No More Evolution in Kansas Schools?
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 Seed Newsvine |
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What does it mean when schools stop teaching actual science in public schools? Well, it means those students are going to be a step behind when they get out of that school system. It also means a lot of kids are going to have a leg up when it comes to getting into a particular school, university, and later finding a job.
We live in a time of increasing competition for good jobs, especially jobs requiring some form of science background. There are nearly 300 million people living in America, not to mention many bright and highly capable people coming from around the globe to study and work in this country.
Unfortunately, the number of universities is not growing as fast as the population. Most importantly, the number of jobs for students coming out of those universities is also not keeping up with the population growth. This means there is more fierce competition, both to get into good universities and to find good jobs once those students graduate. Therefore, anything that gives kids who love science a leg up on the competition can't be such a bad thing.
So what's going to happen to children going to school in a district that prohibits the teaching of evolution in schools?
First: These schools are not going to be able to keep their good science teacher because those teachers will see the writing on the walls and look for other districts to work in. If you want to find a good school for your child, look for a district next to a banned evolution district. This is where the good science teachers will be.
Second: Those students who aren't learning about evolution are not going to match up favorably with students in districts where real science is taught.
These little Christian children are not going to be able to compete. They'll be getting their half-assed educations and settle into those jobs that don't require free thought; that don't require a background in reason and logic or science. This means they won't be competing with all the children who want to work in fields that are intellectually challenging.
If Christian parents are happy watching their children grow up to be insurance salesmen and clerks at Wal*Mart, that should be fine.. They'll be happy spending their lives in their little church community. And we can all be happy because they're content.
I'd much rather buy my insurance from someone who enjoys his work, than from a person with a science degree who couldn't find a job in the field he loves so he takes a job selling insurance because he has to pay the bills.
It's a win-win situation. Christians are happy being ignorant and singing the praises of Jesus while they work at jobs that don't conflict with their faith. And the rest of us can be happy too because it leaves more work in the challenging fields that free thinkers love.
I KNOW.. I'm anticipating the next issue.
What do you do if you happen to live in one of those areas where science is not being properly taught in schools? What if you live in Kansas or other areas in the "so called" Bible belt where they believe that kids should be taught that God is the almighty creator and he did so in 6 days, about 5000 years ago and started it off by putting man on earth first?
This is where your role as parent comes into play. You have the opportunity to give your children a significant leg up. You can read to your children about dinosaurs and primitive peoples and species that lived long before homo sapiens came to rule the world. Get them books by the late Stephen Jay Gould, who had a marvelous way of making the science of evolution exciting and interesting. Explain to your children that some people still believe in fairy tales and that their teachers are being force to hide the "good stuff"
You can also talk to the teachers themselves. If they have a background in science they're probably feeling constrained too, and will be very happy to push the limits in their classrooms if they know there are students who really do want to find out what the truth really is.
Your children are going to have a significant advantage. They'll understand reason. They'll understand the process of learning, the excitement of understanding the world they live in.
Meanwhile, the little Christian children will be content to rely on their faith. They'll be content to limit their understanding of the world to only those areas that don't conflict with their bible teaching. Yep, these children won't be challenging your kids for the interesting jobs where knowledge is a requirement and the ability to reason is a prerequisite.
The bottom line is that there are not as many jobs in fields that require reason, as there are graduates to fill those jobs. Therefore, anything that eliminates a good portion of the competition isn't such a bad thing.
Of course, this is going to mean the United States is going to fall farther behind the world when it comes to science because a good chunk of the population is pretending that science is just godless bunk.
This is true when we are talking about aggregates. When we talk about statistical averages the United States is already behind and getting further behind. It ranks near the bottom in most areas of education when compared with the rest of the industrialized world. But this doesn't mean there aren't a lot of good scientists out there expanding our knowledge of the world. It just means there is an increasing schism between those who want to understand how the universe works and those who are content to accept that everything is just a byproduct of God's miracles.
It comes back to the law of large numbers. With such a large population the United States is still able to produce enough people interested in science that our knowledge of the world is continuing to progress forward. The mean average may be going down but scientific fields are not yet lacking for inquisitive minds. Scientific progress is made by a few great minds, not by the sum of a lot of average individuals.
Let's be quite frank. Public education is sort of the lowest common denominator for education. Parents should not rely solely on the public schools to teach their children everything about life. Let me repeat. It is up to parents to ensure their children get the type of education that will allow them to compete favorably in the very tough world we now live. It is not by mistake that students who are home schooled do better in standardized testing than students who are products of public education.
I'm not saying home schooling is the way to go as there are a lot of social component that may be lacking. What I am saying is that parents who take an active role in their children's education are giving their children a real advantage when those kids get ready to compete in the world. If you make sure your children understand how knowledge is derived, names from the scientific method then you're children will fair much better than the kids whose parents read to them from the book of Genesis.
A Sunday spent at a museum of natural history is infinitely more beneficial than a decade worth of Sundays spent with your asses on church pews.
About 45% of the American population believes in some form of the biblical view of creation. This means that nearly half of all Americans do not have the vaguest idea of how the universe actually functions. Imagine if you will, if all these people suddenly accepted the scientific truth about evolution. The competition in science would explode. There wouldn't be enough schools, nor enough jobs to hold them all and a huge number of people would end up being squeezed out of fields they want to pursue. Instead of Wal*Mart being staffed by happy little Christians. It would be staffed by frustrated, and out-of-work scientists who can't find work in the field they love but still have to pay the bills.
What I am basically saying is that for the sake of the children who do want to pursue a life in science: Thank God for the people insisting on teaching creationism. If it weren't for them half the population wouldn't be so ignorant and we'd all have a tougher time in life.
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