Tales told by idiots (Signifying Nothing: how does saying nothing at all become so loud?)

Tuesday, 2 August 2005

Tales told by idiots

W comes out in favor of teaching Intelligent Design (a.k.a. Creationism with the serial numbers filed off) in public schools. Someone really needs to tell the president he can’t run for reelection, and thus no longer needs to behave like an idiot to gain votes. I take it all back—although, in my defense, I was discussing Congress and not the executive branch.

Unfortunately, the Democrats will fail to extract the correct lesson from this: teachers*, not politicians, should decide what should be taught, and the only way to stop politicians from deciding what gets taught is to get the government completely out of the education business. Instead, they will attempt to back evolutionary theory ad nauseum and further alienate the crowd in Kansas (and the rest of rural and suburban America) which they can’t figure out what’s the matter with.

þ: TigerHawk.

Update: Alex Knapp is sharing my wavelength today.

* I pointedly use the word teacher and not parent; mind you, absent the advantage for public schools conferred by taxpayer subsidies, parents would be free to choose among available schools and teachers on a level playing field.

3 comments:

Any views expressed in these comments are solely those of their authors; they do not reflect the views of the authors of Signifying Nothing, unless attributed to one of us.

1. Patrick Carver wrote @ Tue, 2 Aug 2005, 9:06 pm CDT:

Chris, I would recommend A Case for a Creator by Lee Strobel where Mr. Strobel interviews several leading ID propropents like Jonathan Wells and Dr. Michael Behe. It’s quite a fascinating read. It may not covert someone with a Darwinist view, but I would think such a person would come away after finishing the book with a bit more respect for ID.

2. Michelle wrote @ Tue, 2 Aug 2005, 9:33 pm CDT:

LOL.

3. Cassandra wrote @ Wed, 3 Aug 2005, 6:25 am CDT:

Chris, as usual I beg to differ, even with TigerHawk (and I usually agree with him). I’m not a Creationist, but first of all I don’t see the President’s remarks as an endorsement of “teaching” ID and second, given the vast idiocy of what is currently being taught in our public schools I’m not even sure I endorse completely allowing teachers to decide what is taught (although I’m with you on not wanting government to decide either).

I’m a parent, and darnitall, I want some voice in what is taught. Because I want higher standards in schools. I paid for almost 18 years of private and home school because the public schools were so bad when my children were growing up. That’s not right. When they were in public school, I had to check their work constantly to correct uncorrected errors their teachers let go so their self-esteem wouldn’t get bruised.

As a result, both my sons write beautifully and they can both spell. Had I not taken an active hand in their education, I have little confidence this would have been the case. And fwiw, I come from a family of teachers and my daughter-in-law is a teacher, so I am by no means hostile to teachers. I think they do a wonderful job, but the system is broken and I don’t think much of the certification process either (and I say this as someone who tutored teacher candidates for the CBEST, which many of them couldn’t pass on the first try).

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