Thursday, January 31, 2008

 

R.I.P. When Education Died in Lafayette



Above are the perpetrators, posing for their mug shots, obviously drunk on Kool-Aid. As the Mayo Free Press/Suwanee Democrat related the gory details:

The Lafayette County School Board unanimously adopted a resolution in protest of a proposed Florida Department of Education revision of the science portion of the Sunshine State Standards at a special meeting on Jan. 25.

According to Fred Ward, Lafayette County superintendent of schools, FDOE is considering new standards which would make the teaching of evolution mandatory in every school and to disallow the teaching of any other explanation about how the earth, universe, and man came into existence.

“The new Sunshine State Standards for Science no longer present evolution as theory but as scientific fact,” Robert Koon, chairperson, said.

Well, evolution is both a fact and a theory. But it is most disheartening that any chairperson of a school board in 21st century America would have such an ignorant notion of what a "theory" is in science. That there are so many such people in charge of innocent children's education in this country is simply horrible.
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Via Greg Laden and Florida Citizens for Science.
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Comments:
Local control of schools seemed like a pretty good idea 200 years ago. Maybe it was, in a context in which most commerce, etc., was conducted within fairly tight geographical parameters. Given the realities of today's global economic, social and cultural exchanges, it may be time to reconsider that position.
 
Like interstate highways and national defense, there are some things that may be best handled at the Federal level. Ignorance is just as damaging to the individual, just as limiting to the local community, just as harmful to the national economy, when it is rampant in Podunk as it would be in New York City.
 
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