Politician Wants Sci-fi To Be Mandatory In School 295
Avantare writes "The first sci-fi novel I read was A Wrinkle in Time; the next was Dune. Why don't more people read these extraordinarily imaginative books? Delegate Ray Canterbury, who represents Greenbrier County in southern WV, wants to help with that. Canterbury introduced House Bill 2983, which reads, 'To stimulate interest in math and science among students in the public schools of this state, the State Board of Education shall prescribe minimum standards by which samples of grade-appropriate science fiction literature are integrated into the curriculum of existing reading, literature or other required courses for middle school and high school students.' For decades, walking around with a paperback sci-fi novel in your back pocket at school was the quickest way to find yourself permanently excluded from the cool-kid clique. But what if it wasn't just the geeks who read Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke? What if science fiction was mandatory reading for all students?"
By Science Fiction, does he mean.... (Score:5, Funny)
Creationism?
No - that is called Fantasy. (Score:5, Insightful)
And though Science Fiction is usually combined with Fantasy, there is a rather BIG difference...
Science Fiction (at least GOOD science fiction) tries to stick with only one violation of physics (frequently the speed of light, other times just that something is easy to do - such as neural implants). Each additional violation weakens the "science" into fantasy. Good Science Fiction focuses on the characters, and the physics violations are only a transport to get to a situation.
Fantasy, on the other hand, allows all kinds of physics violations - at the whim of the author when they can't figure out how to resolve a situation - POOF, a miracle (some god or other magical being/device) fixes/saves the character. Good fantasy doesn't even focus on the magical issues - they focus on the characters. Unfortunately, many fantasy authors cannot keep their "magic" coherent (and I include JK Rowling in this group - fortunately, the focus on characters greatly exceeds the magic.. most of the time).
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You could have saved yourself some typing by just stating that good fiction focuses on the characters, no matter what the genre.
Re:No - that is called Fantasy. (Score:4, Informative)
No, not necessarily. There's a lot of good sci-fi that doesn't focus so much on individual characters, but rather social issues, how a new technology affects society, etc.
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stick with only one violation of physics (frequently the speed of light, other times just that something is easy to do - such as neural implants).
What's so physics-defying about neural implants?
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The early Asimov story "It's such a beautiful day" is a good example. The one physics violation is the use of teleporters, which have become as commonplace as household cookers. They've replaced school buses, driving down to the supermarket and commuting to work. Homes still have frontyards and backyards, but these are maintained by automatic machines. Then they have one kid who decides he prefers to go outdoors and walk to and from school rather than use the school teleporter. This causes chaos because his
Re:TOO MUCH FREAKING MEDIA!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
This politician's point isn't about making children read his favorite books because they're his favorites. He wants children and teenagers to read Science Fiction because it makes science and math interesting, which in turn, turns more of our youth to those fields of study. I seldom agree with politicians, but this guy is absolutely right-- if we want to improve ourselves as a species, we need to get our youth interested in these subjects. Getting them to read Science Fiction is one good approach.
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Yes let the kids choose for themselves, and don't bitch when they all end up majoring in vampire studies.
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Nice try but no. Actually, that was my first thought as well -- "is this how they will get Christianity into schools?"
Science fiction, as opposed to regular fiction, [and religion] has an element of believability and/or possibility. Androids, warp drives, time travel, body switching and lots more show us how to imagine a future -- most of the time a better future. And we need more of that. Some of the biggest problems come from our present state of stagnation and "incremental advances" which are simply
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A prezidential sex scandal?
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Hard science fiction does. Most science fiction is not hard, and no more possible than your average fantasy novel. And the summary specifically mentions Dune, which is sci-fi in name only.
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I was going to trigger a hard/soft debate, but I'll just go get some popcorn.
Re:By Science Fiction, does he mean.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Dune's setting is carefully constructed to enforce semi-medieval status, from Butlerian jihad banning computers to forcefields that force melee combat to the return of feudalism. This effectively weeds out any sci-fi tropes. At the same time it has a hearty dose of fantasy tropes, from witches to ghosts possessing their descendants to magical worm-juice that grants precognition.
Dune is high fantasy with spaceships (who's pilots need magical worm-juice to fly them). It's sci-fi in the same sense Spelljammer is.
Re:By Science Fiction, does he mean.... (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm quite interested in Dune not being sci-fi, because that's so ridiculous it should be on a meme.
This one puzzles me as well. As a general rule, you are allowed one "impossible" thing in sci-fi. In Dune, that one thing is the spice. Admittedly, it both warps perceptions of time and space in addition to allowing the Spacing Guild to warp space to match their imposed perception, but that's still all tied to to one thing.
Everything else I can think of is scientifically credible, though much of it requires more discipline than today's human race can generally summon. But that was Herbert's genius. His humans 10K years into the future were evolutionarily more advanced, but still fundamentally humans and not, for example, aliens in human costumes or vice versa.
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No, melange does not allow the Spacing Guild to warp space, at least that's not the way I remember it. They basically had warp drives just like any other sci-fi, the problem was that if you just warp off to some remote planet blindly, you're likely to run into a star or some other object. Melange granted prescience, so that the Guild Navigators could plot courses to avoid any obstacles. In later books, the Ixians (IIRC, it's been a long time) developed computers (previously banned in the Butlerian Jihad)
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No, he means that stupid big explosion thingy that the scientific community drummed in order to keep pseudo-religious scientists content so they can all go back to work.
Wrinkle (Score:5, Informative)
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I'm am also 46, and it was required reading for my 6th grade daughter this year.
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Good choice. Really good choice...
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It looks more like a cube in 3-dimensions, not a cube within a cube. That diagram is not what it would look like projected onto 3-space, it is rather some scheme for conveying information about the shape. See the pictures and animations at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesseract [wikipedia.org]
I'm thinking of that other classic book, Flatland. Picture a cube if you lived in 2-dimensional space. You might see it as a square, or as an oblique slice through a cube. But not as a matrix conveying the facts about a cube.
Or maybe
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My oldest is going into 7th grade, Ender's Game is on the list of books that he is supposed to read over the summer.
Re: Wrinkle (Score:2)
Re: Wrinkle (Score:5, Funny)
Look where that got us. The current crop of politicians thought 1984 was an instruction manual.
Re: Wrinkle (Score:5, Informative)
Kind of happy I did Catholic as opposed to Public schools for the first 12 years. If there's two things they pushed in those schools it was heavy amounts of reading, and critical thinking. Made me a better atheist.
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When I went to school (I'm 46), "Wrinkle in Time" was on the curriculum.
Me too, in fact I can say that without a doubt, Wrinkle in Time stimulated by lifelong love of science-fiction, and made me at least marginally more interested in school subjects like math and science. At least enough to understand that while I enjoyed science fiction, actual science probably wasn't my bailiwick because of all the quiet time and sitting still required.
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When I was in school (35) we had a few sci-fi pieces, but they were mostly short stories, and were probably at a ratio of 1:10 to the rest of the reading. Such works were just not considered 'real' littiture by the people who set th
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Though some people have found Vance hard to read, his English prose is impeccable.
Longyear never uses the "he said," "she retorted," "he quipped" kind of lazy and awkward sentence construction that has come to be almost universal today. Studying how he gets around it while making it seem natural is very educational. (He did publish one short story in which he did that, but it was intended as satire of
really conflicted here... (Score:3)
While I think this is actually a good idea, I don't think that mandating curriclum from the statehouse is a good thing.
It's all moot though... anything that promotes imagination is never going to make it out of a committee anyway.
No (Score:2)
Sorry, this is a ridiculous idea - quality literature should indeed be mandatory for educational curriculum, but specifically highlighting a particular genre is arrogant.
Re:No (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, this is a ridiculous idea - quality literature should indeed be mandatory for educational curriculum, but specifically highlighting a particular genre is arrogant.
I don't know ... sci-fi is a valid literary genre that is traditionally under-represented in K-12 English courses. It is also a genre that supposedly leads more of its readers into science/math fields (which according to TFA the state is lacking in). This legislation makes a small change in legislative mandate to the school curriculum (that the legislature already makes mandates about) in order to balance things better and advance areas they're currently lacking in.
Failing of State Education Boards (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not in favor of legislative mandates for any kinds of curriculum. That said, I do agree with Canterbury's position that science fiction needs to be included in the types of literature covered in school. That the various education boards have overlooked the mainstream SiFi authors like Clarke and Asimov is a symptom of a deeper failure in their processes.
Personally, I'd throw in a little Lovecraft. Just so more people will get my Cthulhu references.
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True. Texas is far more diverse than most of us outsiders give it credit for. Which is why places like Austin need to split off from the Texas board of education and manage their own school systems. This will prevent stigmatizing their children with the label "Educated in Texas".
On the other hand, places like Austin are used by many backward Texas communities as coattails with which to drag themselves along. So its not likely they will be allowed to re-brand themselves, leaving other communities behind.
Good idea, but some rewriting required? (Score:2)
There was a post here recently from a teacher who was looking for inspiring SF books to give his students as a summer project.
As a result, I discovered "The Martian", (it's on Amazon for a buck), which, with expletives removed, would be perfect for young kids.
This old kid enjoyed it "as is".
So, how hard would it be to encourage publishers to adapt SciFi classics for the younger audience?
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There was a post here recently from a teacher who was looking for inspiring SF books to give his students as a summer project.
As a result, I discovered "The Martian", (it's on Amazon for a buck), which, with expletives removed, would be perfect for young kids.
When I was in grade school I went to my local library and ventured into the adult sci-fi section. I checked out a bunch of books with sex and swear words in them. The librarian didn't raise an eyebrow, but I did later. I felt so grown up and mature that I could read such things, and not make a big deal about it. Some of the more colourful sexual metaphors were lost on me, which I only discovered after reading the books again later as a teen.
I'm not sure what folks have against exposing kids to "adult"
HHG2TG (Score:2)
My eldest son is reading it (he's 12) and it's a good start!
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You're speaking of hard sci-fi, my own preference, but there is softer, less tecnologically speculative sci-fi.
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That's not science fiction, though.
Sure, and Animal Farm was just about some talking pigs that got uppity.
Oh sure, and what, The Matrix was just a movie about how corporations subjugate humanity?
reading books (Score:3)
The first sci-fi novel I read was A Wrinkle in Time; the next was Dune. Why don't more people read these extraordinarily imaginative books?
They are waiting for the movie to come out
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Drop teach the test / College prep for all as well (Score:2)
Drop teach the test / College prep for all as well That is eating up a lot of time.
schools also need more recess time (kids are getting to fat no days) also poor fatty school food can be part of that.
Sci-fi is nice but an trades track in HS is needed as well.
More reading at home? (Score:2)
I think what you read in school only matters if you also read at home. (I mean besides your homework).
Pupils should imho read a book per month or week even. Ofc a brought range of genres would be prefered. But some people simply can't stand Sci-Fi (likewise I can not stand that SF is mixed up with fantasy in the book stores shelfs).
Perhaps pointing out some SF stories that are not to 'wiered' to such students would help (Not everyone is into Phillip K. Dick e.g.)
I for my part e.g. would perhaps let
sci-fi? (Score:2)
wrinkle and dune, very little sci in that fi. they're mostly philosophy expressed with fantasy
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Required Books (Score:2)
Every student entering 6th grade should read "Ender's Game" by Orson Scott Card and "A Wrinkle In Time."
If you want to kill a piece of literature... (Score:5, Interesting)
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I opened this /. article to make a similar kind of argument. If you want people to like Sci Fi, this is not the way. Schools will find a way to make you hate it.
They can make ANYTHING totally dreadful. Even things I studied in my spare time while at school, I hated the classroom version of the same issue. A good example is Quantum Mechanics, with its weird and interesting phenomena. In QM at school I was told to memorize some stupid patterns that I never saw again (my profession is not even close to physics
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As with the other reply to you, I'd intended to add the exact point you just made.
I think high school english teachers, as a group, harbor a secret hatred of the literature they "teach" and want to kill it with fire; and harbor a not-so-secret hatred of children and do everything in their power to suck as much joy and happiness as possible out of their teenage years.
When I was forced, for example, to read 1984 and Brace New World for AP English in my sophomore year of HS, I thought they were a couple of ted
The death of scifi (Score:2)
In my experience, requiring certain books to be read is the quickest way to make people hate them. Or was it just that all of (Dutch) "literature" I was forced to read actually is bloody awful?
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No, it is just that all literature that English teacher force their students to read is objectively awful. It is the tradition to only assign mind numbingly horrible books in high school.
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I don't know about Dutch, but I think in American literature it's a bit of both. First problem in English is the canon tends to consist of books which are old -- for example, Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter" was popular fiction in its day, but its day was 1850. Shakespeare is even worse, being 16th century
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Please no (Score:5, Interesting)
If you want to kill a kid's joy in something, make it a school assignment. If you want to make absolutely sure, make them write a paper on it. For extra credit, give them a reading assignment they absolutely do not have the background to understand (e.g. Slaughterhouse 5 before they've even heard about WWII).
Let's let the schools continue to ruin horrid bits of literature, like Willa Cather and Herman Melville. Leave the SF to people who like reading.
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Kurt Vonnegut, aren't you supposed to be dead?
The literary classic "The Scarlet Letter" was a romance novel that sold for $0.75, though I'll admit a dollar then was worth a bit more than a dollar now.
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If you want to kill a kid's joy in something, make it a school assignment.
Can certainly be true. It certainly ended my dream of programming video games for a career.... Not everything I had to read was miserable, though. Cold Mountain and All Quiet on the Western Front were a couple forced titles I actually enjoyed.
But is their not some Requirement (Score:2)
But is their not some requirement that all books that teachers can make you read in English class have to be incredibly boring? That is the only way that any of the assigned reading I got would make any sense.
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Well it worked for me (Score:2)
Already being done. (Score:3)
Are we sure about this? (Score:3)
Does it have to be Mandatory? (Score:2)
Isn't there a way to promote them without mandating them?
My school had a lot of mandatory Shakespeare in 8-12th grades, 2+ plays a year and guess what? I always loved reading and yet absolutely detest and despise anything by him or any of the authors that was mandated as I associate it with a tedious chore and avoided anything by them ever since.
Idk if it's the case for everyone, but I always sought out what was interesting to me, it didn't have to be mandated. The trick isn't to ram it down the throat so
1984 (Score:2)
1984 was required reading for us. I think it was up to the individual teacher or schools.
I also read Ender's Game in school. It was picked by me, but approved by the teacher.
No (Score:2)
While I like science fiction, I don't like this law:
1. Onerous, cluttersome. The United States has too many laws. Do politicians feel insignificant if they don't make them? Maybe they need to adopt the mindset of good programmers and take pleasure in refactoring the legal code down to a smaller, more elegant set.
2. Counterproductive. As said by others, making people read something has no guarantee of making them like it. In fact, they'll like it less. If he were really clever, he would outlaw science fictio
Fahrenheit 451 (Score:2)
My younger sister was assigned to read Fahrenheit 451 for one of her classes. I read through it because I had never been assigned it and was curious about the storyline. Personally, I thought it sucked compared to many of the more advanced Sci-Fi stories exploring the human condition that I was reading at the time.
She had to write a report on the meaning of the book. I pointed out to her that the writer's forward actually said that he wrote the book because he was tired of his editors screwing with his b
Hes not a congressman (Score:2)
Hes a West Virginia state legislator
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Hes a West Virginia state legislator
OK. Then the legislature can butt out too. It's fine for them to set high-level standards. Micro-managing what kids read in school is a decision for somebody much closer to the process.
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I agree. At least it should originate from the state's department of education and not from the state's legislature. Regardless of how good of an idea it may be, it sets a bad precedence.
If it's okay for the legislature to pass a bill mandating that all schools teach science fiction then it becomes okay for legislature to pass a bill mandating that evolution should banned from the classroom.
You should never let a camel put his nose in your tent.
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The reason that it's not ok to ban evolution from the classroom has nothing to do with whether that decision comes for the state, local, or federal level, or from a legislature or a Board of Education. The reason it's not ok is because It's wrong because the alternative is teaching religion. (Or not teac
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My point is that once you allow a state legislature dictate what should be taught in class, you open the door for another state legislature to dictate what should not be taught in class.
And that is different than providing the budget for the department that dictates what should be taught in class in what way? Besides, this bill was sponsored by the department of eduction through the committee on education.
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When you provide a budget for the department you delegate all the authority to that department. In theory that department would be less political in nature than the legislature.
In my state the legislature rushed a bill that provides vouchers to send kids to private schools with little or no debate. I much rather have educational recommendations and mandates originate from the state's
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Hes a West Virginia state legislator
Perhaps a bit of grammar and punctuation as well.
Is there "precendence" for that?
http://entertainment.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3692373&cid=43567367 [slashdot.org]
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My actually-decent high school in Delmar, New York, had a fantasy/sci-fi elective course when I went through it back in the '90's. We got exposed to stuff like The Little Prince, Archy and Methithibel and a bunch of other stuff I'd have otherwise missed out on. Then Dad got transferred to Alabama for my senior year. Glad it wasn't sooner, so I only felt like I had one year of wasted time in a useless fucking educational system. Those jackasses didn't know
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Yeah, because all those guys are doing a great job.
It might actually be easier to do a good job if the politicians would butt out.
And on the bright side, maybe I'll get Alzheimer's disease in a few years and have that last year of high school blotted out from my memory. That'd be nice. It's a good reason to look forward to getting older. Yeah...
You'll never know what you're missing.
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Civil war? They wouldn't understand that either- down there they call it "The War of Northern Aggression".
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Well, strictly speaking it was a war of northern aggression.
The south seceeded, which was their constitution or union contract given right as far as I understand .
The north did not accept this and started the war on the south. (Hint: the "reason" of freeing slaves was invented in the third year of the war roughly when there was a stallmate and the north could not get enough recruits, slavery never was the reason for this war, or abolishing slavery)
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Your re-thinking of history is pretty much fact-free. Read the history and understand it for what it was. Get the facts and lose your hints, as they're both incorrect, and is the sort of thing that betrays the reality of the situation.
Perhaps your great grandfathers and uncles didn't fight or die in that war, and you're just pulling facts out of your hat.
Strictly speaking, your facts are both incorrect, and seditious.
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So, the south started the war?
Sorry, my facts are correct ... after all we have history classes in germany as well. But you are in so far right that indeed the south started shooting on a fortress occupied by northern troops. However the fortress was in southern territory. No idea and to lazy now to look up how and why the north could occupy it.
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I thought that was when a game of chess had to be abandoned because the board was lost under a truculously ridiculent beard.
Re:Congress can Butt Out. (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, I'd say this is the correct level of curriculum decision by legislators: Guidelines are being decided, but the actual curriculum (i.e. what books are actually read) are left up to the teachers/schools. Considering how broad "sci-fi" is as a writing field, and how arbitrary the reading choices are in pre-college English classes anyway, this is hardly forcing a massive shift in what is being taught.
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Congress has no business deciding what students should read in school. Leave that decision to:
Very true.
Ask a teacher or someone with a PhD in pedagogy. The problem is not that kids don't read enough quality literature or that they don't read a diverse enough range of genres.
The problem is that books are boring and iPads are fun and that consequently most kids don't read unless an adult is actively monitoring them and forcing them to read.
Re:Congress can Butt Out. (Score:4, Insightful)
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And the movement is towards putting *nonfiction* in English classrooms. The all-business-all-the-time ideologues want English teachers to finally drop that literature stuff (or a good chunk of time for it). This is seriously happening and the curriculum may look a lot worse in ten years. Of course the schools the rich can attend will still have all the good stuff. This is just a policy they want to foist on the rest of our kids.
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Congress has no business deciding what students should read in school. Leave that decision to:
Ummm, the guy is in the state legislature encouraging the state board of education, which is supposed to be made up of proffesional educators, to add sci fi books to the reading curriculums of the state to promote interest in math and science. It has nothing to do with congress or government over-reach.
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Sounds like someone's view of teachers is being heavily colored by their political beliefs.
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Unfortunately, most public schools pay the absolute minimum they can get away with.
My son's public school pays teachers an average of $79,787. Last year a teacher retired, and they received over 400 qualified applications before they even advertized the job vacancy. Local charter schools, which can pay market rates, have average teacher salaries below $50k, yet achieve slightly better results.
If you live in California, you can see how much your school district pays by clicking this link. [sacbee.com]
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Apparently I had the wrong idea about what a charter school is. I retract what I said earlier.
Re:A Wrinkle In Time was a great book (Score:5, Informative)
There's usually a sliding ground between them - if you look at books like the Dragonriders of Pern [wikipedia.org] you have a wide spectra.
It's also possible to look at Science Fiction from the perspective of trying an idea - which Heinlein was doing a lot - take an idea and write a story around it. Not all ideas are realistic, but it can still be a seed for a nice story.
There are also the dystopian stories like Nineteen Eighty-Four [wikipedia.org], THX 1138 [wikipedia.org] and Kallocain [wikipedia.org].
Add to it the movie and TV series Max Headroom [maxheadroom.com], which really is interesting since it looks much like the future we are heading to. "This is Edison Carter, Live and Direct...".
Science Fiction is a great package for "Thinking outside the box" stories.
Re:A Wrinkle In Time was a great book (Score:4, Informative)
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I recall reading Animal Farm, 1984, and Brave New World all in the same year as curriculum. I think it was Grade 9.
Did A Wrinkle in Time and Dune on my own dime.
Couldn't agree more with the politician. I think I am mostly just surprised that a good idea came from a politician. He must have good staff or something.
Then again, unless they tackle the whole creationism thing down there, it's a bit of a mess. I mean trying to promote science and math by getting kids excited about science fiction on one hand and
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And yet, sadly, there are some people who cannot get into the HHGTTG...they read the first few chapters, completely skipping over the humor, and think it awfully dull. I have known two such individuals, and I don't think even therapy can save them now...
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Ha... good news, West Virginia introduces âoegrade-appropriate science fiction literature" into the curriculum. Bad news: it's "The Hunger Games" trilogy.