• 12 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 2nd, 2023

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  • But doesn’t a lot of this come down to “ambiguity” in statutes which can be attributed to lack of technical expertise. In the example of you make is there a difference between:

    Congress saying the agency is responsible for ensuring drinking water is safe vs the agency is limiting heavy metals in drinking water? If a statute says the agency is responsible for regulating drinking water safety including, but not limited to, heavy metal levels can they also regulate microplastics?

    If ambiguity is at play doesn’t that require congress to provide more technical definition to some degree?

    It’s crazy it goes to the courts. In an early published ruling Gorush’s ruling was talking about the compound of laughing gas because he confuse it for an air pollutant…




  • I am hopeful this could pass. Congress knows they are not technical subject matter experts. They don’t like looking like fools when they talk about the Internet being a bunch of tubes. They want to be able to pass legislation and delegate the details to experts, at least to some degree. They don’t want the overhead of that nuance and detail it takes agencies to define. I am surprised the judiciary wants that responsibility…

    With agencies Congress has a scapegoat to drag in the muck and make them look good on TV. Without agencies, Congress is responsible for their own laws and being very explicit about some technical details. They look bad if shit breaks now.


  • I have no faith in them be able to pass something like this. Not when this is what the Republicans have been dreaming of for the last 50 years. But I hope they keep trying.

    They haven’t. The ruling is only 40 years old from 1984. And it was actually a Reagan era interpretation based on Reagan EPA era. Not sure when the Republicans changed their mind on this though.

    Edit: this probably is a trump era, fauci backlash, change. Maybe tea party roots. But this level of anti intellectualism and Republicans getting nominated to dismantle and not govern didn’t exist until probably 2010. Mitt Romney, Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfield probably all wanted and supported agencies to do their bidding. Mitch used his power to guy like Anit Pai in the FCC which Obama approved…




  • The statement was in response to another commenting not talking about the specific policy, but making a general comment that in order to understand US History and thought of early American Settlers you likely need to have some understanding of the bible. That has nothing to do with this specific teaching policy, and the comment you responded to calls out the commenter didn’t trust the superintendent:

    With that said, I don’t trust Oklahoma to teach about the Bible in a manner appropriate for historical analysis rather than religious dominance.


  • Cool. Sorry, I’m accustomed to being flamed on this thread for not being as liberal as the base here. Sorry if I came off super defensive. I can’t tell if the superintendent is just posturing or not. Without any curriculum definition, what does “teaching the bible” even mean. I agree his objective is probably hoping to teach christian fundametalism, but you can’t make that happen with some batshit memo by itself. I actually wish schools could teach religion in a balanced way. In a pluralistic multicultural society, it probably helps to have some background to understand basics of other religions.


  • You said this:

    Really, you need to look no further than our legal system though to see how little influence the Bible and Christianity actually have. I don’t just mean the First Amendment, I mean the fact that our whole system is basically a gradual evolution from the laws of Ancient Rome.

    this statement says nothing about what should be taught in schools, it’s a statement of history. my statement is simply stating it is very difficult to separate out the roman influence from the christian influence because of thomas aquinas linking christian tradition to greek thought. I would say that from a intellectual POV, founding fathers were probably equally or more influenced by greeks than romans, but at the end of the day we can just call it all classical thought. that’s pretty apparent in our architecture of state houses. This is a tangential discussion where we are not discussing what should be taught in schools, but just historical thought in the USA. Please re-read your own to catch up on the conversation topic.


  • It’s not appropriate for an elementary school kids. Per the article, this applies to grades 5 through 12. So what, 1 year of elementary with the primary focus of impact on junior high and high school?

    But if you are getting into questions of “what was more important to our founding fathers, rome or christianity?” I’d say that’s pretty difficult to separate because of thinkers like Thomas Aquinas that married Greek Philosophy with Christianity. When you begin with a point that God is the source of reason, and build off of that, I think you can’t easily separate that out.


  • I have a lot of friends who, like me grew, up going to church. Some went to catholic high schools, some went to liberal arts colleges with required religions classes in the core curriculum, or had other exposure. None of us go to church in our adulthood and have no intention starting when we have kids. But we all want our kids to have an understanding of what Christianity is because it’s important for understanding American history, origins of non profit institutions, and contemporary political and cultural climate. Also want to ensure there’s exposure and understanding of Judaism, Islam, and other predominant religions. Not sure how kids are supposed to get that these days without growing up in a religious house hold.

    Growing up in the Pacific Northwest I remember in school we studied Native American cultures which included some exposure to myth and religion. I wish there was a way schools could touch on modern religions in a more neutral way, perhaps more similar to how we teach classics/greek mythology.



  • Well I think the Unions and government need to push back on this (the AG already is). I 100% believe that this should be reveresed. But reading the article it states that losing your teaching license is possible punishment. It’s really easy to be high and mighty when it’s not your livelihood and job on the line. If you need to wait it out while the courts settle it what do teachers need to do to protect their jobs, stay in compliance, and avoid retaliation until this gets settled? How many teachers already are in compliance just by teaching regular US history curriculum that says “yeah, protestants read the bible and disputes on interpretation of the bible with catholics is part of the history of America.” I think it’s important to note that the Gutenberg press published the first printed bible. With the increase of education and literacy lay people no longer had to get teachings directly from the literate Orthodoxy. This allowed to different interpretation and rise of different religions which led to conflict, etc…


  • The existence of the Bible is historical fact and artifact. There is historical merit in studying the various religious beliefs of historical peoples that factored into their values and thinking. Protestantism is factually a thing. Different colonies and denominational belief is a thing and a topic in American history. What made Quakers Quakers and how did that impact the Pennsylvania.

    There’s a difference between teaching the bible, teaching theology, and teaching histories of religion. There’s definitely questions of what we are teaching and what is appropriate in public primary and secondary schools and in what subject, but I don’t think there is anything in and of itself bad if the historical religious beliefs and impact on historical civic life are discussed.