How big is the distinction between education and indoctrination? Not terribly, if you ask some Tennessee lawmakers. They are pushing to remove any mention of religion from Tennessee’s State Academic Standards. At issue is an apparently controversial unit in seventh grade world history class that spends some time exploring Islam. At some point, the students
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Many of those against the transgender lobby LOVE the Rachel Dolezal case. In case you don’t remember, Dolezal was the Spokane (WA) NAACP president whose parents outed her last summer for having been born white. Yesterday, Dolezal was back in the news for finally admitting, in an interview, that she “was biologically born white, to
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So, morality is all a matter of personal preference. There is no way to have a rational argument between competing moral claims, or about whose vision of life is more correct. All we can do is agree to disagree, or try to force other people to agree with us through non-rational means. At least,
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It is hard not to have seen the 1971 film adaptation of Fiddler on the Roof or a stage performance of the play. It is a staple in high school drama clubs across the United States and the world. Many communities have a local playhouse that has at one time or another put on a
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Last week the news hit that U.S. student scores in math and reading had dropped. In stark terms, this news tells us that only 40% or less of American 4th and 8th grade students are proficient in math and reading. These poor results are excused by a number of issues, poverty being the most prevalent.
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Fascinatingly, the term propaganda has roots in the Catholic Church’s missionary work and push-back against the Protestant Reformation. Mark Crispin Miller, professor of media studies at New York University, describes the development of the word propaganda as follows: “The word had been coined in 1622, when Pope Gregory XV, frightened by the global spread of
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