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Hank Rearden wrote:

If you want to teach your kids ... YEC, then either do it in your spare time or send them to a private school that will do so.

Actually, the right have beaten you on the punch to that one. At least the ones that aren't digging the control aspect are.

Dump the religious worldview of Evolution from the science classroom. I bet if ceasefires are declared and both pull, we can probably get back to teaching some science and progressing as a smurfing nation.

Farmerkev wrote:

Hank Rearden wrote:

The crazy-Right in this country want the cake (public education) and to eat it too (i.e., to control it).  Moral of the above news story, and many like it...it ain't gonna happen.

Well if we're going to be fair, the right sees some of the things being taught in public school as nutso leftwing stuff getting shoved down their throats.
Neither side is totally innocent here.

Seems like a good reason to have school vouchers so every parent can decide what kind of school they want to send their kid to.

bedstuy wrote:

So if I have kids and I want to teach them that red is really green I should get a voucher?  OK

If you can find an accreditted school to teach that. Good luck finding one.

mentholiptus wrote:

Farmerkev wrote:

Well if we're going to be fair, the right sees some of the things being taught in public school as nutso leftwing stuff...

Like, what....evolution?



Didn't these "creationist" zealot goofballs also claim the world was flat? And at the center of the universe?

Uh, no?

Try to brush up on your smurf, buddy. How about looking into what was being taught at particular time periods and why.

Evolution is much like the flat earth and geocentric theories of yesterday; taught and built upon for fear of oppression and lost livelihood from bucking the norm.

Is it good for America to have a respectable percentage of its population educated in creationist dogma rather than science? If you're leading the country, and facing a world that's becoming increasingly competitive, do you want your country to be headed backward rather than forward?

There's historical precedents here. The Soviet Union, for political rather than scientific reasons, promoted the theories of a guy named (forgive my spelling) Lysenko. He was basically a crackpot who cooked up a genetic theory that fit in perfectly with socialist dogma.

Unfortunately, the theory was a bunch of bullcrap, and the country was set back decades (and opposing, correct scientists were sent to the gulag). Those theories later led to the deaths of tens of millions in China, where they were put into practice during the Great Leap Forward -- history's worst known famine ever (approximately 30 million dead).

Creationism is the new Lysenkoism. Scientific inexactitude being embraced for ideological reasons. And it will hurt America. Hurt America bad.

ShnickyShnack wrote:

Creationism is the new Lysenkoism. Scientific inexactitude being embraced for ideological reasons. And it will hurt America. Hurt America bad.

If you think I'm going to believe I have monkey blood in my body well -- THINK AGAIN!

During the past 5 years (that I've been in the States) I kept hearing at school that America should produce more scientists, and specifically more physicists and engineers, that America is falling fast behind Europe, China and India in the number of degrees awarded in those areas of science and sooner or later America will feel the economic consequences of that. South Korea and the UK are doing groundbreaking work on embryonic stem cells while the US is still debating whether to fund such a promising area of science or not. US companies are taking their jobs elsewhere,  mainly (so far) due to the lower costs but I guess soon enough they will be doing out of necessity, and although it started with low paying jobs in the support industry it will spread to the better jobs as well.
Alienating kids from science and teaching them nonsense about men and women made of clay will not help the situation in the future. Yes evolution is a theory but it's the best fit we so far have to the world we see around us. Creation on the other hand is a bunch of bullcrap that does not resemble science in the slightest. I'd much rather for religious studies (not evangelizing but rather history and beliefs of various religions) to be introduced into public schools on a voluntary basis and put all this creation bullcrap in there, rather than mix it with science and give it the slightest notion of legitimacy, separation of church and state be damned.

Hank Rearden wrote:

In reality, it boils down to this.  The crazy-Right in this country want the cake (public education) and to eat it too (i.e., to control it).  Moral of the above news story, and many like it...it ain't gonna happen.

is evolution fact?  no

so what's wrong with letting the kids know that?

benightedbastard wrote:

Sure, NokX, if we can also stick stickers on all the Bibles saying it's only a theory.

are Bibles handed out at tax payer expense?

benightedbastard wrote:

What does that have to do with it?

if you're not sure then maybe you shouldn't have been so quick to reply

benightedbastard wrote:

kids have access to bibles too

do my tax dollars go to buy science books that claim evolution is fact?

do your tax dollars go to buy Bibles that Christians claim as fact?

k

NokX wrote:

do your tax dollars go to buy Bibles that Christians claim as fact?

k

Every time a voucher is used to send a kid to a Christian school.