I agree with this. I was 18 doing maths A-level and tutored someone the year below, and his grade tripled. Other such evidence...

If you live in a "good school" area.

You're raping freedom when you argue that it might not be the best idea to teach 2+2=5 in a classroom with taxpayer dollars.

And make no mistake about it "we" are involved when it comes to taxpayer dollars.

Although when you can say pretty anti state things like forced, theft, thugs, to try and advance your worldview that something like 15 people share and has less chance of occurring than the jolly red guy ACTUALLY coming down your chimney you can feel pretty good about yourself.

So remember wondering if we shouldn't teach 2+2=5 in a school funded via taxpayer dollars (lol, stolen dollars!!!) is equivalent to the Spanish Inquisition.

Yeah....i get that impression to from alot of the anecdote based arguers. My anecdote was that I thought public schools did a really good job for me. Some teachers basically let me do what I wanted and encouraged independent thinking (mostly math and physics teachers)....others forced me to jump through hoops and taught me that you only get credit if you do things a specific and highly arbitrary way. Both things I use everyday as an adult.

Well I definitely agree but my point was specifically in response to a particular post that said a masters in education is a good thing because fourth graders might ask a question.

My anecdote is that I went to a terrible urban public school for a while - and while I'm personally thankful for having the experience, if I had to choose between that and a fundie school for my kid, I'd choose the latter. Although I would spend every night deprogramming him/her. No kid should have to go through school more worried about getting beat up that day than making good grades.

I'm pretty sure there's no set theory in secular (secondary) schools, either.

It's even better when you get the fun of beatdowns and the fundamentalists setting the curriculum. Welcome to Texas.

luckily there are private schools out there that aren't run by fundies. Amazing.

How can you people badmouth teachers like this? Heaven forbid some of us take 4 years out of our lives to go back and get our Masters so we can help children, instead of sitting around being JERKS on the internet.

As far as I know most children are taught about basic concepts of set theory ( union, intersection , ect) Probably not about the various issues with infinity which is where fundies freak out. I wasn't.

Unfortunately, not a huge amount. And the fun of paying for school twice.

It's funny, in Austin, there actually is a pretty huge secular home schooling community because of such things.

So just to be sure that I understand the logic here (if it can be called that): The existence of other options/career paths is the reason we don't have enough quality math and science teachers? Is that really what you are saying?

lol