SENATE BILL: The Duke-Scott Educating The People Reform (Debating)

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

If we want schools to offer these let's just fund it as opposed to a mandate that is probably unconstitutional.

I don't understand section IV.  Are the teachers choosing the textbooks or are the school districts?

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Nay

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

If we want schools to offer these let's just fund it as opposed to a mandate that is probably unconstitutional.

I don't understand section IV.  Are the teachers choosing the textbooks or are the school districts?

It's not really a mandate.  The government decides how the public schools are run and provide the appropriate funding for their services.  The teachers choose textbooks that are permitted by the districts.

It is a mandate since it says to schools "do this, and maybe we'll help you fund it if you apply for it." Though I guess it could be interpreted as a mandate on the school district rather than the region, so not unconstitutional.   Still, I will not vote on any education bill that further restricts the regional and local role in education.   If regions are going to be completely subservient to national policy when it comes to something like education, we might as well not have regional governments at all.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

amendment

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[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

I don't know what you're talking about, Yankee. Shua's suggestion addresses a real problem that is well within the spirit of this law.

Thank you. Indeed it is.

There is a certain history text used in classrooms across Atlasia which takes a couple of Mr Burke’s words out of context in order to make him appear misogynist when in fact the statesman was criticizing the misogynists who murdered Marie Antoinette.  That historian must therefore been either extremely bad at reading comprehension, or more likely, this is just one example of many of him bending the facts to suit his ideological agenda.  In either case, should we allow our students to be subjected to such fabrications?  This is just the tip of the iceberg but we need to take a stand somewhere.  As Edmund Burke famously (never actually) said “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”    If teachers cannot be trusted to guide their students when it comes to well known controversies about evolution or climate change, how can we trust them on more arcane but, when put together, no less consequential matters of history and philosophy?  Or is accuracy in the humanities unimportant?

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

To that I would add that Atlasian law has prohibited schools from using federal funds to teach creationism since at least 2007.

Yep. Schools are prohibited from using federal funds to teach that creationism might possibly be true, and also from teaching that it can be tested either way by science.  So basically students just have to take it on faith that it's wrong.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Aye

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Is it too late to withdraw my amendment in favor of bore's?  (If bore's fails I would reintroduce mine.)

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Yes, the vote is the cuttof unfortunately. The best way is to fail it then.

NAY

Actually the best is to pass it unanimously. 

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Either way its okay, you wake up with yourself. Sorry, couldn't resist.

Yea, since bore's eliminates, passing or failing this amendment wouldn't matter, but since you expressed desire for withdrawal I suspected msot would lean towards a nay vote as the expediant path to get to the destination.

It must be understood that my desire to withdraw was not an end in itself, but only because I was anxious for a speedy vote on the next amendment.   It is still very possible that bore's amendment will fail, in which case the absence of misquotations of Burke among our list of intellectual grievances will be a great loss for the humanities.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Either way its okay, you wake up with yourself. Sorry, couldn't resist.

Yea, since bore's eliminates, passing or failing this amendment wouldn't matter, but since you expressed desire for withdrawal I suspected msot would lean towards a nay vote as the expediant path to get to the destination.

It must be understood that my desire to withdraw was not an end in itself, but only because I was anxious for a speedy vote on the next amendment.   It is still very possible that bore's amendment will fail, in which case the absence of misquotations of Burke among our list of intellectual grievances will be a great loss for the humanities.

I like Burke as much as any Conservative, but I worry your amendment is too vague to achieve your desired ends regardless, unless you define the misquotation.

Even if it were so, that's a small ambiguity compared to the contested definitions of "creationism" or "climate change."

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

amendment offered:

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[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

What is the point of the amendment offered? Schools must offer those things and if they cannot afford it, they can apply for grants so they can afford it. Why do we need to change the wording? So we will set a limit? Do we even know how much money these needy schools will need?

It's not enough to say you must do something and you can apply for grants. What if the grants are denied for some reason, or they aren't given enough, or the grant office takes its sweet time?  In that case the schools are required by law to do something they don't have the money for.

Besides that, there are those of us who believe education ought to be pretty much a regional and local matter.  Nothing in the Constitution gives the federal government the authority to micromanage schools, as much as we seem to like to.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Section III I just changed because the wording made it sound like $50,000 would be split between all the schools in the nation rather than to every school .

Section V is redundant because Section I already mentions recess.

If $3 billion is not enough for grants than let's figure out how much is.  I almost put that in as TBD, but I figured putting in a dollar amount that we could change later would make more sense.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

AYE

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Our reasoning was that the federal government wouldn't deny these schools grants to comply with section one arbitrarily. We don't know how much it will cost to bring these needy schools up to speed, and placing a $ amount on it is pretty short sighted. Even if we appropriate $3B for grants, the schools will still need to get approval, so this amendment doesn't change that.

If we are not putting a number on it, how are we going to budget for it?

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

No, I see why it's redundant, but my issue is that for legal and liability purposes, we may need to have the schools given high school seniors permission to leave campus. For example, if a student leaves campus and gets killed when he should've been at school, we would know if they had given him permission to leave or not.

Why would that apply specifically to high school seniors at recess and not otherwise?

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

No, I see why it's redundant, but my issue is that for legal and liability purposes, we may need to have the schools given high school seniors permission to leave campus. For example, if a student leaves campus and gets killed when he should've been at school, we would know if they had given him permission to leave or not.

Why would that apply specifically to high school seniors at recess and not otherwise?

What do you mean not otherwise? Otherwise, they should be in class. Unless we just do as my high school did and allow seniors to just leave campus whenever they want to. Or we can just leave the decisions up to the regional governments and simply do as we are doing now, and say they should get recess, as in they shouldn't go to class continuously for hours and hours, and nothing more.

I mean how is the solution to the liability issue addressed by giving high school seniors the ability to leave at recess?   Is there not also this liability issue if the student leaves at other times of day, or if a younger student leaves?

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

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[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

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What in the blazes? You've gone and taken the teeth out!

I don't really think that punishing districts and teachers for not following our druthers is what Federal education policy should be about. But if you do, what punishment do you recommend?   

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

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What in the blazes? You've gone and taken the teeth out!

I don't really think that punishing districts and teachers for not following our druthers is what Federal education policy should be about. But if you do, what punishment do you recommend?   

I'm not that up on education policy/school incentives, but I do think there should be punishments for schools failing to provide lunch (although I don't think a one-size-fits-all approach would work). Perhaps the regions or states or other such lower tier of government would be the carriers out of punishment?

Regions carry out regional law, not federal law.  And that is where for the most part school policy  should stay.   If we want students to be provided with lunches, we can fund it.  In fact we do under the 2007 Education Reform Act (one of the few worthwhile aspects of that law).  On the whole, regions have traditionally provided the majority of funding for education.  Unless we are going to spend the dough to change that equation, and be responsible to our constituents for that money, we have no business dictating to the regions how to run every aspect of the schools.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

When you add this law to all the laws the Senate has already passed on education, it becomes clear that there is no limit to what the Federal Government is willing to do to limit regional and local control over educational policy.  All in all this is just another brick in the wall.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

We still have a couple amendments that haven't been processed, btw.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

AYE

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

NAY

Certainly, at the very least, conditions could be attached to the monies given and carry some weight with those conditions.

I tried that approach already with an amendment, and it failed.  As it is now, the money in Section 1 is conditional on whether federal bureaucrats feel like taking the option of handing it out, but the onus on the school districts to comply with this law is not optional.  How is that right?

I guess we can go threaten to take all their federal funding away if they can't come up with the money to meet these mandates, but isn't that just a little perverse?