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Prison Planet – December 30 2005:
Children in Washington State are being given ‘Patriotism tests’ which are completely unrelated to their studies. The paper gauges whether or not the student shows fealty to the power of the state and whether the student believes in the right to overthrow a corrupt government.
Bizarre stuff. I hope this turns out to be an isolated incident or a joke. Utterly scary if true.
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I think the more interesting part is what the “answers” are supposed to be.
Before anyone posts it, chances are Canada doesn’t want you. If you’re very wealthy and plan to open a business and hire Canadians they’ll take you.
K……… I have alot of family in Washington… On both sides of the state… They know nothing of this….
Is’nt Seattle supposted to be a Liberal bastion?
All that Starbucks has pulled their pony tails tighter!
An image posted by a reader of the blog, with out a city or school being mentioned? Sounds like a hoax to me.
Strange, I could see this happening in a Social Studies class, but English?! Fantastic, now I’m even MORE scared of my government.
I agree with Dave Drews. It looks like the opionnaire was graded ..with a line drawn to the left of the “wrong” answers, and an A or D to the right of each question indicating what the “right” answers should be. Scary.
I don’t know if this is a hoax, but the link goes to one of Alex Jones’s websites, and if you don’t know who he is, look him up. He’s one of the preminent kooks of our times.
Well, one of the dangerous aspects of placing the government in charge of education is that people are only taught what the government wants them to be taught. Now this could be said about all education, but it’s more dangerous to the freedom of a society when the government is allowed to decide what children are taught and not taught.
There have already been cases appearing recently where large chunks of early American history, and study of early American beliefs and ideals are covered either very briefly or not at all. It’s not hard to imagine a country moving away from its founding principles when those principles are no longer taught to children in school.
It is amazing how you people will believe anything that supports your view of this country becoming the next Nazi Germany. This is an obvious hoax, but you post this crap anyway. Why?
“A reader from Washington State writes us to highlight a questionnaire paper handed out to her daughter and the rest of her 10th grade class.”
One reader? And based upon this wonderful intel, you libel the entire state of Washington? The credibility of dvorak.org is getting pretty close to zero!
“Well, one of the dangerous aspects of placing the government in charge of education is that people are only taught what the government wants them to be taught.”
If true then how do you explain the story of a school teacher who made all her student write anti war letters.
“If true then how do you explain the story of a school teacher who made all her student write anti war letters.”
An individual teacher imposing her agenda on her students, and other isolated incidences, has an entirely different issue from have the government controlling the curriculum.
The tendency of people with power is to want more power. This is unavoidable and recognized truth that drove the desire to place Constitutional restraints on the government. What better way to increase the size and power of government than to have it in charge of educating all children? Once you have taught a few generations of citizens that the government is the solution to all problems, while de-emphasizing the self-sufficient nature of early Americans, you will be almost certain to have an exceptance of an ever-expanding governmental power, married with the restring of individual freedoms those powers require.
Hoax or not, there is a weird mixed message in this test. As for Washington State politics, Seattle (and the surrounding towns) is the only bastion of liberalism/libertarianism. The rest of the State is old-fashioned Bible thumping conservatives often of the Idaho survivalist extreme. That said they generally do not like Bush anyway.
This doesn’t smell like a hoax, it smells like someone is doing a sociology study or something on the side as a prelude to a book or a research paper. Of course if we were to take “Smiths” advice we wouldn’t run it. Needless to say, we are running what we think is interesting whether stiffs like Smith like it or not. Reality sorts itself out by itself as these events unfold.
Looks like a hoax to me. A google search gave a half million hits. The first 25 all seemed to have the exact same text so I guess they are just copies of the original. If it was real, then I would expect at least one MSM to have picked it up and some variation of the text.
paul t
I am unfamiliar with zim’s History text books. What is wrong in them? I couldn’t find any history texts by anyone named zim during a quick search.
I am in the public school system in Washington. This is… not something we are taught. I have taken a similar test, however, the entire point of the test was part of a unit teaching us how to detect bias in texts. We then had a discussion on our opinions. It was not a “Patriotism Test”. What probably happened was that some nut got his hands on one of these tests used to stir debates, and misinterpreted it.
Also, the handwriting on that test is WAY to good to belong to your average student.
“This doesn’t smell like a hoax, it smells like someone is doing a sociology study or something on the side as a prelude to a book or a research paper.”
Let’s try a little logic here. There are four possibilities stemming from the information in the blog.
1. The student fabricated the story for unknown reasons.
2. The mother fabricated the story for unknown reasons.
3. The blog fabricated the story to generate controversy and hits.
4. The school did indeed submit such a survey to its 10th grade students.
So just using straight probability, there is only one chance in four of this story actually being true. Given the total absence of any outside corroboration (do you really think CNN would fail to cover it was it true?) and the nature of the website reporting it (prisonplanet.com), I apply my own subjective intelligence and conclude: hoax.
Now maybe your threshold for incredulity is far below mine. Or maybe you just wanted to generate your own hits by posting a likely fabrication. But why did you slander an entire state for the alleged incident involving one school?
“Washington State Schools Give Weird Patriotism Tests to Students?”
Had you simply dropped the plural, I wouldn’t have had a problem with the “interesting” post. By expanding the alleged incident to the entire state and then including the Nazi reference photo, your site was deliberately sending its own political message based upon what I perceive as a lie. I guess that makes me a stiff.
As a side issue, John, why did you place my name in quotes? Do you refer to all those who comment in quotes — “Mike,” “dvorak reader,” “Jim,” “Rob,” “darkmane” — or were you inferring (LOL) that I was hiding behind a fictitious moniker?
Smith is my name. I could include my first, but you still wouldn’t know who I am. However, someone at work might and I would hate to flag the IT police. I suppose I really could just sign in under a fictitious name … Steve, is “Imafish” available?
How funny that so many people dismiss this as a hoax or untruth and as such valueless when we are now in a war based upon false information provided to us by our government. The book “1984” was nonfiction but it still has value as a warning and a reminder that the general populace are easily manipulated and you should be concerned and weary of all attempts of your government to exert more influence and control over your life. Just think of it as a flashing yellow light or smelling salts unless the facts come to prove something more credible or sinister.
What’s most ironic is that in the early days of our Constitution, the right answers would have been to overthrow a bad nonrepresentative government but now anything less than full support of everything the government does is considered negative. The right answers all depend on who is asking the question and not the question itself.
In all honesty this is a liberal blog. They do allow posts with other views. but mostly to riducule them
Hey Smith, read the post just before yours. It’s probably the actual rationale…a point of discussion. Don’t get your panties in a bunch.
I am leaning toward Smith’s idea that this should not have been published. In my opinion, for whatever it is worth. It appears that everyone is getting upset over nothing.
A well known fable is called Peter and the Wolf. As I’m sure everyone is aware of the story, I won’t repeat it. The moral of the story is to NOT claim there is a danger just for a whim. It might backfire on you. An example of this was, I believe in 2004, when the Attorney General, Ashcroft advised us that there was a terror alert. He suggested we barricade ourselves in a room, cover it with plastic sheeting and cover all cracks with duct tape. As soon as it became apparent that this would asphyxiate you in a short time, depending on the room size did people start realizing that this was a farce. Now people will not believe any warning from the government unless they see actual terrorists outside their window.
By publishing a hoax, it lessens the impact of the true violations of our civil liberties. Soon, people will ignore true infringements of their freedoms because they won’t believe it or have become too numb to care.
The subject matter should be why would someone make up a story like this in the first place. Save your wrath for the true stories.
Pat, in retrospect you are correct. But we just loved that picture!
“In all honesty this is a liberal blog. They do allow posts with other views. but mostly to riducule them”
Don’t I know that, but still I try and put my view forward as much as possible even though I’m in the minority here.
One: Much ado about nothing…I think that’s a famous quote by some one famous, I’ve no idea who, my education in the reform schools was lacking.
Two: Americans will argue with a stop sign, and frequently do; check the highway fatality rates.
Three: Although there is a certain degree of rot in American society, it’s not just us, the whole world is going quietly dotty as the awful truth of petroleum depletion sinks in.
What the hell were we talking about?
A google search for “Politics, Patriotism, and Protest Opinionnaire” reveals this “quiz” in lots and lots of places. Many of them are used to generate discussion for the play Julious Caesar and to try to understand if the actions in the play were justified or not (I don’t want to spoil a 300+ year old play based on centuries older events!)
So teachers ARE giving the test! …just not for the reasons that the conspiracy people suggest. Of course just because the intended context is for Julius Caesar doesn’t mean that every teacher uses it for that reason…
“teyecoon, what, i wonder, leads you to believe that the book “1984″, first published in 1949, is nonfiction? besides your unremarkable credulity?”
Paul, my boo boo as I meant fiction but since the book is about the “future”, you can never really be sure that it won’t have a basis in reality. 😉 BTW, “credulity”? I didn’t say the article was true so your really stretching to justify this.