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?

[http://users.livejournal.com/_candide_/]

BTW: After responding, I looked up Booker T. Washington and Louis Brandeis.

I did vaguely recollect Mr. Washington's association with the early African-American Civil Rights Movement. I'd forgotten that he'd helped found Tuskegee University. And I never realized the extent of his work towards educating African-Americans in the latter half of the 19^th Century.

I dimly recalled that Louis Brandeis was Jewish and thought that he had to fight the rampant antisemitism of his day to achieve what he did. But I didn't remember at all that, "what he did," was become the first Jewish Supreme Court Justice, at the beginning of the 20^th Century. I never knew that he was a child of immigrants, or that he completed a law degree at Harvard at age 20. Nor did I know that he took so many cases, for free, backing, "the little guy," against the powerful industrial and banking interests of the Gilded Age (and later).


Both men are, indeed, worth of admiration for their deeds — and equally worthy of admiration for their intellectual prowess.

Re: Why is there such an aversion to thinking?

[shunra.livejournal.com]

Indeed - and the point is, they are actually admired for their intellectual stature, as well the admirable deeds. More in the other response, which I'm sweating over, as it is an important subject and one that touches on a core issue of our society in the U.S.

(And thanks for looking them up; I do love their stories and it feels good to know that I have been the catalyst for further sharing of them.)

Re: Why is there such an aversion to thinking?

[http://users.livejournal.com/_candide_/]

Of course I was going to look them up. I knew who they were, once. And it would've driven me crazy until I refreshed my memory. ^_^

Re: Why is there such an aversion to thinking?

[shunra.livejournal.com]

::grin::