International study finds US at 18th in reading and 28th in Math

Because I said we need to stop inject religion into public education.

And Justsearching, did you think that quoting Jefferson was going to sway me to your point of view. He is advocating for separation of church and state, unlike you who think we shouldn’t have a separation, and that we should force kids to at least listen to prayers. And your crime statistics are not proof of the value of prayer. There were a lot of other factors behind the rise in crime.

BTW, you do realize that Jefferson was an aethiest. Ever here of the jeffersonian bible. He wrote his own bible, where he took out all the miracles, the virgin birth, the resurection. He didn’t believe in such nonsense. But he did believe in the tenets that christ taught, like peace, justice and tolerance.

Don’t get hung up on semantics. He did not believe in the christian god, or any other supernatural explanations for our existance.

Neither have you… You have only provded supposition.

Crime also went down in NYC, and they have strict gun laws. You are trying to create correlations where none exist.

The US used to have the best educational system on the planet, …and then they invented the Department of Education and destroyed everything.

Here’s how to fix it:

1. Shutdown the Department of Education and remove all federal involvement in education.

2. Give the schools authority to expel students who are unmotivated or are constantly causing trouble. For students unable to keep up due to lower intelligence, put them into programs similar to those for the mentally handicapped where they can still achieve all they are capable of without holding everyone else back.

3. Quit experimenting. Use tried and true methods of teaching the basics: phonics for reading/writing, and drills for math

4. Hire more teachers. Make education rather than professional style sports arenas the priority.

Some of the other probels are environmental and cultural. American children have terrible diets which result in lethargy and a reduced capacity to learn. TV, video games, internet addiction, excessive sports, etc. all have a tendency to demotivate as well.

todaly, first you need to look at the FBI’s report from 1947 to 1985 and you will see the drastic increase. This was on a National level not a state. It began its upward climb in 1963 but from 1947 to then is was almost level in number.

So how do explain the steep drop since the eraly 90s?

…it’s best to use the right terminology. Otherwise, the battle is lost before it begins.

Jefferson was a Deist.

Taking one statistical fact and coming to a conclusion without looking at anything else is just supposition, and proves nothing. I was not asked to prove anything. It was you who implied that the cause of the rise in crime was due to school prayer being banned. My evidence is just as good as yours. Both are only opinions of the causes. I am not the one who implied one sole reason for the rise in crime.

Parents…well, commuting timein the US has grown since the 70’s. And, the number of hours worked has also grown.

Combine longer work weeks for parents, ever more difficulty even in a two income family to “get ahead”…and, well, yes, it is the parents fault to a degree…

…but, it’s also societies fault (read, government, both sides) who have been pandering to the richest in the country, and wages compared to any number of things have been going down.

When you spend too much time working, it’s really hard to be there to make sure your children do well.

He may have been, but he did not believe in the supernatural. To me that is an aethiest, or agnostic at least.

interesting enough I believe in 1990 the state of Florida issued the first Right to Carry permit. Statistical facts that have been recorded show that when states started issueing right to carry permits crime has dropped, but it is still off the charts compared pre 1963.

You still haven’t given me any evidence as to why it went so high immediately after 1963

justsearching, here is a table of crime in Florida, compiled by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, spanning the region from 1960 through 2006 http://www.fdle.state.fl.us/fsac/Crime_Trends/total_Index/total_crime.asp . I’m not seeing any huge jump you alluded to in 1963. What I see is a steady increase from 1960 (the start of the table) until about 1989, followed by a steady decrease ever since.

First God is not mythical as you think, but you are intitled to believe whatever you choose. You sound just like a typical liberal telling everyone they need to be tolerant to your beliefs and oppinions but when it comes to you being tolerant you don’t give a G. D. as you put it. You are a hypocrite.

And before the supreme courts decision teachers prayed with their students before classes and test and many other things. Why, because that’s just how it was. What the supreme courts decision did was stop that from happening. It wasn’t telling anyone who they had to believe in it was giving the whole group the opprotunity to pray.

below is Thomas Jefferson’s full quote on Church and State:

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between Church & State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.

He says that the American people declare that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

England’s Law made the Catholic church the official church of England. That’s why our fore fathers left England because they didn’t want the government telling them how they had to believe thus creating a wall of seperation. Our fore fathers didn’t want that to happen here. He never said to remove religion from Government. He is saying here that they don’t want the government ruling the church as it did in England. Thats why they have always prayed before congress and the house met. They wanted God to bless this land and He has. This nation is a Christian nation always has been, it wasn’t founded by muslims or jews or buddist’s it was founded by Christians. Thomas Jefferson was and agnostic. In case you don’t know what that means, he even believed in a Supreme being, his writtings support what I am saying.

I have in my files a report from the FBI, it is a graph that shows crime statistics from 1947 to 1990. From 1947 until 1963 crime had a very small curve upward but from 1963 to 1990 crime went up off the chart drastically. It went from a long curve for 47 to 63 to an almost straight up curve each year after that. What was the major factor. Prayer was removed from Schools. If you look at the violence in schools alone today how can you even doubt that the teaching of the 10 commandments and prayer didn’t have an effect. Just because a group of people pray in your presence doesn’t have any impact on what you believe.

The Bible says that every knee will bow and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is LORD. That includes you but then it will be too late. You sir need Jesus Christ as Lord of your life whether you believe that or not. I hope for your sake you meet him before you close your eyes in death.

First get rid of the goddam republicans. Then stop trying to inject religion into education, stop funding schools based on property values, fund NCLB like it was supposed to, extend public education through college. No one should ever have to pay for an education.

Interesting, stop injecting religion into the education. If you will go back and research history the Mcguffy reader is what our founding fathers learned to read by and most of the school systems used them until about 1947. Guess what they used to teach the alphabet, Bible verses for each letter of the alphabet. It seems as if our country was steeped in Bible teaching in the schools until 1960 when our ever so wise Supreme court decided that you couldn’t pray in schools. Interesting that crime has been on the increase ever since.

It must be a crime to teach our children not to steal, not to covet, not to lie, not to murder, not to take God’s name in vain. I find that very offensive by the way for you to do that. I wonder why the editor or the dude or whats his name the other owner dosen’t delete this guys site for using such language when this site is supposed to be to improve the world.

You want to know why our educational system stinks, its because of the liberal idealism that has removed God from everything. It’s not the republicans fault either Lynn Cheney has done far more for education and reading programs than Hillary Clinton ever thought of doing. Our country is in the mess its in because all the democrats want to do is throw more money at things instead of making people be accountable for their actions.

I gave you a statistical fact put out by the Federal Buera of Investigation, that is my evidence. You on the other haven’t provided any evidence, mainly because you have none.

He was an agnostic not an aethiest he believed in a supreme being. I am not trying to sway you as you put it, you can believe what you choose. He was not advocating for a seperation he was advocating that the Government not dictate what church was the official church like they did in England.

You can choose to ignore the fact that after prayer was removed from school that crime has gone rampant. If it isn’t then you give me evidence of what happened that caused crime to skyrocket from 1964 to present.

…how did a question about education get turned into a theology debate?

The first Ammendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”

it says “of religion, not “of a religion”, Just relgion. Any acknowldegment of a god is respecting an establishment of religion. Again, how many times is god referenced in the constitution?

Jefferson also said this: “Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.”

The intent is very cliear from this part: “that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions”. By requiring kids to be subjected to prayer time you are forcing an opinion on them. That a god exists, and you must pray to him.

And, there were a lot of factors behind the rise in crime from 1960 on, like the civil rights movement, and rises in poverty. Prayer had nothing to do with it.

How do you explain the steep drop in crime since the early 90s? Did they start allowing school prayer then?

You theory doesn’t hold water.

It was also the end of the civil rights movement

justsearching, certainly you are not deluded enough to believe that the root of crime is no prayer in school. and as for lynne cheney, just be reading her bio, I can tell what she has accomplished. hmmm…served on the lockheed board of directors. no conflict of interest there. Lynne Cheney served as chairwoman of the National Endowment for the Humanities from 1986 to 1993. In 1995 she founded American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a conservative group that monitors American colleges and academia.

She is a senior fellow in education and culture at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. She also serves as a director of Reader’s Digest Association, Inc. She is a director emerita of the Independent Women’s Forum.[2]

From 1995 to 1998, Cheney served as a co-host of the Sunday edition of CNN’s Crossfire, replacing Tony Snow.

Lynne Cheney served on Lockheed Corporation’s board of directors from 1994 to 2001, a $120,000-a-year post she gave up shortly before her husband’s inauguration; Cheney served on the board’s Finance, and Nominating and Corporate Governance committees.[3][4]

In 2000 she was mentioned as a possible conservative female pick for Republican Vice Presidential nominee on the George W. Bush ticket. The appointed head of the nominating committee was her husband, Dick Cheney, then the CEO of Halliburton, Inc., who eventually emerged as Bush’s choice.

She repeatedly spoke out against violent and sexually explicit lyrics in popular music, picking up on an issue originally made famous by former Vice President Al Gore and his wife “Tipper”. She also criticized video game makers for similar content.

this country is secular and there is no mention of god in the constitution.

I lived in germany and I did not pay for my education, through college. perhaps if the republicans are not allowed to continue to divert money to the wealthy…

So we should be teaching bible versus to jews, musilms, hindus, buhdist? The bible, while important to some people, is not the source of all that is good in the world.

And you need to go back and do some research. The supreme court never decided that people CAN’T pray in school. What they said was that the school can’t impose prayer time on students. A big difference. In fact, if a school ever forbiid a student from engaging in personal prayer, say before eating his lunch, that would be an unconstitutional violation of the first ammendment.

You do not need to teach about god in order to teach about right and wrong. They are mutually exculsive.

What excatly has lynn cheney ever done beside marrying the most dispicle politician this country has ever seen?

“…instead of making people be accountable for their actions.” That is pretty rich come from a republican. Where was the accountability in lying to the country about the reasons for going to war, or the deliberate outing of a CIA operative, or the illegal wiretapping of americans, or the politcal firing of US attorneys, or for getting drunk and shooting someone in the face? I could go on, but that is enough for now.

Weather you want to accept it or not, this country is a secular one. Or at least it is supposed to be. Answer me this, how many times is god mentioned in the constitution?

And I couldn’t give a goddam crap about using a mythical being’s name in vain!