Texas School Board of Education ^W Dumbasses

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Life, the universe, and everything…, Rants

SHAME! SHAME! SHAME!

Texas’ Board of Education will be ridiculed by pretty much everyone (including me in this post). I would make more fun of them if the consequence of their gross incompetence didn’t lead directly to irreparable harm to the next ten year’s worth of students who will be unemployable in any medical, bio medical, biology, DNA testing, stem cell research, drug research, geology, paleontology, farming, animal husbandry, crop research, or pretty much any field which requires them to understand the basics – or indeed, fine detail – of evolution.

Modern medicine, to name but just one field, doesn’t make ANY sense except if evolution is true. It’s as simple as that. There’s about as much doubt regarding evolution as there is doubt the planet is round and is orbiting our sun.

In my view (and IANAL), these students have due cause to sue the asses off the Board of Education for future earnings loss. What does a specialist medical doctor make per year? Half a million? Million per year? Multiply by all the number of students in each of these fields… whoa that’s a lot of moolah.

I call on all biology text book authors to refuse to allow “updated” editions to be issued with the forthcoming Texas changes. If the schools can’t buy any books, so be it. They can use the ones they have today that have the facts, instead of sowing doubt. Scientists everywhere should make it incredibly clear to their congress critters and senators, as well as their local Boards of Education, that this decision is about as dumb as they come.

I’m actually struggling to understand how “educated” folks, charged with the incredible responsibility of educating their state’s children could be so abusive. They should be sacked immediately and this terrible position stuck down for all time.

Comments

7 responses to “Texas School Board of Education ^W Dumbasses”

March 31, 2009

Big Red

Aha! You are falling into the old beginner’s trap for litigation. You need to nett the earning from being a doctor against the earnings for being, say, a priest, or a Family First senator. These are, of course, opportunities which may not have occurred to these impressionable kids had the texts not been altered. Kind of like the Bible really.
April 1, 2009

Kirsten

And on the sixth day, in the afternoon, God said to the work experience kid: “Your turn!”
April 8, 2009

Brad Andrews

Modern medicine wouldn’t exist without a belief in a belief in particles to people Evolution? Yeah, right.

Real easy to get quite sarcastic here, but you really need to study a bit more of science history. Many people who had significant scientific breakthroughs would make the Texas BOE look mild (which they really are).

Lots of forums exist to argue the topic, but I feel compelled to stick my head up against the blind following of stupidity.

How many computer attacks “just happen”? Is the whole code security field built on things randomly happening? Of course not. All fields require some creative force. Attackers are successful because they craft things. Defenders are successful because they create effective defenses.

Quite a few successful doctors today don’t believe in your “key principle” either. I would rather have a doctor who believed in logical causes than the modern myth that is having lots of trouble anyway.

School systems have a huge number of troubles anyway. Believing that all those students are going to be crippled because they are told that they should consider the evidence strains credibility a bit as well. Since when did critical thinking lose importance?

This is a bit incoherent, but I just read the note (while looking for good secure development information) and felt compelled to respond.

Brad
April 8, 2009

Brad Andrews

BTW, I would also ask you how many of the “facts” in the current texts are really accurate? Several that have been discredited for years are still there. Where is the crusade for that?

Or is it just ideas you disagree with that shouldn’t be examined? Flawed arguments in favor of theories you endorse deserve support?

Brad
April 9, 2009

vanderaj

Brad,

I’m sorry if you don’t “believe” in evolution, whether the bits about origins, or the bits about how we change over time, but evolution is an observed fact, and there’s precious little that can be done about that.

On the “some doctors believe in something other than evolution” is the “call to authority” logical fallacy. It means nothing. Evolution doesn’t care what those doctors think. If folks are discussing evolution in forums, good on them. I have better things to do than argue with folks who will never believe the facts, let alone learn what the difference between “theory” (English) and “theory” (science) means. I could tell those folks the sky is blue forever, and they’d say “No, it’s not”. I just … don’t care.

Evolution is not having lots of trouble. Science works in a particular way:

a) observe facts (Go on a long voyage and collect and classify a large number of animals)
b) create theory that fits facts (see Darwin’s book)
c) in the theory, make predictions about future hopefully observable facts (ibid)
d) Conduct research or experiments searching for those hopefully existing facts (ever since then)
e) If the new facts are indeed found, that adds weight to the theory being correct (done)

Evolution is an observed fact. Speciation is an observed fact. Change over time has been used by farmers, breeders and others for thousands of years. How we classify plants and animals, including us, is being revolutionized by DNA and RNA evidence, which for the most part supports the older method of looking at features to show descent and relationships. These are unavoidable facts. Evolution is a theory that fits those facts very well, and makes predictions about other facts, which have since been observed. The theory bits are where the exciting research is being done. Modern synthesis is a far greater tool for finding new medicines, creating new therapies, and filling in the blanks of our knowledge than anything else. In fact, there is nothing else.

I will agree with you on one thing – the US school system is suffering from a lack of critical thinking. There can be no other explanation as to why so many (apparently 40 something percent) do not understand that evolution is how we came to be. From my personal experience, I think the problem is the role in the rote learning, “mile wide, 1 inch deep” learning. It would be good for US education system to consider starting later (say 9 am), and move to a model that encourages students to think for themselves. We have a responsibility to teach them how to perform research (where do I get that information from), evaluate the information and its sources and then make a decision about it. But that doesn’t mean teaching them falsehoods as being equivalent with more than 150 years of research and documented results by hundreds of thousands of scientists all over the world.

I’m sorry if you don’t believe in what is easily observable, verifiable and repeatable everywhere on the planet using any living thing. Evolution is one of nature’s wonders and it should be celebrated for all its glory.

thanks,
Andrew
April 9, 2009

Big Red

Brad,

I’m not sure that I understand what your thesis is. THis is not meant personally, but neither of your posts are written very clearly (to me at least)

Is it that you don’t believe in evolution, or that Mr van der Stock’s commentary against creationism is as bad as creationism itself?
March 13, 2010

Henry Harris

As usual the Texas School Board has distinguished themselves as the captains of ignorance. Falsifying science under the color of authority for the benefit of idiots should be a capital offense in my opinion. They make me ashamed of being born in Texas.

For the uneducated and/or terminally stupid: evolution is a fact. It is a cornerstone of science and is the underpinnings of our understanding of biology. It you teach in Texas and you don’t understand this fundamental fact, you are committing an obscene act, the mind rape of our youth.

What these morons don’t seem to understand is that by insisting religion must falsify science, they logically undermine the truth of religion. If religion teaches something that can easily be proven as false, then it calls into question all of the teachings of religion.