UC system sued

[A.E. Brownstein]

I don't know anything about the particular classes at issue in this law 
suit. But I do know that in the student planners at the junior high schools 
and high school in California where I live, each class will be identified 
as to whether it is on the UC or CSU approved course list, whether approval 
is pending, or whether it is not approved. Two years of lab science courses 
in the Life and Physical Sciences are required. And not everything 
satisfies UC criteria. For example, Davis high School offers a course 
called Physical Science. It is described this way. "Physical Science is a 
full year course encompassing the fundamental concepts of physics, 
chemistry, earth science and astronomy. Although this course covers many of 
the same topics as regular physics and regular chemistry, it places less 
emphasis on mathematics and more emphasis on the practical applications of 
science in today's world. Currently, this is the only high school course 
that includes earth science curriculum. Course work will consist of 
lectures, demonstrations, laboratory experiments, homework and 
discussions." This course is not approved for UC.

alan Brownstein


At 02:16 PM 8/28/2005 -0400, you wrote:
>In a message dated 8/27/2005 10:11:26 PM Pacific Standard Time, 
>JMHACLJ at aol.com writes:
>As to "inventing irrelevant hypotheticals," you are simply being bombastic 
>in the hopes, I suppose, of dodging the very real and very obvious other 
>sorts of judgments that can be justified just as equally.  This is a list 
>related to the discussion of law and religion.  It is mainly populated by 
>professors of the subject.  Professors of the subject love to reason by 
>analogy.  If you think that the hypotheticals are irrelevant, you might 
>offer some basis for saying so.  I chose them because I think that they 
>help point the way to one possible problem with the innately stupid choice 
>made by the UC system:  bias.
>
>And if you think that pedagogical value of courses is determined by 
>employment of universally adopted approaches (the evolutionary presumption 
>among soft sciences), how will you go about deciding the pedagogical 
>values question in those non-ID courses, in the English literature, 
>history, and civics courses?
>
>Underneath some of my rhetoric there is a hard edge because I know that we 
>begin simply by adopting rules we think fairly supported by our role as 
>guardian of public institutions.  It is only later that we begin issuing 
>bits of cloth to targeted populations to insure that our exclusion of them 
>from public life is uniformly observed.
>
>Jim Henderson
>Senior Counsel
>ACLJ
>
>To me, this lawsuit revolves around two factual questions that, at this 
>point, do not merit overheated rhetoric about "issuing bits of cloth to 
>targeted populations." According to 
><http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/education/20050827-9999-1n27school.html>the 
>news story I read, the Calvary Chapel Christian School of Murrieta is 
>teaching classes with titles like: "Christianity's Influence on American 
>History,"  "Christianity and Morality in American Literature," and 
>"Special Providence: American Government." The two factual questions are:
>
>1. Do these courses meet the 
><http://pathstat1.ucop.edu/servlet/StoneGround?templateName=course_descriptions/subjectapproved>objective 
>criteria of the UC system's 
><http://pathstat1.ucop.edu/ag/a-g/a-g_reqs.html>"a-g subject matter 
>requirements;" and
>
>2. Has the UC system selectively enforced these requirements against the 
>plaintiffs while letting similar "narrowly focused" courses pass.
>
>If the answer to either factual question is yes, UC should lose. But, 
>according to 
><http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/education/20050827-9999-1n27school.html>the 
>news story I read, both these factual questions are in dispute. It looks 
>to me like these factual questions can be resolved by litigation long 
>before anyone need worry about  "issuing bits of cloth to targeted 
>populations."
>
>Allen Asch
>_______________________________________________
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