Ignoring the Lipstick Wars for the moment...

[dianeduane]

(sigh) It’s hard to ignore the political noise right now, but as it gets noisier and each side spins the other one (or itself) as hard as it can, I prefer to go back to the earliest available sources to start understanding candidates’ behavior with an eye to projecting how they might possibly behave in the future. I find newspaper citations, especially local ones, can be a useful resource.

With this in mind: this document (a Democrat-prepared opposition document) found at Politico.com contains numerous excerpted details from local Alaskan newspapers regarding various aspects of Sarah Palin’s early political life. Leaving the source aside, and ignoring the bullet points on the first page, this doc is useful in that it gathers a lot of cites together. Does it have its own bias? Doubtless. However, it’s still interesting preliminary reading.

(ETA: This brought me up short --

Asked if she was offended by the phrase "Under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, Palin responded, "Not on your life. If it was good enough for the Founding Fathers, it's good enough for me and I'll fight in defense of our Pledge of Allegiance."

Did she seriously not know that that phrase was only added in 1956? "What do they teach them in these schools...?")

Tags: Sarah+Palin, history

Comments

[gmh.livejournal.com]

Or, for that matter, that the Pledge itself only dates back to 1892, by which time the Founding Fathers were long since wormfood.

[lady-autumnstar.livejournal.com]

"What do they teach them in these schools...?")

Not much. That's why my husband and I home schooled our children. We took a good look at the textbooks and realized that American history was being changed to suit current political correctness. Then our son's fourth grade teacher told us that it didn't matter that he couldn't write a coherent sentence and our daughters couldn't do basic math and decided we could do a better job of teaching them. Our daughters graduated with honors and our son is in his junior year of college, so we must have done a pretty good job of it.

But no, school children aren't taught anything about the Pledge of Allegiance or the Constitution.

[ghotitank.livejournal.com]

"our daughters couldn't do basic"

My daughter had failed a number of math test in fourth grade. The teacher's reaction was to give "certain students" easier test, so as not to damage their self image.

My wife and I argued against that, wanting a true gauge of her abilities. So the teacher suggested that maybe she could not see the board, and moved her towards the front of the room.

We took her to the eye doctor. Turns out she was near sighted and could not see the board. A pair of glasses later and she shot to the head of the class.

[lady-autumnstar.livejournal.com]

I had that same problem when I was in school. However, since we took them for regular checkups, that wasn't the problem. We had also run into the "we'll damage their self esteem" line when I told a teacher that if my child failed, she was to put an "F" on the paper.

Believe me, this was not something we did as a whim.

[agawa-jean.livejournal.com]

I used to babysit for a family once a week, for several years in a row, and their oldest child had this problem. She was autistic, and when the school discovered that, rather than give her more support they took her out of regular classes and put her in the "Learning Centre" where she did sheets of work at whatever level she could do. Even when she went to regular classes all of her work was determined by the Centre and was incredibly easy.

This got to the point that when she was in grade 8, she could still only do the math work of a 2nd grader (she was put in the program in grade 2) and the English work of a 4th or 5th grader.
Her mother has been trying to teach her as well, but she's a single working mother with two children and very little free time, and she can't for a world of trying convince the school to actually help her daugher more.

This was in Canada, not the US, but we certainly have the same problems up here and especially on the East Coast.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

The scary thing is that not being able to see the board wasn't the *first* hypothesis considered (particularly by the teacher, who is after all supposed to know something about teaching children).

[jerel.livejournal.com]

When I was in school during the Dark Ages, we had a vision screening every year. If you couldn't read the eye chart, the school secretary would call your parents and say "Hey, your kid might need glasses."

And giving easier tests to some kids? That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. If the kid can't master the material, you find alternate ways to teach it to them--extra practice, one-on-one help, software, manipulatives, peer tutoring...

There are times when I want to take large portions of my colleagues--I'm a teacher myself--and bonk them on the head.

[ameretrifle.livejournal.com]

My school had vision screenings too; that's how my vision problem got caught. First or second grade. Which means about... '94-'95.

So I don't know what's wrong with that school district. (Though Lord knows I'm not saying mine didn't have problems of its own...) I hope they aren't all getting that far gone...

[ailbhe]

It's hardly all in Plato, now, is it?

Apparently not teaching much

[ghotitank.livejournal.com]

In a training class yesterday, we were discussing the Hadron Collider.

Before giving it up as a lost cause, I was trying to convince two class mates that MAGNETISM and GRAVITY were not the same thing. One guy was (and still is) convinced that it was the Earth's magnetic field that draws in asteroids. All those craters on the moon? Drawn in by the moon's magnetic field. I explained that the moon does not have a magnetic field, but I was told I was wrong because of all the craters as evidence.

[occams_pyramid]

The trouble with being under god is that the spaghetti sauce tends to drip on you.

[mhaithaca.livejournal.com]

Outstanding. :-)

But... I'm willing to give Palin the benefit of the doubt and assume that she was referring to the phrase "under God" being good enough for the Founding Fathers, not to that phrase's inclusion in the Pledge. The earliest use I'm aware of is in Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, but it's not that much of a stretch to assume the phrase itself is older.

[gmh.livejournal.com]

There's any amount of writing by Jefferson and his friends that suggests that they'd have been pretty firmly opposed to 'under God' in any form recognisable to the US today; he was a Deist, rather than a Christian per se, and the language of the Declaration, as a compromise document is chosen to make no reference to any particular faith or lack thereof.

For example:

"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and 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 and State."

(from an 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptist Association).

[mhaithaca.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm not going to agree with her, but I'm willing to give her the benefit of the doubt and assume that she's wrong, not stupid.

[lunza.livejournal.com]

She's a young-Earth creationist. 'Nuff said.

[keristor.livejournal.com]

Mmmm, spahetti sauce [drool]...

Tell me again why that is a bad thing?

[jerel.livejournal.com]

I know, right? It's proof you've been touched by his noodly appendage!

[dewline.livejournal.com]

She may know it, but that doesn't preclude her wanting it to be disbelieved.

[seiberwing.livejournal.com]

I don't know if this woman is actually stupid, but she is very, very ignorant.

[qob.livejournal.com]

Or she could have been saying something more subtle. That since the founding fathers had no problem with including mention of God in the foundational documents, she had no trouble with it in the Pledge.

FYI, source of quote

[qob.livejournal.com]

http://eagleforumalaska.blogspot.com/

[thelauderdale.livejournal.com]

I'm not so surprised she doesn't realize the phrase was added in 1956 - lots of people seem to be clueless about that. That she seems to believe the Pledge itself dates back to the Founding Fathers when its first drafts were in the 1890s is more surprising to me...

[keristor.livejournal.com]

To a lot of people the 1890s and the 1770s were both just "a long time ago"[1], they don't really understand much difference between them. Sad, that they are so ignorant, but a fact of life, to most people anything which happened before they (or their surviving relatives) were born is lumped together as 'history'.

[1] To me they are both 'recent', being well after Elizabethe Queen of England died...

[giza.livejournal.com]

I saw somewhere else last night, some commented that "Sarah Palin makes Dan Quayle look like Stephen Hawking". Ouch. :-P

[stlscape.livejournal.com]

not know that that phrase was only added in 1956?

FWIW, she may not have. I didn't learn that until I was well into my forties.

"What do they teach them in these schools...?"

Not a whole lot, in my opinion. I graduated from the top school system in the metro area, and it was so far below the system I'd been in previously (in a different area of the US) that it wasn't even funny. The difference was very noticeable to me as a student.

I'm still located in the same school district, but sent my daughter to private school because of how low the standards of the still-one-of-the-top-systems-in-the-area have fallen since *my* day.

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

I think very few Americans know that, actually. :/ And the ones who know are not the ones the others want to listen to, honestly.

[azbound.livejournal.com]

Eisenhower isn't a founding father?

I'm crushed.

[tuilelindowen.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much for posting this. I am old enough to remember learning the Pledge of Allegiance (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pledge_of_Allegiance) when it did not include the words "under God" and yet young enough at the time to feel violated when it was added, not because of any moral conviction, but because as a child it just interrupted the flow of something I understood and recited in school every day. "One nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all" just flowed naturally, with words and a concept I could understand and I got very upset when we had to interrupt that phrase.

I also find it interesting that so many people are unaware of the Jefferson Bible (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_Bible) . When I mention it I have been called an outright liar.

[madwriter.livejournal.com]

The first time I ever heard about the "under God" being added was when I was a kid and listening to a 1976 recording of Red Skelton reciting his annotated the Pledge. He pointed out that "under God" didn't appear in the Pledge when he recited it as a boy.

His recitation is still by far my favorite, too.

[keristor.livejournal.com]

As far as I am aware your post is the first time I've heard of the Jefferson Bible (I do have an excuse, being a Brit in the UK). Fascinating, now I want a copy...

[jaxomsride.livejournal.com]

I'm sure if the Republican Party continues in power that is what the "new" History books will include.