Comments on: What Newt Gingrich Thinks Students Should Learn

By: Claus

Claus — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 12:07:05 +0000

Gingrich’s reference to religion is interesting. He and his wife are currently promoting a documentary on Christianity and the founding of the United States. In talk shows, he has joined to chorus of voices claiming that US schools have become uniformly hostile to Christianity. So perhaps he’s envisioning a state-administered catechism.

Is this the next plank in the Educational Equality Project platform? A good person to refer to on these issues is First Amendment scholar Charles Haynes. (http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/biography.aspx?name=c_haynes). While Haynes argues that some schools go overboard in avoiding Christian references, others fail in exactly the opposite direction. He generally sees those who scream and yell about public schools’ ostensible hostility towards religion as people who do not understand First Amendment principles.

By: Jane St. Pierre

Jane St. Pierre — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 21:19:19 +0000

I watched Meet the Press today and felt the frustration I usually feel when people get together to discuss education and there are no teachers on the panel. Although NBC did have interviews with other educators like the superintendant of D.C., and Randi Weingarten of the AFT, I still believe that the missing voices are those of teachers, students, and parents.

By: Harold Shaw

Harold Shaw — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 20:51:29 +0000

Larry – A tongue in cheek answer he wasn’t talking about the public school system, he must have been talking about the private schools that all his friend’s kids go to, they don’t have to use standardized tests to show their effectiveness.

But that would be asking politicians to consider teaching a profession and that we are professionals who know what works in our classrooms. A bit of a cynical answer I guess, how many other professions are treated as though the professionals don’t know what they are doing?