of a backlash against "Common Core" even though the AP Exams are issued by a private company. It could also just be jealousy towards smart kids seeing as it's unlikely any of these people in OKLAHOMA legislature ever set foot in any AP class and most certainly don't have any children attending such classes. Outside chance it's a sinister plot to dumb down our citizenry so that it's easier to put the wool over people's eyes in the future by ignoring history.
Also, I've done some more research into this, and the issues the legislators have a problem with were things like internment of Japanese Americans or persecution of American Indians, while not including anything about the founding fathers, the war of independence and the bill of rights. The issue is, the old framework didn't mention those issues, either.
I find that hard to believe but I can't prove. I learned all about the founding fathers, the war of independence, along with the Bill of Rights. I went to a regular high school history class so I'm sure those would be covered in AP History if only because the AP History Exam is rather rigorous and that's an important aspect of U.S. History.
If these courses are designed to be run along side the regular history courses offered there is absolutely no point in rehashing material covered in the basic course, especially with something like history where the important skills are in analysing sources and being able to form a view and then a coherent arguement based on them, rather than memorising the dates of Events.
The time they have got is far better spent in opening the students eyes to different periods and if it opens people up to some of the less savory aspects of world history so much the better. That way we have some chance of learning from our mistakes and hopefully not repeating them.
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Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag and start slitting throats.
- H.L Mencken
I Became insane with long Intervals of horrible Sanity
All Religion, my friend is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination and poetry.
- Edgar Allan Poe
It's hard for me to play devil's advocate on this one. But in the most charitable way possible, I'll attribute this to a clash of culture.
Conservatives care very much for morale and positivity. It's all about being a team player. If you're not a team player, then you're against them.
Team players don't understand critical thinkers. In fact, critical thinking has very little value to them. Because they don't value critical thinking or understand it, an attempt to paint American in a bad light is seen as un-American.
Let me paint a pictures here:
"Alright everyone we're going to win this game! Y'here? We're the best, and nothing is going to stop us!!!!!!!"
"umm...actually, we have a 45.6 percent chance of winning statistically. Going by that, we're more likely to lose than win."
Lets call the first statement: team player.
Let's call the second statement: critical thinker.
How do you think team player, the speaker of the first statement would process the second person's statement?
That's how I see these people justifying their actions in their mind.
Conservatives care very much for morale and positivity. It's all about being a team player. If you're not a team player, then you're against them.
Team players don't understand critical thinkers. In fact, critical thinking has very little value to them.
I don't think this is a conservative/liberal difference. All political extremes tend to have a "team" mentality and shun critical thinking.
Extreme right: "America is the best." Any critical thinking about this, such as pointing out the oppression of natives, is seen as unamerican.
Extreme left: "White European colonists are oppressors." Any critical thinking about this, such as pointing out benefits of colonization, for example, is seen as racism or Euro-centrism.
Conservatives care very much for morale and positivity. It's all about being a team player. If you're not a team player, then you're against them.
Team players don't understand critical thinkers. In fact, critical thinking has very little value to them.
I don't think this is a conservative/liberal difference. All political extremes tend to have a "team" mentality and shun critical thinking.
Extreme right: "America is the best." Any critical thinking about this, such as pointing out the oppression of natives, is seen as unamerican.
Extreme left: "White European colonists are oppressors." Any critical thinking about this, such as pointing out benefits of colonization, for example, is seen as racism or Euro-centrism.
I don't deny that the extreme left has its share of zealots who refuse to engage critical thought also.
But I am saying, my best guess is that's what's going on here.
The left also tends to do a better job keeping our fringe crazies from actually driving policy, too.
Citation needed?
If you lean left, you will tend to think left-leaning policies are more mainstream and less fringe. If you lean right, you will tend to think right-leanng policies are more mainstream and less fringe. If you lean libertarian like me, you will think left-leaning social policies are mainstream and left-leaning economic policies are fringe. And so forth.
The policies you personally favor will tend to seem more mainstream to you, and the policies you personally disfavor will tend to seem more fringe.
The left also tends to do a better job keeping our fringe crazies from actually driving policy, too.
I'm not sure it's a matter of control so much as distribution. Left-wing crazies tend to be concentrated on college campuses, whereas right-wing crazies are spread out in the community. So you see left-wing crazies driving college policies and college-related policies (see: the campus rape issue), while the right-wing crazies show up at city council meetings instead. Unless of course it's the Berkeley city council or something, then you're back to left-wing crazies again.
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Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Voting is a sham, because of the lack of choice within the governmental circles at different offices. For example, for a country of millions of people, why do we only have 2 choices on voting day and *maybe* a third?
Because the other parties don't have millions of people voting for them.
The fact of the matter is you don't have only two choices. You can vote for anyone you want.
However, no one is obligated to vote with you. And if your complaint is that millions of people disagree with you and are choosing to express this with their vote, and thus your party is marginalized, guess what? That's not a problem with the system. That's exactly how representative government is supposed to work.
I took AP US History last year and there definitely were some things that weren't so great about America. States do have some leniency in what they can teach.
It isn't a choice I agree with, but if those who voted represent the Oklahoma masses, then I feel the decision should stand.
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The left also tends to do a better job keeping our fringe crazies from actually driving policy, too.
Citation needed?
If you lean left, you will tend to think left-leaning policies are more mainstream and less fringe. If you lean right, you will tend to think right-leanng policies are more mainstream and less fringe. If you lean libertarian like me, you will think left-leaning social policies are mainstream and left-leaning economic policies are fringe. And so forth.
The policies you personally favor will tend to seem more mainstream to you, and the policies you personally disfavor will tend to seem more fringe.
Can I cite myself as source because I work in campaign management? My area of expertise is running field campaigns along with the campaign version of copy writing.
I'm well aware that perspective plays an issue. I've also been the guy who gets to smile and nod at the insane people who think we should be unpaving cities because something something the environment, not fluoridating our water, GMO's and Monsanto are evil, the only good food is organic. The list goes on and its part of my job to keep them knocking on doors and turning out to vote even though none of our reps (and I live in Washington) are going to try and actually ban GMOs.
It got to a certain point during this last election cycle that my pitch during calltime to volunteers got, just, insanely vague. "Neither of us want the wrong person to be in office" kind of things and these people who vote for the "standard liberal" even though the individual people I'd get to come out and knock on doors were significantly to the left of both the candidate and myself. Hell, the candidate was a fiscal conservative in a 50/50 district (most electorally balanced in the state) and half, or more, of my persuasion to the vols was that we didn't want a real insane person to take over because of ~lots of area specific reasons that I don't want to belabor and you don't care about~
Sadly we lost. It was a bad year for Democrats and the local head of the tea party and former republican county chair outspent us 3 to 1 and we lost by just over 1000 votes in a district that had a normal (51%, relatively good compared to the 36% national average)
This isn't one of those "I can't believe he won, none of my friends voted for him" things.
@Blinking Spirit,
It might not be control so much as the big tent approach that the Democrat party has taken, and our lack of cohesion between our positions, means that on the national level, even at the state level, there isn't enough support for the really wonky stuff. Plus because of the big tent our candidates are trying to appease a more diverse constituency group which is going to sand off some of the edges. There are quite a few factors that play into how democrats have done a better job at keeping our fringe crazies from driving policy.
I should clarify that I'm not going smaller than the state legislature size when I say this. Going to small towns you can get huge variance in a city council race or whatever, like with your example of Berkeley, but its largely irrelevant as far as the parties themselves are concerned. Think Asimov's foundation and Psychohistory. Policy here, and my statement had a problem of knowledge thing coupled with my preference for being brief, is not any policy, but electoral policy. The stuff done by people with some modicum of real power.
There will always be the Berkeley's and Portland's, but their influence barely holds in their own city sometimes (you should have seen how the Portland city mayor, also the chief of police, handled Occupy :-/) and its not like Portlands anti-fluoride non-sense tracks over to basically anywhere else in the country. I know I should have a Berkeley example here that hasn't tracked over to make my point, but that would involve me knowing what Berkeley does on a regular basis and I just don't care to know anything about the goings on of the Berkeley city council.
The left also tends to do a better job keeping our fringe crazies from actually driving policy, too.
Citation needed?
If you lean left, you will tend to think left-leaning policies are more mainstream and less fringe. If you lean right, you will tend to think right-leanng policies are more mainstream and less fringe. If you lean libertarian like me, you will think left-leaning social policies are mainstream and left-leaning economic policies are fringe. And so forth.
The policies you personally favor will tend to seem more mainstream to you, and the policies you personally disfavor will tend to seem more fringe.
Can I cite myself as source because I work in campaign management? My area of expertise is running field campaigns along with the campaign version of copy writing.
No, at least not in support of the statement: "The left also tends to do a better job keeping our fringe crazies from actually driving policy."
First of all, even if that statement is true based on your experiences, your experiences are just anecdotes. You made a general claim about politics (I'll assume just American politics). Your argument is equivalent to someone saying "I know some kids who got vaccinated and ended up with autism, therefore vaccines tend to cause autism." In order to support a general claim about whether the fringe drives more policies on the right versus the left, you'd need to (1) figure out where the mainstream of American opinion is located (perhaps through surveys) and then (2) show that left-leaning politicians are more likely to promote mainstream policies than right-leaning politicians (perhaps by surveying the voting records of a large number of elected officials). Personal anecdotes don't cut it when you're trying to make generalizations.
Second of all, I would expect your experience as a campaign worker to make your opinions on this subject more biased, not less. I briefly worked in DC for a Republican congressman, and my SO has worked for a number of Democrat state senators, both in campaign positions and capitol staff positions. In my (admittedly anecdotal) experience, people in these types of positions tend to start drinking their own cool-aid and will see their boss's positions as "reasonable" and "centrist" while their opponents' positions start to look "fringe" and "extreme." Even today, eight years later, I would characterize the congressman I worked for as a moderate, though I'm sure there are many people (maybe you) who would disagree. So your perception that your boss did a better job than his/her opponent of keeping the "fringe crazies" from driving policy is likely a slanted one. I'm not saying you're necessarily wrong, I'm just saying your perception of this issue is going to be subject to biases that make your personal experiences a bad source to support your arguments.
As someone that comes from a state(Arizona) that teaches(or did when I was in HS 20 years ago) US History in an outrageously positive light, I feel like I have a good perspective here.
The way that US History was taught here(yes, even AP History and AP Government, both of which I took), the prevailing message was 'The US is great, everything we do is great, everything we have ever done was for the best reason possible'. It wasn't until I took a similar history class in college, years later, that I got a better idea of the various motivations behind US actions throughout history.
Children should be taught the positive and negative aspects of our history. Because history is exactly that. Positive and negative. We have done some great things and some terrible things. We've done some things for great reasons, and some for terrible ones. It's imperative that people understand both sides of this.
Children should be taught the positive and negative aspects of our history. Because history is exactly that. Positive and negative.
History as a discipline is about understanding why things happened, not passing a value judgment one way or another. Historians try to be as scientific as possible - the sample size may be one, and there may be no room for experimentation, but that doesn't mean you have to throw out all aspirations to rigor. So I might put on my historian hat and say, "The root cause of the American Civil War was the institution of slavery", but I would have to take off the historian hat and put on my ethicist hat to say, "Slavery was and is an evil institution." Obviously, the facts and relationships discovered in history are very useful in informing the value judgments we make, but when we do it the other way around and let our value judgments inform our historical studies, that's how we get crap like Marxist history (in which the entirety of conflicts throughout all the millennia of the human experience bear an uncanny resemblance to 19th-Century industrial-labor relations). The most important values to understand in doing history are those of the subjects of your study. Knowing what you think about slavery doesn't help you understand why the American South seceded. Knowing what they thought about slavery does.
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Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
It might not be control so much as the big tent approach that the Democrat party has taken, and our lack of cohesion between our positions, means that on the national level, even at the state level, there isn't enough support for the really wonky stuff.
"Big tent" and "lack of cohesion" could readily describe both American political parties - hell, I probably hear "big tent" more often used to describe the post-Reagan Republican Party than anything else. I really think you're looking for intrinsic virtue in what's actually an accident of contemporary history: the GOP is getting an organized uprising on its right today, but this sort of thing has happened to both parties before and will happen to both parties again. The GOP got taken over by a different sort of right wing in 1964, and the Dems got hit really hard from their left in 1968. Sometimes one tentpole just up and decides to try and knock down the others. Usually happens when the party establishment is starting to look discredited, a la LBJ and GWB. I think Obama's got too much an outside-the-establishment image to ever have provoked this response, but if Clinton screws the pooch in the 2017-2020 term, keep an eye on the likes of Elizabeth Warren.
I might add that the Tea Party is also pretty big-tent and incohesive. Ask ten different Tea Partiers what the Tea Party stands for, and you'll get ten different responses. What motivates them is not so much their own ideological purity as their discontent at the mainstream GOP's lack of ideological purity.
I find that hard to believe but I can't prove. I learned all about the founding fathers, the war of independence, along with the Bill of Rights. I went to a regular high school history class so I'm sure those would be covered in AP History if only because the AP History Exam is rather rigorous and that's an important aspect of U.S. History.
The claims coming from the Oklahoma legislature is seeming like a thin AND weak excuse. Lastly this is an AP Course so I'm thinking this is more of a backlash against "Common Core" even though the AP Exams are issued by a private company. It could also just be jealousy towards smart kids seeing as it's unlikely any of these people in OKLAHOMA legislature ever set foot in any AP class and most certainly don't have any children attending such classes. Outside chance it's a sinister plot to dumb down our citizenry so that it's easier to put the wool over people's eyes in the future by ignoring history.
Warning issued for trolling. --bLatch
If these courses are designed to be run along side the regular history courses offered there is absolutely no point in rehashing material covered in the basic course, especially with something like history where the important skills are in analysing sources and being able to form a view and then a coherent arguement based on them, rather than memorising the dates of Events.
The time they have got is far better spent in opening the students eyes to different periods and if it opens people up to some of the less savory aspects of world history so much the better. That way we have some chance of learning from our mistakes and hopefully not repeating them.
- H.L Mencken
I Became insane with long Intervals of horrible Sanity
All Religion, my friend is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination and poetry.
- Edgar Allan Poe
The Crafters' Rules Guru
Conservatives care very much for morale and positivity. It's all about being a team player. If you're not a team player, then you're against them.
Team players don't understand critical thinkers. In fact, critical thinking has very little value to them. Because they don't value critical thinking or understand it, an attempt to paint American in a bad light is seen as un-American.
Let me paint a pictures here:
"Alright everyone we're going to win this game! Y'here? We're the best, and nothing is going to stop us!!!!!!!"
"umm...actually, we have a 45.6 percent chance of winning statistically. Going by that, we're more likely to lose than win."
Lets call the first statement: team player.
Let's call the second statement: critical thinker.
How do you think team player, the speaker of the first statement would process the second person's statement?
That's how I see these people justifying their actions in their mind.
I don't think this is a conservative/liberal difference. All political extremes tend to have a "team" mentality and shun critical thinking.
Extreme right: "America is the best." Any critical thinking about this, such as pointing out the oppression of natives, is seen as unamerican.
Extreme left: "White European colonists are oppressors." Any critical thinking about this, such as pointing out benefits of colonization, for example, is seen as racism or Euro-centrism.
I don't deny that the extreme left has its share of zealots who refuse to engage critical thought also.
But I am saying, my best guess is that's what's going on here.
Citation needed?
If you lean left, you will tend to think left-leaning policies are more mainstream and less fringe. If you lean right, you will tend to think right-leanng policies are more mainstream and less fringe. If you lean libertarian like me, you will think left-leaning social policies are mainstream and left-leaning economic policies are fringe. And so forth.
The policies you personally favor will tend to seem more mainstream to you, and the policies you personally disfavor will tend to seem more fringe.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
The fact of the matter is you don't have only two choices. You can vote for anyone you want.
However, no one is obligated to vote with you. And if your complaint is that millions of people disagree with you and are choosing to express this with their vote, and thus your party is marginalized, guess what? That's not a problem with the system. That's exactly how representative government is supposed to work.
It isn't a choice I agree with, but if those who voted represent the Oklahoma masses, then I feel the decision should stand.
WBB/W TokensWB
WUBAd NauseamWUB
- Commander
WG Captain Sisay's LegendsWG
Can I cite myself as source because I work in campaign management? My area of expertise is running field campaigns along with the campaign version of copy writing.
I'm well aware that perspective plays an issue. I've also been the guy who gets to smile and nod at the insane people who think we should be unpaving cities because something something the environment, not fluoridating our water, GMO's and Monsanto are evil, the only good food is organic. The list goes on and its part of my job to keep them knocking on doors and turning out to vote even though none of our reps (and I live in Washington) are going to try and actually ban GMOs.
It got to a certain point during this last election cycle that my pitch during calltime to volunteers got, just, insanely vague. "Neither of us want the wrong person to be in office" kind of things and these people who vote for the "standard liberal" even though the individual people I'd get to come out and knock on doors were significantly to the left of both the candidate and myself. Hell, the candidate was a fiscal conservative in a 50/50 district (most electorally balanced in the state) and half, or more, of my persuasion to the vols was that we didn't want a real insane person to take over because of ~lots of area specific reasons that I don't want to belabor and you don't care about~
Sadly we lost. It was a bad year for Democrats and the local head of the tea party and former republican county chair outspent us 3 to 1 and we lost by just over 1000 votes in a district that had a normal (51%, relatively good compared to the 36% national average)
This isn't one of those "I can't believe he won, none of my friends voted for him" things.
@Blinking Spirit,
It might not be control so much as the big tent approach that the Democrat party has taken, and our lack of cohesion between our positions, means that on the national level, even at the state level, there isn't enough support for the really wonky stuff. Plus because of the big tent our candidates are trying to appease a more diverse constituency group which is going to sand off some of the edges. There are quite a few factors that play into how democrats have done a better job at keeping our fringe crazies from driving policy.
I should clarify that I'm not going smaller than the state legislature size when I say this. Going to small towns you can get huge variance in a city council race or whatever, like with your example of Berkeley, but its largely irrelevant as far as the parties themselves are concerned. Think Asimov's foundation and Psychohistory. Policy here, and my statement had a problem of knowledge thing coupled with my preference for being brief, is not any policy, but electoral policy. The stuff done by people with some modicum of real power.
There will always be the Berkeley's and Portland's, but their influence barely holds in their own city sometimes (you should have seen how the Portland city mayor, also the chief of police, handled Occupy :-/) and its not like Portlands anti-fluoride non-sense tracks over to basically anywhere else in the country. I know I should have a Berkeley example here that hasn't tracked over to make my point, but that would involve me knowing what Berkeley does on a regular basis and I just don't care to know anything about the goings on of the Berkeley city council.
No, at least not in support of the statement: "The left also tends to do a better job keeping our fringe crazies from actually driving policy."
First of all, even if that statement is true based on your experiences, your experiences are just anecdotes. You made a general claim about politics (I'll assume just American politics). Your argument is equivalent to someone saying "I know some kids who got vaccinated and ended up with autism, therefore vaccines tend to cause autism." In order to support a general claim about whether the fringe drives more policies on the right versus the left, you'd need to (1) figure out where the mainstream of American opinion is located (perhaps through surveys) and then (2) show that left-leaning politicians are more likely to promote mainstream policies than right-leaning politicians (perhaps by surveying the voting records of a large number of elected officials). Personal anecdotes don't cut it when you're trying to make generalizations.
Second of all, I would expect your experience as a campaign worker to make your opinions on this subject more biased, not less. I briefly worked in DC for a Republican congressman, and my SO has worked for a number of Democrat state senators, both in campaign positions and capitol staff positions. In my (admittedly anecdotal) experience, people in these types of positions tend to start drinking their own cool-aid and will see their boss's positions as "reasonable" and "centrist" while their opponents' positions start to look "fringe" and "extreme." Even today, eight years later, I would characterize the congressman I worked for as a moderate, though I'm sure there are many people (maybe you) who would disagree. So your perception that your boss did a better job than his/her opponent of keeping the "fringe crazies" from driving policy is likely a slanted one. I'm not saying you're necessarily wrong, I'm just saying your perception of this issue is going to be subject to biases that make your personal experiences a bad source to support your arguments.
The way that US History was taught here(yes, even AP History and AP Government, both of which I took), the prevailing message was 'The US is great, everything we do is great, everything we have ever done was for the best reason possible'. It wasn't until I took a similar history class in college, years later, that I got a better idea of the various motivations behind US actions throughout history.
Children should be taught the positive and negative aspects of our history. Because history is exactly that. Positive and negative. We have done some great things and some terrible things. We've done some things for great reasons, and some for terrible ones. It's imperative that people understand both sides of this.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
I might add that the Tea Party is also pretty big-tent and incohesive. Ask ten different Tea Partiers what the Tea Party stands for, and you'll get ten different responses. What motivates them is not so much their own ideological purity as their discontent at the mainstream GOP's lack of ideological purity.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.