Battleangel

David Galbraith reports that Kansas science classes have been been taken over by the wicked witch. The argument put forward by Pharyngula is no less compelling.

Pharyngula - It’s a sad day for American science. We’ve lost Kansas. For the next few years, a lot of schoolkids are going to get taught slippery twaddle — instead of learning what scientists actually say about biology, they’re going to get the phony pseudoscience of ideologues and dishonest hucksters. And that means the next generation of Kansans are going to be a little less well informed, even more prone to believing the prattlings of liars, and the cycle will keep on going, keep on getting worse.

It’s especially interesting to see how the proponents (IDiots as they are now referred to) of the new public-school science standards reason. They wrap the decision in terms like freedom and declare it to be a great day for education. I.e. contrary Well, with the current climate in the US that has been brewing ever since Strauss first lamented liberalism and Reagan made the fateful invitation to Christian conservatives, what did people expect? And I doubt we’ve seen the last of this nonsense either. In fact they are only just now gaining momentum. And of course, this WILL have repercussions outside of the US as well. It always does. Next up, schools (and especially private schools) are going to wish to be exempted from the core curriculum because of group rights or whatever nonsense they come up with these days. Put simply, the US, by hiding behind its federal system and playing selective group rights one day, civic religion and quasi-scientific ideas the next, has become a proving ground and a staging area as it were for this unfortunate development that threatens to expand far beyond the state of Kansas.
Finally, I wonder if this would perhaps have been reported in a different way by the corporate media and the blame America last crowd had it happened with a school board in Teheran or Damascus. Then I suppose some wouldn’t have been so quick to wrap it in terms of freedom and proclaim it to be the greatest thing since sliced bread.