Governor (Schwarzenegger) vetoes climate change curriculum

[Newsjock]

Source: San Jose Mercury News

California public students will stick to reading, writing and arithmetic, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger decided as he vetoed a bill late Friday that would have required climate change be added to schools' curriculum.

The measure, sponsored by state Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto, also would have required future science textbooks to include climate change as a subject.

In January, the state Senate approved the bill, SB 908, by a 26-13 vote. Only two Republicans supported the proposal.

In his veto statement, Schwarzenegger said he supported education that spotlights the dangers of climate change. However, the Republican governor said he was opposed to educational mandates from Sacramento.

Read more: http://www.mercurynews.com/breakingnews/ci_10010291

[MisterP]

1. gess iy am not ze Grün Governator ennyhoo: all acting! n/t

[defendandprotect]

2. Anyone trust this creep . . .?

[EFerrari]

3. The only really good thing about him is that he doesn't get along with Junior

and has refused to march in lockstep with him. I guess I'm grateful for the big ego that prevented THAT.

[Ztarbod]

19. I don't trust the Gov but I also don't want the legislature

deciding what the curriculum should be in public schools. Bad politics either way.

[heliarc]

32. A lot of unsuspecting Californians.

I just got really mad at some coworkers who called him a "liberal" the other day. No one was joking about it either. Somehow he seems to sell himself that way and people here are buying.

[roody]

4. I too am opposed to educational mandates from Sac.

There sure are A LOT of them!! Some of the more henious being having to choose among the State-approved curriculums, all from big publishers with good lobbyists.

[Name removed]

5. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Codeine]

6. Dude, back off a little.

There was no need at all for that reaction.

[comtec]

7. YES there is!

because I'm sick AND TIRED of this BULLSHIT GOVERNMENT DOESN'T KNOW ANYTHING MEME!!!!!!
The reich wing has been using it for CENTURIES to CRUSH the little guy, and now this asshole come up with it to attack the educational system!!!!

I KNOW there are serous problems, but most of those have been caused by WASHINGTON and daddy Regan!

The lack of funds for schools is the fault of daddy Regan when he was gov of my state! when prop 13 was raped and destroyed by a bullshit meme that gov can't do anything right and lil old ladies were being tossed on the street!!!!

CALIFORNIA HAD THE BEST EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM IN THE WORLD BEFORE THE GOP RAPED IT!!!!!!

every child left behind is a BUSH POLICY!!!!!

I WANT FUCKING NUMBER, LINK, AND PROOF OF THESE BULLSHIT CLAIMS!!!

ONLY RIGHT WINGERS CALL FOR LOCAL, usually RACIST control of school curriculum!!!

[The Croquist]

8. You are way out of line here

Go ahead, insult me too.

[comtec]

9. ANSWER MY QUESTION!

PROVE that I'm wrong! Insult me if you must, your tiny ego must need that stoking, defending the 19% like that, BUT PROVE ME WRONG GOD DAMNED IT!

[pattmarty]

11. I agree with you, the education system in this country.............

......has been progressively getting worse since the 70's. I went to school in the 50's & 60's and it was a lot better then than when my kids went in the late 70's & 80's. Look at the college grads that can't properly spell or find a MAJOR NATION on a fucking map. I believe in FEDERALLY funded education from K thru 4 yrs of college/trade school. It's about time we fix this, we have fallen behind the rest of the industrial world in our education system in addition to all the other things (healthcare, citizen/consumer protections, banking regs, medical/prescription regs)too.

[comtec]

14. ahnold's defense of his actions are totally non-sensical

adding the realities, the proven realities, of global warming to curriculum would only amount up to a week or two of Biology, like sex ed is usually only a day or 3 of films and dialogue.

To require something be done - such as teach them math, literature, the ability to use their own farking language, and science, and logic skills, is not an unreasonable thing for the government at the top to demand.

I apologize for loosing it, but it's the damned constant meme of "states rights" and "local rights" that is what is destroying our once beautiful, admired country!

Demanding a standard test to know where everyone is, isnt really that unreasonable, but to take away, or give money based on performance is stupid! schools that do worse should get MORE money not less.

>sigh< oh well. I don't think there really can be a properly intelligent conversation on this because it's a golden child, DO NOT TOUCH... and yet, without teh discussion, the ass holes in Washington are quietly taking all the money away!

[Posteritatis]

21. The problem is a very finite amount of resources

(For the record: not only do I think Arnold was an idiot for vetoing this, but I actually have written materials for issues like this, and rather more controversial ones besides, that are just starting to go live on high school curricula in my neck of the woods. With luck, I'll be doing it again in the fall.)

These days, "the three Rs" absolutely doesn't cut it. Anyone who thinks that schools should just do those is a fool; a dangerous fool if they have any authority to enforce it. Generally the schools themselves, the departments of education, know this sort of thing, which is why there is a lot in most existing curricula. Ever looked at a few history curriculum documents? Ever write one? The struggle surrounding the things is constant. There's a constant balancing act involving keeping the material up to date, keeping the material accurate, placating the people who are convinced that the material isn't (especially for things like climate change or, well, damn near anything in history these days), figuring out how best to evaluate the kids' knowledge of the subject matter, and so on. There's enough stuff in some province/states' curriculum guidelines that classes are often scheduled down to the day just to get most - not all, most - of it in.

Every time there's a mandate from somewhere to put X into the curriculum, something else pretty much has to go. So let's say you've got a one-term course in a Canadian school. That's something like 80-90 days in the classroom after you account for holidays, school events, weather closures, the exam periods, etc. You want to devote "only" five or ten days to a given topic - doesn't matter what it is, though as I said I agree that climate change needs to be more prominent.

So what gets discarded?

Something will have to; that's up to one-eighth of the potential course time in a pessimistic situation, which is a lot in classes that usually try to get through one or two topics every week. So if I want to fit a week or two of class time on whatever topic - or worse, if I'm going to demand it be done a few times or several times per year over the course of the school year as some places are wont to do - then what am I going to make sure the students don't learn as a result of this? Stuff has to go, which is going to cause problems in curricula where everything has already had good enough reason to get in there to survive this whole process in the first place. It's even worse in curricula where the material is tightly integrated with the previous and following years, where a disasterous addition/removal from one class can cause a lot of harm in the next one.

And as if all that wasn't already awesome enough, a small pile of your biology or history or whatever teachers are going to be from outside their discipline anyway. There's a lot of people out there who wanted to and who studied to teach chemistry that wound up stuck in a history or math classroom for a number of reasons, and who have to already learn a mountain of material entirely on the fly. If I could be confident that any teachers my material was going to reach were ones who'd trained for and qualified for and gotten into history and geography, that'd free my hands up to write my materials in a very different way than I did, when the standard problem case that kept coming up was phys. ed teachers being required to teach global history courses with no background in the material because the government turfed a third of the educational workforce a few years earlier.

I agree absolutely that a lot of major current issues really need more prominence in the schools; I have to or I wouldn't have spent awhile working to that end recently. But it is not as simple as "it'd only take X amount of time, so just do it!"

[roody]

24. There is plenty of money in the system.

What is it used for? New textbook adoptions every 7 years in every subject. The school I teach at is "low performing" because of test scores. We have a grant from the government to bring up "achievement." FYI, the word "achievement" now means test scores, nothing more. This grant pays for a data director. This person was a fantastic classroom teacher; she now has little or no contact with students. She organizes their test scores online. This grant pays for CONSULTANTS, former teachers who know how to ride the gravy train without having to teach children. This grant pays for "training" which of course involves airline travel, hotels and food, and includes all administrators.

Who do you think pays for all the test materials? And practice test materials.

What do our kids need? They need more kind adults in the classroom. They need more personal attention. That costs money. That involves creating jobs with benefits. This is what is being CUT.

[aspergris]

34. Perverse incentives

"schools that do worse should get MORE money not less"

Just for the record, this is what economists refer to as a "perverse incentive"

carry on...

[bahrbearian]

15. Right On

But the name calling is a little over the top. I do like the calling out though. not one answer.

[The Croquist]

17. I didn't challenge your statement and I didn't insult you

All I said was:
"You are way out of line here. Go ahead, insult me too."

You immediately obliged and insulted me (your tiny ego must need that stoking) while claiming I insulted you.

You also seem to think that profanity helps make your case. I disagree.

[Ian David]

13. I'm backing you up on this as 100% correct. Let's see examples.

I'll give the guy a hint:

[The Croquist]

30. I tried to find a complete list of California Educational Mandates but failed miserably

http://www.sacbee.com/education/story/1072678.html
The California State Board of Education agreed Wednesday to do something that no state in the nation has attempted: put every eighth-grader in public school through Algebra 1.
Among the strongest voices was Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who urged the change in an unexpected letter to board members Tuesday.

This seems at odds with Arnie's statement that he is opposed to mandates but that's not a surprise. There is some controversy regarding this however.
"We're setting every school up for failure," said state Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell, who argued passionately against the move. "It's going to be a firestorm in our state."

There is also required testing involved.

Here is a discussion regarding textbooks:
http://www.keypress.com/documents/PressReleases/CSUSummit.pdf
"California and 21 other states mandate which textbooks schools can adopt. This is intended to
ensure alignment between curriculum, teaching and state testing. But only California prescribes
the specific form of presentation, pedagogy of instruction, textbook format, use of technology
and permissible references to professional teaching standards in state-adopted texts."

Here are some history mandates:
http://www.beyond-the-book.com/opinions/opinions_100505.html
California, for instance, states in its History-Social Science Framework that students must “Discuss human rights violations and genocide, including the Ottoman government’s actions against Armenian citizens.” California also requires schools to build material about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Cesar Chavez into every year of the curriculum.
California specifically names six key documents that students should read and understand to become informed citizens: the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Federalist Papers, the Emancipation Proclamation, the Gettysburg Address, and George Washington’s Farewell Address.

Now whether or not you think these mandates are "heinous" or not is up to you. I don't know enough about the Algebra or textbooks to have an opinion but the history mandates seem like micromanaging to me.

[Phred42]

10. Der Gropenfuhrer still holding the party line

Wake up CA

Time to dump the bastard

[Ian David]

12. I hate Governor Douchenbagger. n/t

[kimmylavin]

16. Where else would educational mandates come from, gov?

Textbook publishers?

Los Angeles, at least, won't really have to push this.
Any child living there only has to look out their window to see the results of global warming.
Ah, smog...

[Igel]

28. Mostly they come from state depts. of education.

Staffed often by education professionals, not politicians. Usually elaborated in consultation with parents groups, academics in the various fields, and local boards of education.

The textbook publishers are in constant tension with curriculum producers. But when California--or Texas--alters its curriculum, textbook publishers take note. Big markets.

But hey--I'm comfortable with politicians, often responding to lobbyists, deciding the day-to-day activities of kids in schools. Perhaps a legislative committee could provide some worksheets on the subject, with answer keys. They can rework the algebra curriculum next week.

[XemaSab]

43. Smog and so-called "global warming" are totally different things

Smog is mostly visible particulate matter; climate change is mostly caused by invisible carbon dioxide.

[ensho]

18. he's a creep, a punk, a liar and is nasty

how he ever got to be Gov of Calif. is a story never told

[lonestarnot]

20. CA why did you vote for a terminator as Gov.?

Did he cheat too?

[comtec]

22. Actually... yeah he did

The way the recall was done was very clever, and the major problem is that the state dems' resolve fell apart at the last minute. They all decided Grey Davis had, had it, and ran for Gov.
The rethugs, only had ONE person on the ballot, thus all they needed were all the state rethugs to vote for him, which they did, and some star struck idiots, which they did, and POOF, governor Ahnold.

there is good reason why the North hates, politically anyway, with a passion the southern half of the state (ok southern 1/3 as NORTHERN (north of the bay area) California often gets ignored).

I know he was (re?) elected on a normal cycle, which is this year BTW, but he had 3 years of incumbency where he did not fuck up in any major way. So he got alto of Regan democrats to vote for him, and that was enough to keep him in office. The CA dems also ran a really crap campaign.

Basically ahnold's reign of terror has been pete wilson's 3rd and 4th term, as he's the guvernator's main adviser... god heave mercy on us all.

[Garbo 2004]

26. Arnie was not the only Repub on the recall ballot. Tom McClintock, Repub state legislator

also was on the ballot. There were other Repubs on the ballot, but McClintock was the main Repub challenger to Arnie.

[yurbud]

23. when the chips are down, he serves his corporate masters. the rest is just window-dressing

[KingFish019]

25. Broken clocks can be right twice a day.

Schools are already struggling to comply w/ No Child Left Behind -- another one size fits all mandate. Why add more mandates to an already overstretched system?

Also, American students trail the rest of the world in math and science as is. Let students focus on global warming after they master alegbra, basic chemistry, etc.

[bean fidhleir]

29. You're making a mistake. Every subject should be begun as soon as possible

because of the way our ability to learn changes as we age. Our brains undergo organization due to hormonal influences that vary with age. That's why, for example, kids can learn multiple languages flawlessly but most adults cannot.

Climate change can be taught early, in an age-appropriate way. Algebra cannot.

[aspergris]

35. actually

what is most important, is teaching the kids HOW to think - iow language skills, math skills, reading, etc.

While I don't have a problem with global warming on the curriculum, the point is to teach kids to read, write, think critically, etc.

It is true about the language thing btw.

But if you teach kids MATH, PHYSICS, and critical thinking skills, they can grok global warming.

Without math skills, etc. then they will have difficulty understanding global warming and will be more easily persuaded by whichever side is loudest vs. correct.

[bean fidhleir]

36. And the way to teach critical-thinking etc skills is with real-life contexts

such as global warming. Phoney examples don't have the emotional draw that real things do.

[aspergris]

37. the way you teach critical thinking

is primarily with philosophy, specifically analytical reasoning... etc.

The classics work, fwiw.

Like I said, I don't really care either way whether they include global warming in their curriculum. I see no problem with it. But I don't know enough about the curriculum to know what, if any, vital stuff would be removed to make room.

The point is - teach kids how to think.

[bean fidhleir]

38. We agree on the goal, even if not the methodology (nt)

[KingFish019]

40. That statement reads like cotton candy.

It sounds nice, but...

Two points:

(1) Emotional draw is a nice luxury to have, but sooner or later kids or going to have to get down to the hard work of learning material. Proving geometric theorems, solving algebra problems, etc. are fantastic ways to build critical thinking skills, but they are also very theoretical. There is no way to sugar coat them.

(2) If someone cannot read at an appropriate level for his age, or do math, what could he possibly learn from time spent on global warming? For that matter, what good would learning about global warming do the student? The SAT's and future employers do not care if someone can give them a fuzzy explanation of why the planet is heating. They care if you are competent in reading, writing, and arithmetic.

[bean fidhleir]

42. It's fairly easy to see what YOU haven't learned :-)

Unlike adults, young kids will endure the most barren, silly, patronizing lessons. But that doesn't mean that barren, silly, or patronizing is the best way to teach. They're generally the opposite, because of the associational nature of long-term memory. The things we remember best are those with the densest webs of connections to other things in memory.

As Penfield determined experimentally in the late '40s, we store nearly everything we experience. But we don't "remember" everything because we don't build the web of connections that allows us to retrieve the memory at will, or if we do build some connections we don't exercize them and they fade away. We might know something in the sense of having stored it, but if we can't retrieve it on demand, what good is it?

Which means the more relevant the learning process, the more usably the material will be learned. So unless your goal is something other than successful learning, your puritanical ideas about how learning should be a grind are misguided at best.

[ohio2007]

27. theories come and theories go

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=3370882&mesg_id=3370882


http://www.adn.com/life/story/473786.html

Some are more stimulating then others if given their day in the sun

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=aad_1217084226

Teaching global warming...just another subject kids will ignore along with the 3 R's.

[NashVegas]

31. Doing the Right Thing For the Wrong Reasons

Most of the things that consensus dictates we do to adapt to climate change are already and have been taught in jr. high and HS science classes since the 1970s, as well as the results of industrialization and pollution.

I'll never forget how pissed off and despairing most of my 10th grade bio class was when we were shown "Silent Spring," and told that it was going to be up to us to clean up the mess, though. I wouldn't want to subject groups of school children to weeks of a program designed to tell them how fucked we are.

[yellowcanine]

33. Actually I agree with this. State legislatures should not be in the business of choosing curricula.

If we don't want fundy legislatures mandating the teaching of creationism in schools we should reject all state legislative mandates.

[slackmaster]

39. I generally agree - the job is done best by professional educators

Legislature should deal with the budget. Content decisions, learning objectives, etc. should be left up to people who actually know what they are doing.

[UTUSN]

41. It's time Maria be re-named "Vichy". n/t