Posts Tagged ‘Public Schools’
US Textbooks: Muslims Discovered America
Posted by Mats on 06/10/2010
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: History, Indoctrination, Islam, Public Schools | Leave a Comment »
School Trip to “Moderate” Mosque: Inside Video Captures Kids Bowing to Allah
Posted by Mats on 16/09/2010
School Trip to “Moderate” Mosque: Inside Video Captures Kids Bowing to Allah
Today, Americans for Peace and Tolerance released a video showing 6th graders from Wellesley, MA as they rise from prostrating themselves alongside Muslim men in a prayer to Allah while on a public school field trip to the largest mosque in the Northeast. Teachers did not intervene. Parents have not been told.
…The video was taken inside the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center – Boston’s controversial Saudi-funded mega-mosque – during a Wellesley Middle School social studies trip to the mosque, ostensibly taken to learn about the history of Islam first-hand. Yet the video reveals that the students are being blatantly mis-educated about Islam. A mosque spokesperson is seen teaching the children that in Mohammed’s 7th century Arabia women were allowed to vote, while in America women only gained that right a hundred years ago. This seems to be an increasingly recurring theme in American schools – the denigration of western civilization and the glorification of Islamic history and values. In fact, just recently, the American Textbook Council revealed that the New York State high school regents exam whitewashes the atrocities that occurred during the imperialistic Islamic conquest of Christian Byzantium, Persia, the African continent, and the Indian subcontinent, even as it demonizes European colonialism in South America.
The mosque spokesperson also taught the students that the only meaning of Jihad in Islam is a personal spiritual struggle, and that Jihad has historically had no relationship with holy war. As far as we know, the school has not corrected these false lessons.
For the past three years we’ve been sounding the alarm about the radical leadership and Saudi funding of the Boston mega-mosque and the organization that runs it, the Muslim American Society, which has been labeled by Federal prosecutors as “the overt arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in America.”
The Islamic Society of Boston was founded by Abdulrahman Alamoudi, who is currently serving 23 years in jail on terror charges. For years, its board of trustees included Yusuf al Qaradawi, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood who was banned by Bill Clinton from the United States in 1999. Qaradawi now chairs the Muslim American Society’s university, which offers classes inside the mosque. Over half the mosque’s $15.5 million price tag was funded by wealthy Saudis and since it opened, several of its leaders, donors and members have been implicated in Islamic extremism.
Oussama Ziade, a big donor to the mosque, is now a fugitive in Lebanon after being indicted in 2009 for dealing in the assets of an Al Qaeda financier. Ahmad Abousamra, the son of the Boston Muslim American Society’s former vice-president Abdulbadi Abousamra, is now a fugitive in Syria, fleeing the country before being indicted in 2009 on charges of aiding Al Qaeda. One of the mosque’s imams, Abdullah Faaruuq, was captured on tape in 2010 telling followers to “pick up the gun and the sword” and to defend another local terrorist Aafia Siddiqui from the U.S. government. Siddiqui, who was one of the imam’s congregants, is an MIT graduate and Al Qaeda memberawaiting sentencing for attempting to murder FBI agents in Afghanistan while shouting “death to America.” (LINK)
The mosque leadership continues to be embraced by top Massachusetts political and religious leaders. These include Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, as well as a group of local progressive rabbis and Christian clergy, who all insist despite evidence to the contrary that the mosque is moderate and its critics are just bigots.
Indeed, this is a familiar refrain by leaders nationwide in response to the increasing public realization that Islamic leaders are not as moderate as they present themselves. Radicalism is growing and many moderate Muslims have been silenced. In various parts of the country, public schools are allowing Muslim extremists to promote Islam to our children. Something’s broken here. Our leadership is failing. It’s now up to ordinary citizens to fix it.
Posted in Islam, Politics, Religion, Society | Tagged: ACLU, Children, Indoctrination, Islam, Public Schools | 1 Comment »
Blacks and Hispanics Concerning School Dropouts
Posted by Mats on 09/08/2009
Return to the Article |
August 09, 2009
An Obama style educational experiment fails to deliver
By David Paulin
How do you motivate failing students at a troubled high school, one plagued by abysmal test scores and soaring dropout rates? Leave it to guilty white liberals to throw money at the problem — all while failing to understand or admit why many Hispanics and blacks are failing.
“Eleven other students completed the program enrollment process; however, those students either did not show up to participate or only participated in one or two sessions.”
“It was the first time it was done, and you know if you do something in high school that’s not cool yet, that can be difficult.”
“In 2007-08, the Grade 9-12 dropout rate for African American students (5 percent) was more than three times as high as that for White students (1.5 percent), and the rate for Hispanic students (4.4 percent) was almost three times as high.”
“An array of complex, interrelated factors contribute to dropping out. Family and personal background, academic history, and characteristics of the school all may influence the decision of a student to stay in school.”
Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/08/an_obama_style_educational_exp.html at August 09, 2009 – 06:33:58 PM EDT
Posted in Society | Tagged: Blacks, Liberals, Public Schools | Leave a Comment »
Scientist Says “Teach Creationism”. PZ Meyers Angry
Posted by Mats on 30/06/2009
Darwin’s Dogmatic Defenders Say Follow Only Some Of the Evidence When Teaching Evolution
The recent comments by a Royal Society scientist and education expert about creationism being taught in science classes in the UK have got PZ Myers panties all in a bunch. Of course, Myers’ panties are used to being in a bunch because it doesn’t take much to get his dander up.
To be clear Discovery does not support the inclusion of creation science in science curricula. However, teaching both the strengths and weaknesses of a scientific theory, such as Darwinian evolution, is a far cry from teaching creationism, or any other alternative views.
For Myers it is too much for anyone to even suggest discussing creationism with the intent to knock it down, and ultimately to uphold a dogmatic view of the Darwinian orthodoxy.
This is an important distinction that is blurred by most people who advocate that tired old slogan, “teach the controversy” or “teach both sides”. There is only one side, the pattern of the evidence. There are, of course, cases where the evidence is still open to interpretation, and there it is appropriate to present a more ambiguous answer and explain how scientists are still working to resolve the problem.
Indeed, we have long argued to follow the evidence where it leads. And, in regards to science education policy specifically:
Discovery “believes that evolution should be fully and completely presented to students, and they should learn more about evolutionary theory, including its unresolved issues. In other words, evolution should be taught as a scientific theory that is open to critical scrutiny, not as a sacred dogma that can’t be questioned.”Simply put, if a tenth grader can understand some of the evidence that supports Darwin’s theory, she can understand some of the evidence that challenges it.
What are the cases where the evidence is still open to interpretation I wonder? Would it be discussion of Haeckel’s faked embryo drawings?
Haeckel’s infamous embryo drawings obscured the differences between vertebrate embryos in their earliest stages, leading to widespread belief in the false idea that “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny” (i.e. development replays evolutionary history). The factual data reveal that vertebrate embryos develop very differently from their earliest stages in a pattern that is unexpected if all vertebrates share a common ancestor.
Or perhaps it would be the peppered moth myth?
A friend of mine tells me that the only things he remembers about evolution from his high school biology course are photos of black and white peppered moths resting on light and dark tree trunks. They were presented as the classic case of Darwinian evolution in action, explaining how a trait that enhances survival could be acquired through an unguided material process.
Throughout the second half of the twentieth century, most biology textbooks featured photos of peppered moths (scientific name: Biston betularia) on tree trunks. Canadian textbook-writer Bob Ritter explained why in 1999: High school students are “very concrete in the way they learn,” he said. “The advantage of this example of natural selection is that it is extremely visual.”
Soon after 2000, however, the peppered myth succumbed to mounting scientific criticisms. The most embarrassing was that peppered moths in the wild don’t normally rest on tree trunks, and the textbook photos had been staged — as The New York Times pointed out in an article on scientific fakery in 2002. Darwinists trying to save the peppered myth turned what should have been a quick and merciful death into a long and painful demise, but it expired anyway. Most biology textbooks have now dropped it entirely.
Or maybe it’s the contoversy over the similarity of chimps to humans?
(1) Is the 99% Human/Chimp DNA-similarity statistic accurate? While recent studies have confirmed that certain stretches of human and chimp DNA are on average about 1.23% different, this is merely an estimate with huge caveats. A recent news article in Science observed that the 1% figure “reflects only base substitutions, not the many stretches of DNA that have been inserted or deleted in the genomes.”1 In other words, when the chimp genome has no similar stretch of human DNA, such DNA sequences are ignored by those touting the statistic that humans and chimps are only 1% genetically different. For this reason, the aforementioned Science news article was subtitled “The Myth of 1%,” and printed the following language to describe the 1% statistic:
- “studies are showing that [humans and chimps] are not as similar as many tend to believe”;
- the 1% statistic is a “truism [that] should be retired”;
- the 1% statistic is “more a hindrance for understanding than a help”;
- “the 1% difference wasn’t the whole story”;
- “Researchers are finding that on top of the 1% distinction, chunks of missing DNA, extra genes, altered connections in gene networks, and the very structure of chromosomes confound any quantification of ‘humanness’ versus ‘chimpness.'”
Indeed, due to the huge caveats in the 1% statistic, some scientists are suggesting that a better method of measuring human/chimp genetic differences might be counting individual gene copies. When this metric is employed, human and chimp DNA is over 5% different. But new findings in genetics show that gene-coding DNA might not even be the right place to seek differences between humans and chimps.
Clearly, there are different interpretations on lots of aspects of modern evolutionary theory. Instead of discussing creationisms pros or cons, when teachers present evolution, they should present both the evidence that supports it and the evidence that challenges it. That’s just good pedagogy.
Posted in Biology, Science | Tagged: Academic Freedom, Darwinism, Fake Evidence, Public Schools | Leave a Comment »