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And people wonder why US education doesn't measure up to other countries.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7711574/
Evolution going on trial in Kansas
State to hold courtroom-style hearings
Updated: 4:07 p.m. ET May 2, 2005
TOPEKA, Kan - Evolution is going on trial in Kansas.
Eighty years after a famed courtroom battle in Tennessee pitted religious beliefs about the origins of life against the theories of British scientist Charles Darwin, Kansas is holding its own hearings on what school children should be taught about how life on Earth began.
The Kansas Board of Education has scheduled six days of courtroom-style hearings to begin Thursday in the capitol Topeka. More than two dozen witnesses will give testimony and be subject to cross-examination, with the majority expected to argue against teaching evolution.
Many prominent U.S. scientific groups have denounced the debate as founded on fallacy and have promised to boycott the hearings, which opponents say are part of a larger nationwide effort by religious interests to gain control over government.
"I feel like I'm in a time warp here," said Topeka attorney Pedro Irigonegaray who has agreed to defend evolution as valid science. "To debate evolution is similar to debating whether the Earth is round. It is an absurd proposition."
Widespread debate
Irigonegaray's opponent will be attorney John Calvert, managing director of the Intelligent Design Network, a Kansas organization that argues the Earth was created through intentional design rather than random organism evolution.
The group is one of many that have been formed over the last several years to challenge the validity of evolutionary concepts and seek to open the schoolroom door to ideas that humans and other living creatures are too intricately designed to have come about randomly.
While many call themselves creationists, who believe that God was the ultimate designer of all life, they are stopping short of saying creationism should be taught in schools.
"We're not against evolution," said Calvert. "But there is a lot of evidence that suggests that life is the product of intelligence. I think it is inappropriate for the state to prejudge the question whether we are the product of design or just an occurrence."
Debates over evolution are currently being waged in more than a dozen states, including Texas where one bill would allowing for creationism to be taught alongside evolution.
Kansas has been grappling with the issue for years, garnering worldwide attention in 1999 when the state school board voted to downplay evolution in science classes.
Subsequent elections altered the membership of the school board and led to renewed backing for evolution instruction in 2001. But elections last year gave religious conservatives a 6-4 majority and the board is now finalizing new science standards, which will guide teachers about how and what to teach students.
The current proposal pushed by conservatives would not eliminate evolution entirely from instruction, nor would it require creationism be taught, but it would encourage teachers to discuss various viewpoints and eliminate core evolution claims as required curriculum.
School board member Sue Gamble, who describes herself as a moderate, said she will not attend the hearings, which she calls "a farce." She said the argument over evolution is part of a larger agenda by Christian conservatives to gradually alter the legal and social landscape in the United States.
"I think it is a desire by a minority ... to establish a theocracy, both within Kansas and growing to a national level," Gamble said.
Old Testament teachings
Some evolution detractors say that the belief that humans, animals and organisms evolved over long spans of time is inconsistent with Biblical teachings that life was created by God. The Bible's Old Testament says that God created life on Earth including the first humans, Adam and Eve, in six days.
Detractors also argue that evolution is invalid science because it cannot be tested or verified and say it is inappropriately being indoctrinated into education and discouraging consideration of alternatives.
But defenders say that evolution is not totally inconsistent with Biblical beliefs, and it provides a foundational concept for understanding many areas of science, including genetics and molecular biology.
The theory of evolution came to prominence in 1859 when Darwin published "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection," and it was the subject of a 1925 trial in Tennessee in which teacher John Thomas Scopes was accused of violating a ban against teaching evolution.
Kansas School Board chairman Steve Abrams said the hearings are less about religion than they are about seeking the best possible education for the state's children.
"If students ... do not understand the weaknesses of evolutionary theory as well as the strengths, a grave injustice is being done to them," Abrams said.
Copyright 2005 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters.
And people wonder why US education doesn't measure up to other countries.
Probably not. I'd hate to see how God would handle a subpoena.
i really hate it when i hear this ... if the u.s. is so ing uneducated than why are we the most powerful economically, militarily and technologically?
It's because of the huge head start we have on everyone else, and the existing braintrust and infrastructure.
Education in the US is getting better, but so many others countries are improving at a rate we're not keeping up with.
I'm not bashing you Clan, but crap like this is a major problem. Shouldn't schools be working at providing the best possible education that they can without arguing over something that was settled sixty years ago?
Because we are living off of the past in many respects with regards to our educational, capital, and political systems. Also, because at least up until now, we have been rather adept at attracting intelligent people from around the world to move to this country, study here, and then stay here.
This country has a nagging tendency to devote 95% of its attention span to matters of belief, matters which ultimtately turn into a spectator sport in the media while devoting 5%, if that, to matters of some import. And I don't mean killing Arabs and other bad darkies.
K-12 education in this country has been on a rather marked decline since the 1960s. We seem to be moving towards a feudal style society in which the (relative) few enjoy a bounty of wealth while the ignorant masses find themselves working more and more for less and less.
Basically, I see little reason to be proud of the state of American education, unless you are of the jingoistic knee-jerk sort.
i think it is a scare tactic for everyone to get an education... in many euro countries they start a vocational path at an early age and never even learn all the subjects we have to learn.
there could be worse scare tactics though.. in reality we never had a head start. britain started the industrial revolution. our country is also barely over 200 yrs old. everyone else had the head start. we just caught up and left them in the dirt.
what's with the brick?
What's a HS diploma worth nowadays in the US?
jobwise, not much. which means so many people have them. to get ahead you need better than a h.s. diploma. employers can now be picky and choosy. back in the day, a h.s. diploma was something bc not many had them. bachelors are going to be the same thing in the future. basically now a h.s. diploma is just a ticket to college.
Not everyone goes to college. What then?
they can still succeed, but most likely it would require them to start their own business or work from the very, very, very bottom up. it can be done of course. nothing is impossible in american. bill gates never graduated from college, mark cuban, etc.. the list goes on and on..
Actually I believe Cuban graduated from IU. As for Gates, his background was not that of the average HS graduate and he did at least spend some time at Harvard.
bush: but he didn't graduate. and what kind of grades did he make? because we all know that just attending an ivy league school means nothing... at least that is what everyone says about bush.
yeah, my mistake on cuban. it was grad school he dropped out of..
The point is that those careers which offer the prospect of significant income growth and good employment prospects in this country tend to require at a minimum an undergrad degree. And an undergrad degree itself isn't much anymore.
As for the average HS grad, what do they have to look forward to? The occupations for which they are qualified tend to be those which offer the prospect of stagnant if not declining real wages.
Now when you think about the fact that well over half of HS students end their formal learning after HS that does not paint a pretty picture.
As for entrepreneurial opportunities in this country, sure, there are plenty, but not everyone can be a Gates or a Walton.
yes, i agree with what you said, but what you say doesn't prove that american education is declining. look at our universities... full of foreign students from all over the world.
Um that proves my point. K-12 education in this country is so sorry that students cannot capitalize on the opportunities in their own country past the HS level.
i see it differently. i see it as everyone having that level of education, so you need more to stand out.
in many other european countries you don't even atten high school like we do. most stop at 16. and before that, usually, a little past elementary, they choose a vocational path. they are screwed from that point on. they know they will never attend a university.
...and the way to "stand out" today is to attain an undergrad, if not graduate level education.
yes, exactly... and the only way to do that is to get a high school diploma first!
And yet, despite thinning out the "talent pool," they produce more qualified college graduates per capita by far.
, China and India crank out more engineers per capita than we do.
The only reason we're still on top is because our grandparents gave us such a huge head start. The past two or three generations of Americans haven't been worth . The American Dream has changed from working hard to carve out a decent life to getting paid for doing nothing, and it shows.
So what? Only a relative small minority attain that. The majority have to rely on a HS education which is declining in quality.
but china and india can't even feed their own people! great example buddy...
But these days, a high school diploma is useful for little else but getting into some form of higher education.
Our work force is not very skilled compared to our compe ors.
Yes, it is a great example that backward, third-world nations have superior educational systems to our own. It's the best possible example.
America is great right now for the same reason Paris Hilton is rich.
I know some engineers from India -- well, yeah, they're everywhere. They explain to me that the difference is in upbringing -- their parents drive into them to educational achievement is EVERYTHING if they want to make something of themselves. Laziness in their studies is SEVERELY punished.
American parents care more about their kids' self-esteem, living vicariously through their sports activities, and most of all lavishing them with material goods either so that they can be left alone to watch more TV and have fun, or to assuage their guilt for making work the top priority.
So our kids grow up with ty values, and themselves raise kids with ty values. We rot from the core, much like the Romans did.
That, by the way, is what drives these religious fundamentalists. Their brand of religion isn't working anymore in raising families against the rot of secular culture, so their behavior is typical of what humans do when a behavior no longer produces the same feedback. They get extreme in that same behavior.
Last edited by Extra Stout; 05-03-2005 at 12:33 PM.
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