The early days of third world country...

[elfs]

In this morning's newsfeed, two articles back-to-back only showed me that we are in the early days of becoming a third-world country. The first article is from USA Today, and it stares us in the face and we flinch, terrified. Entitled Poor science education impairs U.S. economy, the article shows that science education has declined over the past five years and there's nothing in the pipeline intended to improve it. 49% of Americans don't know how long it takes for the Earth to revolve around the sun; US mathematics teaching is 48th in the world; China has replaced the US as the world's top exported of high technology.

And we are doing nothing to turn that around: we are arrogant in our assumption of exceptionalism, we are cowardly in our unwillingness to face the truth, we are self-destructive in our tolerance for foolishness.

Foolishness like the second article, Speakers challenge Darwin’s theory, in which Southern Methodist University's campus newspaper reports on how Stephen Meyer moderated a panel among Intelligent Design proponents without any input from a competing viewpoint, and ended with this quote from a student at the business school: "We can have a positive future if we can convince people that Darwin's theory is just a theory like any other and not a fact."

It's a fact and a theory, just as gravity is a fact and a theory. Just as chemistry is a fact and a theory. Germs are a fact and a theory.

I'd like to ask the business student: "I can point to several successful pharmaceutical, zoological and agricultural research programs that depended upon Darwin's theory of evolution being true in order to be successful. These research programs have resulted in new businesses and billions of dollars in revenue. Can you point to a single similar initiave that depended upon Darwin's theory of evolution being incorrect or incomplete?"

Nobody can.

SMU is an accredited university. It's motto is "The Truth Shall Set You Free." Today, SMU administrators ought to be ashamed of themselves for allowing this kind of tripe. They'd never allow yoga instructors to claim they can levitate, or acupuncture woomeisters to give a symposium on how they cure cancer, and that's the level of respectibility "Intelligent Design" deserves.

Comments

Re: Why is there such an aversion to thinking?

[elfs.livejournal.com]

I think the answer is obvious:

When Ronald "Facts are stupid things" Reagan was in office, the last death blows to the economic well-being of the Soviet Union were enacted. It took a few years for something that big to finally keel over, but it did a year while his successor, George H. W. Bush, was in office. After that we had ten years of relatively little challenge: a very successful combat operation in Kuwait and the Clinton technology bubble basically led to an attitude on the part of the American people that hard work wasn't really necessary, that The System could take care of itself without input, and that we never needed to look outside our own borders for potential challengers. We'd taught the Commies and the Ayrabs a lesson, and that was that.

After 9/11, we were told that The Government Would Take Care of Everything, and all we had to do was "go shopping." That's it. We stopped being citizens and became consumers, propping up an economic system that is spiraling out of control. Half our country spends its days being scared of bogeyman, and when it's not being scared, it's being angry because the other half isn't scared enough.

Michael Leeden of the American Enterprise Institute (a Koch-brothers funded noise tank) once wrote, "Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business." We did that in Iraq. After 9/11, we did it to Afghanistan and again to Iraq. We've become bullies, kicking around the smaller nations to mask our own fear. Bullies don't need to study: we steal other kids' lunch money and class notes, and turn them in as they were are own.

But the first Iraq war was 19 years ago. The world has moved on. And now the bully at 19 looks at the world and realizes he doesn't have the skills needed to prosper.

Re: Why is there such an aversion to thinking?

[invisogoth.livejournal.com]

I believe that there is a much more simple answer to the question why we are adverse to thinking. We no longer teach the basic tools of critical thinking and rhetoric in public schools. Why? i suspect that it is because most kids who learn them use them first on their parents. I know I did. We now have a generation of parents who literally do not want their children to be "smarter" than they are. It frightens them. Makes the kids too unruly at best and leads them to thoughts that they, the parents, disapprove of at worst. "Muslims are people too."
The other side of this is that if rhetoric is "too hard" for Johnny than it needs to be removed from the requirements because Johnny needs to go to a good college.

Re: Why is there such an aversion to thinking?

[invisogoth.livejournal.com]

to add on to this, as the tools of critical thinking are no longer taught, our public discourse gets worse largely because no one calls the speakers on it. Joe McCarthy was a great demagogue, but Edward R Murrow was a critical thinker. :)

Re: Why is there such an aversion to thinking?

[shunra.livejournal.com]

That's a very tempting thought, except I don't think we're a herd - we're all pretty much capable of thinking.

Avoiding active thought cannot be laid at the feet of either Ray-gun or Bush. The reverse may be true, though.

And somehwere - somewhen - we-the-people came to the conclusion that it was somehow ok to let government do the thinking for us. (At least it doesn't spend tax dollars, or something.)

Being fiercely individualistic, that strikes me as a disastrous decision.