How could a History book get the 2nd Amendment wrong?

I have thought for a long time that public school education should be standardized, one curriculum, one book used throughout the country by all kids per the subject per grade. Set to a very high standard, teachers more as guides and lectures by recognized experts via internet, and opinions kept out of the classroom. Included would be field trips to important places for all americans, Concord & Lexington, Washington DC, Gettysburg, Jamestown, Kennedy space center, Little Big Horn, maybe others. It would even the playing field by bringing the slow up and getting kids excited.

It would solve many problems including lousy textbooks.

 

Just because they write a book, doesn't mean they have a clue.

And politics, history and political science by their nature are subject to revisionist points of view.

you and I could probably talk all day about what the 2nd Amendment means, but we can't argue about what the 2nd Amendment says.

Same with the Little Big Horn, WWI, WWII, the invention of the internet, on and on. We know what happened, what it means in relation to history is another story.

Did we really fight the Civil War to settle State's Rights? Or was it about slavery, or maybe something else completely.

I will say, however, that this particular shortened interpretation of the 2nd Amendment leave quite a bit to be desired.

And why isn't this in silver subscribed??

D

 

The worst textbooks in college were the ones written by the prof.
(Who would assign it, not because it was good, but because he got the royalties on it.)

We had a physics text jointly written by our prof and a community college prof.
We swore that the text was from the community college and the questions at the end were by our prof: You couldn't answer the questions from the information in the text.

Most of us had to buy the "assigned" books ... and then also buy informative ones.


In grade school (way back when), we were assigned the Federalist Papers.
On my own, I also picked up the companion volume: the Anti-Federalist, which contains the other side of the debates.

So I know what the intent was behind the 2nd Amendment. I've seen the drafts of it.

It doesn't need "translation".

It's not like we're talking about ancient archeology, here.
The US government is only a couple of hundred years old.
If kids are expected to understand Shakespeare, then Madison, Hamilton, and Jay are a breeze.

 

Hold on there big fella.

Reading an historical accounting of what went into the argument about the 2nd amendment isn't gonna give you first hand knowledge. Without that, we're still all interpreting written words, and that's just not the same as original intent, spoken word with a follow up Q and A.

There is always room for discussion about this. After all, the wording of the 2nd amendment is clunky and ambiguous on purpose, just as the language on most of the others is not.

D

 

Why take local control, what little parental input there is, out of the equation? Like every other field, if we want good schools we need to decentralize, not demand uniformity through a nationwide mandate.

Besides, don't parents have the right to educate their kids as they see fit? And how are we going to get more innovation in education if we impose one way of doing it?

 

Because most people don't have a clue about anything, really, and that includes teachers. Have you ever watched "Jaywalking"? How do so many people get out of 1st grade being so dumb? Look at our elections and who is leading the country. So many aspects of society, but especially education, have gone down the drain in the last 30 years. And a lot of that has to do with "innovation".

There is a best way to do things and there are many crap ways to screw it up. I want uniformity, uniformity of excellence. Standardized tests so we know who is succeeding and who is not. It doesn't have to involve anyone in govt., just the best of the best brought together to write the best textbooks. A national plan to the school day and year so wherever you are, a lousy inner city neighborhood or Bel Air, you are getting the same instruction and same materials.

In math and most science there is no argument, 2+2=4. In History there are also facts, it's just that some on both sides, right and left, like to spin. The only innovation would be the use of technology to have the subjects lectured by experts by video (the same podcast) into every classroom in the country, teachers would then just help students get it after the podcast stops. ( my guess is a lot of teachers would be learning also)


Google says -- "In 2012 - American students ranked 25th in math, 17th in science and 14th in reading." ............................... and ............................... "After World War II, the United States had the #1 high school graduation rate in the world. Today, we have dropped to # 22 among 27 industrialized nations. (OECD, 2012)"


wow - don't know these folks but -- The Broad Foundation - Education

 

Yet, somehow, these same people are going to know whom to elect to, or tolerate in, these positions of enormous power, how much say to trust them with, and when to replace them with the better option?

The only way out of this and similar collectivist messes is to undo the collectivism and allow markets to do what only they can do. It may take more time than we like, more time than many think we have, but it's the only viable option, in my view. And, oh, let's not forget that people have the right to educate their kids as they see fit, which, thankfully, annihilates the notion of a centralized curriculum.

As for those "innovations": they wouldn't have made it past the concept stage if we didn't have what is, for all intents and purposes, a centralized education system. (I'm sure you're familiar with the history of Progressive Education. No way that stuff gets snuck into American culture without an enforcer behind it (FDR taking philosopher/educator John Dewey under his [blue eagle] wing.)

 

everyone's different and want to do different things but let's teach them all the exact same way!! great idea. if you're gifted and the classes bore you, tough luck. if you're technical and want to explore technical subjects, tough luck. you have passion for something, forget about it. let's get rid of the magnet schools too because they don't follow the standard. awesome. can't wait to see what kind of mindless robots are produced from this system..

 

Just as a point of clarification the photo is from a study guide for an AP text that is a summary of the amendments. It is not a textbook. It is not the amendments. I don't agree that it should have been written that way, mostly because a young student would not see the difference between the summary and the actual amendment.


BT

 

Well, put it into context.

What was the biggest gun they had in 1787? No doubt it was some kind of cannon or mortar, which was manufactured for the government only. I don't think your average citizen could buy a cannon, but I don't really know. Anything short of that, a newly minted U.S. citizen could own with impunity.

Today, there are still government issue only weapons, they're just a ****load more sophisticated and deadly. We can't buy automatic weapons without a special license. You can't buy a tank that'll actually shoot rounds, and they won't sell you an F22 either. There are probably more limits on ownership, and vastly more weaponry, than the writers of the Bill of Rights could have ever imagined.

Sure, our technology has surpassed anything they could have imagined, which is why "original intent" seems to me, outdated.

But, sure would be nice to know what they'd think now.

D

 

perhaps you didn't read this,

so we already know what such a system would produce, the BEST in the world! Today's system with all it's innovation and magnet schools and all the crap subjects produces near the WORST in the industrialized world. Undisciplined and uneducated illiterates is the result from all this great innovation.

College is for specialization, trade schools are for the "bored". The result of what I am suggesting would be even much better than what was being produced in the 50's, reading, writing, math, history, and science proficiency. (science today encompasses computer fields.)

 

look up the graduation and college attendance percentages of "non standard" magnet/charter schools students compared to "standardize" public schools students.

 

But the alternative isn't either today's Progressive nonsense or the more uniform approach you seem to be advocating. There are many other options, each of which gets thwarted through centralization -- regardless of who's running the Machine that decade/century.

If your vision is right, parents with the power to chose will eventually gravitate towards it -- maybe even improve on it in ways you haven't considered. But the wholesale compulsion thing is disastrous no matter which side is running it, no matter which aspect of the economy we're discussing. (Is there any point in asking where would anyone get the right to force a given curriculum on parents that want to go another way?)

We have the standards, notebooks and literary rates of pre-public education America. They're absolutely staggering; they even stunned that greatest fan of the American Experiment, de Tocqueville. (We have notes and letters from slaves that simply blow away most college grads these days. Centralized education, public education, for that matter, has been a disaster.)

 

The magnet/charter school students of today are the average serious everyday students of the 50's and 60's who are escaping the detention center like atmosphere of the disastrous "innovative mess" of todays liberal public system.

btw I didn't write a white paper length description above, so much was left out, but in mine there would be dilineations and smart kids would not get bored, but dumb kids would be sped up.

I know people. What you are advocating wouldn't work in even the most pollyannaish version of what today's society could possibly be. Most people are extremely lazy, extremely undisciplined, and/or too tired/uninformed to even begin to self-educate their kids. Just look at their health status, the obesity rates.

The revolutionary education you mention comes from a world with absolutely no safety net where failure meant death. bygone era. As to compulsion, try skipping your taxes for a while.



Just watch this, completely anecdotal and even made up version of the 60's, but even though created by the liberal hollywood media types, it was the norm for kids appearances then which has to do with self-respect, discipline, and attitude. And if you listen to the kids, they spoke proper english and knew how to behave, not today.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcaUluahdwM]Room 222 Theme song and opening video with Karen Valentine - YouTube[/ame]

 

And you, of course, had James Madison call you on the tachyonphone to tell you it was on purpose?


The drafts don't tell you anything?

Pennsylvania - December 18, 1787

Virginia Declaration of Rights - June 12, 1776

That seems clear enough. The drafts' intent was to prohibit the US from having a peacetime military.

E.g., the argument wasn't whether the government should let the people have guns.
The argument was whether the people would let the government have any.


This was thrashed out in the Federalist and Anti-Federalist as debate published in newspapers.
Because of the need to maintain a force to patrol the western frontier (at a time when the west wasn't yet won), the proposal to ban a standing army was defeated.

But the assertion of the rights of the people was left in, with language included to appease those who wanted the army banned.


If that's not clear, what do you make of "He jests at scars that never felt a wound."

 

First of all, you can't find the right to impose anything on a free people, so right there you're way off.

Second, you're discounting the impact such imposed systems have had on the culture -- are you sure it isn't centralization that has brought about the current culture?

Third, how people chose to live their lives is really none of your business. People aren't free so long as they live their lives the way you and I would like them to. If they chose to send their kids to a school that instills a hippie ethic, it's really none of your business.

Fourth, where do we get off thwarting people that would thrive under a decentralized system in the name of those you describe as barely human? Why is everyone so eager to either punish or sacrifice the better members of a given society to the masses the self-annointed consider so inferior?

They wouldn't be self-educating their kids, though that would be an option. They'd be choosing from a set of viable options. Short of that rare, oddly premised school, you can be assured that the overwhelming majority of schools in a decentralized system would run circles around just about anything we have today. (How do you explain the great pains parents in the lower rungs of the ladder go through to get their kids into publicly funded charters? How do you explain the results we see in charters when compared to publics that draw from the same neighborhoods? What percentage of parents do you thing wouldn't do their best to ID a great school for their children? Why are we imposing a catch-all system in the name of that tiny %?)

That's a rationalization. One issue can, and probably does, have nothing to do with the other.

And decentralizing education, reducing government to the protection of individual rights, brings a good deal of that reality back. How can we object? (It need not happen overnight. Introducing parental choice in education today privatizes the system tomorrow, and leads to better family models the day after.)

Having to pay for legitimate functions of government is very different from having crucial life choices made for you by an unaccountable bureaucracy with government's track record and motives.

This is probably dead on. It does not, however, justify what you're advocating -- if only because the current collapse is attributable to centralization/government.

And let's not forget that the uniformity you seek can easily thwart the truly gifted among us. Those people are incredibly rare and are often lost in the crowd. But ratchet down every aspect of the school day and they'll all be thwarted. And one of them who has broken through is worth more than millions of "average" folk to a culture.

I don't think people are as bad as you think. I don't think the current status quo is insurmountable, let alone a natural state we can't outgrow. I don't see how centralizing anything improves society -- not a free one, not one that has to live up to America's legacy.

Thanks, Vinny Bourne.

 

To the first paragraph -- It's not 1790 anymore, when people lived their entire lives within a 10 mile radius. How they live their lives becomes my business when the consequences of their lousy decisions directly affects me.

Lazy undisciplined folks who get obese and acquire all those expensive chronic diseases directly increase my cost of living, taxes and health insurance

Lazy uneducated folks become a drag on society raising taxes to provide them the safety net, not to mention stuffing the ballot box electing losers, who destroy my country, not just the latest guy, examples, defunding NASA, not protecting the border

Lazy immoral folks who commit violent crimes whether drug related or not, make the world less safe, raise taxes of all levels to police those losers.

A good school system would make every one of those better, forced phys ed and health ed gets rid of the fatty's, the more educated the better the person generally speaking, I could go on............................




The 2nd paragraph -- I have already explained it. "The magnet/charter school students of today are the average serious everyday students of the 50's and 60's who are escaping the detention center like atmosphere of the disastrous "innovative mess" of todays liberal public system."

 

Any studies that point this out or are you just making it up as you go along?

 

But those principles describe eternal aspects of the human condition. You therefore can't argue for tyranny in any form by pointing to the fact that we've veered off course -- especially when the only remedy is to reinstate those principles as quickly as possible.

There's a few things to say to this:

-- First, that such people are a factor for your insurer is a matter of law, not market forces.

-- Second, by the principle behind this factoid gone excuse to rule over people, you could justify any form of tyranny you could name. (You going into field X costs society cash because you're clearly more qualified for filed Y. There goes career choice. Or, that you like driving over 55mph and refuse to buy a hybrid jacks up everyone else's insurance, fuel, tire costs, highway maintenance, LE and hospital costs. Therefore, no more non-Prius automobiles - sp? - on the market.)

-- Third, you buy insurance voluntarily. If you don't like the price of the plans available to you, or don't like living in a culture in which x% of the population is morbidly obese, you have options (MSAs, self-insurance, moving, advocating for the decentralization of healthcare.)

This isn't an argument for controlling anything, let alone something as crucial and deeply personal as education -- or healthcare for that matter.

The solution to this is to work against statism, not to advocate for either more of it or a different flavor of it.

Let's not link crime to your issues with X% of Americans that chose to live lives you don't approve of. Punishing rights violations is the proper purview of the government of a free people. What you're advocating, both in education and, I assume, elsewhere, is a very different thing.

The problem here is that you can't get good anything under the government model you're calling for -- it's never worked, never will (Sparta had a mandatory education system. Athens didn't. Which City would you rather live in? Which contributed more to the world? Which set of results would you say we'd like to see in the US?)

In addition, you're setting/reinforcing an incredibly dangerous precedent, one which leads to massive inefficiencies and endless changes to "The People"'s education system. (You realize the latest drop in US education standards coincides with the centralization of education through the federal DoE and UFT, right? You also realize that cultures are determined by ideas, and that there's no way we'd be able to impose whatever you're advocating if indeed the culture is as bad as you say, right?)

I've addressed this. One more time: the current mess is a product of centralization. The thugs in charge chose an approach to education that instills their fundamental ideology while pandering to a particular group of people. Do you really think seizing the machine of government is the solution to anything?

There's no getting around it: centralization never works. Let people chose and the results will astound you -- as long as you're thinking in the relevant time-scale.

Thanks, VB.

 

Getting progressively heated and P&R'ish, particularly with the last comment.

 

You are getting too abstract but,

1) You're right, what was I thinking, you can't make everyone drive on the right side, that would stifle creativity and infringe on their self expression.


2) Just because the DOE wastes a lot of money in the name of education has nothing to do with school culture. see below


3) the school system was in its most rigid form in the 50's & 60's and produced the best results. It has been the liberalization of it that ruined it.