I’d be interested in hearing what Codrescu says on the subject. I suspect that, were it not for his outrageous accent, he might be a bit of a blowhard; but he’s also not above saying something provocative just for fun. He’s a playful, ironic commentator.
That said, I’m not remotely upset about this. I already knew that Mississippi had at least one idiot in their state legislature, and one idiot is all it takes to get a bill proposed. Kambukta, surely New South Wales has some body that makes laws for the region, right? Are you saying that this legislative body doesn’t have a single idiot in it?
Actually, it’s because your typical public school in Mississippi is 50%-100% black. As such, it allows non-black parents who can afford it to send their non-black kids to non-black schools.
While there’s some decent public schools in the state I can certainly point you to a whole lot more that are terrible. If you’d like to see for yourself, I’d suggest swinging by the towns of Fayette, Rolling Fork, or Greenville. These towns have schools where half the windows are boarded up at any given time.
The SCOTUS has ruled against teaching creationism, but not against ID. I’m sure you know that the Dover decision is not binding on Mississippi schools. If this law comes out of committee w/o the creationism part, it won’t be unconsitutional.
ID IS creationism. There is no way to teach it without teaching that there is a designer. We also just had a federal ruling that ID cannot be separated fron creationism and I expect that precedent to hold. ID is purely a religious belief. If you don’t teach it as a religious belief there’s nothing left to teach. “Design” can only be seen by faith.
But how can ID, in any meaningful way, emerge without incorporating the issue of creationism? You can have creationism without ID, but it seems to me very difficult to have ID without creationism.
To tell you the truth, if we have to put up with any religious bullshit being injected into the science curriculum, i think i’d prefer creationism. At least that can, in certain of its iterations, coexist reasonably comfortably with the theory of evolution, as long as no expansive claims are made about the origins of life and the universe.
On preview, i see you’ve already answered Diogenes, but i still think that it would take a very creative spin to remove creationism from ID.
Whether the teaching of ID in public schools could ever survive a Supreme Court challenge. I wasn’t actually proposing any terms for a literal wager, though. I was making a joking reference to that other thread.
I’d like to hear how.
The ruling in the Dover case was pretty broad. The judge said that any teaching of ID was unconstitutional, not just the particular case before the court.
The school board withdrew the class after a number of people in the district threatened to sue, not wanting to spend the money. (Wise people.) A truly even situation might be good, but in this case, they claimed that they were being fair by inviting Francis Crick to talk about evolution. Two minor problems. I doubt a Nobel Laureate would go to a little town for this, and he’s been dead for several years.
I’m sure we’ll see more or the “call it philosophy, but make it one sided” approach.
If you take the time to read the official Mississippi Legislature bios of the sponsor and co-sponsors on the government web site, you will find every one lists their religious faith affiliation.
They may be why people in Mississippi send their kids to private school but it wasn’t what I was talking about, I was talking about how poor states are often viewed as having a bad public school system. And that the middle/upper class people in these states recognize this fact and send their kids to private school to avoid it. My experiences are in parts of Virginia where there actually aren’t many blacks per se, and in West Virginia where there’s virtually none (it’s like 98% white.)
I don’t think that means anything. As I counted, all but five of the legislators listed a religious afffiliation. I suspect it was just a standard question on the bio form and only a few left it blank. It is the bible belt after all.
Yeah, there’s a lot of bible thumpers down here all right.
When I moved here and went to open a checking account, the damn godlady bankteller even had the gall to ask which fucking church I go to. It’s the BUCKLE of the bible belt.
No alcohol on Sundays, no gambling (at least in this county), but the bluehaired church people gotta have their bingo. Hypocrisy I tells ya.
If this bill passes (and it probably has a better chance than you think), I sure as hell won’t be sending my (unborn) daughter to these schools.
Meh. I miss Chicago.
Considering that similar bills died in committee for the past three or four years, I think you’re overestimating the stupidity of your State Representatives. (Possibly not, I’ll admit. Usually you can’t go broke betting on idiocy, I know. In this case, however, I do have some evidence to support the more intelligent option.)
