It doesn’t have to. After all, EVERYBODY knows that there weren’t no colored folk 'til Cain received his mark.
Most Western churches (esp. RCC and the more conservative, which I think would probably fairly well encompass the Christian leanings of Georgia) have iconography that is consistent with a Western European (French, German, British, etc. … Spanish have more specifically stylized renditions from what little I have seen of them) representation of the vast bulk of, if not all of, the central figures in the Bible; Jesus is given blue eyes and brown hair, Adam and Eve are consistently represented as, if not Aryan (in the pre-Hitler sense of the word), certainly not decidedly MENA-ian. An examination of non-secular Western Art (Michelangelo’s Adam, anyone?) as well as media depictions (Charlton Heston as Moses) reveals a similar trend, but it is not like this bias in representation is unique to the Western world. Similarly-biased representations are found in African churches, in Greek churches, etc.
It is entirely possible to grow up in a Christian (self-identifying or otherwise) community and not realize for quite some time (I was a teenager) that Jesus probably did not have pure white skin, blue eyes and wavy hair, let alone that he was decently close to what is now called Iraq.
I have blue eyes and brown hair. BOW DOWN BEFORE YOUR GOD, GEORGIA!
I don’t know what all the fuss is about. Just because some glorified clerk in some Education Department recommends that:
“evolution” be removed from the state curriculum and replaced with the phrase “biological changes over time.”
So what? As far as I can work out, that’s just a slightly long winded way of saying “evolution”, isn’t it?
And why did the OP decide to evolve the name of the state to “Jawja” anyway.
Did he think it would add weight to his argument (such as it is).
Incidentally, Diogenes TC I am not a fanatical member of the grammar/typo police, but if you have to make that statement your sempiternal signature tune, please review your: “… all you’ve done is won an argument with a moron.”
To Bobkitty you listen, yes!
Confused UK Doper checking in…
Are they allowed to teach creationism then? What if a parent objected to this?
What about genetic engineering? Is it taught in schools in Georgia?
Is not being able to teach evolution a widespread issue in America or is it confined to a few/some/most states?
Tuco, public schools are not permitted to teach creationism in schools. Some schools resist teaching evolution by teaching it only in the sketchiest terms without making reference to common descent…("animals can adapt over time. Next subject.) Some will just avoid the subject altogether. There is a political effort in some school districts to teach “Creation Science” as an “alternative theory” to evolution but such efforts have been thankfully unsuccessful.
She also wants to stop teaching common descent.
My sig is a [sic].
In the U.S. the system of determining curriculum follows this general path:
The Federal government lays down really vague guidelines for how smart kids have to be (meaning that they determine that the kids all have to be tested and if any school district suffers poor grades on the tests–for example, because the district cannot afford to buy enough books for all the kids–then the Feds will take more money away from the support of those schools to punish them for doing a bad job).
The State governments set the general requirements to get a high school diploma, (meaning they design (or buy) the individual tests on which the kids will be scored to demonstrate their prowess to the Feds as well as indicating the sorts of topics the schools should teach). In many, but not all, states, the government chooses which text books are permitted–in a few states, the textbooks are limited to state choices. *
The Local School District sets the actual curriculum in most states, deciding which year any given course is offered as long as all the state’s mandates are met in the 13 years of K-12 education. The local district also does the hiring and firing of teachers, using community pressure and the teacher review system to hire or fire teachers based on perceived quality. (Thus, the effort of the Georgia Superintendent to hide the word Evilution from the standardized tests so as to prevent the various communities where religious fervor opposes that topic from rebelling against the state mandates and possibly getting her thrown out of office in the next election. As long as the number of kids who pass the standardized tests stay above some minimal level, no state Board of Education is going to risk the wrath of the voters by interfering.)
The teacher then walks into the classroom with the weight of all those vague (or, sometimes, too specific) “guidelines” hanging over his or her head and proceeds to brilliantly engage the students in ways that will inculcate knowledge and understanding (or to dully slog through the material in ways that will cause the children to take a single test with some modicum of success and then forget all the genuine information involved).
In recent years, the success or failure of the children to produce good scores on state-sponsored standardized tests has often become the primary evaluation key for any given teacher’s salary or ability to maintain employment in a district.
- (The state of Ohio recently went through a flirtation with teaching “Intelligent Design” alongside Evolution. Despite the fervor of several truly dumb Board members–forget their religious biases, based on their comments, I am not sure some of them could graduate from the high school I attended a generation ago–the “ID” plan was not adopted after a protracted campaign by people interested in science. Kansas and a few other states have had similar experiences, in the last few years.)
The School Superintendent for Georgia is not a glorified clerk. It’s an elected position, and the person holding that office affects educational policy for every public school in the state.
Fortunately, Superintendent Cox’s curriculum is a proposal, not yet a fact. There’s been a strong reaction against it, and Gov. Perdue has now said that he disagrees with the idea, and that it’s silly to teach evolution without the word “evolution”. So it may turn out to be much ado about nothing. Still an embarrassment.
Here’s something that’s bothered me for a long time…
Does the existence of those who vociferously campaign against evolution act as evidence that Darwin was likely wrong to begin with?
No, because the creationists are acting from irrational religious sentiment and not from a dispassionate examination of the evidence. I have read the anti-evolution posts from fundie web boards, and not one, not ONE, has shown that he or she understands even the rudiments of evolutionary biology. The argument from popularity is a logical fallacy. Science must be examined with evidence, not popularity polls. You can’t vote on the truth.
Yeah, kinda. My point being that their minds “working” the way they do suggests that the idea of “natural selection” “'survival of the fittest” isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
Wow, that was dry. You probabably should have included a wink in that first post, **Doktor Fluff]/b]. 
No, they are just proof that warning labels and the like are short-circuiting the natural methods of culling the herd.
You know, throughout all this another atrocity in the new curriculum has gone relativly unnoticed.
The history curriculum is also going to be vastly changed if this proposal passes. World History classes would start after 1500 AD. US History would omit the Civil War. The rational behind this idea is that those things would be taught in Elementary and Middle School.
Sadly, I can’t find a link to the article besides one that requires subscription, but here’s a link to some letters responding to the history proposal.
Damn Cox.
No; the various factors that determine the likelihood that a given human will survive long enough to reproduce have little to do with whether they’re astute enough to share our lofty views and understanding of science. Obviously, a lot of stupid people have kids. There are a lot of common human characteristics that, in the modern world, endanger the long-term survival of our species – aggression, tribalism, short-sighted greed – but these traits don’t generally prevent one from finding a mate and spawning. Sometimes just the opposite. Remember – evolution doesn’t have a goal; it doesn’t “care” what happens to our species.
Great; now it’s on NPR. This is truly a national level of embarrassment for my poor benighted state.
Here’s what I heard Kathy Cox say in explanation of why she thought we should drop the term “evolution” from Georgia curricula. (This is as close to verbatim as I can recall.): “When the average person in Georgia hears the word ‘evolution’, they imagine things going on in biology classes that don’t happen.” So, she’s 1) saying that Georgians are ignorant, and 2) saying that the right response to that ignorance is to pander to it.
So Ms. Cox has used up any goodwill she had with me. You’d think the state School Superintendent would want to deal with ignorance by, oh, I don’t know, maybe education.
Shit, how do you think I feel? For a while, it was less embarassing than Louisiana (where I used to live).