Thoughts in a Haystack

One Evan Pennington, writing in The Underground: The Unofficial Student Publication of Missouri State University and who describes himself as "a future teacher," decides that teaching biology, which necessarily includes teaching evolution, to public school kids is "useless when compared to the rest of the curriculum." Mr. Pennington believes that K-12 education should stick to 'the basics.' Citing to the case of James Corbett, he says:

This guy Corbett, for example, was a European History teacher. European History, people. Is there not enough history to pass the day with? Must we resort instead to creationism vs. evolution? Please.

In summation, Corbett was being an ideological quack who used his classroom not as a "bully pulpit," but rather as a soapbox on which to vent his frustrations about creationism. He apparently found this more suiting than teaching history and facilitating the learning of his students.

And this kid who recorded Corbett's lectures so that mom and dad could swat the mean-old-teacher on the wrist with a nasty lawsuit? A quack if I ever saw one. He probably spent more time cooking up that little scheme with the tape recorder than he did on his homework.

Both sides plan to appeal. Both sides believe they're right. Neither side really cares about what happens to our students. Let's all just stick with what works, shall we? Readin', writin', and 'rithmatic rarely cheese anyone off, after all.

As we know from recent history in Texas, history cheeses people off too, so lets drop that as well, along with any and all science that points to an old Earth or climate warming. The list is going to get rather long. Mr. Pennington doesn't say what type of teacher he plans to be but let's hope that he is studying only to teach the ABCs, penmanship, addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Otherwise, if anyone was silly enough to follow his advice, he'll be unemployed.
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