Oh, come on. This is no surprise. Public schools mostly take religion for granted—it’s rife in athletics, in particular, but many of the ceremonies have prayers and ministers involved—so when a valedictorian speech damns her godless classmates to hell, it’s just a reflection of the culture.
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Did you know that nature is a nice place, a kind of untamed Cute Overload where nobody ever gets an owie, there are no diseases or parasites, and everyone eats tofu? That seems to be what one school administrator in Florida believes, anyway.
A class was studying reptiles and a student brought in his pet boa. Somehow it was suggested that anyone who was interested could watch the boa being fed its usual meal: a live rabbit. The teacher arranged for the feeding to be held after school hours and attendance was voluntary. No one had to be there who didn’t want to be there. According to the story, the teacher even warned the squeamish to stay away.
I’m not bashing the school admistrator’s religious beliefs, but rather his silly inanity in the statement: “The school uses lessons and curricula that teach respect for God’s creative handiwork, and this event does not support that.” Snakes eat rabbits. Welcome to nature. Snakes don’t shop at the market for cans of rabbit stew.
Leave it to me to bash the administrator’s religious beliefs! If your idea of “god’s creative handiwork” involves an absence of death and predation, then you’re an ignorant nitwit, and I blame your religious miseducation — especially since this occurred at a place called Trinity Christian Academy. And I certainly hope this administrator doesn’t ever eat meat, and doesn’t have any pet dogs or cats, unless he wants to be guilty of hypocrisy.
Just to push the absurdity to an even greater level, this administrator has issued a proclamation.
We have taken steps to ensure this type of event doesn’t happen again.
Somehow, I don’t think the hungry carnivores that live all over the place are planning to pay much attention to that order. It’s probably enough, though, that he’ll close his eyes to reality and pretend nothing is eating anything else—willful blindness is the Christian thing to do.
This is an ugly story, and it’s ugly on both sides. First, rude students make a nasty, mocking video of one of their teachers and post it to YouTube, which is bad enough; these are kids who definitely need some discipline. But then the school district suspends the students for 40 days in punishment. Forty days is almost a quarter of the school year. They deserved a harsh response, but kicking them out of school just deprives them of the education they need, and they’re probably going to regard it as a vacation.
I must confess, though, that what first caught my eye about the story is that it’s from Kent, Washington — where I grew up. I read it wondering if it was my alma mater, Kent-Meridian High School, that was going to be the scene of the crime…and no, it wasn’t. It was Kentridge, our hated cross-town rivals, the school that was even more despised than Auburn. I felt relief.
It’s funny how those silly scholastic enmities can come back to you after 30 years…
Oh, dear. John West of the Disco Institute is in a furious snit because, after refusing to grant tenure to Guillermo Gonzalez, Iowa State University did promote Hector Avalos, of the Religious Studies department, to full professor. You can just tell that West is spitting mad that Iowa would dare to keep Avalos around, and thinks it a grave injustice that one scholar would be accepted, while their pet astronomer gets the axe. So now they’re going to do a hatchet job on Avalos.
I cower away from the horror that is MySpace, and I scarcely know what to do with facebook; I’m all at sea on this social networking buzz. Now I’ve gone and signed up for another one, the Nature Network, a social networking site for scientists. I’m still lost. Maybe if I encourage a bunch of you other scientists out there to sign up, some comprehension will begin to gel for me.
Attila Csordas has a nice writeup of the whole magilla which helps. I’m giving it a shot, anyway.
I already notice it lacks those bosomy young ladies in skimpy clothing that always greet me on MySpace, and the contributors all seem to know how to write plain English, so it’s different on those scores.
I just finished grading all the genetics final exams, and submitted final grades to the registrar!
I’ve just got two independent study papers that need to be turned in and graded, and then I will be completely done.
Les Lane has a summary of Gonzalez’s unfortunate tenure situation. To nudge your memory, Guillermo Gonzalez is the Discovery Institute fellow who was working as an assistant professor of astronomy at Iowa State University; he was recently denied tenure there and is protesting the decision.
It’s an awkward position, but very common — academia isn’t an easy career to break into. It also doesn’t help that Gonzalez fails to understand the process.
Knocked another one down — I finished the grades for the last exam in my genetics course (there is still an optional final next Friday). This was an important one, because I promised myself that if I could get them all done this afternoon, I would let myself go to the local theater to watch Spiderman 3 tonight. Those little internal incentives help a lot!
My next Seed column was just sent off to the overlords. I love this time of year! Everything is coming to tidy conclusions, so I can focus on one thing at once instead of 10, get it done, and unlike the usual Lernaean Hydra-like state of affairs, it doesn’t bloom into two new tasks.
Then, tomorrow … no classes, so I’m going to be able to just rip through all my grading without interruption. And then Friday and this weekend I’ll be free to tear through a major administrative chore that’s been dogging me for the last few months.
Freedom!
