Shut up and pay, you morons ...

Here, British physicist David Tyler asks, "Are 72% of biology teachers hindering scientific literacy in the US?"

Some have described the survey as shocking. The authors of the report are gloomy about their findings. The perceived problem is this: evolutionists have won court cases bearing on the teaching of evolution in schools; state curricular standards have been revised to reinforce the status of evolutionary theory in biology - but despite all this, "considerable research suggests that supporters of evolution, scientific methods, and reason itself are losing battles in America's classrooms". The problem is that only 28% of teachers are forthrightly explaining evolutionary biology.

The fact that the 60% who teach microevolution (minor, demonstrated instances of evolution) are called "the mushy middle"makes the agenda clear: Tax funding to and court judgments, to teach Darwinism as a belief system about life when it is less and less supported by evidence.

... they want to target teachers in training:

"More effectively integrating evolution into the education of preservice biology teachers may also have the indirect effect of encouraging students who cannot accept evolution as a matter of faith to pursue other careers. Effective programs directed at preservice teachers can therefore both reduce the number of evolution deniers in the nation's classrooms, increase the number who would gladly accept help in teaching evolution, and increase the number of cautious teachers who are nevertheless willing to embrace rigorous standards. This would reduce the supply of teachers who are especially attractive to the most conservative school districts, weakening the cycle of ignorance."

For more, go here.

So shut up, you morons, and pay. Your science-talented kids can mow lawns for mediocrities shouting the shoot for Darwin. It's not your money and they're not your kids, and all truth is Darwin's truth.

Or not.

Real reasons why science education might be declining

Ed Sisson

Jeremiah the doomster insists that science education has been going downhill ever since it started, so presumably there is no bottom to the hill. That said, any kind of education could in fact be declining at a given time, and Jeremiah fulfills his duty in causing us to pause to wonder.

Here, for example, is the report by13 Howard Hughes Medical Institute professors on how to “change the culture of science education.” Their concern is commendable, but their report is the usual wish list for things that won’t and can’t happen. For example, they quote

“We’re trying change the mindset of the research faculty. There’s a sense that teaching isn’t important in review or promotion or tenure, and unless research universities take a role in making teaching important, it’s going to be very difficult to get faculty to invest more and change their methods.”

- Jo Handelsman

No research university is likely to do this. Star researchers want to research and will go elsewhere if they are cumbered with teaching - except when teaching essentially means recruiting reliable postdocs.

Friend Edward Sisson has a somewhat different, thoughtful take on it:

Read more »

Sunday afternoon coffee: Did your old science teacher know the Tarot?

From The Scientist (8th October 2010):

Science tarot

A whimsical deck of cards shuffles the worlds of logic and mythology

On a Thursday night in San Francisco, three elaborately costumed women sit in a lively hall giving tarot readings. One wears ornamental snakes in her hair, and another sports a headdress with oversized purple eyeballs. This isn't your everyday divinatory gathering -- they're at the California Academy of Sciences, surrounded by glass cases of stuffed antelopes and lions. And instead of knights and kings, their cards display images of mitochondria, neurotransmitters, and Darwin.

This unusual scene is the launch party of Science Tarot, a collaboration between science communicators, artists, and other creative thinkers who have produced a science-inspired deck of tarot cards. The team has reimagined each traditional card as a scientific concept, using images ranging from bacteria to black holes. While some people are dubious about the idea, others say the project could encourage interest in science and even act as an educational tool.

"I want to get science out in the world in a friendly way, so people who don't necessarily have a relationship to science realize that it's part of their lives," says co-creator Raven Hanna, a San Francisco-based science communicator with a PhD in molecular biophysics and biochemistry.

The project began in 2003 when Hanna was brainstorming ideas for an art installation with Logan Austeja Daniel, a landscape and sound designer, and Martin Azevedo, a writer, filmmaker, and tarot fan who works in biotechnology. They realized "there was not a science tarot deck in the world, and there really should be one," recalls Hanna.

Some worry that students might get the wrong idea of what science is all about.

Now, there's a thought. Used to be that kids thought the world of science for putting a man on the moon. What you think?

Faith in mindless matter and energy ...

A friend, responding to some bumph fronted by a Darwinist in a (doubtless) tax-supported journal, writes to say:

... it's not that the evidence is so strong, it's that there's no other explanation within the materialist worldview. Of course, Dr. Padian describes it as "rationalist," but that is a time-honored bit of sophistry inherited from the time of the philosophes. It is not belief in observations and testings that supports evolutionism, but faith that everything in the universe can be explained in terms of mindless matter and energy. Given that as the only framework for "scientific" explanations, evolution is the only "scientific" possibility. Dr. Padian also touched on this when he described how scientists must all think alike, or keep their opinions to themselves.

So, to believe in creation rather than evolution does not require ignorance of the facts and/or of the methodology of science, or stubborn clinging to religious faith in spite of the evidence. No, it only takes being open to the possibility that there's something more to reality, that there might actually be a God who might have done something more than light the fuse for the Big Bang (speaking colloquially, of course). Then you can truly look at the theory of evolution critically and put the claims to real tests, not trials designed to find in what way they are true. Suddenly the evidence is seen to have an entirely different pattern than the doctrines taught to students claim.

Not having a financial interest in either book, perhaps I can recommend Persuaded by the Evidence and Slaughter of the Dissidents , both of which can be found on Amazon. If you are not familiar with cases such as are presented in these books, you do not fully understand the basis of the creation-evolution controversies.

(Note: I don't know why my profile has disappeared from this blog. It wasn't intentional. I made the mistake of attempting a minor edit in the template. You can still see it here if you care.)

Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy:

(Note: I do have a financial interest in this book. I wrote it and I want you to buy it, in order to persuade my publisher to let me write an update.)

Cartoonist wanted: Texas science standards fight

From the evil Discos:

[Education warning: If you work for a typical school board, you should not be reading this blog! Do not read it at work!]

Big Win in Texas as State Now Leads Nation in Requiring Critical Analysis of Evolution in High School Science Classes

Robert Crowther

In a huge victory for those who favor teaching the scientific evidence for and against evolution, Texas today moved to the head of the class by requiring students to “critique” and examine “all sides of scientific evidence” and specifically requiring students to “analyze and evaluate” the evidence for major evolutionary concepts such as common ancestry, natural selection, and mutations.

“Texas has sent a clear message that evolution should be taught as a scientific theory open to critical scrutiny, not as a sacred dogma that can’t be questioned,” said Dr. John West, Senior Fellow at Discovery Institute. “Contrary to the claims of the evolution lobby, absolutely nothing the Board did promotes ‘creationism’ or religion in the classroom. Groups that assert otherwise are lying, plain and simple. Under the new standards, students will be expected to analyze and evaluate the scientific evidence for evolution, not religion. Period.”

The new requirements were contained in revised science standards approved today by the Texas State Board of Education. The science standards include language requiring students to “analyze, evaluate and critique scientific explanations…including examining all sides of scientific evidence… so as to encourage critical thinking by the student.” Equally important, the high school biology standards now require students to “analyze and evaluate” the scientific evidence for key parts of evolutionary theory, including common ancestry, natural selection, and mutations.

Discovery Institute has long endorsed the idea that evolution should be fully and completely presented to students, including its unresolved issues.

SOURCE

Okay, so the State of Texas will now be sued by Darwin pressure groups.

The only question I have is, how many dollars of US public funds will they be given to do that? How much will Texas taxpayers be on the hook for?

I think these Texans are fighting a noble battle, but may it be - in these times - a lost cause?

Many third and fourth-rate intellectuals - having seen the complete failure of their ideas in any setting where evidence matters - have sought to make them law, case law, or government policy. And they largely succeed. You'd have to be a Texas longhorn or a wolf of the northern forest to evade their reach.

And it is going to get far worse before it gets better.

Also, a friend writes to ask,

Does anyone know a cartoonist/artist?

We would like a drawing of E. Scott [= key Darwin lobbyist] getting the boot out of Texas. Possible caption "Don't Mess With Texas".

I have never seen her so angry.

I replied,

I will advertise on my blog, care of me.

It is high time these censorious nobodies started getting the boot.

We are eye deep with them here in Canada. (I will later be reviewing Ezra Levant's book, Shakedown. )

They think they have the right to interfere with anything, anywhere, when no one is actually in danger. It's just a question of some people thinking differently from them. Can't allow that, can we?

Do you think Obama will give them a big grant to pursue their activities? Under his stimulus program?

Well, if so, another fine instance of Americans' tax dollars at work.

Oh, you know what? We just have to get these people out of public life and back to the obscurity they so justly merit.

Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy. It is not what you probably think:

Darwin, check your mail. Texas needs you.

(I submitted this op-ed to the Austin American-Statesman, but - in their wisdom - they decided not to print it. So I am simply posting it here.):

When I first heard that a group of professors who say they speak for 800 Texas scientists "is challenging the idea that discussion of the weaknesses of evolutionary theory belongs in science classrooms" (Austin Statesman-American, October 1, 2008), I sighed.

Darwin, Texas educators need you and your "bulldog" Thomas Huxley to come back and talk some sense into them.

Huxley once wrote that "irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors." A hallmark of an "irrationally held truth" is that mundane discussion of its strengths and weaknesses is forbidden.

Any theory whose strengths and weaknesses cannot be discussed is not a theory in science. It is a creed. If you want to be received into a sect, you cannot doubt the sect's interpretation of obscure doctrines in Scripture. But you should be surprised and concerned if, when you want to learn about evolution, you are not allowed to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the prevailing evolution theory.

In fact, you should ask, what exactly is going on in science education?

First, as philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn pointed out, all theories are "underdetermined" by evidence. By that, he meant that, at any given time there is usually some evidence or circumstance that does not fit the theory. Progress in science often depends on studying these exceptions with an open mind.

For example, Lord Kelvin remarked in 1900 that there were just “two little dark clouds” floating around Newton's classical "law of gravity" physics. They were Michelson and Morley’s measurements of the velocity of light and the puzzling phenomenon of blackbody radiation. Kelvin was quite sure that these troublesome little clouds would shortly be blown away. Yet modern physics advances—relativity and quantum mechanics—derive from these two little dark clouds, not from the theory to which they were an annoying exception.

Similarly, at a number of points, Darwinian evolution (the prevailing theory) does not accurately interpret the history of life. Here is one example: Almost all the major divisions of life forms came into existence about half a billion years ago during the Cambrian explosion. Some have gone extinct, but few or none have been added. Darwin knew this was a problem, and he blamed the incomplete fossil record. We now have a much more complete fossil record ... and it is still a problem.

Today, we also face another conundrum. Living cells are full of intricate machinery that is essential for life processes, yet life on Earth apparently began almost immediately (in geological terms) after the planet cooled. A recent discovery in Canada's northlands may even have pushed the beginning back another 250 million years. Overall, life is not a story best interpreted by a long slow process of Darwinian survival of the fittest.

Evolution theory is politically sensitive - for a good reason. It has often been used as a creation story of materialist atheism. Of course it need not be used that way in the classroom. But the best way to demonstrate that we do not intend to use it that way is to permit discussion of its strengths and weaknesses. Otherwise, people are quite justified in assuming that it will be presented as the creation story of a creed in which students are invited to put their faith.

In the recent Expelled film, Richard Dawkins ("Darwin's Rottweiler") told Ben Stein that he was prepared to consider that life was brought to Earth by intelligent aliens. Many people are not at all prepared to consider that. But if Dawkins and Stein think that such an idea is worth discussing, then surely the strengths and weaknesses of Darwin's theory should be as well.

In general, the cleverer students always know what is going on. They read the papers, they overhear discussions, they go to blogs. Silenced or blinkered teachers simply lose their respect. The consequences erupt later ...

We have learned a great deal about the history of life in the last few decades, and much of it has not been kind to Darwin's theory. This is a time for exploration, not dogma. Teach strengths and weaknesses.

Denyse O'Leary is a Toronto-based Canadian journalist and author.

(Note: If you live in or near Texas, why not send this to friends who are interested in the intelligent design controversy? Why assume you must wait for the tree chain saw massacre people to tell you "THE TRUTH." Here, we just offer you our best guess, but it is free, and no trees die.)

Science education: Yawn Central ... oh, no, wait! This just in ....

In an American election year, the science lobby worries that many people don't know enough about science to make informed decisions, according to G. Jeffrey MacDonald ("Are we science-savvy enough to make informed decisions?", USA Today, August 8, 2008):

... only 26% believe that they themselves have a good understanding of science. And 44% couldn't identify a single scientist, living or dead, whom they'd consider a role model for the nation's young people.

These results are disturbing, science education experts say, because scientists aren't the only ones who must distinguish solid scientific methods from bogus ones. Some important scientific questions are being debated this year, including food safety, imported-product safety and the effect of biofuels.

But most of their recommended solutions won't be much use because people either can't or won't follow them. I think a Media Studies course would be more useful - if it improves skill in distinguishing how information becomes "news" and how to distinguish hype from hope.

Meanwhile, another round of kvetching about "why American kids don't like science", this time featuring Mr. Microsoft himself. Bill Gates, according to Peter Wood at Chronicle.com, offers a solution:

... while Gates didn't make the point in so many words, his call for more H-1B visas was really testimony to the incapacity of American education to inspire children to take an interest in science and motivate young adults to follow though. He noted that 60 percent of the students at the top American computer-science departments are foreign-born.

Woods comments,

Let me offer a different explanation. Students respond more profoundly to cultural imperatives than to market forces. In the United States, students are insulated from the commercial market's demand for their knowledge and skills. That market lies a long way off - often too far to see. But they are not insulated one bit from the worldview promoted by their teachers, textbooks, and entertainment. From those sources, students pick up attitudes, motivations, and a lively sense of what life is about. School has always been as much about learning the ropes as it is about learning the rotes. We do, however, have some new ropes, and they aren't very science-friendly. Rather, they lead students who look upon the difficulties of pursuing science to ask, "Why bother?"

- How Our Culture Keeps Students Out of Science (August 8, 2008)

Well, East Coast American lawyer Edward Sisson, a sympathizer of the intelligent design theorists - who told me to go ahead and say so - couldn't resist giving Wood's article a "thrashing" and invited me to print his comments here. Done!

As the father of two teenagers, I make a point of watching the TV shows they like, while I am with them. What they watch are shows in which sports stars show off their fancy houses ("cribs") and fancy cars and swimming pools etc. Or else they watch shows set in high schools, in which the students are never shown studying, they are shown in their social lives (always dynamic) and sports, and in lives filled with family conflicts and friends-conflicts. Or they watch shows like America's Next Top Model (fashion modeling) or Project Runway (fashion clothes design) or other competition talent shows (American Idol (pop singing) being the premiere example). Or shows like The Apprentice (business entrepreneurs) or Top Chef (high-fashion cooking). In summary, shows involving young people engaged in emotionally passionate activities. If the science community can come up with a way of making a show that shows young would-be scientists or engineers involved in exciting competitions, it ought to do so.

Woods noted,

Success in the sciences unquestionably takes a lot of hard work, sustained over many years. Students usually have to catch the science bug in grade school and stick with it to develop the competencies in math and the mastery of complex theories they need to progress up the ladder. Those who succeed at the level where they can eventually pursue graduate degrees must have not only abundant intellectual talent but also a powerful interest in sticking to a long course of cumulative study. A century ago, Max Weber wrote of "Science as a Vocation," and, indeed, students need to feel something like a calling for science to surmount the numerous obstacles on the way to an advanced degree.

Sisson replies,

The TV shows I described above sometime show the fruits of success for people who are successful in those fields: sports stars' fancy houses, cars, etc.; the lives of fashion models or fashion clothes designers or pop singers or business entrepreneurs. If the science community can come up with a way of making a show that shows that successful scientists or engineers are rewarded with exciting lives, it ought to do so.

Woods notes,

At least on the emotional level, contemporary American education sides with the obstacles. It begins by treating children as psychologically fragile beings who will fail to learn - and worse, fail to develop as "whole persons" - if not constantly praised. The self-esteem movement may have its merits, but preparing students for arduous intellectual ascents aren't among them. What the movement most commonly yields is a surfeit of college freshmen who "feel good" about themselves for no discernible reason and who grossly overrate their meager attainments.

Sisson replies,

This is false. The TV shows teens like are full of emotional moments where someone is told he or she does not measure up on the merits and has to leave. I have never met a teenager -- and I meet lots, having both a teen boy and a teen girl -- who has an over-assessment of his or her abilities due to undue praise from parents or teachers, or who feels that he or she does not need to work hard at "intellectual ascents" because he or she has already achieved an "intellectual ascent."

Woods notes,

The intellectual lassitude we breed in students, their unearned and inflated self-confidence, undercuts both the self-discipline and the intellectual modesty that is needed for the apprentice years in the sciences. Modesty? Yes, for while talented scientists are often proud of their talent and accomplishments, they universally subscribe to the humbling need to prove themselves against the most-unyielding standards of inquiry. That willingness to play by nature's rules runs in contrast to the make-it-up-as-you-go-along insouciance that characterizes so many variants of postmodernism and that flatters itself as being a higher form of pragmatism.

Sisson replies,

The comment immediately above applies here too. The self-praise of scientists who "universally subscribe to the humbling need to prove themselves against the most unyielding standards" far better describes every high-school jock who wants to excel in sports.

Woods notes,

The aversion to long-term and deeply committed study of science among American students also stems from other cultural imperatives. We rank the manufacture of "self-esteem" above hard-won achievement, but we also have immersed a generation in wall-to-wall promotion of diversity and multiculturalism as being the worthiest form of educational endeavor; we have foregrounded the redistributional dreams of "social justice" over heroic aspirations to discover, invent, and thereby create new wealth; and we have endlessly extolled the virtue of "sustainability" against the ravages of "progress." Do all that, and you create an educational system that is essentially hostile to advanced achievement in the sciences and technology. Moreover, those threads have a certainty and unity that make them not just a collection of educational conceits but also part of a compelling worldview.

Sisson replies,

Again, false. Only a minority of students make social politics their priority, and the students who have a personality prone to want to get into social activism are unlikely ever to choose the very different kind of life offered by science. Much of this article devolves into denunciation of liberal social trends in education. Regardless of whether you like those trends or not, I see no relationship between those trends and the decisions of students not to pursue lives in science.

Woods notes,

In his testimony, Bill Gates did more than glance at the failures of American schooling. Our record on high-school math and science education is particularly troubling. International tests indicate that American fourth graders rank among the top students in the world in science and above average in math. By eighth grade, they have moved closer to the middle of the pack. By 12th grade, our students score near the bottom of all industrialized nations. As a result, too many of them enter college without even the basic skills needed to pursue a degree in science or engineering.

Sisson replies,

Again, false. This is not a failure of schooling, the decline over the years between 4th grade and 12th grade reflects the fact that higher and higher percentages of each class of students learns, over the years, how comparatively dry and un-passionate and un-remunerative a life in science is as compared to other paths of life in America, fewer and fewer see any reason to prepare for a kind of life they just don't want to lead. Is not the Dilbert strip a fairly accurate portrayal of the quality of life most such students would lead, if they took that path? Why would we expect any student to want to grow up to be Dilbert?

Woods notes,

On the other hand, nothing in his testimony suggested recognition that American education's cultural imperatives play a role in diminishing the importance of science and technology in the eyes of the great majority of students. I don't take it as a tragedy if our top graduate programs fill up with ambitious and talented students from abroad; if we need to issue more H-1B visas to sustain our high-tech industries, let's do it with dispatch. Welcoming some of the world's most educated, talented, and ambitious scientists to our shores only strengthens the nation. But the apathy of so many homegrown American students to the intellectual challenges of science is something else - something that building schools, multiplying computers, and ginning up STEM programs won't touch.

Sisson replies,

For foreign students, Dilbert's life may well be better than any other option they can see for themselves. Not so for American students.

Woods notes,

Bill Gates may not be the right person to tell us how to restore that mixture of awe, admiration, sheer ambition, delight in meeting difficulties, and stubborn curiosity - the patient exuberance - that draws students into the adventure of science. A few of our students catch it despite the preoccupations of their teachers and their textbooks. But what to do about the larger problem? I'm starting my own Hilbert's list [of unsolved math problems].

Sisson replies,

American students do not believe science is an adventure. They think it is Dilbert's life. If it really is an adventure, why aren't there TV shows that show what an adventure it is? If America can make a show that makes fashion clothing design an adventure, America can make a show that makes science an adventure. If, in fact, it is.

The biggest problem here is that the promise of science-as-an-adventure, as promoted in the 1950s and 1960s, plainly failed. The big impetus for American science education was Sputnik and the space race. I have a colleague who remembers that era vividly -- he was in grade school and suddenly science was all the rage. This was the great driver of science education in America: the exploration of space. Well, we went to the moon-- and, in the public's opinion, there wasn't anything exciting there. We sent fly-by probes to all the planets, and again there wasn't anything exciting, as far as the public is concerned. We landed two rovers on Mars - and the most exciting thing about this achievement is our own rovers, and how long they have lasted. What the rovers actually saw, and explored, wasn't exciting. Now we have a Mars digger, and it's finding water ice. Exciting?

No. From the late 1700s through to the early 1900s people thought there were vast water canals, there could be civilizations -- so a little ice is not exciting, it is a big let-down. And now it appears perhaps the soil there is antagonistic to life.

And, of course, to turn to our key issue, the science world repeats endlessly that life bubbled-up out of mud or other matter, and its course of development into us was a giant accident, and there is no reason to pay any attention to any idea of God -- and then they put the label "isn't this exciting" on a picture of the world and of us that is as desolate and boring as the surface of the Moon, or the surface of Mars. And believe me, the public does find them boring.

My area's cable TV provider includes the NASA channel. It has zero production values. Endless long sequences out the shuttle window of earth below. Nerdy astronauts in dorky clothes describing how they turn knobs and so forth. The public just doesn't see any adventure in this. That isn't the fault of the schools, it is the fault of the fact that what science has actually discovered doesn't excite, and the process of discovering it conveys no adventure.

When you're in the broccoli business you can spend hours telling people that broccoli tastes as fun as ice cream. But folks, it doesn't. If you're selling broccoli to a community that otherwise has only rice or potatoes to eat, you may get a lot of satisfied customers. But in America, science is a broccoli stand surrounded by ice cream parlors. That's the reality.

I think Sisson is on to something there, on at least two points:

Foreign students: Yes, absolutely. As a Canadian, I get nervous when I hear Americans bellyaching about the number of "foreign" students at their universities (I know they mean my #1 son-in-law, among others, even if they are too polite to spell it out). But getting into a posh US U is a vital career asset to many foreign students, one for which they will sacrifice much. And a career in science is of much more use if you need to provide for your family than a career in art history would be. So it's not exactly a choice anyway.

Science as dullness raised to an art form: Does anyone remember the scene in Mrs. Doubtfire where the Robin Williams character points out that the kids' science show currently airing is just awful? As Mrs. Doubtfire, Robin transforms the show, and it takes off.

But yes, all too many science shows do sound like Dr. Snore the Science Bore rather than the wonderful March of the Penguins. But whoops!, March was accused of being an ID-friendly documentary, and the producers went to the trouble of denying it, pointing out that, after all, penguins are not faithful to their spouses. ...

So here we are, folks, at the crack of Yawn ...

What's wrong with science education today?

Some friends and I were discussing what is wrong with science education today. One person asked, "I wonder whether anybody else gets tired of the continually repeated suggestion that intelligent design (or even young earth creationism is the factor that's going to hold the US back in science education and achievement?"

My friend is an American, so I offered him some suggestions as to how to respond: In addressing such claims, I think you must insist that people explain what they are talking about. Here is what I usually say, when confronted with similar claims:

1. Quit crying wolf. The United States has been a world leader in science since at least World War II and there is no good evidence that that is changing significantly. Of course, there is always some evidence supporting any given trend claim, which is why the half century picture is so important. Fifty years ago, people were saying that the United States was falling behind in science. Yeah? Tell it to the Mars Rover.

2. Quit comparing apples and oranges. Many countries do not have a No Child Left Behind Act, let alone great concern about gender equity or minority disadvantage. Some countries have few resources and put all the ones they do have into the high performers. But they are not a useful comparison because the United States would easily outstrip them in their own area of expertise (producing geniuses) if it did the same thing. Check out the math genius school at Princeton in the film, A Beautiful Mind, for example ....

For reasonable and useful comparisons, compare - say - a prosperous U.S. state like New York with a prosperous contiguous Canadian province like Ontario. Absent cherry-picking, I wonder how big a difference one will find.*

*It might be quite easy to find inner city schools in New York City that perform worse than similar inner city schools in Toronto (Canada's largest city and the capital of Ontario) . But New York is much larger than Toronto so there may be room for more statistical anomalies. The significant question is, do average New York State students receive a significantly poorer education than average Ontario students, and if so, what might be the real-world reasons?

3. Quit engaging in fact-free discourse. Does young earth creationism (YEC) actually result in poorer individual scores on standardized tests? Less knowledge of Darwin's theory? I suspect that one reason Darwin activists in your area are not making an issue of test results - but rather sticking to generalities and suppositions - is that the results may show the exact opposite of what the activist wants the public to believe. If so, it is probably due to the fact that the YEC student may actually be expected to learn what he is supposed to dissent from. The worst aspect of propaganda masquerading as education is that it kills the desire for knowledge. All you need to know is what they want you to parrot back, and - because you MUST parrot whatever they tell you back without question or dissent - the exact nature of the foolishness in which you are being indoctrinated is unimportant.

Actually, that's not even the main problem, in my view. What's wrong with science education today is what's wrong with all education today: Feeling good has replaced doing well. And fixing that would require the replacement of much of the current education establishment, which takes time. People who are looking to blame this or that social group - as a group - in the meantime are opportunist agitators who should, in my opinion, be ignored.