A survey of scientists in Texas reveals that the vast majority reject all versions of creationism — only 2% give it any respect at all. This is in Texas, the state with Don McLeroy, creationist dentist, running the educational show. There is some dissonance there.
What about that 2%? The survey explains those:
What can we say about the small minority of Texas science faculty (2%) who evidence some measure of support for intelligent design/creationism? (For purposes of this analysis, intelligent design/creationist supporters are all respondents who indicated either “Modern evolutionary biology is right about the common ancestry of all extant organisms, but it is necessary to supplement it by invoking periodic intervention by an intelligent designer” or “Modern evolutionary biology is mostly wrong. Life arose through multiple creation events by an intelligent designer, although evolution by natural selection played a limited role.”)
The educational profile of this group is revealing. Ten supporters of intelligent design/creationism responded to the question, “Have you taught a course that included a substantial block of material on human evolution?”. Of the ten, seven persons replied “no,” as compared to three who replied “yes.” So we readily see that most intelligent design supporters identified in this survey do not teach courses that address evolution. Even more strikingly, no person in the subsample of those supporting intelligent design reported teaching graduate students about human evolution within the past five years. (Another way of phrasing this last point is to say that there was no person out of the total sample of 464 respondents who said they both supported intelligent design and had taught graduate students within the past five years.) We are therefore safe in concluding that the already thin support for teaching intelligent design vanishes to essentially zero when looking at established Texas biology and biological anthropology faculty who teach at the graduate level.
Heh. Bill Dembski = “essentially zero”.
Well this is good news.
98% of scientists?
Bah. We Parents know better here in Texas what our kids should be learnin.
And yet, there are people who insist on injecting Creationism/Intelligent Design into the educational system in Texas (and elsewhere).
How strange.
Periodic intervention. Like parasitic twins?
I like this result from the study:
0.0% responded:
“Modern evolutionary biology is completely wrong. Life was created essentially as we see it today.”
Interestingly, this is the same percentage of peer-reviewed scientific research papers presenting data refuting evolution!
They still seek pseudo-scientific confirmation, apparently, faith is not enough.
*Awaits Robert Byers to enter the thread*
I consider religion the only virus spread by sight and sound. In it’s more vicious form, it is most dangerous to all mankind. In it’s milder forms, it’s not much better.
Since Fark redlit this, I suppose I’ll bring my popcorn here for a while….
You’re grouping WAD in with real scientists? You’ll have to watch out for enraged Tx professors now.
Most Texan professors aren’t stupid and are, in fact, quite intelligent! Good!
abb3w, I stopped reading Fark after I realized they were only a marginally more mature version of 4chan. They’re not quite as stupid as some , but mention women and you get misogynist comments and ‘TITS OR GTFO’s. I wonder what they think when they see the sites of my fellow female scientists on here .
So only 2% of the scientists polled believe in creationism, yet they represent what percentage of scientists on the school system’s science board? Wasn’t it 50% or more?
How can you say that about the man who. . .
Uh. . .
Who. . . .
Brought the “art” of fart jokes to a new low?
Nah, I got nuthin’.
The problem in Texas has never been higher education. We have our share of Tier 1 universities that do plenty of research and provide a good education in science: UT Austin, Rice and A&M.
Why? Because it’s very hard to get creotards into positions of power there. By comparison, it’s extremely easy to nominate them into school boards and just about any political position in the state.
Democracy should never be used when it comes to education. It naturally leads to a tyranny of the (often ignorant) majority.
Katharine, while I don’t blame you for eschewing Fark, I’m not overly attached to my own sense of maturity. (It probably helps that, as a male, I tend to get fewer TOGTFO requests.)
As for what they think of female scientists… well, the male of the human species notoriously tends to only have enough blood to keep one head operating at a time. The part Fark’s audience who would care whether you’re female appears to only intersect minimally with the part who think and look at science blogs, and the latter faction is far larger than on 4chan. The humor’s oft lowbrow and tawdry, but I find it has its moments. Serious science types can doubtless find more appreciative audiences for their thoughts, but I’m merely a high-grade dilettante.
I have registered to present testimony at the Texas State Board Education on Wednesday. I have three minutes to make my case, and I have tentatively settled on the following ideas:
1. American high school students consistently lag the rest of the developed world in math and science. Now is not the time to pollute science standards.
2. Evolution is no more a “theory” than gravity. Both theories are the result of careful application of the scientific method: observation, rational thought, and experimentation. Both theories are still the subject of study and undergo refinement as knowledge is gained.
3. Science is objective and would embrace a new, better hypothesis for life’s origins. However, that new hypothesis would be held to the same standards of rigor and merit as the current theory of evolution. Moreover, that new hypothesis must go further and explain more than the current theory of evolution to gain acceptance.
Currently, the theory of evolution has no peer; there is no alternative hypothesis that meets the standards of science.
At this time, there is no controversy to be taught.
Any comments or suggestions are welcome.
Brett
LB: Democracy should never be used when it comes to education.
“Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time” – Churchill
98%, huh? So, there’s no consensus then.
Having witnessed the way these guys work, that two percent minority will come to be seen as the righteously oppressed minority, that has been crushed by secular intolerance. They’ll be martyrs for the cause of “teaching the controversey”. If the “teach the controversey” theme comes up again, I’m half tempted to accept it on grounds that they — the creatotards — agree that it’s an altogether fitting lens for all academic endeavors. Is transubstantiation legitimate? Teach the controversey. God exist? Teach the controversey. Does religion help human progress? Teach the controversey. I hope you, fair reader, catch my drift.
#19 was sarcasm, by the way. My “</sarcasm>” got interpreted as a html tag and removed.
Indeed. Did we ever go to the moon? Was 9/11 an inside job? Is the holocaust a zionist conspiracy? What ever happened to the city of atlantis? Is the world flat? Is the earth at the centre of the universe? Do freemasons run the country? Do aliens make crop circles? Do we all have dormant psychic powers? Is there a teapot floating between earth and mars? Teach the
absurtidycontroversy!#18:
Sure, give me democracy for every other government policy. But when you let ignorant voters elect supporters of idiotic educational policies and they emasculate public schools’ curricula, then the ignorance of your society becomes self-perpetuating.
abb3w, #18:
Just a wild guess, but I think LB was talking about education, and Churchill government.
Brett you might also want to bring up the practical uses of evolution(and earth science?), i.e. genetic algorithms, bioinformatics(a multi-billion dollar industry), applications with respect to biotech, etc. Also, has creation science ever helped us find natural resources like oil? I think not.(might resonate particularly with conservative school board members)
good luck
Heh. Bill Dembski = “essentially zero”.
More like “less than zero” for Dembski. Heh.
I am confused by the quoted section. “no person in the subsample of those supporting intelligent design reported teaching graduate students about human evolution within the past five years” is not the same at all as “no person in the subsample of those supporting intelligent design reported teaching graduate students about human evolution within the past five years.” The second claim is much stronger than the first. Moreover, someone might very well not teach evolution to grad students because they taught some form of creationism instead.
Also it is worth noting thatthe article shows that although only 2% have some variant idea about 5% favor some sort of teach the controversy position. (See page 9). None favor just teaching creationism or intelligent design but that is hardly surprising.
Sorry, hit post before I meant to. It is also interesting to note that only 4% think that any of IDs points constitute valid weaknesses in evolution with an additional 2% not sure. So at least 1% thinks they might be serious weaknesses or are not sure but don’t want it taught in classrooms. The two obvious explanation for this is that a) those scientists even if they back this to some extent understand that cutting edge or controversial material doesn’t go into the highschool science curriculum or b) they understand that it would quickly become an excuse to teach some form of YECism or something similar.
Also note that 79.6% agreed that teaching claimed weaknesses of evolution would impair students ability to do well in college and that a similar number said so about the job market.
But, of course, we already knew that.
Scientists are sceptics if not by nature so because they need to be during work hours, and also they understand science and its methods. I’m surprised that the number is only 98%.
Brett: Any comments or suggestions are welcome.
From my cut-and-paste collection, some expansion and reworking; you’ll want to trim it and dick-and-jane it down to the School Board level and managable length. The first paragraph is in bold because if you can beat that part into their brains, I think you should count it a victory. (Of course, this is my one-trick as a one trick pony, so I’m a bit biased.)
Science refers to the process of gathering evidence; forming conjectures about the evidence; developing a formal hypothesis which indicates how the current evidence may be described under the conjecture; competitive testing of all candidate hypotheses under a formal criterion for probable correctness; plus the body of hypotheses testing “best” thereby and which thereafter are referred to as “Theories”. The goal of the best Science education is to teach both the current results, and the means by which these are obtained so as to obtain further improvement in the results.
While the material and math is beyond the scope of high-school students, the most formal criterion used for this is an expression of Occam’s Razor mathematically proven correct. (“Minimum Description Length Induction, Bayesianism and Kolmogorov Complexity”, by Paul M. B. Vitanyi and Ming Li.) It follows that science and the Philosophy of Science is dependent on (but ONLY on) three assumptions: that logic is valid for inference, that the the modern foundations for all mathematics (ZF axioms) are self-consistent (though not necessarily complete), and that Reality is relatable to Evidence.
In practice, the experimental method is used as a means of competitive testing in hopes of data involving reasonable math. The default reference comparison is the “null hypothesis”, which mathematically corresponds to simply stating there are data, and making no attempt to relate them. However, a hypothesis must be tested against all alternatives expressed before becoming “Theory”. Under the banner of the Theory of the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis, there are a number of variations evolved from Darwin’s original expression of evolutionary biology continue competing. However, distinguishing between these is beyond the realistic scope of high school requirements at present.
Outside the Modern Synthesis, there presently are no other viable contenders. Neither “creationism” nor “intelligent design” provide more than marginal improvement over the null hypothesis under the formal criterion, and are nowhere near the power of the Modern Evolutionary Genetic Synthesis. Claims of “holes” and “missing transitional forms” are a fundamental distortion of Science, since science is inherently intended to infer the nature of probabilities for what we have not directly observed, starting from only what we have observed.
Since science is based on competitive testing; since “Strengths and weaknesses” or reference to particular arguments being strong and weak can only be made in terms of one hypothesis relative to a given alternative; and since there are no contenders which (without additional assumptions beyond those of the philosophy of science) are remotely probable, it follows that the inclusion of “strengths and weaknesses” discussions in science classes are unlikely to provide benefit commensurate with the time expended.
Joshua Zelinsky wrote
Um, from where I sit (recognizing that it’s 3:00 am), those two look identical. Was the second quotation supposed to be this?
If so, they’re saying the same thing, on the understanding that the “taught graduate students” phrase was a condensed reference to the same set (taught graduate students about human evolution) as in the first sentence, which I think is a reasonable reading.
>>> Posted by: abb3w | November 17, 2008 11:31 PM
LB: Democracy should never be used when it comes to education.
“Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time” – Churchill< <<< While I may share Churchill's opinion on democracy as a political therory to organize a government for a society. There are many other activities that people engage in where a democratic organization might not be an advantage like maybe a football team, an army, a concert orchestra or an Surgical operating room, I would also include education. Saying this I would acknowledge that there are many levels of democratic organization that could be used. It would be more of a continuum from absolute despotism -> -> -> complete democracy. Most things that involve people would benefit by some level of participation in the decisions being made but there is always some point where things break down. Having the ignorant decide every thing that should be taught in schools down to the smallest details is the point where education stops being education.
The student does not decide what the teaching is nor the lesson. That it be a give and take is understood but the teacher must lead.
That the citizens have some control over education as to quality and relevance to the societies needs but they can not decide what is truth by vote.
The report also contains this sentence:
Given that, and given that the survey was sent to “1,019 individual biology and biological anthropology faculty members” (italics added) I think the reading I suggested above is appropriate.
so now we can openly call creationists fucking retards.
thanks PZ
My my. Consider this comment from one of the biology professors surveyed:
Compare that with the anecdote told (under oath in an administrative hearing) by a former student of John Freshwater:
That’s what enrages me about the creationists. And “enrages” is exactly the right word.
This is interesting because it highlights a fundamental public policy dilemma: who should have the right to set government school curriculum standards?
In theory, in a democratic country based on governance by consent, one would think that it ought to be the taxpayers – who fund the schools – who decide how they are to be run and what is to be taught. Yet, as we have seen, this can lead to incompetent local politicians imposing the wrong curricular standards, thereby disadvantaging students in the competitive global higher education and employment market.
But it would clearly be wrong, in principle, if the voting public had no say in how their schools were run.
I humbly submit that the solution is to take schools out of state control entirely. Have a voucher-based system, in which anyone can establish a school and run it however they wish; provided that they meet accreditation standards, they will be eligible to receive state funding for every student they educate. Parents and students will have a free choice of school, in a competitive market; they won’t be limited to the schools run by their local district.
Of course, this will mean that some parents will choose to send their children to creationist/fundamentalist faith schools, and will receive state funding to do so. That might appear to be a problem. But in reality, the market will take care of it in time; as it becomes clear that graduates of fundamentalist schools find it harder to access reputable higher education or to find jobs in science, those schools will become less and less popular with parents. Most parents want the best for their children. And so those schools will, over a few decades, largely go out of business, and educational standards will increase overall in the long term.
Yay, watch education standards fly out the window!
Walton,
One problem with that: geography. Small towns often can’t support more than one school, so ‘choice’ of the sort you describe isn’t really an option.
Sure, it’s fine for cities – but not everyone lives in them.
I humbly submit that the solution would be for educational standards to be set by the federal government. What’s wrong with a national curriculum, followed by standard testing? It works for most countries I know. Schools would have some liberty to emphasise this or that subject which may be culturally or historically relevant to that particular school or area, but in the end all students are required to know a certain set of things, as well as have a certain set of skills. And although the federal government certainly has its share of yahoos, at least most of the dumb-fuckery would be filtered out by the national scrutiny rather than reinforced by neighbourhood scoial pressures.
Am I wrong? Apart from the Rethugs calling it “Socialised ™ education”? Scary!
A survey of scientists in Texas reveals that the vast majority reject all versions of creationism — only 2% give it any respect at all.
Only 2%? That’s disgraceful. This is more evidence for the idea that Texas is one of our most backward states. 2% of their scientists are a disgrace to their profession.
#35:
I’ve been calling these subhumans “creationist retards” for a long time. Whenever I visit a blog or news website infested with creationists I always remind them how hopelessly stupid they are. Creationists need to be told they are no better than flat-earthers, and when they try to attack science education they need to be told they are worse than terrorists.
But it would clearly be wrong, in principle, if the voting public had no say in how their schools were run.
You mean the way Margaret Thatcher imposed the National Curriculum on all schools – except the rich, fee payers?
She was responsible for taking any kind of spontaneity out of the classroom.
She instigated a narrow, out of date, exclusive curriculum written to satisfy her Conservative cronies and passed ill-conceived rulings about what could be ‘promoted’ in schools. (I had to remove any book from the library which mentioned homosexuality for instance). British education is still trying to recover and many of our children were and are essentially uneducated.
#40 Ploon, A National Curriculum is only as good as the people who write it.
As for the market being allowed to decide – it’s done such a good job with the economy and the National Health Service lets give it our kids to educate too – that’s bound to work!
What on earth is wrong with letting professional educators educate? Would you want to be defended in court by a hairdresser, operated on by a lawyer or live in a house built by a chef?
Kitty @42
Granted. My point was just that it makes no sense to me why it was agreed that educational standards should be decided at the state or district levels, i.e. by local yokels, who may be democratically elected (like the local dog catcher), but know nothing of the subject. If only there were something like an Education Secretary with a direct line to the NCSE, the AAAS etc. That would be something.
From outside the penetrance of democracy in American society is remarkable. It seems wrongly targetted, at least for the modern world. For eg how is the electorate to judge the qualifications of someone running for Sheriff? Or District Attorney? i don’t see that they can have the necessary skills.
So in the rest of the developed world where we have what are essentially Social Democrat governments the State employs appropriate qualified and experienced people for equivalent jobs to Sheriff and DA. The democracy comes in the bodies that have oversight of them. The democratic accountability is one step removed from the coalface but that means they are insulated from pressures to ‘do something’ in knee jerk response to events that a directly elected official feels.
We also have professional civil servants all the way to the top that don’t change when the government does. Though thinking about that I always found it strange that the democratic accountability thing breaks down when it comes to those who head up the great departments of state. Here in Yurp (to be renamed in January) those positions are held by elected politicians. Sure we don’t directly elect the Foreign Minister, but he is elected.
I suspect the elected Sheriff was appropriate for a stage when nobody in the community had any formal training. I just wonder if it is still appropriate in a technocratic age.
Re Brett, #17:
In item #3, you speak of life’s origins. As we all know, evolution is about life’s diversification, not its origins. You don’t want to muddy the waters on that point. I would substitute the phrase “the diversity of life we see in the world”, or something similar.
We devolved responsibility for education from Westminster to the Welsh Assembly a decade ago and there have been improvements, especially at primary level. This was mainly due to the appointment of a teacher as Welsh Education Minister.
She relaxed National Curriculum requirements and removed SATs from the youngest age groups, introduced reading and maths programs and generally gave teachers back some control over their classrooms.
It’s not perfect, but it’s a start.
I’ve often found the elected officials of America anachronistic, especially when, in Florida, 30 years ago I was introduced to the head of a school board who thought it was a waste of money to educate ‘the Negro’! Be thankful Obama didn’t grow up in his bailiwick.
Kitty: British education is still trying to recover and many of our children were and are essentially uneducated.
Mainly because of the failed comprehensive system… for which, admittedly, Conservative as well as Labour governments must bear a fair share of the blame. But the problem was socialist idealism: “let’s make sure all kids go to their local comprehensive school and get the same education!” Meaning that today, the worst schools are those in the most socially deprived areas – and kids from those areas, whatever their ability, have no recourse but to go to their local failing state school.
Blair must bear some of the blame for scrapping the excellent Assisted Places scheme, whereby the most able students could receive state funding to attend prestigious independent schools. Unlike some of my fellow Conservatives I’m not a grammar school fanatic – they’re better than the comprehensive system, but it’s still IMO too rigid to organise all students into two tiers at the age of eleven; I would instead go over to a voucher-type system in which independent schools would be funded by the state, and would provide a certain number of state-funded places for free to able children from poorer backgrounds. Rather than trying (and failing) to fit everything into the same mould, we need to accept that some schools will be better than others, and do our best to ensure that the kids who get the best education are selected on merit, not on the basis of parental wealth or a geographical lottery.
Kitty: You mean the way Margaret Thatcher imposed the National Curriculum on all schools – except the rich, fee payers? She was responsible for taking any kind of spontaneity out of the classroom.
Ironically, as I understand it, most people on this forum are advocating a National Curriculum-style initiative in the US, on the basis that it works in other countries. And here you are claiming that it doesn’t work in Britain…
I humbly submit that the solution would be for educational standards to be set by the federal government. What’s wrong with a national curriculum, followed by standard testing? It works for most countries I know… Am I wrong? Apart from the Rethugs calling it “Socialised ™ education”? Scary!
I don’t think the issue is one of “socialised education”; the US already has socialised education, as do most countries. Rather, the issues are twofold. Firstly, your suggested scheme is essentially unconstitutional; the Constitution does not give the federal government power to impose curricular standards on the states. Admittedly, the federal government could nevertheless achieve it through the mechanism of conditional grants (as they currently do, for instance, in forcing the states to maintain a drinking age of 21, by threatening to withhold federal funding in unrelated areas if individual states lower their drinking age); but this constitutes adhering to the letter, rather than the spirit, of the Constitution. The Founding Fathers did not intend the federal government to have any involvement whatsoever in education.
Secondly, the other problem with your scheme is that it ignores the benefits of localism. As Milton Friedman pointed out in Capitalism and Freedom, it’s better for governmental functions to be carried out on the most local level possible, for this reason: if you don’t like what your town, county or school district is doing, you have, ultimately, the recourse of moving to a different locality (which, though rarely exercised, is a very real threat). In contrast, if you don’t like what your state government is doing, while you can conceivably move to another state, it’s likely to be difficult, expensive and inconvenient to do so, and will entail leaving behind your career and your roots. And, of course, if you don’t like what the federal government is doing, you have no real recourse, unless you’re wealthy enough to emigrate at will.
Tualha @45
Abiogenesis vs. evolution: if I remember correctly, PZ (and a lot of readers here) consider that distinction to be a bit of a dodge, employed only to keep from making creationists cry or dig their heels in at word one, and strictly speaking a false dichotomy (of which we like to accuse those same creationists). There was mutable, replicating material which was subject to natural selection long before there was anything resembling life.
As for the discussion of the American education system: I bow out for now, since it seems there are only Europeans discussing it at the moment. Maybe later, when someone in the US gets their lazy can out of bed, they can add some perspective.
Walton your enormous leap onto vouchers is a sledgehammer to crack a nut. The answer is comprehensive admission to a school and streaming within it. With the proviso that those in the ‘lower’ streams are taught by specialist teachers and not simply warehoused.
This is the situation in other places like the school I attended in New Zealand. Here in the UK we had to have one offspring moved to another class so learning could take place. Eventually the streaming for individual subjects does happen but far, far too late.
I think you will find that little old New Zealand consistently out performs the UK, including devolved nations, in every area of up to 18 education. They are doing something right.
Walton,
With this logic, why not create an entirely free market for education and let parents shop around and define the education curiculum for their children based on their likes ?
To use Friedman’s model for a public good such as education, one has to assume that in this matter, parents always know what’s best for their children. Assumption which is of course not warranted most of the time, but Libertarians still assume it.
if you don’t like what your town, county or school district is doing, you have, ultimately, the recourse of moving to a different locality (which, though rarely exercised, is a very real threat) – Walton
If you can afford to. But of course, it’s only the well-off who really matter, isn’t it Walton? In the UK at least, moving in order to get your children into a better state school is very common. The only way to avoid this is in fact much greater economic equality, so the differences between well-off and poor areas are much less.
Or you could just try and copy successful models of education systems from around the globe, though they involve socialism and we can’t have that ;) After all, what benefit does a society get from having an educated nation?
negentropyeater: With this logic, why not create an entirely free market for education and let parents shop around and define the education curiculum for their children based on their likes ?
That’s kind of what I’m advocating. As I said, I would introduce a universal voucher system. Anyone would be able to establish an independent school and run it how they chose, providing it met certain minimum requirements (for child welfare etc.); it would then be provided with state funding, on a per capita basis, for every child it educated. The schools would therefore have to compete for students; the best schools, being oversubscribed, would select students on merit. It would be a system based on parental choice within a free market.
In answer to your criticisms: Yes, it’s true that while most parents want the best for their children, they don’t necessarily always know what’s best; but this is why competitive exams and league tables are essential. The best-run schools will get the best exam results, and will be most successful at getting students into higher education and employment; parents, seeing this success in the statistics, will want to send their children to those schools. Other schools will have to improve their standards or face going out of business. And since schools will want to improve their exam results in order to make more money, their incentive will be to select students on merit; which will mean that the brightest students get the best education, creating a more meritocratic system.
Nick Gotts: In the UK at least, moving in order to get your children into a better state school is very common.
I know that; and it’s a huge problem that, at present, the worst comprehensive schools are in the most socially deprived areas, and kids from poorer backgrounds have no alternative but to go to their bad local state school, thereby reducing social mobility. In contrast, in the competitive system which I advocate, the kids with the greatest academic merit, regardless of their social background or place of residence, would be able to access the best education. Some schools will always be better than others; we have to accept that as a fact of life. But we should make sure that the kids who get the best education are chosen on ability, not on social background.
The only way to avoid this is in fact much greater economic equality, so the differences between well-off and poor areas are much less.
Socialist nonsense. “Greater economic equality”, in the sense of equality of outcome, is neither achievable nor desirable. Free people are not equal, and equal people are not free. Those with more ability, drive and determination can and should have the opportunity to earn high incomes, and the right to enjoy the fruits of their success. But what we should strive for is equality of opportunity, and a more meritocratic society; we need to ensure that people with talent, regardless of their socio-economic background, have the opportunity to succeed economically and earn a higher standard of living.
There’s nothing wrong with inequality, because people themselves are inherently unequal, and to take from the successful and give to the unsuccessful constitutes a disincentive to success. But success should be meritocratic, not hereditary, with the most successful people being those who have the greatest ability, natural drive and determination, not those who were born to wealthy families. And the best way to achieve that is with a system of education which acknowledges that not everyone can (or should) have the same education, but gives the best educational opportunities to the most able people, regardless of their background.
Brett #17
I wish you all the best. Three minutes is such a short time. I was particularly grabbed to your first point;
“1. American high school students consistently lag the rest of the developed world in math and science. Now is not the time to pollute science standards.”
because it reminded me of an item in zdnet from March 2008 – “Western economies warned of ‘serious’ skills crisis”
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/itmanagement/0,1000000308,39369893,00.htm
It’s more to do with Maths than Science but includes the stark point –
“India produces slightly more than half a million engineering graduates a year compared to 75,000 in the US and Premji [chairman of Bangalore-based Wipro] said this is because there is still a huge amount of parental influence on Indian children to focus on maths, which is a solid foundation for a science or engineering career”.
I recently took my family to visit the Balaji Hindu temple in central England. Much chanting was going on and one of the faithful explained to me that they were giving thanks for “Science, technology, knowledge … also teachers, doctors, scientists …”. It seems to me that India and China are hungry for development, and that hunger will not be crippled by any faith based meddling. I don’t know if I’ve made myself clear, but maybe you could introduce a ‘compare and contrast’ element to your 3 short minutes. That would be well in line with your assertion that “now is not the time to pollute science standards”.
negentropyeater/walton> You’re neglecting an important point, that being the education is are reserved powers, constitutionally, so imposing a national curriculum or accreditation would require an amendment to be passed. Hmm.. come to think of it, so should NCLB, so perhaps that’s not so great a point.
Are you honestly advocating that we institute a voucher system nation-wide, with schools able to set their own curriculum? What impacts do you forsee this having on education as a whole? Frankly, you’re likely to end up with students who either 1) attend a school that their parents think is best and end up with an inferior education, or 2) cannot reasonably attend a school other than the one closest to them for financial or transportation reasons. Unfortunately, most of those who fall into 2 are going to be from low income areas that already have poor schools. Encouraging the flight of students from those to better schools will do nothing to improve the state of the schools they left. Promoting a capitalist system of schools sounds wonderful (they’ll all have to get better, right?) until you consider that all children have to go SOMEWHERE. Supposing those poor schools really do shut down… what options honestly remain for inner-city or very rural students who then can’t afford to go elsewhere, or who aren’t competitive enough to gain admission elsewhere due to the poor quality of their previous education?
A meritocratic system would be fine with me so long as you can propose a reasonable method of not allowing those who don’t demonstrate enough merit to avoid degenerating from the bottom of decent society into criminal filth because they have no other way to get ahead.
Ouch.. I need to preview after I edit posts… my apologies for the beginning of that last one.
IST, exactly, that is precisely what happens in many parts of England now. The wealthier can move to areas with the good schools while the poorer elements of society are left with sink schools. Admittedly, there is some national and local legislation in place to try and prevent this. But all that means is that the schools who want to practise selection and parents who want their children in the ‘better’ schools just have to be a bit more creative in getting round the legislation.
First, to Brett #17…K.I.S.S. abb3w has made a suggestion which is not bad in terms of content, but the language level is way too high.There is a reason that most media is presented with no more than a 9th grade comprehension level. Browse the internet, and there a number of “controversies” that could be taught. The sun goes around the Earth. (No – there are too many folks who don’t see what’s wrong with that) O.K. – how about the Earth is hollow? The point to be made is that there may be a wide spectrum of beliefs but science is not about belief, it’s about evidence.
As for schools, having taught for nearly 30 years in a lower income area, I have to disagree with Walton and his Libertarian views. He states that “Those with more ability, drive and determination can and should have the opportunity to earn high incomes, and the right to enjoy the fruits of their success.” which carries the assumption that these are the only factors linked to academic success. This is simply wrong. Schools are amazingly complex organizations with actual academic learning being only a small part of what is going on. Schools are not businesses, like say banks and auto manufacturers.There is no control over inputs and what is happening to the “product” when not in the factory for the remainder of day and evening. Add to the ability, drive, and determination things such as families in transit or transition, drugs, gangs, financial issues, and parental support and you might be a bit closer to things that influence academic success.
Walton,
There goes your Libertarian ideology ! If you can impose a national standardised exam on which you can measure and compare all schools, why can’t you impose national educational curricular standards ?
Here’s a VERY nice site with LOTS of data: http://www.gapminder.org
Hans Rosling has collected a variety of statistics on many countries, and has commissioned the writing is a very nice Flash applet for displaying comparative graphs of that data in one’s web browser.
Walton complains about egalitarianism. But what would be too much inegalitarianism? Checking on various measures of well-being (income, life expectancy, etc.) and inequality (Gini index, fraction of income going to lowest 20%), South America is much less egalitarian, but shorter-lived and much poorer. Europe is more egalitarian, but it is a bit behind in income and a bit ahead in life expectancy, though neither of them correlates very well with inequality measures inside of Europe.
Epistaxis: Just a wild guess, but I think LB was talking about education, and Churchill government.
There is an intersection of the two. How else do we get local and state Boards of Education, save by the mechanisms of our republican representative democracy?
Uncle Froggy That the citizens have some control over education as to quality and relevance to the societies needs but they can not decide what is truth by vote.
…well, they can, but the universe gets a final veto, via competitive selection of variations. I society that decides truth by vote incorrectly is far more likely to perish.
Walton: But in reality, the market will take care of it in time
By competitive selection and extinction. While this is a solution, it causes sufficient societal harm as to make leave room to argue for covert assassination of creationist members of the Board of Education being substantially more moral.
There ought to be a better way than either of these.
ploon: What’s wrong with a national curriculum, followed by standard testing? It works for most countries I know.
Avoidable conflict with the US’s traditional tendencies of States’ rights. The US Federal government is closer to the EU as a level of organization. It also limits teachers’ adaptability in instruction. Mind you, it may come to that.
However, this just moves the level of the problem, and allows for the entire US to get screwed up all at once by the election and appointment of local yokel idiots. Perhaps you’ve noticed the effects of this problem at some point in your observation of US history?
Walton: Firstly, your suggested scheme is essentially unconstitutional; the Constitution does not give the federal government power to impose curricular standards on the states.
I’ve argued before the constitutional authority to “fix the standard of weights and measures” would allow for centralizing standards for the measure of an education. The Federal government wouldn’t be able to enforce education, but they would be able to enforce what gets called an education… especially for purposes of interstate commerce.
Mind you, I’ve been (politely) called an ignoramus for this view by my brother-in-law, who has a JD.
Allen N: abb3w has made a suggestion which is not bad in terms of content, but the language level is way too high.
Flaw cheerfully admitted. You should indeed keep in mind that this is a Texas board of Education. =)
We are all happy that vast majority reject creationism, but have read the findings in the research?
The finding #5 says that “Texas Scientists Strongly Believe that Support for Evolution Is Compatible with Religious Faith”.
The comprehension of Evolution leads not only to the understand of origins of species, but also to the understanding of origin of life. It means that religion and evolution (and entire cience) are incompatible.
What do you think?
Reminds me of a nutball handing out pamphlets for his church I met on the street who tried to convince me that “50% of all scientists support creationism”.
There’s nothing wrong with inequality, because people themselves are inherently unequal, and to take from the successful and give to the unsuccessful constitutes a disincentive to success. But success should be meritocratic, not hereditary, with the most successful people being those who have the greatest ability, natural drive and determination, not those who were born to wealthy families. – Walton
But this is simply rubbish, Walton, as has been pointed out to you numerous times, because wealth is a form of power, and wealthy families will do whatever they can to ensure their children do not sink down the social scale. Conversely, those who start poor are disadvantaged even in the womb. As has been pointed out to you repeatedly, it is the most egalitarian societies that show most social mobility – in other words, which are also the most meritocratic.
Moreover there is a great deal wrong with inequality. For one thing, it kills people. Being at the bottom of a steep social gradient is so stressful it cuts years off people’s lives. See for example Richard G. Wilkinson’s “The Impact of Inequality”. However, your imperviousness to mere factual information persuades me that you really couldn’t care less about actual flesh-and-blood people, apart from those at the top of the heap: your “libertarian conservative” ideology is infinitely more important to you. You are very ready to denounce what you call “socialist nonsense”, but have very little in the way of evidence to back up your claims: it’s all just standard right-wing verbiage deduced from the love of inequality.
Brett,
Find the graphs comparing (a) US students’ science performance to that of students from the rest of the industrialized countries and (b) public evolution acceptance in those countries.
IST@55,
Obviously you’ve noticed the discrepancy with NCLB between what “enumerated powers” of the government actually means.
I believe the commerce clause is what the Congress relies on for its passage of the law creating both the Board of Education and NCLB (which is just an update of a much older law, ESEA). The commerce clause is extremely far-reaching, so much so that the only law I know of that wasn’t able to be justified under the CC was the Gun-free school zones act.
Walton, my taxes go to building bridges too, but I’m not about to say that taxpayers should get to have a say in how many column supports a bridge gets.
The educational establishment has largely rejected empirical evidence and gone with unfounded hypotheses they call “theory” instead. Educators prefer talking about “multiple intelligences” for which they have no evidence to talking about practices that actually work. Teachers are often unhelpful in this regard — not because they’re not smart, but because they’re typically restricted to local, anecdotal and time-limited evidence. I can see it even in conferences with my kids — the teacher is looking to the end of the year, I’m looking to the next ten years.
How resistant the educational industry is to any kind of science shows from the results of the most ambitious educational study ever done, ironically named Project Follow-through. A curriculum created by behavioral scientist Wes Becker and Zev Engelmann, Direct Instruction, was clearly superior to other curricula, but is almost entirely ignored by educators today.
A similar resistance shows in school districts’ rejection of the problem-solving focused Singapore math curriculum in favor of full-color glossy artistic math project curricula. Something that’s truly sad, because teaching math takes a lot of diligent effort, but is incredibly easy. Asians aren’t good at math because of natural ability (Daniel Nisbet in The Geography of Thought even suggests they might be less well-suited to math and science than westerners generally), they’re good at it because they work hard. I’ve seen it: my own son (who is admittedly gifted) is working on middle school mathematics now, and he’s in third grade. He probably has about a 140 IQ, but without effort he wouldn’t be where he is.
Nick Gotts: But this is simply rubbish, Walton, as has been pointed out to you numerous times, because wealth is a form of power, and wealthy families will do whatever they can to ensure their children do not sink down the social scale.
I would concede that it is to some extent inevitable that a person’s upbringing will be a factor in how much they succeed, and that most parents will do whatever they can to ensure their child’s future (indeed I wouldn’t want it any other way; would you?). This factor cannot be eliminated without eliminating the family itself, which I trust you would not advocate.
But I would contend that the key factor in that is not wealth, but parental concern. Yes, wealthier parents can afford private tutoring, extra support etc. for their children, but the most important thing is to have parents – of whatever socio-economic background – who are supportive of their child and committed to seeing their child succeed in life. I think, therefore, that you’re confusing correlation with cause: the reason children of wealthy parents are more likely, on average, to do well is because those parents, having themselves worked hard and achieved much in life, understand the value of encouragement and success. But there are many, many people who have come from poor backgrounds, but have been encouraged by their parents to work hard and succeed, and have, accordingly, achieved a higher income and standard of living. This can be seen in the history, for instance, of many immigrant communities in Britain. Many families came to the UK a couple of generations ago with nothing, but worked hard and succeeded, and their grandchildren are now educated professionals. This is the kind of trend we want to encourage.
Moreover there is a great deal wrong with inequality. For one thing, it kills people. Being at the bottom of a steep social gradient is so stressful it cuts years off people’s lives.
How many times do I have to point this out: people are inherently unequal, both in their ability and in their work ethic. Therefore, in a free society, some people will do better for themselves than others, and will acquire more wealth and achieve a higher standard of living. The only way to avoid this is to use the coercive power of the state to forcibly confiscate the proceeds of a person’s success and distribute them amongst the less successful – which, self-evidently, provides a disincentive to success, and is also in my view fundamentally immoral. Hayek said it best: “free people are not equal, and equal people are not free.” So to try and “reduce income disparity”, and achieve economic equality between people, is highly inefficient and fundamentally arbitrary.
It’s as foolish as arguing that every student, regardless of the work they produce and their performance in exams, ought to be awarded the same academic grades – thereby penalising the bright and hardworking, and elevating the stupid and lazy. This would not only be unfair, it would be incredibly inefficient – because it would disincentivise hard work and devalue intelligence, and would therefore impoverish our society intellectually. Similarly, trying to make people “economically equal”, regardless of how much wealth they actually create, would disincentivise success and impoverish our society economically.
My guess is that the number of ID supporters would be higher if you polled the large number of people who didn’t respond.
The only way to avoid this is to use the coercive power of the state to forcibly confiscate the proceeds of a person’s success and distribute them amongst the less successful – which, self-evidently, provides a disincentive to success, and is also in my view fundamentally immoral.
“Self-evidently” is a lazy cop-out. Put up some evidence, or shut up. I couldn’t give a fuck whether “in your view” taxation is fundamentally immoral. In my view economic inequality on the scale capitalism brings about is fundamentally immoral and Hayek was a loathsome shit – so where does that leave us? You say reducing inequality is “arbitrary”. No, it isn’t, because it has specific motivations: to reduce human suffering and provide the opportunity for a fulfilling life to all. You can argue that it can’t do this, but to do that you need evidence, Walton, evidence, not just your “libertarian” soundbites.
Fun Fact: Milton Friedman, pro-free market and anti-nannystate god, spent the last thirty years of his life living in the People’s Republic of San Francisco.
As a parent and Texan the state of the Texas public education system is very troubling. Students failing the test that all the teachers are teaching to, over funded athletics, underfunded sciences and humanities. Now they want to replace evidence based science with religious hogwash.
Cryptic @ 66>
I’ve also noticed the lack of empirical evidence in the education community. The reason teachers reject this is not due to the environment in which they are immersed (although it may contribute), but rather the training with which they are provided. One of my master’s degrees is in science education, and even in those courses very little time is spent on how to actually evaluate research. Gardner’s MI work was presented as effective, as is MArzano, Piaget, etc without any regard to demonstrating HOW effective the methods prescribed actually were. For more annoyance: One of the courses I took was on Ed. Research… all of the methods presented were based on APA standards for human subjects (perhaps appropriate). When asked to review literature for validity the resulting discussions tended to include a large amount of “I feel” statements in place of references to data, methodology, etc. Our professor used Intelligent Design as an example of something that isn’t science, presenting it and then asking the class to critique it. As I had been forbidden to speak during the initial debate, I heard the typical creationist BS accepted as valid argument because the audience had NO idea how science and rationality actually work. The prof added me to the debate as an opposing side (since the entire class that had been allowed to speak sided with ID), but at the end of the class I’m not certain how many of them understood that what had just been presented wasn’t actually science. I know that a number of them certainly didn’t stop arguing with me about it, no matter how the arguments were refuted. These were MA level students, many of whom were going into administration. Perusing the ‘research’ we were asked to complete and present for the course didn’t demonstrate (anecdotally of course) that much of the idea sunk in by the end of the course.
Walton,
Who talks of “equality” ? I talk of decency.
Average net worth of the top decile compared with the bottom decile remained approximately constant during most of the 20th century, it was roughly a factor 30 from 1900 till 1982.
In 2007, it was 120 !
Thank you Economic freedom, Reaganomics, Thatcherism, Invisible hand and other free-market deregulated capitalist ideologies.
Walton writes:
I knew that dog was coming. Voucher systems are bullshit. It’s just a way for rich/religious parents to get the state to subsidize their decision to opt out of public schools.
Stratify the population of students by parental income and there is no measurable difference in academic between public and private schools. Without the difference, there is no legitimate secular reason, beyond personal choice, to remove your child from public education.
Anecdotal, but backed up by actual educational research: When I was a junior in HS I was going to a private school. We moved and I finished my last quarter in public school. They used the same books in every subject, though the public school had newer books. In my old school I was ahead in chemistry and history, but behind in math and English. PE was the same. Spanish was within two pages and I’d missed three days of school.
The over-all quality of instruction was better, and more broad-based due to fewer monetary restraints, than in the public school. This was a solid observation I made as a teen that has been demonstrated in the real world. In private school you mostly get inexperienced or crappy teachers that can’t get the much higher paying jobs in public schools. This is, somewhat, offset by public school tenure issues (like the government teacher who was a drunk).
(BTW, I find this damn amusing: the very principles of competition espoused by the voucher people is the very reason Private Schools have sub-standard teachers when compared to public. The difference in salary, in my district, is about 40%. )
The real difference I saw, however, is that the public school had to take anyone. And a damn sight lot of those “any-ones” were flat-out stupid and incapable. The academic private school I went to only took in children from people, such as my parents, who were academic achievers and could afford to place their children in the school and whose children were capable of performing at a high level. In short, if you cut out the bottom 75% of the population you’re going to skew the damn results. This, too, has been demonstrated to be true. End of damn story.
Further, in the real world, the vast majority of parents can’t opt out of public education. There is either a lack of private education, or the fact that they have do deal with real life issues like getting to work on time and the inability to change their day to conform to the school day makes it impossible.
No, vouchers are bullshit. It’s all about subsidizing people for their personal choices in life. Sort of, oh, Libertarian welfare…
Walton: The only way to avoid this is to use the coercive power of the state to forcibly confiscate the proceeds of a person’s success and distribute them amongst the less successful – which, self-evidently, provides a disincentive to success, and is also in my view fundamentally immoral.
In mathematics, “self-evident” is usually a warning sign that the mathematician is trying to wave his hands to distract from a hole in the proof.
1) What defines the nature of “moral”?
2) What philosophical premises are implicitly required for this definition?
3) And – most important – to what extent does the result of this definition under these premise have any relationship to the nature of Reality as inferred by the methodology of Science (EG: under the Philosophy of Science constraints of Logical inference, ZF Self-consistency, and Reality-Evidence relateability)?
Your expressed view appears an oversimplification due to additional assumptions which may not correctly describe the reality of our Universe.
negentropyeater: Who talks of “equality” ? I talk of decency.
Ditto; feel free to take a shot at the same questions.
“who evidence some measure of support…”
He means “evince”.
ice
I’ve noticed this in about the Libertarian industry. It’s all about manufacturing rationalizations for them to be selfish wankers without the guilt.
In the meantime they fail to realize that, but for government institutions to protect them from better/more inhumane bastards, they’d be wallowing in the sewer with the rest of the peasants. Simply put, their status and economic well-being, like that of so many, is a product of the system they wish to tear down which is, in my view, like crapping in your soup then complaining of the taste.
I find the epic failure of the global financial crisis, which is a product of their ideological efforts to suborn a system that, before they wrecked it, worked much better than the one they replaced it with to be a very good case study. Let the markets handle it. The markets know best. My ass, I, for one, am not happy with the $5 Trillion Bailout they gave us with their “the markets know best” ideology.
I am, further, damn well not interested in watching their libertarian poison put the final nail in our crappy US educational system designed and built for the industrial revolution, not the modern era. Really, their ideas didn’t work for banking and finance. And that’s where they’re supposed to be “smart…” Now they want to screw with education?
No thanks. We tried your Gilded Age economics in the Gilded Age. It sucked for us them. It sucked for us in the Gilded Ave Rev. 2.0. Been there, done that, watched it go hell in real-time.
Walton:
Have a voucher-based system, in which anyone can establish a school and run it however they wish; provided that they meet accreditation standards, they will be eligible to receive state funding for every student they educate. Parents and students will have a free choice of school, in a competitive market; they won’t be limited to the schools run by their local district.
This system is essentially in place in dozens of areas. It’s a terrible failure, because the social and psychological costs of education are not nearly that simple. Young people raised in poverty are dealt a hand that does not win, or even allow them to stay in the game. Schools are essentially powerless to reverse this process, no matter what their basis or rationale. It happens, of course, that poverty indexes to race in most places in the US, hence the conflation of race in evaluation of schools, but the underlying factor in crime, poor school performance, income, crime, and other cycles of poverty is poverty itself. Long run, poverty is fabulously expensive for everyone in a society.
Good schools are often part of a solution, but that solution is only effective for young people who have a host of other processes at work. Good schools are more rigorous, for example; more rigorous coursework require more expense, more support, and more time for kids. When we bring students to our rich white suburban school, we expose them to greater rigor–but they don’t have more time, they have less; they spend two hours a day on a bus, or can’t stay after school, or have no access to other students in similar courses to pair up or connect with. They lack the advantages of their classmates so only succeed if they surpass those classmates in energy or talent–but these are “regular kids,” not the gifted ones. The gifted ones are already cut out and supported in their home schools (to the detriment again of the “regular” kid population, since resources are limited.) So those regular kids fail, or struggle. They also lack the social and psychological resources to cope with insular environments–in this case, a wealthy suburban social life. They are violently alienated from the bulk of the school life, which is a critical index to success for young people. Coincidentally, they are also alienated from their neighborhood social life because they have abandoned the neighborhood values and don’t see their peers in a normal context.
One solution is the parochial school, such as the archetypal Christian school that the voucher people really want, where it’s prayer and paddling and abstinence and Intelligent Design or whatever mind-erasure they teach in bio class. Sure, fine, but those kids emerge with less than an education–it’s an anti-education, an acquired ability to ignore or discount what works and is accepted in favor of what reinforces their hidebound view or what undercuts their loyalty to leaders who urge them to behave in un-American ways.
no thanks.
ice
Not my usual computer (no killfile) and damn it if I didn’t just read Walton. I just have to shake my head at the trademark combination of borderline-smarmy confidence and utter naiveté in his espousal of pure markets. Walton, believe me when I tell you that, for reasons discussed above and many more, you simply do not know what you’re talking about.
p.s. Who gets to set and enforce the “accreditation standards?”
I agree that abiogenesis and evolution should be kept separate at the high school level. First of all there is no current successful working hypothesis for the origin of life, and secondly the underlying disciplines of origin research are organic chemistry and physical chemistry which are out of the scope of high school biology if not high school chemistry as well. The theories of natural selection and genetic drift which are the best known and most agreed on mechanisms for genetic changes in populations aren’t that tough to understand and can be grasped by students at the high school level who are not in a position to need advanced placement chemistry to understand basic biology. Try to keep it simple to avoid confusion. TPFD
Just a quick for-example: There are large swaths of the USA in which a sizable proportion of parent-citizens–easily a majority in many communities–would positively jump at the chance to send their tykes to religious schools that would rival the notorious madrasahs in their intensity of inculcation. I don’t think that those folks feel the poke of the Invisible Hand of The Market the way the Friedmanists predict. Perhaps I’m guilty of social engineering but I do not want that to be OK.
This long thread – discussion leads me to another question. In this “free market based system” solution it is the same type of system approach proposed for health care and social security and of course the financial markets, what happens to those individuals who can not “compete” and “fall through the cracks”?
I have never heard any reference to them in any of the proposals by the “Free market solutions” advocates.
unless there is some proposal that I have not heard about that they at some point be eliminated by expulsion, incarceration or death they will still exist. Unless by some miracle there is no down side and “prices will always go up”
What do we do with the products of this voucher education system who receive an inferior education before the poor schools “go out of business”?
I appreciate all the insightful comment, and I look forward to presenting rational thought to Texas policy-makers!
Moses: I’ve noticed this in about the Libertarian industry. It’s all about manufacturing rationalizations for them to be selfish wankers without the guilt.
No; that’s the Randite school only. There’s also the emphasis on development of personal responsibility to the limits of personal ability.
However, the Randites are why I stopped calling myself a Libertarian and started calling myself a Pragmatic Misarchist.
Moses: I find the epic failure of the global financial crisis, which is a product of their ideological efforts to suborn a system
Only in part. The real problem is domination of the school of economics which neglects information costs, a fundamental error of thermodynamics resembling not so much assuming a spherical cow as assuming a spherical cube. While this flaw is shared by almost the entirety of the libertarian movement, the problem also infects most of the traditional “right”, and even some of the nominal “left”. (Libertarians resemble not so much parliamentary right nor left, so much as the apes swinging from the parliament’s chandeliers. Most I’ve met have even endorsed this analogy.)
the pro from dover First of all there is no current successful working hypothesis for the origin of life
Um… no. There are several workable hypotheses, with various degrees of success demonstrated. What it isn’t clear is which of them deserves the title of “Theory”, nor whether the hypothesis holding that title holds it at all securely.
I’d certainly consider a cursory overview of some of the leading contenders suitable for high-school enrichment material, but not core requirements. Mention of the Miller-Urey experiment to indicate life isn’t needed to form the precursors of life, perhaps when touching on Archaea extremophiles near black smokers, is all I can see needed at the high school level. (Of course, I may be biased, because that’s most of what was covered in my HS Bio course on Abiogenesis.)
uncle frogy: what happens to those individuals who can not “compete” and “fall through the cracks”?
They form a new sub-culture where disidentification with the primary culture is likely to be evolutionarily advantageous. Furthermore, the interaction of new culture they identify with to the primary is most likely to resemble the simplest inter-cultural relationship possible to have: war. Street gangs are an example of one such result.
This is (to be delicate) a drawback to Walton’s proffered form of libertarianism. As with Spencer’s movement of Social Darwinism, it neglects that competition occurs at the societal level as well, and that the nature of societies is rather more dynamic than the nature of individuals.
For IST, abb3w, Walton, and others discussing the constitutionality of nationwide educational standards such as NCLB:
You don’t need to amend the Constitution or rely on the commerce clause (and defintely not the weights and measures clause, abb3w, your brother-in-law is right that you’re way off base there).
This kind of legislation is passed pursuant to the spending power contained in the first clause of Article I, section 8, which enumerates the power to tax and, implicitly, spend money for the “general welfare.”
All Congress does is attach strings to the federal funding. If the state complies with the standards, it gets the funding. If it does not comply, it doesn’t get the money. Pretty simple. The power is more or less unlimited.
If you want to familiarize yourself with the jurisprudence, I’d recommend you start with South Dakota v. Dole: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Dakota_v._Dole
You libertarians might want to consider the holding of SD v. Dole that, although “the spending power is not unlimited,” Congress’s determination that particular spending is “in the general welfare” is given “substantial” deference by the courts. The degree of deference is so great, in fact, that “the Court has more recently questioned whether ‘general welfare’ is a judicially enforceable restriction at all.”
That puts “small government” types in a pickle. Should the courts become more activist and review congressional spending to determine whether it is truly for the “general welfare”? That might give Congress an incentive to get out of influencing public education standards, but it would require a much more activist judiciary.
Gawd, I hate Libertarians. It’s like having an discussion with an Creationist but instead of “Gawd did it!” they regurgitate “Fee market, lower taxes, and deregulate!” Facts and analysis don’t matter and nothing changes their answer. Utopianist ideologies are so lame.
“Free market, lower taxes, and deregulate!” Facts and analysis don’t matter and nothing changes their answer. Utopianist ideologies are so lame.
the universe is not an ideology!
only our thinking and thus our actions are effected by ideology (belief?)
I thought the original question was who should decide what is to be taught in our schools and to our children. I fail to see how a laisser faire attitude toward education would lead to any success in a reasonable length of time besides the unwanted results of a large number of illeducated people until the better better school become apparent.
Are you just being cute with this
< "They form a new sub-culture where disidentification with the primary culture is likely to be evolutionarily advantageous."> statement?
or are you thinking that that is a good thing and would lead to a stronger and more prosperous and more livable society?
Peter Ashby @49
We were until the current NCEA debacle. The government have got rid of the national curriculum, which was too restrictive and limited teacher’s imaginations. Now the have a vague set of learning objectives for the year. It is up to each department head to decide what order they will be taught in, and how much time will be spent on each. It is then up to each teacher to produce lesson plans for every class taught. This means that new teachers have to re-invent the wheel everyday. They are expected to write their own lesson plans for every lesson they teach. That way they can show their individual creativity. There is even a government body to check up on them. After 2 years you must provide the Education Review Office with a copy of all of your original lesson plans, or you don’t get your accreditation.
This system also means that if you are sick, you are still expected to provide a full set of lesson plans for your relief, as otherwise they will have no idea what you are doing.
I was going to become a maths and science teacher until I saw what it was like having to write four separate lesson plans per class due to the internal streaming.
All of the maths teachers I talked to wanted to go back to a national curriculum.
Its no wonder New Zealand has a major shortage of teachers.
My apologies for the rant. The current state of the NZ education system really annoys me. The only thing that makes me feel better is looking at the state of places like Texas. Things aren’t so bad here after all.
sorry I tried to paste this quote above
“They form a new sub-culture where disidentification with the primary culture is likely to be evolutionarily advantageous”
it is the “statement” referred to.
the male of the human species notoriously tends to only have enough blood to keep one head operating at a time
Jesus tits, no, you do it because the culture lets you collectively get away with it. Instead of calling entitled pieces of wank on their “TOGTFO” and similar assorted other crap that’s everywhere, veryone clucks and says “boys will be boys” and makes up bullshit rationalisations as to why men just can’t control themselves and therefore women just happen to need to modify their behaviour to benefit men. Again.
abb3w #84
It’s my experience that libertarians, almost to a man*, are politically conservative, usually hard-right. Sure, a lot of them say “I’m against both liberals and conservatives,” but I’ve rarely come across libertarians who had anything bad to say about conservatives. The only exception to this is it’s fashionable for libertarians to be against the Iraqi War.
Now I’m sure the libertarians will come roaring back with “conservatives advocate such-and-so and I am against it.” But the arguments against conservatives are either minor (“I’m against having Christmas creches in the town square”) or hedonistic (“all drugs should be legalized”). Libertarians, or at least American libertarians are conservative reformers in the same way that the Greens are liberal reformers. There are libertarian arguments against a few mainstream conservative positions, but most libertarians are much more comfortable with conservatives than liberals. That’s not surprising because libertarians are basically conservatives who want to smoke pot.
*I’ve met very few female libertarians.
Should the courts become more activist and review congressional spending to determine whether it is truly for the “general welfare”? That might give Congress an incentive to get out of influencing public education standards, but it would require a much more activist judiciary.
Hell, no. That would be much worse than the status quo. As a law student (albeit of English law, so I’m no expert on US constitutional law) I do not trust the judiciary with political decisions in the slightest. The balance is hard to get right; on the one hand, the courts are needed to protect certain basic rights even against an overwhelming majority (and most codified constitutions were compiled with the intent of protecting such rights), but on the other hand it’s always bad when the courts step outside their proper boundaries, and circumvent the popular will by developing new “rights” which trespass on issues of public policy. For instance, regardless of the rights and wrongs of abortion, I think Roe was a bad move. There is nothing in the Constitution which confers a federal right to abortion; the judgment was based on an incredibly strained, and fundamentally non-legal, reading of the text. And its legacy has been one of polarisation in American society. It would have been better to try, over time, to build a broad political consensus on a state-by-state basis in favour of abortion rights, rather than imposing it by judicial fiat. This is a lesson that should be learned, and applied as regards other controversial rights issues (same-sex marriage, for instance).
It would be better, though, if more congressional representatives were like Ron Paul and were willing to simply say “No” to any federal programme which is outside the proper scope of the federal government, regardless of how popular it might be. But that’s incredibly rare, for obvious reasons; elected officials want to get re-elected, and so they tend to oppose all pointless pork-barrel spending except that which happens to benefit their own state and district. :-) And, of course, there’s the disproportionate influence of lobby groups, who also want policies that will benefit their members at the expense of the taxpayer. Hence the continuance of the iniquitous and indefensible system of agricultural tariffs and subsidies, for instance.
The problem is, in fact, that a truly free nation, in the libertarian sense, is unattainable in practice. Libertarianism requires a system of law, in order to protect the security of persons and property, enforce contracts etc. And when you have law, you have to have some way of changing the law – and as soon as you have legislators, and officials with discretionary powers, you immediately have special interests who want the power of government to be used for their benefit, leading to the growth of government programmes.
It hurts to be from Texas sometimes. :(
I am but a speck floating in a sea of bronze-age backwardness.
-Pat
God, you’re long-winded, Walton. I just wanted to clarify that there’s nothing unconstitutional about nationwide education standards tied to conditional federal funding.
To abb3w, do you have a reference preferably peer reviewed journal article where a successful synthesis of a living organism was developed from non living precursors? When I say “succesful working hypothesis for the origin of life” this is what I’m looking for. The Miller Urey experiment is about the synthesis of organic molecules from more or less inorganic chemicals (methane is probably organic)using presumed early earth physical conditions, but not life. I remain unconvinced that theory of origin of life should be tought in high school biology classes.
Lowell,
Walton’s training to be a lawyer. The more long-winded he is, the more he’ll get paid!
Walton’s training to be a lawyer. The more long-winded he is, the more he’ll get paid!
To clarify, although I’m doing a law degree, I don’t actually want to go into legal practice (the idea bores me, to be honest). If I get a 1st in Finals (which is looking unlikely) I’m hoping to do graduate study and move into legal academia and teaching; if not, I’m considering my options (maybe the civil service, or I might try and get into the RAF as an intelligence officer).
Lowell: you’re right, I’m long-winded, and I apologise that I tend to make long threads even longer. I’d start my own blog, if anyone here would promise to read it. :-)
Sorry Walton, that was a bit below the belt!
the pro from dover: To abb3w, do you have a reference preferably peer reviewed journal article where a successful synthesis of a living organism was developed from non living precursors? When I say “succesful working hypothesis for the origin of life” this is what I’m looking for.
That would be “demonstrated synthesis of a living organism developed from non living precursors”, or perhaps “experimental demonstration of abiotic/biotic transition”, which is not an inherent requirement of a “successful working hypothesis for the origin of life” in the sense that Science uses the terms. You appear to want a working hypothesis to Engineering standards, which is a equine of alternate hue. Science is the discipline of understanding of the universe; Engineering is the art of using that understanding to blackmail the universe into exhibiting the behavior you want it to.
It’s time that the truth be told:
Yes, the scholarly and peer-reviewed Expelled explains the results. Unlike scientists with genuine good ideas which have not yet been accepted–always trying to promote them–IDists, in a survey which will not give out the names of respondents, are too frightened by unkind remarks, such as Sternberg received, to tell their true feelings. Even though they’re protected from exposure.
Wow, they must be sure of the worth of ID.
Garner wants to make the lies of IDists–claiming serious doubts about evolution and thus provoking this response–into some indication of, yes, doubts about evolution.
Tard Garner, there is a consensus regarding E=mc2, although no one bothers to say so because there aren’t lying perverts claiming otherwise. And it would be exactly the same with evolution, except for swine like yourself.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Well, there aren’t many, at least.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
‘Tis Himself: I’ve rarely come across libertarians who had anything bad to say about conservatives.
Libertarians, as a general rule of my experience, also tend to disagree with conservatives about abortion as well as the War on Drugs, much less tolerant of religious whackjobbery infiltrating government, and massively disapproving of warrantless search. Any, yeah, they tend to be really loudmouthed about the last.
There are other differences. True, the Libertarians seem to get along reasonably well with the Moneycon wing, but badly with the Theocons, Neocons, and Xenophobicons in the GOP. I’m hoping the Moneycons will defect to the Libertarian party after giving long knives to the Theocons and Neocons.
to abb3w: I disagree that science is the discipline of understanding the universe because claims to that are also made by religion and metaphysics, which need to be kept out of high school science classes. Science is a method by which questions are asked of the natural universe or part of it; the answers to these questions coming in the form of experiments and/or observations which must be repeatable, peer-reviewable and publishable. And anyway didn’t you really mean ” an evolved single-toed stripeless hyracotherium posessing pigmentation reflecting photons of a dissimilar wavelength”? TPFD
the pro from dover: I disagree that science is the discipline of understanding the universe because claims to that are also made by religion and metaphysics, which need to be kept out of high school science classes.
I don’t claim believe I’ve described science thusly. I would describe science as the methodology used for understanding the probability over a set of possible implications from evidence (which I do not believe religion or metaphysics address, save that science is a branch of metaphysics which is a branch of philosophy). The methodology’s correctness is as provable as anything in philosophy is.
the pro from dover: Science is a method by which questions are asked of the natural universe or part of it
Method, yes; the rest, no. Again, “probability over a set of possible implications from evidence”.
the pro from dover: the answers to these questions coming in the form of experiments and/or observations which must be repeatable, peer-reviewable and publishable
Repeatable? Have you ever tried to go soak your head in a River “repeatably”? =)
Evidence is not the answer; evidence is what allows the question, “how likely is it that these things relate?” The answer is mathematically expressible. (See doi:10.1093/comjnl/42.4.270 and doi:10.1109/18.825807 for hard math.) Peer review and publications are symptomatic of correctness, but not a requirement. Repeatability (I think) equates to mutual information expectations.
Only a small percent of TX scientists will PUBLICLY give creation any respect:
ontherightside.com/columns/the_biologist.htm
@105
If “Sam” had any evidence of his beliefs, it would be published in peer-reviewed scientific journals. Please provide details on where Sam’s evidence was published.
Got anything…?
Nothing at all…?
Didn’t think so.