Just curious if Colleges nationwide could legally assume Kansas high school students are not adequately prepared because Intelligent Design is part of the curriculum, and exclude them just for being educated in Kansas High schools? Doing this would obviously be obnoxious, but would it violate any laws?
I’m sure they could, or at least say, I’m sorry, you don’t fulfill our requirements for science. If they phrased it that way, rather than “You went to a Kansas high school”, it would probably fly.
Wouldn’t it just be that their biology and natural sciences would not qualify as science anymore?
If a college requires two years of science, the Kansas Students would have to have a year of chemistry and a year of physics. If a college requires three years, the students would have to find that third year somewhere else.
(I’m old enough to have been out of the college application loop for a while, but that’s how I remember it working way back then)
The painfully obvious thing to do is to give them a test. If they pass, they’re in. If not, they’re not. Actually, it would be interesting to see if the kids scored lower than those from other states. How about if they scored higher? Would that mean we should introduce ID to all curriculums? 
Sure. Natural selection at work.
Just because a biology course includes “intelligent design” doesn’t mean the students didn’t get a good education, does it? I mean you could learn all about natural selection and sexual selection and also know how intelligent design work. Please note, I don’t think ID has a place in a science curriculum but why punish students who don’t have a choice?
Marc
Because their parents have a choice to accept or reject the law that will deprive the students of acceptance at other states’ universities. If the parents think that being a dumbass may hurt their kids’ chances, maybe that will motivate them to embrace more enlightened educational standards.
Look, Marc, it’s the same for Kansas as it is for a primitive tribe living on an isolated pacific island–their kids are as bright as any other kids, no doubt, but because of their limited formal education, they’re going to have a hard time coming up to our minimal admittance standards. That’s too bad for them, but the primitive society made a choice to follow primitive standards, and with a far better excuse than Kansans.
Do you have any evidence that Kansas students don’t qualify? As I said earlier, I don’t believe ID belongs in science books but I do think you can understand natural selection, sexual selection, genetics, etc. even if ID is in the curriculum. You’re going to have to come up with a better reason to exclude KS students.
Marc
Well, the way college admissions are done, it’s not on a case-by-case examination of each students’ understanding, but a review of high school transcripts and the statewide standards for credit in a subject.
If Massachusetts, say, decided that foriegn languages were to be taught exclusively in English translations of the literature, universities would be justified IMO in deciding to give all Massachusetts public school applicants no credit for the foriegn language grades on the high school transcripts. They wouldn’t need to test each applicant to see if maybe he or she had picked up some actual knowledge of a foriegn language, though I suppose they could submit some evidence that they had. The student would have to prove that he or she had the knowledge, the transcript notwithstanding, and the universities would get to decide if the evidence was sufficient. Some universities wouldn’t want to take that trouble, and that would harm the Kansas applicants.
If we put even this barrier between KS students and college admissions, it could serve as a useful reminder to Kansans that the educational community regards their involvement in educational issues as something they know very little about.
The University of California system is currently being sued because it refused to certify a Chrisitian high school’s science courses that taught creationism and challenged Darwin. The group suing UC says that the admissions policy infringes on their religious beliefs. linky
I would assume that universities that refused to accept Kansas high school science courses would face more lawsuits but I wouldn’t be surprised if some universities refused them anyway. It might make a difference if the various schools are public, private, state-run, etc. But I don’t know.
My goodness! I find it interesting that you would want to punish students—some of whom will no doubt have as much science knowledge as the top 1% in any state—because of your dual bias: 1) Your assumpton that the kids that are taught ID will have less knowledge about everything else covered in science class and 2) your obvious hate of ID being covered.
Number 1 is pure conjecture on your part. Number 2 is understandable, but to have it derail the concept of fairness and abandon empirical facts should be quite worrisome to all, particularly those who profess to so love science.
I find your “thinking” here the height of hubris.
Well, someone’s got to pay the price for Kansas’s embracing of pre-Enlightenment values, and since they chose high schools as the place to manifest that choice, it’s the high schoolers who will pay. The only other people to pay the choice for their unfortunate decision would be the qualified and legitimately educated students from other states who would be rejected from college so that a pinhead who knows about as much about science as I do about the private thoughts of God gets into college in their place. If there are two equally qualified candidates for admission, I have no problem admitting the one whose school system did not specifically disavow the role that science plays in science classes.
IIRC, there’s a requirement that a student take a certain number of science credits. Once that ID malarkey is included in the class, the class is no longer a science class.
That should be “The only other people to pay the PRICE…”
Heh, I am reminded of an old (I’m guessing apocryphal) anecdote about a blueblood woman on the Boston School Committee remarking about foreign language education that if English was good enough for Jesus then it ought to be good enough for the students of Boston.
First, who says there is a price at all? You are just assuming that these kids will know less science. So we’re supposed to automatically discount what they actually DO know and go with your assumption. DO you not think that there will be kids graduating in Kansas that will be in the top 1% in the nation regarding science knowledge? I’ll bet you any money right now that there will be. In fact, the extra scrutiny on Kansas may cause them to pay particular attention to the sciences and cause grades and science knowledge to improve overall. And you want to potentially keep some Kansas science whix-kid out of MIT so you can impose your beliefs on a whole state. And they say the peolpe who embrace religion are dogmatic and close minded… :wally
Being taught about something doesn’t automatically mean you accept it as ahem gospel.
I had a Marxist history professor, so that informed the content of our classes, but it didn’t mean 1) I blindly follow Marxism, and 2) I am unable to evaluate other theories.
Just because a student knows about ID, doesn’t mean she doesn’t realise it’s bollocks.
That’s correct. Kids who are taught something other than science in their science classes tend to know less science than kids who are actually taught science.
Yes. Life is short and application forms are long.
Okay, I’ll bet you a million zillion dollars. You’re not as brave as you might think in making your offer, however, since there is no way to test your hypothesis without compelling every admissions board to test every applicant to see whether it is true.
That’s certainly possible. Not quite as likely, of course, that the universe was whipped up by Betty Crocker, but still possible.
Well, I certainly say so.
Please read GD guidelines.
Now, what’s your interest here? If you’re offended by my bigotry, then please explain how it is that you’re not being far more bigoted against a high school student from a more enlightened state than Kansas (i.e., every state in the country) who has to do the hard work of studying science, as opposed to the mediocre theological thinking of Christocentric retrograde pinheads, in his or her science classes, yet is kept out of college so some undereducated Kansan can be admitted? Kansans can include any nonsense they choose in their high school curriculum–but universities can and should evaluate those curricula carefully to favor the more rigorous and well-designed ones in their college admissions policies.
How did the Kansas curriculum compare to all other state curriculums when ID was not allowed? What portion of the science curriculum is now being abandoned to make room for ID? 1%? 5%? 30%? Or have they made some accommodation that ID is going to be added without losing anything? And if something is now being omitted, what is it?
Until you can answer these questions, you’re just talking out of your ass. And even then, you still be assuming that the kids are going to know less. If you so disapprove of ID being taught, and are so sure it will be harmful to these kids, why not test them? It seems like it would both help your cause AND be the fair thing to do for the kids you want to keep out of MIT.
But I think you’re afraid to test them. Becaiuse if you did, and they did well, you’d have to close your yap and acceph that ID may not be as eveil as you think.
Yes. Too short for answers that try to be cute, fail, and do not address the point.
And you wouldn’t want to do that because your assumptions might be proven false and you’d be stuck not being able demonize their curriculum based on your fantasy projections.
It helps, when trying to be clever, to actually BE clever.
See above.
To point out that you are talking our of your ass and making things up. The actions you want to take are based on assumptions and nothing more. That fact that you’re doing that in an attempt to protect empiricism and the scientific method is both ironic and hilarious.
If you don’t see your bigotry and bias in the paragraph above, you are hopeless. “More enlightened state”? Are you kidding? “Mediocre theological thinking”? So, is your objection that you fear the theological thinking will not be rigorous enough? Or is all theological thinking mediocre and you were just being redundant? Christocentric retrograde pinheads? Again, are you just being redendant here? And again you assume that the kid from Kansas is going to be “undereducated”.
And should the measure of rigor and good design be evaluated by what the kids know and how well they do in college science—actual data—or should we leave it up to someone who appears to never have had a course in logic?
If my memory serves me, there are many homeschoolers how have been exposed to the dreaded ID ideas. Yet, homeschoolers do quite well in college.
Right now, you have a hypothesis: that if kids are taught ID they will know less science. And you want everyone to act based on that hypothesis. The scientific (and fair) thing to do would be to first test your hypothesis. If the results strongly support it, then you would be right to propose ideas like the ones you have. Until then, you’re simply acting on FAITH.
You seem to misunderstand where the burden of proof lies here, and it would be too tedious to explain that point to you, especially since you seem determined to resist it.
But, briefly, I think it’s obvious that the schoolday and schoolyear are not limitless quantities, and if you want to include a subject (that I find of dubious intellectual content) in school then either the schooling must increase to accomodate it or something must be sacrificed so it may be included. It is not for me to show that Kansas has done either, it is up to you to show which of the two paths Kansans have chosen, and then to justify that choice, neither of which I expect you’re interested in (or capable of) doing.