Archive for the 'education' Category

another brick in the wall

03Apr08

This has to be less than ideal as a precedent for civil liberties in schools.  Another sign of a fundamental shift in our attitude to the presumption of innocence in the 21st Century, perhaps?

unscientific superstition quietly gaining influence in australian schools

25Feb08

The Age reports on the pressing issue of the growth of independent schools teaching from a faith-based curriculum in Australia.  Presenting religious indoctrination in the Howard era clothing of “choice”, some such schools are teaching creationism in science classes and directly counteracting government efforts to provide sex education to students.
For example, the principal of one […]

religion is in the inverse of…

12Dec07

The always interesting Possum Comitatus has some analysis of voting trends and social factors at the last federal election. Tucked away in there are some very interesting graphs about religion and its correlation to several other variables (about half way down, look for “Update 2“).
In particular, two relationships stand out:

atheism is proportional to growth […]

on teaching science

26Jun07

I enjoyed this article about the teaching of physics to school children in the United Kingdom, and reforms which seem to be focused on teaching kids to talk “about” science rather that teaching kids science itself.
Perhaps the most startling point is that calculation has been removed from the physics syllabus. Everything must be […]

oh the history books tell it, they tell it so well

11Apr07

This was in the Oz today: British teachers are allegedly avoiding teaching their students about the Holocaust and the Crusades because this might offend Muslim sensibilities:
These kids are told at home or by Muslim preachers that the Holocaust never happened. Teachers aren’t challenging that misinformation, they’re shutting up so as not to disturb a world […]

this monkey’s gone to heaven

16Mar07

A bit out of date now, but in February it emerged that the University of Sydney has agreed to ban stem cell research at a new facility built on land it acquired from a Catholic residential college.
According to the ABC:
The church’s deed on the land stipulates there should be no foetal stem cell research or […]