Moderators: carlson1, Keith B, Charles L. Cotton
The bill can be read here: http://www.legis.state.tx.us/BillLookup ... Bill=HCR39Supporting prayers, including the use of the word "God," at public gatherings, and displays of the Ten Commandments in public educational institutions and other government buildings.
The bill is to not to make illegal, not to make mandatory. I guess you get to choose the useful stuff?Ipconfig wrote:Keep your god to yourself and teach practical and useful stuff in schools.
Not even a bill, just a resolution. I have nothing against any resolution the TX Leg does, EXCEPT for the fact that it waste valuable legislative time.twomillenium wrote:The bill is to not to make illegal, not to make mandatory. I guess you get to choose the useful stuff?Ipconfig wrote:Keep your god to yourself and teach practical and useful stuff in schools.
Except that the bill doesn't change any laws, it just voices support. It's a symbolic gesture, not much more.twomillenium wrote:The bill is to not to make illegal, not to make mandatory. I guess you get to choose the useful stuff?Ipconfig wrote:Keep your god to yourself and teach practical and useful stuff in schools.
I agree with you for the most part it should be secular. I just don't agree with the inconvenience it has become to be a Christian in a public school. My children can't say "one nation under God" because it their choice but someone who practices Islam can be excused to do. My coach in High School had to take down a poster in our locker room because it had a religious reference. The one thing that stood out to me the most was he told us that they could make him take it down but he would never stop praying for us or giving us the choice to pray before every game and after every practice.mr1337 wrote:Except that the bill doesn't change any laws, it just voices support. It's a symbolic gesture, not much more.
Honestly, I believe all government-run activities should be secular - with no emphasis on any religion unless it's teaching history of the religions or other academic subject about them.
Ipconfig wrote:Keep your god to yourself and teach practical and useful stuff in schools.
Government is not supposed to be antagonistic to religion. The First Amendment was written to prevent the U.S. Government was establishing an official church, such as the Church of England.mr1337 wrote:Except that the bill doesn't change any laws, it just voices support. It's a symbolic gesture, not much more.twomillenium wrote:The bill is to not to make illegal, not to make mandatory. I guess you get to choose the useful stuff?Ipconfig wrote:Keep your god to yourself and teach practical and useful stuff in schools.
Honestly, I believe all government-run activities should be secular - with no emphasis on any religion unless it's teaching history of the religions or other academic subject about them.
You base that upon all the "practical and useful stuff" that has been taught since God was removed from the education system?Ipconfig wrote:Keep your god to yourself and teach practical and useful stuff in schools.
A slight, but related, Topic tangent: the SAT was revamped for a third time in 2005, when it went from a total maximum of 1,600 points to 2,400. Worth noting, also, that the test was changed in 1995 to "re-center" the results: it had been originally scaled so that 500 was the mean score for each section with a standard deviation of 100. As the test became more popular in the preceding decade or 15 years, the actual mean had dropped to 428 for verbal, and 478 math. So actual results had been declining since the late '70s or so.bblhd672 wrote:You base that upon all the "practical and useful stuff" that has been taught since God was removed from the education system?Ipconfig wrote:Keep your god to yourself and teach practical and useful stuff in schools.
That's politics for ya.Alf wrote:When they claim "they ran out of time" at the end of the legislative session, remember how much time they waste on feel good resolutions and happy brirthday proclamations, and realize they intend to run out of time before touching certain bills.
When I took the SATs at age 15 back in the 1960s, There were two required tests - the verbal and the math - and you could take a third one in an elective subject. Maximum possible score was either 1600 or 2400, depending on whether you took a third one or not, but you'd have to be crazy smart to get into the 700s on any test. I scored a 520 on the math, and a 615 on the verbal. Those scores put me in the 96th percentile......at age 15. I scored a 783 on the French exam, which I don't really count because I grew up speaking French as well as English. BUT.... the interesting thing is that if you compare my 615 in the English verbal, to my 783 in the French exam, it tends to reveal that it would be easier to score more highly in the French exam by virtue of it being limited to only that small group of people who studied French as a second language and learned enough of it to help get themselves into a university, compared to my having spoken it most of my life.....whereas virtually everybody who took the SATs was an English speaker from birth. And yet, my "lowly" (by today's standards) 615 in English and 520 in Math put me into the 96th percentile that year. My scores were typical for the private boys school I attended at the time (Webb School in Claremont California), and were well above national averages. At that time, somebody scoring in the 400s would have been "average"......not necessarily college material, but not an idiot either.Skiprr wrote:A slight, but related, Topic tangent: the SAT was revamped for a third time in 2005, when it went from a total maximum of 1,600 points to 2,400. Worth noting, also, that the test was changed in 1995 to "re-center" the results: it had been originally scaled so that 500 was the mean score for each section with a standard deviation of 100. As the test became more popular in the preceding decade or 15 years, the actual mean had dropped to 428 for verbal, and 478 math. So actual results had been declining since the late '70s or so.bblhd672 wrote:You base that upon all the "practical and useful stuff" that has been taught since God was removed from the education system?Ipconfig wrote:Keep your god to yourself and teach practical and useful stuff in schools.
In 2005, it went to the 2,400-point total. How have our nation's high school graduates been fairing?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/ed ... story.html
The average score for the Class of 2015 was 1,490 out of 2,400. The lowest since the 2005 SAT overhaul. The state of Texas was even worse, coming in with an average 1,410.
How does that compare to the post 1995 "re-centered" results? A score on the current test of greater than 1,400 but less than 1,500 equates to a score on the pre-2005 test of greater than 950 but less than 1,010...or in the 36th percentile of the bell curve.
Remember, now, that even that equivalency was adjusted and "re-centered" because actual student test results had been declining prior to 1995. Pre-1995 a hypothetical mean aggregate score would have been 1,000. The actual mean had dropped to 906. The "re-centering," then, represented a boost of approximately 9.4% of the old score to the new median.
If you adjust the Class of 2015 scores by 9.4% to bring them into rough alignment with pre-1995 scoring, the Texas mean score would be 1,278...or in the 15th percentile; the nation as a whole would be in the 24th percentile. A small number of students greatly exceed the average by dint of intelligence, fantastic teachers and, more often than not, I imagine, a private prep-school curriculum.
(More here on SAT score comparisons/conversions: https://www.quora.com/How-can-an-old-SA ... he-new-SAT.)
Lot of reasons postulated for the relatively consistent year-over-year decline across the last four decades. But the numbers are the numbers. Over the preceding few decades, our high school graduating seniors have weaker math skills and communicate more poorly than their predecessors. But they do have a lot more participation trophies on their shelves...the shelves where books would have been 40 years ago.
Back on Topic...
