More monkey business from Liberal Street Fighter

Kansas, Where “Ignorant” is the New “Educated”

Kansas: People say that it’s flat. But to me it seems to be going downhill.

Somewhere right now in Kansas, there is a little child who may grow up to be a brilliant scientist. She may make fantastic contributions to science, and future generations may remember her as one of the brightest intellectual lights of her time. But if so, it will be despite the public education that she received in Kansas, because today six dimwits on the state’s Board of Education voted to lower the standards for how science is taught.

Needless to say, I share John Rennie’s disgust. Better yet, the School Board also decreed that they were changing the definition of “science”:

If George Orwell were alive, I think he’d agree this development is not only good but doubleplusgood. Because just teaching kids the right answers is an unbearable infringement on academic freedom. Just think of the advantages that those Kansas students will have when they go up against their peers from other states and other parts of the world, who only know the accepted facts and theories and think that logical consistency is desirable in science.

The standards state that high school students must understand major evolutionary concepts. But they also declare that some concepts have been challenged in recent years by fossil evidence and molecular biology.

The challenged concepts cited include the basic Darwinian theory that all life had a common origin and the theory that natural chemical processes created the building blocks of life.

In addition,  the board rewrote the definition of science, so that it is no longer limited to the search for natural explanations of phenomena.

It wasn’t enough for them to undermine the teaching of biology by falsifying a scientific controversy over evolution. No, the Board of Education went as far as to redefine what science is: it’s no longer just a search for natural explanations for natural phenomena. Now it’s a search for… well, that’s a bit hard to say. Any sort of explanation, apparently. Pixies, ghosts, telekinesis, auras, ancient astronauts, excesses of choleric humor, they all seem to be fair game in the interest of “academic freedom.” Oh, and God, of course. The Board might not say that because it could get them into trouble with the Supreme Court, but can anyone say with a straight face that getting God into the science classes isn’t the goal of the people who pushed for these changes?

There is a sick willingness to WALLOW in ignorance and idiocy at work here, but this type of thing has a long history in this country. The Bible-thumping Republican Theocrats demonstrate an instinctive understanding that in order to swell their ranks they need the next generation to be stupid and superstitious too.

As PZ Myers puts it in Goodbye Kansas on the blog Pharyngula:

Goodbye, Kansas. I don’t expect to see many of your sons and daughters at my university in coming years, unless the teachers of your state refuse to support the outrageous crapola their school board has foisted on them. I hope the rest of the country moves on, refusing to join you in your stagnant backwater of 18th century hokum.

Luckily, just yesterday, the voters in Dover, PA toss 8 Republican school board members out on their thick little heads:

DOVER, Pa. – Voters came down hard Tuesday on school board members who backed a statement on intelligent design being read in biology class, ousting eight Republicans and replacing them with Democrats who want the concept stripped from the science curriculum.

The election unfolded amid a landmark federal trial involving the Dover public schools and the question of whether intelligent design promotes the Bible’s view of creation. Eight Dover families sued, saying it violates the constitutional separation of church and state.

Dover’s school board adopted a policy in October 2004 that requires ninth-graders to hear a prepared statement about intelligent design before learning about evolution in biology class.

Note that this triumph for modernity and reason happened in PENNSYVANIA, the very state where the illustrious leaders of the Democratic Party insist that we have to run our own religious nut to take back the Senate from the Republican religious nut. Perhaps they should take a look at this school board election and talk to the good folks of Dover.