Quote :

"I'm not conflating "religiousness" with "complete disregard for the Scientific Method." I'm talking about mouth-breathing idiot parents who either don't know anything about science or actively distrust it. Not every religious person in the country but at least 40%, sadly. I'm not buying that education is something we trust small communities to. You end up with tearing pages out of health books and putting warning stickers in biology books. "

I think you have this backwards. I'd wager that the vast majority of america is perfectly fine with (or at least indifferent to) science, the scientific method and teaching it to children. Unfortunately, the vast majority of america is also fine with (or indifferent to) allowing educational decisions for their children to be made by a small board of people elected by a small minority of voters. It was something like 10% of voters that turned out for the last school board election wasn't it? Which means a simple 6% of eligible voters have to turn out to change education for everyone. Sure the turn out get's bigger with larger elections, but even at the congressional level, we still can't get more than 50% of the eligible voters out (IIRC, didn't the last two elections have record levels, and that was still below 40%?).

Additionally, because such a small minority can affect such a large institution, they have the power to affect people even outside their voting districts. If 6% of voters in the state of texas decide to elect board members who decide their text books need warning labels on them, suddenly many other states might have to have warning labels too. Not because they voted for them, but because Texas is a big spender, and has influence on what the publishers will produce, which in turn influences what other states can buy.

Sure, dropping the decision making to the local level will probably increase the absolute number of instances of schools deciding to have warning labels (assuming of course they can get a publisher to publish it, or at the very least afford to buy their own warning labels), but I would wager that it would reduce the total numbers of students who are affected by it. IOW, local decision making might mean that 6% of the voters in East Bumblefuck TN can get that town (or more likely, their individual children) a crappier education, but right now, 6% of the voters in Kansas can fuck up the education system for 100% of Kansas.

2/23/2013 4:29:15 PM

I'm going to have to call this one. Defending the sanity of the American public is hopeless.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/155003/hold-creationist-view-human-origins.aspx



The nation is a bunch of fucking idiots. Everything you think about the nation is from the rose colored glasses that you and I wear from living in an education part of the nation, being educated, posting on TSB, so on and so fourth. The big questions of our day aren't being decided by reason. Why the hell do you think global warming action is in an impasse?

We are collectively dumb as a rock. And things aren't getting better.

2/23/2013 5:13:07 PM

^^mrfrog pretty much addressed the point that vast majority of Americans are NOT fine with the scientific method

Now, moving on to small percentage of voters deciding the fate of the school boards. First of all, the people who vote actually care about education issues and are more likely to make an informed decision. Would we increased the voter turnout to 57% by combining voting for schoolboard with voting for the President, but only the same 6% of those voters knew anything about the people running from the schoolboard, then their educated vote would be hopelessly diluted by people voting in a crapshoot.

Now, if the school board did make some stupid policy on the state level and the news started to spread to other states, it is more likely to be picked up in the media and be shut down in a fire of public outrage, than the same stupid policy introduced only on a small local level, where it is likely to stick.

2/23/2013 7:46:06 PM

Quote :

"mrfrog pretty much addressed the point that vast majority of Americans are NOT fine with the scientific method"

No he really didn't. At best, he posted a poll that demonstrated that decades of public education controlled at state and federal levels has done little if anything to advance the scientific method.

Quote :

"First of all, the people who vote actually care about education issues and are more likely to make an informed decision."

Facts not in evidence. And there are plenty of horribly stupid decisions by school boards around the country that have not been voted out to suggest that voting and informed decisions do not go hand in hand.

2/23/2013 9:09:45 PM

motivated voter != informed voter

2/23/2013 10:24:06 PM

Quote :

"vast majority of Americans are NOT fine with the scientific method"

The scientific method just boils down to using reason to think about stuff, with an ultimate obligation to evidence from the world around us.

We get wrapped up in the use of words, in part because our K-12 (and mostly K-8) education system is all about authority, and facts are presented with an air of authority. The idea of consensus is flat out inconsistent with science. If you don't believe in evolution, your mistake wasn't a failure to respect the consensus, your mistake is that you're a fucking idiot. The 46% of people who believe God created humans in present form are holding a position that's almost certainly inconsistent with our elements being forged in an ancient supernova. This could be blamed on media that distracts them with false evidence, but the evidence for an old universe literally surrounds us.

Maybe this is my own bigotry, but I have a hard time believing that people who are that stupid really have anything to contribute to society. They have a brain, but they've shown that they're determined to not use it for anything productive. Is such a person really going to produce something important to our economy? I would be delighted if they would go form Jesusland in the middle of Utah and succeeded.

But those are adults and we're talking about kids. The kids have access to so much more information than their parents did at the same age. I believe there's hope. If you wanted to teach "both sides" of the issue, then I would love for kids to read Wikipedia and Conservapedia side by side. Not only will it teach them to think critically about conflicting accounts, but it will give them an accurate picture of what the decay of the human mind is like.

2/24/2013 11:56:26 AM