Gah.

[pyrephox]

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.

Comments

[cpip.livejournal.com]

Two possibilities: (1) he doesn't have them yet, or (2) he's got two random teachers who share whatever views he wants, and who don't stack up to the opposition. (Or, I suppose, he just doesn't want to let the media go attack-doggy on them; but really, that shouldn't be too much of a problem.)

[amethystjade.livejournal.com]

Teach the Norse one! The earth is made out of a dead giant! Teach it right before lunch!

[bimmer1200.livejournal.com]

I think the whole creationism/ID is just a symptom of a larger problem. Primary and secondary education are a monopoly at this point. Government run, but a monopoly nonetheless. Christian parents are feeling that their viewpoint is marginalized, that they are being cut out of the discourse, that schools are trying to not just teach their children reading, writing and arithmitic, but values that are contrary to their own. And they don't have any choice in it. The average person cannot afford to send their children to private school. Hell, they can't even choose the school in their city or county they want in many cases. Look at the case you pointed to in an earlier entry; that only adds fuel to that fire.

Little wonder that they react by trying to get their viewpoint heard, by hook or crook. And the truth is, as long as we're funding schools with their tax dollars, those parents have every right to try to push their viewpoint. You have two (or more) competing viewpoints. There's no coherent way to present them both, there's a winner and a loser. And to add insult to injury the loser has to not only pay for the winner's viewpoint being promulgated, by doing so, she is unable to pay to present her own. Is it any wonder the fight is so bitter and so much resentment occurs.

The problem with public education is the public part of that. Our system of schools is broken, and we need some changes or these type of battles are going to continue to occur to the consternation of all sides.

[multiplexer.livejournal.com]

To quote Carl Sagan on Cosmos:

"Evolution is a fact. It is not a theory."

The evolution episode of Cosmos is wonderful. He introduces the Creationism argument, says why it is just not true, and moves on to describe the wonders of evolution in bright and happy detail.

Interestingly, the philosophical argument for the Cosmic Watchmaker (better known as Intelligent Design now) has been around since the Victorian Times. So have the counter-arguments against it. I had a full introduction to the logical fallacies of the Cosmic Watchmaker in my introduction to Philosophy class way back when, long before the "ID Movement," and had to write this big paper describing it and the various debunking counter arguments. My favorite was one in Bertrand Russell's collection of essays, "Why I Am Not A Christian." I was pretty surprised when it came back around, but hey, it's doing well with a dusting and a new coat of varnish.

All Hail Bishop Ussher and the Beginning of the World in 4004BC! On a Wednesday!

[bimmer1200.livejournal.com]

From my reading of that quote of the abstract, he's saying that the gains are small, and that there's no 'compelling' evidence that the gains outweigh the losses. Though I haven't read the article, obviously, so I can't say for certain what he considers a loss. It doesn't surprise me that a journal for professional educators is less than pleased about the idea.

I'm not citing academic journals. Here are a couple of cites, concerning a program in Milwauke which targets poor students, defined as those in households that have an income under 175% of the poverty level for the U.S.:

“Choice can be a useful tool to aid families and educators in inner city and poor communities where education has been a struggle for several generations … If programs are devised correctly, they can provide meaningful educational choices to families that now do not have such choices. And it is not trivial that most people in America ... already have such choices.”

John Witte, The Market Approach to Education - An Analysis of America’s First Voucher Program, Princeton University Press, 2000.

According to this website, Minnesota Choice , both Harvard and Yale teams found "statistically significant math gains". There's various other data there.

Vermont has been doing this for over 130 years, in a limited fashion and like Maine mentioned earlier, there's no indication of the problems you claim this would cause. Vermont .

Be glad to look at Edison, the majority of their 100 schools have shown improvements in test scores even after the Administrative problems they've had. Further, the troubles they are having illustrate perfectly my point; a public school operated in that fashion doesn't close, or get taken over. It just keeps going, and keeps demanding more tax money. With competition, a badly run school does not last. And if you think that public schools don't have any mismanagement...I'll point you to Washington DC and the scandal with the teacher's union there in 2003 as just a quick off-the-top-of-my-head example.

And we're still back to the fact that adjust for inflation we're spending far more than we were 30 years ago more and test scores are either flat or falling. It is a fact that we spend more per pupil than nations which we lag behind in test scores. There's the example of Kansas City. After being ordered by a judge to spend 2 billion dollars (!) more over five years, what happened? The school district failed 11 performance standards and lost its accredation. We spend more than anyone else on education, 7% of our GDP. Yet we're like..15th in the rankings of industrialized countries. Education is one of the few areas where we really do lag behind the rest of the world (at least primary and secondary school. Post-secondary is another story). We've been trying it the leftist way of spending more and more, and giving more and more control to cetralized authority for 40 years, and it's made the situation worse, not better.

I'll be happy to look at that .pdf.