Is this Constitutional?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Charlemagne_III
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
C

Charlemagne_III

Guest
The California state assembly has passed a law to require the teaching of the significance of Obama’s election to the presidency as a requirement. The law was unanimously approved.

Is this Constitutional?

If it is legal, is it the start of a avalanche of state and eventually federal laws that will require teachers to teach “this 'n that” as legislators, rather than educators, see fit?
 
Charlemagne_III said:
The California state assembly has passed a law to require the teaching of the significance of Obama’s election to the presidency as a requirement. The law was unanimously approved.

Is this Constitutional?

If it is legal, is it the start of a avalanche of state and eventually federal laws that will require teachers to teach “this 'n that” as legislators, rather than educators, see fit?
Click to expand...
Unfortunately, education has long been governed by people with little educational knowledge…legislatures and school boards. Things like this are what we get. President Obama’s election is significant, but could be covered very quickly and without legislative action.
 
Charlemagne_III said:
The California state assembly has passed a law to require the teaching of the significance of Obama’s election to the presidency as a requirement. The law was unanimously approved.

Is this Constitutional?
Click to expand...
Since this is a state issue, and not a federal one, it is clearly Constitutional.
If it is legal, is it the start of a avalanche of state and eventually federal laws that will require teachers to teach “this 'n that” as legislators, rather than educators, see fit?
Click to expand...
There is a great chasm between what the states can do and what the federal government can require the states to do. It doesn’t follow that if a state can impose a law on its citizens, that the federal government can do the same.
 
Charlemagne_III said:
The California state assembly has passed a law to require the teaching of the significance of Obama’s election to the presidency as a requirement. The law was unanimously approved.

Is this Constitutional?

If it is legal, is it the start of a avalanche of state and eventually federal laws that will require teachers to teach “this 'n that” as legislators, rather than educators, see fit?
Click to expand...
Unfortunately, the government has been dictating teaching for a long time. I don’t see anything unconstitutional with it, they are providing the education after all. Even though I don’t think he is doing a very good job, it is historically significant that he was elected as the first black president.
 
What is significant about his election? That he was a negro made leader in a country still coming to grips with its demographics, or that he followed a long line of lame duck choices that has led America further to the left than at any other time in its history?
Strangely, no matter what the victors try to teach, historical truth has a nasty worm like virtue of always crawling out at the most inappropriate times.
 
I don’t understand your question. Do you think that the election of the first African-American president doesn’t have civil rights significance or that it is wrong to teach students that it was significant?

And you do realize that you are incorrect in saying that the bill would “require” that educators teach that his election showed how much race relations have improved but only "encourage that it did, don’t you?

Why do you think that the bill passed unanimously, with bi-partisan support?
 
Rhubarb said:
Why would it be unconstitutional?
Click to expand...
Legislators interfering with the free speech of the academic world to decide the elements of academic freedom.

Why not also pass legislation requiring that teachers teach the significance of Darwin in the science class, or the significance of Karl Marx in the history class, etc. etc.? I guess you get my drift. Isn’t it supposed to be the perogative of scholars to decide what is significant enough to be taught? Why do they need a legislature to tell them what to teach? And why wouldn’t most students already know that Obama was the first black (actually mullatto) president ever elected.

And isn’t this really political correctness run amok, as it will in the state of California?
 
Charlemagne_III said:
Legislators interfering with the free speech of the academic world to decide the elements of academic freedom.
Click to expand...
You can back up one step. The writers of the Constitution did not intend there to be a right to an education in the first place.
 
TheWarriorMonk said:
You can back up one step. The writers of the Constitution did not intend there to be a right to an education in the first place.
Click to expand...
The right to Free Speech has nothing to do with academic freedom? :confused:

How far away is the moment when, if you let the legislature say we want this taught, they will also be able to say we don’t want this taught?
 
Charlemagne_III said:
The California state assembly has passed a law to require the teaching of the significance of Obama’s election to the presidency as a requirement. The law was unanimously approved.

Is this Constitutional?

If it is legal, is it the start of a avalanche of state and eventually federal laws that will require teachers to teach “this 'n that” as legislators, rather than educators, see fit?
Click to expand...
Can you cite the roll call? I doubt it was unanimous. My assemblyman would not have voted for this.

Either way, it is constitutional, unless you are referring to the California State Constitution which I am not as familiar with.
 
yellow8yellowM said:
Can you cite the roll call? I doubt it was unanimous. My assemblyman would not have voted for this.

Either way, it is constitutional, unless you are referring to the California State Constitution which I am not as familiar with.
Click to expand...
So it is now Constitutional for the state assembly to deprive teachers of the right to decide what emphasis will be given to what lessons in the classroom?

How does this not impact on Academic Freedom as an extension of Free Speech?
 
Thomas Jefferson, when he was on the Board of the University of Virginia, let it be known that Federalists need not aply for teaching positions. This abrogation of academic freedom was corrected when James Madison influenced Jefferson to drop that position as a violation of the faculty’s academic freedom.

Now the California Assembly wants to tell teachers what to teach and what emphasis to place on what they teach? How is that any different from Jefferson’s arrogant imposition of his will on the faculty at the University of Virginia?
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top