It's great to say that you're teachin'.
Make sure you aren't overreachin'.
'Cause if your lesson's
the 'truth' of Nessie
then those aren't facts: You're just preachin'.
The next step in fundamentalist idiocy is more stupid than I expected. A company called Accelerated Christian Education has reached the bottom of an already disturbingly deep barrel. Their argument, basically, is that the Loch Ness monster actually exists, so it must have swum there after Noah's flood, therefore evolution didn't happen.
They also teach that "apartheid was beneficial to South Africa; reasons include the claim that segregated schools “made it possible for each group to maintain and pass on their culture and heritage to their children”.
A charter school in Louisiana will receive government funding, in the form of vouchers, to teach these things to children.
Wait, wait...jumping down this rabbit hole for just a moment and accepting as verified fact that both Noah and Nessie exist, just for the sake of argument...how does that disprove evolution? At best, it would refute the idea that all the dinosaurs were extinct by Noah's time (which is true enough--we still have crocs, gators, sharks, sturgeon, and jellyfish). But it neither disproves that humankind first appeared millions of years after the dinosaurs did, nor disproves that species adapt to environmental pressures by natural selection.
ReplyDeleteI'm less concerned about them teaching easily disproved facts than I am about them failing to teach critical thinking skills. If people can't think, they can't catch the errors in what they've been taught.
But crocodiles, sharks and jellyfish disprove evolution, because they prove that species don't change! And Nessie is a plesiosaur, a true dinosaur, which could not have survived for millions of years therefore it was placed there after the flood therefore evolution is wrong.
ReplyDeleteBut I agree with you about the failures to teach critical thinking. That's one of the biggest issues I have with charter schools and government vouchers with which to pay for them. Having no standardized curriculum, they are free to teach whatever nonsense they want, and children, ever trusting, will eat it up as absolute fact.