GOP Sponsors Bill In Missouri Allowing Parents To Remove Students Where Evolution Taught.

[TheMastersNemesis]

If you are in Missouri and do not believe in evolution the GOP has an answer. You can take your kids out of classes that teach evolution. We are really crazy in this country.

[3catwoman3]

1. I wish my parents...

...could have taken me out of calculus.

It often seems to me that those who claim that their faith is soooo strong act as if just the opposite were true - always afraid of or offended by or desperate to avoid those things outside their comfort zones. If their belief systems were as strong as the believers allege, should it not serve as a bulwark, as armor against all those things? Why so fearful?

[RKP5637]

3. You make an excellent point. If, their convictions were so strong, so true, so

absolute, then they would have no fear, they are right! However, with most of these characters their logic is severely flawed and they have to force people into their belief system, because it and they can not stand on their own it is so flawed. Excellent point!

[freshwest]

7. Back in the Stone Age, we were taught evolution in elementary school and religion taught their

version in the church. They never crossed that line, didn't whine and pitch a fit over prayer being taken out of school, etc.

We were in school to get tools for life and work, period. No one had to get riled about being told what to to believe or not when off campus. But on campus, it was science.

This country was a better place with the wall of separation maintained. No one was screaming they were being victimized because they could not preach in schools.

This is all from the right and their highjacking the churches to use politically. It makes me sick at heart to see what they've done to this country.

[RKP5637]

9. Agree so much! Much of this use to be non-issues, people did their thing, but now they

want to force their delusional mindsets on the entire nation. Churches should be stripped of tax free status, as many are now nothing but political operatives hiding under the banner of religion.

[longship]

6. Why so fearful about the calculus.

It's a rather simple system, rates of change. Invented simultaneously by two different dudes in the 17th century, one in England (Newton) and one in Germany (Leibniz).

If one understands the concept of slope in algebra one can understand differential calculus. Integral calculus is a different matter, but is functionally the opposite of the differential.

Calculus opens a wide range of mathematical techniques and has been key to the advancement of physical science since Newton and Leibniz.

[ananda]

12. A math person can never understand a non-math person.

I really appreciate good mathematicians, I really do. I got pretty good
at math in high school and my first year of college. But my calculus
teacher was a bastard and did me in. I decided to drop that course
and go for history and English, which now I see as a great blessing.

Over the years I forgot most of the higher math I ever learned, and
it doesn't interest me either... and it was never easy or simple for
me. It was more a matter of rote memorization and applying tools
to solve problems... very boring really.

For true mathematicians, this is a different story I'm sure. But don't
just assume that what is simple and easy for you is the same for
others. It isn't.

[longship]

14. Well, mathematics is just a logical construction.

And some people can't wrap their minds around the methodology. That's okay. As a retired math teacher I am acutely aware of this issue. But I am also aware that the mantra that math is somehow more difficult is also wrong.

It's like anything else. One has to work at it to learn it. It doesn't come automagically.

I appreciate what you wrote, however. And I had a calculus professor just like yours. He was a fucking jerk. I also had some others who were wonderful.

[3catwoman3]

15. Perhaps I have dyscalculia - LOL! I'm great with language...

...however.

As a high school freshman (way back in 1965), I thought I just "didn't get it" when I took algebra. 1 year later, the teacher was fired, because it turned out a whole lot of us in her classes didn't get it. Geometry was fine in my sophomore year, and I actually really liked trig in my junior year. In my senior year, the last math marking period was a 6 week calculus section. The teacher handed us a slender black book, and said, "Here. This is all self-explanatory." It wasn't. Only thing I ever got a "F" in.

Some years ago, my husband gave me a book called Math Without Tears. After I re-read page 6 about a dozen times, and it still didn't help, I chucked it.

Maybe I should try the books by Danica McKellar.

[RKP5637]

2. It's really become a F'ed up place in my lifetime, mosty thanks to F'ed up

religion and a number of other things. We're becoming the laughing stock of the world.

[struggle4progress]

4. HB 1472 appears to have been read twice, which means the Speaker should assign it to committee

The second reading was 21 January, so perhaps it is still too soon to learn to which committee HB 1472 has been assigned

It will sit in committee until the committee reports it back to the House or until at least 1/3 of the 163 House members vote to take it from the committee for vote

Here's the text (pdf)

[hollysmom]

5. Because parents have a right to keep their kids stupid? n/t

[RKP5637]

10. They are educating their kids in Idiocracy, perhaps even Ph.D.'s in Idiocracy! n/t

[Warren DeMontague]

8. "You can't handle the truth!"

...Clearly.

[MineralMan]

11. More moronic legislation from the Christian Right.

When will they make an end of it?

[Coyotl]

13. Keep digging, there's a hole down there somewhere.

And be sure to advertise how crazy you are