Emasculating Science Education

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American lags behind. Tough words to read, n’est-ce pas? America lags behind in science education. Even nations as “conservative” as Tajikistan teach evolution in their classrooms without question while the United States just can’t seem to accept the facts. The fault, with no question whatsoever, lies with a very narrow Christian interpretation of the irreconcilably contradictory creation stories that open the book of Genesis. This fact has once again come to an ugly head in New Jersey, among the bluest of states. Our, gulp, Republican governor has recently nominated Bret Schundler, a supporter of school’s rights to teach intelligent design, as state commissioner of education. I shudder.

As I teach classroom after classroom of Rutgers students, there is neither biblical nor scientific basis for Creationism. Creationism is a neo-Christian chimera forged together by political pundits who believe that if evolution is stopped in its factual tracks, America will revert automatically to the pre-hippie days of the 1950s where authoritarian dads with conservative haircuts barked out the family marching orders and saw everyone to gospel-hymn-singing churches each and every Sunday. It is a myth, they assert, that is worth believing.

The problem is that facts don’t evaporate simply because nabobs don’t like them. At the FIRST Robotics competition I attended this weekend, facts were presented. The facts are that America has fallen far behind in science education. Decades of fighting the pointless battle of Creationism at the highest political level in this country have weakened us. Those who study the Bible seriously do not question evolution. Those who study science at all cannot seriously question it. Those who do dig trenches of doubt in the minds of generations of Americans with an already inadequate understanding of science and suggest that maybe there is reason to find an atheistic plot behind evolution. There is no plot, only facts. And if New Jersey is about to join the Kansases, Arkansases, and Texases that see big cars, big oil, and big daddies as the solution to our social ills, it may be time to move to New Hampshire.

3 thoughts on “Emasculating Science Education”

  1. Henk van der Gaast

    It’s not like I have been telling folk for years.

    I am deliberately going to write something very confronting so as to kick peoples thinky bits into gear..

    Frankly creationism isn’t the only issue that affects science and policy.

    Steve my homework to you is to go through every possible way (and try) to be “a pregnant male”.

    Its a damn fine idea if you could get your grandma for a skin cell harvest. Women from that genetic stage liked staying at home and not interfering with our male dominated society.

    So should you choose to proceed, you have a future evolving male species and a genetically fixed female species “for the fun of it”!

    Science is close to doing this and has all the technologies to do many wondrous things in the next year

    Back to your pregnancy….

    I hope you notice that nearly every condemnation you can percieve in society will come your way.

    But its ok Steve, you can be offered an abortion.

    I for one would condemn that. From my feminist agenda (and I have one) I really think you are not in a position to control your womb.

    Nor would the Huffington Post agree with your decision to terminate.

    Now you think that was absurd? Americana, I greet thee.

    You have to really get it into their heads that;

    a) everything in their lives is thanks to science (we have even changed the air you breathe).

    b) their deities came after 200,000 years of animism and trying to build a better mammoth trap.. yep, clay bricks, oven, pottery, clay tablets, stories, gods, caravans, more gods etc etc…To get to any point in that 200,ooo years science had been done.

    c) If it wasnt for writing equipment and rooms to argue in, the whole redact of the semitic/mesopotamian mythology would not have happened. That is to say, if science hadn’t occurred the current amoral Yahweh would not have been invented by people who otherwise would have been working like mad..An economy was in place.

    Can I have your students next “Introduction to the Hebrew Bible” for just 30 minutes?

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  2. Steve Wiggins

    You bring to mind the birth of Dionysus — the twice born, the second time after a male pregnancy of Zeus. By the gods! The Greeks have thought of everything before!

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