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Evolution No Longer Worth Learning, Says Government
Davemania writes "New York Times reports that the Evolution biology subject has disappeared from a list of acceptable fields of study for recipients of a federal education grant for low-income college students. The Education department has described this as a Clerical Mistake but others are skeptical about this. 'Scientists who knew about the omission also said they found the clerical explanation unconvincing, given the furor over challenges by the religious right to the teaching of evolution in public schools. "It's just awfully coincidental," said Steven W. Rissing, an evolutionary biologist at Ohio State University.'" As someone who made use of one of those grants to study Evolutionary Biology, I find this more than a little galling.
The situation is inherently asymmetric and attempting to plead for symmetry is a baseless argument.
I'm not arguing that it should be symmetric, I'm just pointing out that there's a very good reason why there's an asymmetric response to an asymmetric situation.
If everyone could get school vouchers, the funds for public education would drop dramatically, the quality of public education would drop dramatically, poverty would then increase rapidly, and crime would then increase rapidly.
Evidence?
Consider the voucher bill that failed recently in my state: It would have given parents $2500 per child per year in a voucher to be spent at the private school of their choice. The state spends over $5000 per child, per year, so the net effect of the program is to *increase* the available funding per child remaining in public schools.
Further, there's an assumption implicit in your argument: That public schools would not be able to compete effectively with private schools for students. Why do you believe that? And what does that belief say about your position?
In the short term, I think that assumption is correct. I base that on my own experience with my oldest son and the private school he was in. We paid $3500 per year to put him in this private school, because the public schools simply were not working for him. For that money, we got teachers of at least the same quality as the local public schools but in classes one-third the size. My son's private school classes had no more than 10 students per teacher, vs over 30 in public schools. Not only that, the $3500 was *all* we paid. Public schools not only take our money in taxes, but if you have any kids in them, you know there are fees out the wazoo. Registration fees, book fees, field trip fees, lunch fees, etc. And the meals that you pay so much for are unbelievably lousy. Pre-packaged, not even warmed up in most cases. At the private school he got a hot lunch every day, and even a hot breakfast if we wanted. Educationally, there's no comparison; their curriculum was at least a year ahead of what was being taught in the same grades in public schools, and it was far better. It was not a religious school, BTW, and had no sources of funding other than students' tuition.
That private school was better in almost every possible way than the public school options, and for it we paid $1500 *less* than the state puts into the public schools.
However, I really don't think that public schools would lose in the long run. I think they would improve, and rapidly, once people had other options, and once the vouchers' effect of increasing the money available per pupil took effect.
Yes, school vouchers seem fair from an individualistic libertarian point of view. (Though not as fair as abandoning tax breaks on families and taxes for education in the first place). But as far as the well being of a society is concerned, it would be a terrible mistake.
I disagree, completely and utterly. I'm pretty libertarian, but I think taxes to fund education are a fundamentally Good Thing. There's not much I think government should do in the way of social programs, but that's one of them. However, I also think it would do both public and private schools, not to mention students, a world of good, to introduce some real competition between them. I expect it would make the lives of teachers much better as well. I don't think it would increase their wages much, but I do think it would serve to eliminate a lot of the bureaucratic nonsense they deal with now (nonsense that is a big part of why my wife is no longer a schoolteacher).
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I would even go so far as to say that the two [science and religion] really have nothing to do with each other.
Science and religion are both belief systems. Science bases all beliefs on knowledge and has rigorous ways of determining fact from fiction. If science cannot answer a particular question it doesn't attempt to guess. If it does guess, the guess is based on available evidence and is called a theory. Religion on the other hand bases beliefs on faith and (typically ancient) teachings.
But science, if anyone's noticed, doesn't try to intrude on religion.
That's not true. Some people like to point out clear evidence that some religious beliefs are false. The whole evolution debate is one such example. I'm not critizing people for pointing out evidence, but to say that science doen't try to instrude on religion is not true. The science belief system (like all other belief systems) would not survive if it didn't not make some sort of an attempt to say that it's the only valid belief system. As far as I know, there hasn't been a single court case in the U.S. where a group of scientists have tried to dictate what can be taught in any church.
This is an invalid comparison because the church is a private institution. It is funded by people who choose to take part in it and therefore they get the right to decide what's taught. The public school system is funded by the tax payers. Many tax payers have religious beliefs and feel they should have some say in what is taught there.
No Sigs!