Teaching evolution in an evangelized America...

Precisely. If Democrats spent half the time building America as they did waxing over stuff that happened 35 years ago and wringing their hands over changes...

 

I'll give you points for originality. I've heard the creationism vs. evolution debate a lot, but I've never heard the "scientists are to blame becaue they're not better teachers and use big words" angle. Very original.

 

Actually, that isn’t insulting or offensive. It is sad. A parent’s job is to educate their children, to give them the broadest base possible so that they are as prepared for the real world as they can be. It is sad that a parent would view the very basis of all biology and medicine as something their child should not know.

The football player, Bryce, will go home to a mother that will openly argue (obviously from a position of ignorance) that evolution didn’t happen and isn’t continuing to happen. The science teacher then has to tip toe around and be afraid of offending whatever bullshit the mother has spewed that evening.

The other problem is that you continue to push this idea that science is some sort of collective group that organizes, meets and then decides where science goes from there. It isn’t. It is just various people with different goals, ideas and ideologies. If one scientist things s/he’s doing the world a favor by being in the lab, then that is where s/he will go. If one scientist thinks they will do a better job as a teacher, they will become a teacher.

You can’t just arbitrarily decide for someone else what they are supposed to do as a career.

 

Only because G-d isn't telling them to use bad grammar.

 

Just so everyone's clear: I know Pastor and he IS a scientist. He is not pretending to play one on sj.

 

Well then it's his responsibility to teach us about evolution -- and his responsibility alone.

 

There is another fallacy at work here, this idea that great scientific minds belong in the classroom teaching science.

Teaching takes more than knowledge of the subject. Having information is useless if you don't have the ability to relate it in a way that young people will respond to. I'll take the person with great teaching skills and an average knowledge of science over the scientist with no clue how to handle a classroom every time.

 

The ground is not fertile for scientific advancement. I don't understand what's so mystifying about this.

 

As an educated citizen, it's simply mystifying that a large swath of people could still believe in such things.

But to be sure, the Bush admin's hostility to science is well-documented, so on that front, it's not surprising at all.

 

Blaming teachers is ridiculous and offensive. Anyone who does so has taken leave of his senses.

This is an administration that asked park brochures at the Grand Canyon to reflect the geologic effects of Noah's Flood. Nothing should come as a surprise.

 

This is from a recent Chris Mooney piece in Mother Jones (which unfortunately isn't online), from a quote from a former NASA adviser: