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Gah.
As someone who is planning to go into education in South Carolina, the ongoing attempt to push intelligent design into our classrooms is of intense interest to me. And, of course, you know my opinion of intelligent design's validity. So, when I read this story from our local paper, it makes me wish to weep.
"A lawmaker pushing to give teachers alternatives to evolution won’t identify the people he has asked to advise a state panel.
State Sen. Mike Fair has invited two experts to advise the school reform oversight agency, which is evaluating the standards for teaching the origins of life.
Fair said he promised the two advisers he would protect their identities to minimize scrutiny of their views and credentials prior to their appearance before an EOC subcommittee next week..."
Now why, I must wonder, if these to are experts in their fields, would they wish to MINIMIZE scrutiny of their credentials? If they have good credentials, relevant to the science of evolution and the practice of public education, then they should be proclaiming them loudly and proudly. Credentials sell opinions...unless, of course, you don't have any.
"Fair has emerged as the leading voice to modify lesson guidelines for high school biology by advocating for the inclusion of language that gives teachers more leeway in discussing alternatives to Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.
Fair insists he is not advocating teachers present lessons about creationism, which draws on the Bible to explain the origins of life, or “intelligent design,” a relatively new theory challenging evolution because it cannot fully explain some of life’s mysteries."
...then what /is/ he proposing? What 'alternatives' does he wish to teach? The world sprung from the loins of the Great Mother Goddess (God, if I were a teacher who did not value my job, I would /love/ to teach that as an 'alternative')? For that matter...
It's not Darwin's theory! Darwin was one of the /original/ theorists, and certainly the father of evolutionary biology, but the theory of evolution has gone far, far beyond his work. It has been adapted for new evidence, expanded, revised through experimentation and study, and held up through decades of intense scrutiny by brilliant minds of many different disciplines. Evolution, in some form or fashion, is the /only/ theory we have that adequately explains what we see in the world around us. "God did it" is not an explanation. It tells us nothing about our world, it gives us no areas for exploration, and it helps not at all with the development of new technologies and knowledges. It's not a bloody alternative, no matter how you phrase it, or what kind of mealy-mouthed pretty psuedo-scientific language that you put it in.
Damn it all.
"A lawmaker pushing to give teachers alternatives to evolution won’t identify the people he has asked to advise a state panel.
State Sen. Mike Fair has invited two experts to advise the school reform oversight agency, which is evaluating the standards for teaching the origins of life.
Fair said he promised the two advisers he would protect their identities to minimize scrutiny of their views and credentials prior to their appearance before an EOC subcommittee next week..."
Now why, I must wonder, if these to are experts in their fields, would they wish to MINIMIZE scrutiny of their credentials? If they have good credentials, relevant to the science of evolution and the practice of public education, then they should be proclaiming them loudly and proudly. Credentials sell opinions...unless, of course, you don't have any.
"Fair has emerged as the leading voice to modify lesson guidelines for high school biology by advocating for the inclusion of language that gives teachers more leeway in discussing alternatives to Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.
Fair insists he is not advocating teachers present lessons about creationism, which draws on the Bible to explain the origins of life, or “intelligent design,” a relatively new theory challenging evolution because it cannot fully explain some of life’s mysteries."
...then what /is/ he proposing? What 'alternatives' does he wish to teach? The world sprung from the loins of the Great Mother Goddess (God, if I were a teacher who did not value my job, I would /love/ to teach that as an 'alternative')? For that matter...
It's not Darwin's theory! Darwin was one of the /original/ theorists, and certainly the father of evolutionary biology, but the theory of evolution has gone far, far beyond his work. It has been adapted for new evidence, expanded, revised through experimentation and study, and held up through decades of intense scrutiny by brilliant minds of many different disciplines. Evolution, in some form or fashion, is the /only/ theory we have that adequately explains what we see in the world around us. "God did it" is not an explanation. It tells us nothing about our world, it gives us no areas for exploration, and it helps not at all with the development of new technologies and knowledges. It's not a bloody alternative, no matter how you phrase it, or what kind of mealy-mouthed pretty psuedo-scientific language that you put it in.
Damn it all.
no subject
I will tentatively agree that the data isn't consistent. There's not hard proof that it will, 100% work better. But there's no data showing that yep, definitely, it'll be worse, either. At most, even the 'negative' studies show it coming out about the same. It does, however, even if it's about the same, give parents a sense that they are participating.
Which is really the point. The NEA and other teacher unions, /particularly/ administrator types are virulently opposed to even trying it. Which makes it difficult to get any data (remember, this movement is in its infancy. It was a new thing 12 years ago when I got to college, save of course for Maine and Vermont). The lack of said data is then used by the NEA, et. al. as proof that it won't work.
Things are not working. Particularly for poor students in inner city schools. Why not pick some of the worst schools. Start offering those students to have 'follow the pupil funding'. Make it open to any accredited educational facitility to recieve those funds and those students. Expand it slowly unless there is a disaster.
I'm not suggesting that next year we close every public school in my state and go purely to a follow the pupil method. That wouldn't work too well. But what we are currently doing isn't working and throwing more and more money at the same old moribund, hidebound, monolithic structure isn't going to fix it.
no subject
Also, I've yet to see anyone adequately address some of the problems with school choice: the low participation of people who aren't already attending private schools, the unfortunately large cases of graft, fraud, and unexpected school failure that have shown up...one school in Texas shut down in the middle of the night without informing students, parents, or teachers. The company that ran it is still qualified to recieve vouchers in their other schools. Teachers in the voucher schools are less likely to be certified, and for that matter, less likely to have even a bachelor's degree than teachers in public schools. Private schools can still choose not to accept students, regardless of the vouchers...a survey of California private schools indicated that less than 10% of those schools were ready or willing to accept public school students, and those could only have handled approximately 1% of the public school population.
Until I see some good, solid addressing of these issues, I'm not going to accept school voucher programs. You can't wait ten or fifteen years for an 'education market' to 'stabilize' with kids being bounced from fly-by-night school to public school to private school every year, standards and resources varying widely from one to the other, funding going into the pockets of people who randomly decide to set up a school. Keep in mind new business statistics: how large of a percentage of new businesses /fail/ in their first three years?
An educated populance is too important to trust to an unstable system.