Eva sent me a link to a wingnut’s account of a debate between some 6th Congressional District candidates: Patty Wetterling (Democrat), John Binkowski (Independent), and Michele Bachmann (Rethuglican). It’s not a very good transcription—for one thing, the wingnut’s commentary is all tangled up with the words of the candidates, making it hard to tell who said what—but there’s one part of interest. They were asked the ID question.
Q5: Should “Intelligent Design” be taught (along with Darwinian Theory) in the p science curriculum in public schools?
Bachmann: “We need to trust teachers and the local school boards in what they want to teach. The federal government has no business in moving toward censorship. Bachmann stated that Darwinian theory was by no means ironclad, and to be able to question its tenets (i.e., the secondary law of thermodynamics, the fossil record) is a move toward academic freedom. She stated that it should be up to faculty, students and parents to draw their own conclusions.
Hypocrite. What about the state standards mandated by NCLB? Is this Republican going to reject the policies she pushed a few years ago, which specifies what ought to be taught?
No scientific theory is ironclad, but the objections that she or the wingnut blogger raised are not valid: evolution does not violate the second law of thermodynamics, and the fossil record is part of the evidence supporting evolution.
This Binkowski fellow illustrates why I am no fan of libertarians and their worship of the free market.
Binkowski: Related that he took a class in astronomy, and that it was a “mindboggling” and “spiritually moving” experience, and led him to the conclusion that maybe we aren’t alone. But he also said that Intelligent Design was not a proven scientific fact, and that it would be detrimental to teach it in the science curriculum. He suggested that it should be left up to the market to decide; that is, if schools wanted to teach it, Binkowski intimated that it would lead to lower scores in science to those who were taught Intelligent Design as part of the curriculum. (Binkowski left out the fact that it would only be the case if the science test didn’t contain Intelligent Design questions).
Oh, sure, let the market decide—when schools fail their students and those students wash out and end up selling fries at McDonald’s, the schools will get the message and improve. And if it happens to be your kids at the crappy schools…? Them’s the breaks. They will be the price paid on the altar of capitalism.
The wingnut’s stupid aside at the end gives me an idea. If we put Flying Spaghetti Monster questions on the SATs and ACTs, then the teachers will have to include it in the science courses, and that will make it automatically true.
Alas, there was no answer from Wetterling on this one.
He should just stick to overdriving with Turner.
Sorry.
Sorry, but each time you mention Bachmann, I think of Bachman Turner Overdrive, “Takin’ Care of Business”. Not the same thing obviously.
This part just kills me:
He suggested that it should be left up to the market to decide; that is, if schools wanted to teach it, Binkowski intimated that it would lead to lower scores in science to those who were taught Intelligent Design as part of the curriculum
The market? This isn’t capitalism: it’s science. I adopted a phrase from a poster here (I forget whom): “Science is not a democracy.”
What, are they planning on instituting control groups, to see whether ID tests better than evolution to specific demographics?!?!?!?
I don’t think the free market’s the answer on this one.
I just love it when the morons say teach both and let the kids decide. Right–that’s why we bother to send them to school, so they can pick and choose what they think is true. The North won the Civil War, or the South (with the help of Dr. Who)? You decide, kids! The President takes an oath to uphold the Constitution and the laws of the land, or only the ones he likes–You decide, kids!
Although, if she’s a Republican, taking care of business *is* their party’s primary agenda…
No real biologist claims that Darwin’s original theory is ironclad. Science is not dogma. Darwin provided a foundation – and probably advanced the field more than any single person before or since – but the modern synthesis has come a long way since then. Nobody is going to teach “Darwinism” as anything more than a historical curiosity: they’re going to teach modern evolutionary biology, which largely confirms Darwin’s theory but has some new wrinkles he didn’t know about.
Interestingly, though, I interpret the other half of this sentence the opposite way you did: I thought Bachman was claiming that 2LOT and the fossil record *were* tenets of Darwinism that ought to be subject to challenge. (Although I don’t know what exactly it means to challenge “the fossil record”, since it consists of thousands of individual fossils; maybe a claim that fossils in general are not really the remains of dead organisms but rather some sort of cosmic graffiti?) Maybe I jumped to this conclusion because I already know those things are completely consistent with evolutionary biology.
Krystalline Apostate:
Yeah, that was me.
The “let the kids decide” stance isn’t wishy-washy fence-sitting, it’s another tack taken in the anti-reality crusade.
The whole point of sending kids to school is to teach them the basic factual framework and decision-making/critical-thinking skills they need in order to survive as a mature and functional member of modern society (we usually fail at that, too, but that’s a whole different post). It has nothing whatsoever to do with making them feel good about themselves or pandering to the petty bigotries of their dumb-ass parents. By throwing the intellectual kitchen sink at kids and “allowing” them to pick and choose what they want to believe, we’re just going to create a feedback loop of anti-rational stupidity.
Forcing our kids to live in a pervasive fog of uncertainty and self-justifying folk-wisdom (i.e., pseudoscience) is not a solution to the problem of living in a pervasive fog of uncertainty and self-justifying folk-wisdom.
Let the market decide?
Hmmmm. Seems to me it already has. ADM, which tracks the evolution of bugs, and uses evolutionary principles in making new food crops, does well in the market place and in the stock market. So does Cargill. So does Monsanto. Pharmaceutical companies who use evolution theory also do well — see especially Genentech.
But you know what? There is not a single creationist company traded on the NYSE, nor on the NASDAQ. I can’t find a single such company in the world that the market has even approved to buy, let alone bought in droves to drive the stock price up.
The market has spoken. Where’s E. F. Hutton when you need them?
Oh, great. Now they’re going to demand that kids be taught an incorrect version of the “secondary law of thermodynamics” (sic) as well, in order to bolster the primary bullshit science.
This is where everything comes unravelled, and why everybody should care, irrespective of whether they consider biology or evolutionary theory specifically to be important to them. You can’t break science in one place and just leave it at that.
…the objections that she or the wingnut blogger raised are not valid: evolution does not violate the second law of thermodynamics…
That’s one of those things that’s too dumb to even be wrong — starting by saying that the 2LoT is a “tenet” of “Darwinian theory.” Was there a chapter in Origin of Species about heat flow???
It’s quite inderstandable for them to mistake one of their own Big Guns for one of the Principal Tenets of Darwinism. Remember, they don’t attack evolution because they understand it.
And of course, from Bachmann, we once again get the Academic Freedom strawman that anyone who asks about the 2LOT or Peking Man in their Darwinism class is immediately dragged out of the room by the Thought Police. It sure didn’t happen in my tenth grade biology class.
This is one of the trade-off points I was talking about. Bachmann is a complete nutjob… but she’s running in a very conservative district. Democrats had a choice this year on who to run against her: a centrist pro-labor former mayor, or Wetterling, who is way left and has never won office in the area before (and prior to this run, she declared that it was unwinnable by her).
Is winning against a creationist anti-gay nutjob more important than nominating the most leftist person you can in a district that went hard for Bush in 2004? These are tradeoffs.
So, by Way-Left, you mean Pro-Union and Pro-Woman, Pro-People, Pro-Public Services? That sounds pretty centrist to me. But then again, I’m not plunge.
If you can’t question the Secondary Law of Thermodynamics, then how do you explain PYGMIES + DWARVES??
plunge: I dunno, this year, it just might possibly happen. Or so it seems so far.
Dan:
Hey, thanks. Seriously. I use that all the time, when I hear the “ooh, poor pitiful wittwe cweationism doesn’t get a say because of dose buwwies.”
I usually throw in the fact that evolutionary theory gets actual results.
The fireworks are…amazing.
Sadly, the ‘feel-good’ crapola is the say of the day. & Dr. FeelGood is everyone’s hero.
“There are only two things that are infinite: the universe and human stupidity. And I’m not so sure about the universe.” – Einstein.
As if you can subject reality to a vote. Snort. Chuckle. Feh.
“So, by Way-Left, you mean Pro-Union and Pro-Woman, Pro-People, Pro-Public Services? That sounds pretty centrist to me. But then again, I’m not plunge.”
You can spin it any way you like: the fact is that Wetterling is not a centrist, and she is an uphill sell in a very conservative district (she lost last time despite having near universal goodwill and a very tame opponent). She’s within striking distance poll-wise in this great year, but it’s a climb, and the downside if she loses is that a totally batshit evil woman will represent the state.
If you don’t believe me, then why not believe… Patty Wetterling? She said so herself before she realized that she couldn’t spend her money on a non-federal race and figured she had to spend it somewhere after she dropped out of the Senate race.
Again, you want to pretend that there are no tradeoffs in life. Well, there are.
And Jesus: “pro-people”? What are you, six?
Hi PZ, now it appears that Wetterling did say something on this one –
http://dumpbachmann.blogspot.com/2006/10/idiocy-brought-up-during-6th-district.html
Wetterling: We need to teach the truth about science. Evolution is scientifically accurate. We can’t let our science curriculum to be based on religious beliefs.
EY: Again – this is Leo’s interpretation.
Leftists in America, that is funny plunge. The American concept of left is somewhere to the right of most of the mainstream ‘rightist’ parties in the world. And it ain’t our fault you all have perspective problems.
Time to wheel out a Pratchett quote. He suggested that the fossils were made by God, who was just playing with the pleistocene.
Dirty Eurotrash – Denmark is an exception to your rule. The main centre-right party is Venstre, which means Left. The main centrist party is Det radikale venstre, which means The Radical Left. They also have a United Left (Det forenede Venstre), and a Popular Peoples Left of Judea.
Bob
It shouldn’t be taught in school, because it can’t be taught in schools. ID doesn’t have any facts behind it. It simply consists of a litony of “problems” with evolution, the bulk of which are outright lies and misunderstandings; that isn’t something you can teach. Any science teacher worth her salt could trounce such silly arguments, you can hardly expect such a teacher to launch flawed attacks against good science on the auspices of equal time. Creationism is simply a PR campaign, it has no positive claims to support it. And at no time does the sort of marked surrender built into the idea of “Goddidit” belong in science class.
Creationism deserves, at the most, a footnote in the history of evolution as that completely insane idea we dumped when we switched to Lamarckian evolution, before Darwin came around with better answers. Right up there with fire, water, earth and air as elements prior to alchemy.
Actually Eurotrash, as an African, I can say that their problem is not simply with their perspective, it is that so many of them are fascists.
If 30% of a country seems to be fascist and 30% seems clueless then that country is in for a hell of a lot of hurt.
“Leftists in America, that is funny plunge. The American concept of left is somewhere to the right of most of the mainstream ‘rightist’ parties in the world. And it ain’t our fault you all have perspective problems.”
I’m not sure what the point of your comment is at all. Ok, yes: who cares? If the French emigrate en masse into the district then maybe that’s relevant. Meanwhile, the point is that Democrat Patty Wetterling is far to the left of the Republican district she’s running in. I don’t know why that is so sacreligious to mention that it brings you people out of the woodwork screaming about how it’s not true. Wetterling said so herself: are you defending her by also calling her an idiot???
The fact is, Bachmann is unmitigated evil. And the danger is that I’m not sure Wetterling can beat her. The result is: more unmitigated evil in Congress. I suppose Stogoe and his self-satisfied political purity can beam truth out into the cosmos regardless of who gets elected, but my point is that sometimes, you face tradeoffs in life. This is a district I had hoped we could actually get a D in, and now I’m not so sure we can. Frankly, the Dems controlling as much of congress as they can and keeping people like Bachmann out dwarfs all other concerns. It doesn’t matter if the Ds are more “conservative” (i.e. centrist) than Stogoe would like: the larger the caucus, the less chance insane nanners nonsense will ever even come up for a vote in the first place.
“She stated that it should be up to faculty, students and parents to draw their own conclusions.”
Even IF there were any legitimate controversy with regard to evolution, why would we be asking 9th grade biology students to figure it out?
When I hear creationists suggest this crap I feel compelled to ask them what other undecided scientific questions we should be asking our 9th graders to solve for us.
That was me.
“Science is not a democracy – the truth is not decided by a popular vote of the ignorant and uninformed.”
Maybe the “truth” IS decided by a popular vote of the ignorant and uninformed. We’re culturally influenced social animals. For many people, the truth is what gets preached to them. Or it’s what the Zeitgeist decrees.
I belong to a book club. It has a science section with just a few titles currently available. In this science section, there is a book on Chinese astrology. Just what kinds of “truths” are in circulation?!
I’ve also been corresponding with a creationist behind the mis-named “Truth in Science” website, one Prof A McIntosh. He wrote to me, “If any philosophy is true on origins it clearly cannot be a private matter, since it affects us all”. The implications of this are truly frightening, if these gadzoonies were to ever get control.
Don’t let this guy tar the image of libertarians. Not every libertarian is completely laissez-faire, and most that I’ve talked to aren’t.
If the government is going to take on the job of education (federal or state level), then it has an obligation to its citizens to provide the highest quality service available. If the government isn’t, then all the schools would be private and would have their own curricula — you could send your kid to the fundy “adam and eve rode dinosaurs” school down the road, or to the science and math-intensive, college-prep school down the road. That is a “free market” — it isn’t a “free market” if you have government-run schools with government-controlled curricula in place. That’s retarded.
Obviously, if your taxes aren’t paying for educational services, then you can pay for your kid to go to the private school of your choosing, and Adam Smith’s “Invisible Hand” of competition and fitness in a free market system would certainly increase the health of the average school, as well as produce some absolute beauties in terms of scientific and mathematical preparation for the kids.
I think that the label “libertarian” is best related to one’s view of the role of government versus individual rights, instead of the role of the free market versus everything else.
That is, the label “conservative” is now a meaningless one, because in the mind of the average American, all it refers to is being anti-choice and anti-gay marriage and etc., all social issues. Also, these social issues are invasions of the government into civil liberties, which is directly contrary to classical conservatism, which holds that the government should be small and limited in scope.
So the label is a misnomer, and I think that libertarians are often misunderstood, and/or have poor representation to speak for them (not that the Democrats are any better). Not every libertarian is completely laissez-faire, and most that I’ve talked to aren’t.
General comment: Christianity sure is a strange thing. It used to have some noble resonance — the masses of Bach, the symphonies of Bruckner. Now, it’s become a kind of macabre cartoon. I mean, folks like Bachmann and Katherine Harris…so pinch-brained and creepy. I doubt they would recognize a Holy Spirit if it bitch-slapped them upside their stale madeup cheeks.
And the free market would also buy you a pony. Don’t forget the pony.
IDiots sound like those sad old Marxist “revolutionaries”…regurgitating their tired old ideology when events have passed them by and when world events have already decided what works….
Ed Darrell wrote, “The market has spoken.”
If only it were that easy. I know you are probably already aware of this, but just to spell it out, the market in this case is the consumer of the good, i.e. the parents. It’s not that I don’t trust the parents in general, but there are a number of nutty ones. Probably enough nutty parents to support a school which, ‘teaches the controversy.’
If there were no public schools, Monsanto might have to open it’s own school just in order to train employees to continue it’s research. Of course, it’s curriculum would probably not include a lot of what we consider important classes for students.
For what it’s worth, anyone who looks at public education from the perspective of a single set of parents getting a service is looking at public education the wrong way.
Quality public education is a benefit to the society as a whole. Violent crime is reduced among an educated population, as are property crimes. Innovativeness is increased among an educated population.
Since increased education levels are a benefit for all levels of society, as a society we have decided to put in place public education measures in order to acquire that benefit. There is no opting-out of helping public education without opting-out of our society.
I, for one, agree that public education should be a organized by our local representatives of society as elected to our local school boards. Remember, the government is not the enemy, the government is us.
We, the body politic, can change our government if we need to. It’s a lot easier for us to change our schoolboard than for stockholders to change the actions of a CEO.
There are a lot of things a well-regulated market is good for. (By well-regulated I mean regulations which improve the operations of a free-market. Unbridled capitalism will destroy a free market.) Public education is not one of them.
Cheers,
-Flex
I’d like to know what happens to all the kids who go to free market schools when the inevitable free market shakeup and consolidation happens. When private schools go out of business where do the kids go? To a holding tank while some government agency figures out which private school(s) to inundate with all of the downsized, outsourced, ex-education consumers (also known in some educational circles as ‘students’? Or do they just get to hang around at home, on street corners or the megamall?
The problem with free market education is that it exposes one of the characteristic flaws of minarchism: children born to bad parents are hosed. There is nobody able or even willing to protect them if their own parents won’t or can’t.
So if every parent has their choice of whether to send their kids to a good school or a crappy fundy school (except, of course, the ones who can’t afford to send their kid to *any* school and have to send him to a sweatshop instead to pay the bills), what happens to the kids whose parents *want* to send them to the crappy fundy school? By the time they’re old enough to realize what happened, they may not be able to climb out of the hole their parents dug them (and that’s assuming that they even manage to untwist their brains at all).
In education there’s something to be said for mandating at least mediocrity, even though like any government action it does produce bureaucracy and increased cost and occasionally interferes with people’s legitimate freedoms.
Obviously, if your taxes aren’t paying for educational services, then you can pay for your kid to go to the private school of your choosing, and Adam Smith’s “Invisible Hand” of competition and fitness in a free market system would certainly increase the health of the average school, as well as produce some absolute beauties in terms of scientific and mathematical preparation for the kids.
There are (at least) three fallacies here. The biggest is the assumption that the proportion of their taxes a family pays that goes towards public education is sufficient to offset the costs of paying for a private school. The advantage of a public school is that the costs are borne by the public at large, not just by the parents of school age children.
Which brings us to fallacy number two; that it is in the public’s interest to NOT have public schools. If there is one theme that most political parties can agree on it is that education is a means to economic mobility. Only a public system is capable of guaranteeing to all citizens(at least in principle) that means, for the reasons stated above. Further, it is true that should schooling be thrown to the wolves of the market that the number of religious schools will likely sky rocket. But that will almost certainly ensure an erosion of the quality of education for a large number of our citizens; the ones so inclined, or those forced to due to financial constraints. Or at least it would make worse a system with an already highly patchy distribution of educational quality. It is a civic duty for our citizens to insist on as near to uniform quality in our education system, public or private, as possible. We fall far short of that goal with our current system, but it is a certainty that a free-market school system will exacerbate the problem.
Fallacy number three is that the market does a better job at education. I won’t dispute that the market is intrinsically better at producing more profit than government entities, but it does NOT follow that the more profitable schools will provide better education.
Fallacy number three is that the market does a better job at education. I won’t dispute that the market is intrinsically better at producing more profit than government entities, but it does NOT follow that the more profitable schools will provide better education.
Which fallacy has been borne out by the healthcare fiasco in this country. The market is great at producing massive profits for insurers, but not so good at actually getting healthcare to consumers.
Odd that, innit? The Market is great for some people, not so good for others. Makes one think, dunnit?
What cracks me up about this is that in the old days it was the “libertarian” social darwinism, and not the theory of evolution that religious folk objected to, and that conflicted so dramatically with religious tenets. How far we’ve come, indeed.
Just as a final comment, I had an epiphany the other day about government waste.
When someone suggests that privatization would reduce waste, ask them how they know it. Usually you get a vague answer about the profit motive driving wasteful spending down.
But we really don’t have good data about the amount of wasteful spending in the private sector. Goverment spending is (for the most part) public knowledge. Anyone can go through the appropriation bills and figure out where the money is going.
We can’t do that for private companies. We have absolutely no idea how much wasteful spending occurs. To say that private industry would reduce wasteful spending is comparing a known to an unknown.
Frankly, if the varioius places I’ve worked is any example, wasteful spending in the private sector occurs at a higher rate than in the government sector. I realize that I can’t really draw any conclusions about my experiances though.
But anyone who brings up the idea that wasteful spending would be reduced if private industry handled the funds, should be asked how much wasteful spending there currently is in private industry.
The question can’t be answered. No one seems to know.
The couple people I’ve tried it on have gotten a confused look on their face and went off to think about it.
Of course, with all the bright people around here, many of you have already come to this realization. But I thought I’d share my observation.
Cheers,
-Flex
Clearly the only solution is to have all children raised in government-operated creches. That will ensure that everyone gets an equal start in life. Of course, there will still be innate differences, so after we identify the brightest children we can make them wear headphones that will constantly interrupt their chains of thought.
Clearly the only solution is to have all children raised in government-operated creches. That will ensure that everyone gets an equal start in life. Of course, there will still be innate differences, so after we identify the brightest children we can make them wear headphones that will constantly interrupt their chains of thought.
But only if they are not quite white babies.
Even after we remove generally-acknowledged distinctions between people, they will still inhabit different places in space-time.
Clearly the only solution is to collapse the planet into a quantum singularity, thus crushing our world into a uniform single point.
To Equality! (clink)
Caledonian wrote, ” identify the brightest children we can make them wear headphones that will constantly interrupt their chains of thought.”
Cripes, I can’t remember if that was Ellison or Vonnegut.
It’s hell getting old.
-Flex
Vonnegut. Harrison Bergeron. Welcome To The Monkey House.
Thanks,
I kept on thinking of the name as Henri Bergson, but I knew that wasn’t right.
Cheers,
-Flex
They also made him wear funhouse glasses that gave him headaches.
Bergeron, not Flex.
;-)
Henri Bergson is the French philosopher famous for L’evolution creatrice, which I must admit to not having read. It involves a defense of vitalism, of a sort, though, and as such probably wouldn’t be congenial to many here.
As for the Harrison Bergeron argument: there is a fundamental difference between one’s own gifts and those due to one’s parent’s situations. Moreover, there’s no intrinsic reason why we couldn’t decide on minimal levels of economic equality and then leave the rest to mixed mechanisms. (Cf. John Rawls, who is not completely correct, but at least worth thinking through.)
ID in schools? Sounds like a splendid idea to me. No worries about me passing my viva then -I’d just say whatever comes to mind and claim that as long as there are unexplored areas in my chosen field of study (physiology), the whole field is unreliable and anything I say could be an equally possible explanation. “Blood pressure in humans is regulated by tiny purple dwarves that live inside your heart and use red blood cells as hovercrafts. No? Discrimination! How dare you fail me, you Scientist, you!”
Ah, no, there isn’t. One’s own gifts are either inherited, due to natal environment, or due to childhood environment. Clearly one’s parents, and their situations, are vital to understanding each and every one of these.
You’ve gotten it completely backwards. Society doesn’t have an obligation to equalize people, not least because that can’t be done. Society only has an obligation not to use artificial barriers to make people more unequal than they are.
I missed some good comments.
To clarify, I do indeed support government’s role in education, with the option to “opt-out” of public schools and go to private or parochial or home schools.
My comment, carefully read, reveals that I was not implying that the share of the tax dollars was equal (fallacy 1), not advocating fallacy 2, but rather commenting on the “fitness” factor of private schools, and I highly doubt fallacy 3 can be supported as such.
My wife sends a lot of kids with LDs to the “Morrison Institute” — it costs $15K or more a year, but severe dyslexic kids who go there are often college grads, while those who do not, are not.
I’m sorry, but I’d love to have you explain fallacy 3 as one — we can talk about the comparable fitness of any government vs private enterprise, insofar as cost/benefit analysis goes, including in health care.
One must keep in mind for the US that a very sad situation exists — a sort of sickened hybrid between statist healthcare and free market: Medicare and Medicaid are the “teats” from which insurers and providers have been able to “seesaw” in their raising of prices and get away with for years. More and more people fall off the ledge from middle class to “Medicare/Medicaid recipient” as the costs keep going up, back and forth. The only way to break the system is to either make healthcare the state’s business or make Medicare and Medicaid go away. I don’t see #2 happening. I’m not sure that I would want it to.