Will you demand the inclusion of other candidates in the remaining presidential debates, as the majority of the American public does? Namely, the ones with sufficient ballot presence to win are; Cynthia McKinney (Green), Ralph Nader (Independent), Bob Barr (Libertarian), and Chuck Baldwin (Constitution).
I see plenty of well founded but familiar criticisms of the intelligent design philosophy and its mind shrinking consequences, plenty of explanations of science, some ire aimed at the Louisiana legislature, but not a single question as to whether or not the state or federal government should be meddling in schooling curriculum in the first place.
No one questions the notion that government should be providing for our childrens' schooling needs, even though this law demonstrates the structural vulnerability of such a system when increasingly vocal theocrats obtain authority in these capacities. I'd like to see this example as fuel for a discussion of a free market in schooling. The religious can send their poor kids to creationism school and localize the intellectual damage, and the rest of us can select schools for the quality of curriculum and presentation.
I wonder how this law would affect private schools whose governing bodies wanted to fire a science teacher for introducing mythology into the class.
Science should be open to everything - including the unmeasurable and unexplainable.
Science should not be so "open" that the brains of its practitioners fall out. Science is fundamentally about measuring and explaining. Anything unmeasurable and/or unexplainable is outside the scope of the practice of science.
Why should we expect more tech in the classroom to change much of anything, beyond students' comfortability in using such? The classroom itself and the larger schooling paradigm in which it sits remain unchanged from a hundred years ago when they were producing industrial factory workers.
We're still going to get students who struggle to think for themselves because they've been trained to wait for teacher to tell them what to do, and how to feel about the quality of work they did; Grads who feel powerless and fatalistic because they've watched an inexorable institution control them for twelve years with little to no input. It also shouldn't be a surprise when these kids don't care much for civil liberties or privacy, when they grew up inside buildings that don't afford them these rights. They need permission to use the bathroom, for fuck's sake.
When we see multiple schooling paradigms become widespread, Montessori schools etc, and compete for students with poorly run government schools, then maybe we'll see some change.
Slashdot Mirror
Senators McCain and Obama;
Will you demand the inclusion of other candidates in the remaining presidential debates, as the majority of the American public does? Namely, the ones with sufficient ballot presence to win are; Cynthia McKinney (Green), Ralph Nader (Independent), Bob Barr (Libertarian), and Chuck Baldwin (Constitution).
I see plenty of well founded but familiar criticisms of the intelligent design philosophy and its mind shrinking consequences, plenty of explanations of science, some ire aimed at the Louisiana legislature, but not a single question as to whether or not the state or federal government should be meddling in schooling curriculum in the first place.
No one questions the notion that government should be providing for our childrens' schooling needs, even though this law demonstrates the structural vulnerability of such a system when increasingly vocal theocrats obtain authority in these capacities. I'd like to see this example as fuel for a discussion of a free market in schooling. The religious can send their poor kids to creationism school and localize the intellectual damage, and the rest of us can select schools for the quality of curriculum and presentation.
I wonder how this law would affect private schools whose governing bodies wanted to fire a science teacher for introducing mythology into the class.
Science should be open to everything - including the unmeasurable and unexplainable.
Science should not be so "open" that the brains of its practitioners fall out. Science is fundamentally about measuring and explaining. Anything unmeasurable and/or unexplainable is outside the scope of the practice of science.
Why should we expect more tech in the classroom to change much of anything, beyond students' comfortability in using such? The classroom itself and the larger schooling paradigm in which it sits remain unchanged from a hundred years ago when they were producing industrial factory workers.
We're still going to get students who struggle to think for themselves because they've been trained to wait for teacher to tell them what to do, and how to feel about the quality of work they did; Grads who feel powerless and fatalistic because they've watched an inexorable institution control them for twelve years with little to no input. It also shouldn't be a surprise when these kids don't care much for civil liberties or privacy, when they grew up inside buildings that don't afford them these rights. They need permission to use the bathroom, for fuck's sake.
When we see multiple schooling paradigms become widespread, Montessori schools etc, and compete for students with poorly run government schools, then maybe we'll see some change.