Here we go again. Another Legislative antic I (or a sibling) am going to rant about. But let's face it, the Utah Legislature is in session, and this year is a banner year for showing their ignorance. Now it's the High School International Baccalaureate program. Lawmakers shot down a bill that would have given $300,000 in support of it because, as the Republican Senator from Orem Margaret Dayton said "I'm opposed to the anti-American philosophy that's somehow woven into all the classes as they promote the U.N. agenda." Anti-American, woven and agenda : three words that conjure up images of Joe McCarthy grilling would be communists about their associations. I hear those words and other words pop into my mind : paranoia, delusional, coo-coo.According to the Tribune Article, the IB program is a program that offers college credit to students who take rigorous courses that expose them to world perspectives, and there is no connection to the U.N. at all. I guess if being taught to be be able to look at other people's points of view, to learn about other cultures and belief systems, reading books like "Crime and Punishment" and respecting people as human beings is anti-American, then so be it. Maybe not anti-American, but it surely is fundamentally opposed to the Utah Legislature's "my way or the highway" philosophy.
Thank you for sticking around for yet another episode of "45 Days of Our Legislature"
7 comments:
And just how many classes in how many IB schools has Sen. Dayton attended? And how many documented incidents of this (gasp!) UN sentiment has she recorded? Or is this- perish the thought!- hearsay?
And heaven forbid that our kids just might be exposed to world views that may possibly destabilize their American isolationist thinking! I mean, they just might do horrible things later on in life, like travel to other countries and not automatically feel superior, or think that people in LaVerkin are idiots, or they might learn a foreign language. Or they might just vote democrat!
NO! Not that!
I've never been to an IB class before, but, based on what I've read about them, I tell my 9th graders that if they plan on attending American Universities and working inside the States, they should probably stick with AP courses. But if they plan on international business, politics, or traveling a lot in their lives, IB might be a good idea.
I can't see that it's so terribly harmful to read Gabriel Garcia Marquez in a lit class instead of Jane Austen. Or that it's so horrible to study Asian history alongside European history.
And how on earth would math and science be changed by a "world view" instead of an American one? Is calculus any different in Kenya than in Idaho? I doubt it.
Thank goodness someone had the sense to reject this UNESCO program. It's nothing but a propaganda laden program designed to prep kids for world socialism under the UN. You want to pay MONEY for this garbage?
You can teach languages, culture, advanced math and science without paying the UN to help corrupt your children.
BRAVO to the legislators who wisely rejected this program.
Writer - Thank you. I know very little about the IB program, other than what was in the Tribune article. It's good to hear from someone who I trust that has better knowledge of the program. I know you well enough to know that you would not advise kids to do anything that was either bad for them or bad for this country.
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As for Anonymous, I'm not sure whether to thank or ignore him/her/it. Personally I think they are full of crap, I gave specifics regarding their response to my "Ouch! Ow! @$*&, ohhh, that hurts." post. Here it's because all the post is is a case of ultra-conservative paranoia spewing. So, I can thank him/her/it because they just want to stir the pot and get some conversation going on, which I would like to see. Or I should totally ignore them because they really do beleive the phlegm they are spitting out onto the web. Not sure which, yet.
I have been unofficially working with UNESCO since 1991, when I took part in my first UNESCO festival. The International Folklore Association, based in Vienna, Austria, works under UNESCO to preserve folkdance, music, traditional crafts, story telling, etc. in peaceful ways.
Each city who hosts a UNESCO festival is allowed to be however capitalist they want about making profits from the festival. No one preaches politics at the festivals. Never, until today, has anyone ever connected socialism with UNESCO in my presence.
I have known the vice president of the Int. Folklore Association since 1984, and he's not the least bit socialist. But he IS in favor of world peace.
I'm not particularly socialist. Trade unions bother me, but I think they are needed to balance out coroporate power. I don't like entirely socialized medicine because it doesn't work well. (I saw that first hand while living in Scotland.) However, some socialized medicine might be better than what the US currently has. I do believe in socialized education, which is what the US has had for over 200 years. Personally, I lean toward capitalism moderated by enough government control to keep idiots from ruining the earth and stamping out all those who are poorer than themselves.
Anonymous, (ah, only a coward would hide behind an anonymous label on a blog where no one's real name is required anyway!), what are your SPECIFIC and CONCRETE pieces of evidence that you throw at us as socialist about either UNESCO or IB? You name nothing. You merely hurl generalizations at us and claim they are a threat to the American way. What, exactly, have you seen/read/heard in an IB classroom that was socialist in nature? And what has it got to do with UNESCO, which exists to promote peace and understanding between different cultures and peoples, not to subdue any of them into a single way of thinking. Are you insinuating that peace and tolerance are only socialist virtues, and that no capitalist could have them? Okay, sure, W. doesn't seem to have those virtues, I'll admit, but John Huntsman, Sr. is quite the capitalist, and he's pretty good at peace and tolerance. Even Bill Gates is fairly human about such things. Those two seem pretty capitalist to me.
Anonymous, I think, unless you're just here to play devil's advocate and are really a sensible person, you'd better move to LaVerkin.
And if you really are the idiot you seem to be, what the devil are you doing reading Max's blog? This is hardly the hang out for xenophobic conservatives.
What??? You mean it's not all warm and fuzzy here for paranoid schizophrenic narcissistic xenophobic conservatives? Man, what AM I doing wrong???
"paranoid schizophrenic narcissistic xenophobic conservatives"
wow. Can you say that 3 times fast? I can't.
"paranoid schizophrenic narcissistic xenophobic conservatives, paranoid schizophrenic narcissistic xenophobic conservatives, paranoid schizophrenic narcissistic xenophobic conservatives" There.
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