Kansas BOE rewrites definition of science

[yum]

Originally posted by Krakatau+Nov 14 2005, 06:31 PM--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Krakatau - Nov 14 2005, 06:31 PM)</div><div class='quotemain'><!--QuoteBegin-saraday@Nov 14 2005, 01:22 AM

not that it would ever happen.. but it would take an act of god (no pun intended) to find people educated enough to teach world religion in public schools. to find someone who could teach different religions objectively would be very hard to do.

 

that's why church and state are seperated and ones who wish to learn religion do so in private schools.

 

bla bla, the whole system is a clusterfuck.. i could go on for days but i'd rather just watch you guys bicker back and forth :)

Quoted post

Clusterfuck is a good term for it.

I agree, staffing the world religions class would be virtually impossible... but I would still like to see a class that explains why you are just as silly wearing a cross on your neck as the guy next to you with his turban.

 

And that is really the purpose of the class as I envision it. By highlighting the absurbities of other religions in parallel to one another I think that it would help kids find fault in their own dogmas.

 

But you sell it as 'a promotion of understanding and cross cultural tolerance'.

Quoted post

[/b]

 

 

thats what philosophy at university is for. most kids of high school age dotn take school seriosuly enough to do subjects that require reflection, introspection, objectivity etc. i know i was too busy playing the fool to do any of that in high school

[Dawood]

Originally posted by Krakatau@Nov 15 2005, 02:09 PM

Alright.

"You look just as silly with your bible as the guy next to you with tht quran."

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So what about the college student reading shakspeare or the chef reading his cookbook? Do they look silly too?

Really, I think It was a pretty silly remark from the beginning.

 

just leave it at that .

[theGOON]

/\/\yeah dawood, i'm sure if one of us were to throw treat iran and pakistan like they were the same place you'd throw some hissy fit about us bastardizing the islamic states... ireland and scotland are in fact, different countries.

 

EVERYTHING is subjective, absolutely. and thus a public education system can never provide everything, one must put forth an effort to decide a TRUTH FOR THEMSELVES, and then we can all just sit the fuck back and bitch about everybody else...

[Krakatau]

Originally posted by Dawood@Nov 15 2005, 09:12 PM

So what about the college student reading shakspeare or the chef reading his cookbook? Do they look silly too?

Really, I think It was a pretty silly remark from the beginning.

 

just leave it at that .

Quoted post

No, leave it at this:

Strike two right there, my friend. It's all good though. We can hold hands and I will walk you through it:

Christians are just as likely to be wrong as Muslims are just as likely to be wrong as Jews are just as likely to be wrong as Buddhists are just as likely to be wrong as Hindus are just as likely to be wrong as the Heaven's Gate Cult members are just as.... wait... my money is on Heaven's Gates just for the novelty factor.

 

Unless, of course, you were implying that a cookbook or Shakespeare are comparable in value to the Quran or Bible. Then I'm with you. They are all just books written by people.

 

.................But at least cook books are practical.

Alright. I'll stop.

 

 

 

Key- That's sounds exactly like what I am thinking of. Although I would like to see something like that make it into the everyday curriculum, I agree that there is no way it would work. I wish that American kids and the school system were is a state that would allow for such a class. But I guess we are just getting by on 'good enough' as far as education goes.

 

Was your class in Canada or were you in the states in high school?

 

I don't know. I just hate the way that school works in the States. I'm a dropout with a GED because of (my inability to deal with) the shitty way in which schools are managed. School should foster creativity and critical thinking instead of fact regurgitation. The way things are currently set up makes everything you learn..... like disposable information or something. Test is over and everything is forgotten. Fucking waste of time.

[RumPuncher]

^ it was in Canada.

 

Plus, it was an elective class at the general level, so not many people would be open to it.

[Dawood]

Originally posted by theGOON@Nov 16 2005, 09:31 PM

/\/\yeah dawood, i'm sure if one of us were to throw treat iran and pakistan like they were the same place you'd throw some hissy fit about us bastardizing the islamic states... ireland and scotland are in fact, different countries.

 

EVERYTHING is subjective, absolutely. and thus a public education system can never provide everything, one must put forth an effort to decide a TRUTH FOR THEMSELVES, and then we can all just sit the fuck back and bitch about everybody else...

Quoted post

 

 

Oh, man, Scotland huh? Man, I swear I googled kilts in ireland for that picture. Anyway...My bad.

 

Yeah, I agree with you that public education can never provide everything.The process of Education should be (and is becoming) a lot more flexible. For example home schooling is becoming much more popular and I'm all for it. Private schools and charter schools Etc.

As far as the debate over whether schools should teach religion class.

Well, religion is a touchy subject, i don't like to talk about religion much.

 

 

 

 

 

Ha, Ha

[Krakatau]

Good news on this topic, though not the Kansas BOE specifically:

 

Link here.

 

Evolution wins Pennsylvania trial

Judge declares intelligent design is creationism in disguise.

 

A federal judge has ruled that teaching intelligent design in US public high schools is unconstitutional.

 

On 20 December, in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Judge John Jones issued a scathing opinion in which he described a local school board's efforts to promote intelligent design as "breathtaking inanity".

 

Last year, the school board of the nearby town of Dover voted to have a statement read in ninth-grade biology classes, mentioning gaps in the theory of evolution and recommending a textbook, Of Pandas and People, that teaches intelligent design.

 

Intelligent design is the belief that today's organisms are not the product of natural selection but of some intelligent designer. Eleven parents sued the school board, claiming that the board's policy violated the first amendment to the US constitution, which separates church and state.

 

Rather than just throwing out the policy because of the religious motivations of the school board members who instituted it, Jones went on to state that intelligent design was clearly religious and indubitably not science.

 

"We conclude that the religious nature of intelligent design would be readily apparent to an objective observer, adult or child," he writes.

 

Creationism retold

 

In his 139-page opinion, Jones reviews the history of intelligent design. He declares: "The overwhelming evidence at trial established that intelligent design is a religious view, a mere re-labelling of creationism, and not a scientific theory."

 

The decision will not have legal precedence for similar cases in other districts, but because of the thoroughness of the opinion, it may have what lawyers term "persuasive authority". The ruling bans the reading of the Dover statement, which was due to go ahead next month at the beginning of the ninth-grade evolution unit.

 

The school board that wrote the policy has since been voted out, and their replacements are unlikely to appeal.

 

Praise be

 

Eric Rothschild, a lawyer from Pepper Hamilton LLP in Philadelphia who helped represent the suing parents, called the decision "a complete victory".

 

Biologists who testified in the case were even more ecstatic. "I think it is everything we could have hoped for," says Kenneth Miller, a biologist at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. "The opinion is splendid. What is very clear is that the judge worked hard, diligently followed the scientific arguments, and understood them thoroughly."

 

"The whole place here is saying that this is beyond our wildest dreams," says Kevin Padian, a palaeontologist and trial witness from the University of California, Berkeley, speaking from Harrisburg. "This means that as science, intelligent design is effectively dead."

 

Hard to squelch

 

Not everyone is ready to read intelligent design's obituary. Casey Luskin, program officer in public policy and legal affairs at the Discovery Institute, an intelligent design think-tank in Seattle, Washington, says that the judge mischaracterized the theory.

 

"The judge simply ignored the evidence that intelligent design does not rely on a supernatural creator," says Luskin. He predicts that the ruling will pique people's interest in intelligent design: "When you tell students that they can't think about something, they are going to want to think about it."

 

Nick Matzke of the National Center for Science Education, a non-profit organization in California that guards the teaching of evolution in public schools, says that intelligent design, under any name, is hard to squelch. "The history of creationism is that it doesn't go extinct... it evolves," he says. "We fully expect that they will come up with a new strategy."