The early days of third world country...
Sep. 27th, 2010 08:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsIn 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.
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.
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Hilarious
Date: 2010-09-29 05:25 am (UTC)And of course, nothing else really matters. It doesn't matter how good or bad the curriculum is, if the teacher sucks. And most teachers in the US suck.
Only morons think that the morons on the Texas State Board of Education are the problem. The National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers are the problem.
And who gives them the power? Who do THEY give power to, in return?
Yeah, them. You know who they are.
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Re: Hilarious
Date: 2010-09-29 05:37 am (UTC)I pride myself on continuously questioning my assumptions, and in this case, I didn't do that well enough.
My mistaken assumption in this case was that the dominance of education by the State was some kind of metaphysical given. It isn't, of course.
So I'd like to revise my comments by pointing out that the even more important problem is that most parents don't accept or fulfill their responsibility to manage the education of their own children.
If more parents did the right thing, it wouldn't really matter that teachers suck.
But of course, most parents have been told that the State is responsible for raising their children, and once the society has been through a couple of generations of this kind of brainwashing, it's pretty much too late.
And we all know who's behind this whole Nanny State thing-- teachers and the evil politicians who support them.
So I'm really back to the same problem, but I think I got there more honestly this time.
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Re: Hilarious
Date: 2010-09-29 10:51 pm (UTC)Re: Hilarious
Date: 2010-09-30 04:04 am (UTC)Do you think the Texas State Board of Education is the biggest problem facing US education?
Or are you confessing that you're ON the Texas State Board of Education?
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