First, I’d like to continue my self-promotional comments of yesterday, re the delightful book of poems known as “Uncle Willie’s Very Silly Animal Poems.” I’m sure that many of you are, like me, somewhat frugal minded. There are other words for it, but we’ll stick with frugal minded for the moment. In any event, you are not automatically inclined to go to Amazon and order a book from someone without 1st reading at the very least lots of rave reviews.
I can do one better on that score. When you open up this blogsite, you see a bar across the top where it says Blog/Tarot Poems/Other Poetry Books, or something like that. A quick clickety click over there on the right, where it says “other poetry books,” and you’re in. You can read UWVSAP first, and then decide if you’d like to own the book. The only thing is, Booboo’s drawings aren’t there, which is a darn shame, but that’s just because I’m kind of a computerphobe (seriously) and don’t know how to do it. We’ll get them in there, eventually. While you’re at it, you can check out any of my other books.
On to the news of the evening. We liberals have a game we sometimes play, called “What is the Stupidest State?” South Carolina had it’s day in the sun, and Mississippi is a perennial contender, then Arizona was leading for a long time with crazy Jan Brewer yelling at Obama at the airport and Joe R. Piehole making ridiculous birther statements. Then, last week, I thought Louisiana had taken a commanding lead with Governor Bobby (Piyush – he got the Bobby after Bobby in “Dallas”) Jindal and his dumbass plan to privatize (churchify) public education, complete with textbooks stating that the Loch Ness Monster is real. But then, along comes Texas. Don’t mess with Texas. It’s like a whole ‘nother country. Stupidstan.
Here’s the story. In the Texas Republican Party Platform, there is a section on education, which is reasonable, of course, there should be. In this section, however, they advocate a return to corporal punishment in schools (How kin ya larn these kids iffen ya caint whup em?), eliminating kindergarten (because we take children away from their mothers too soon,) and –here’s the gem – “We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) , critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-BasedEducation (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining of parental authority.”
Just read that first part again. We oppose the teaching of higher order thinking skills and critical thinking skills.
As stupid as I think most Republican voters are, I didn’t expect the Republican Party, (which has enough money to hire PR consultants to prevent them from saying moronic shit like this) to say something this stupid. We oppose teaching students to think. But, they did.
Texas wins.
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