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IP: A Total Eclipse of Reason
From: David Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>
Date: Wed, 22 Sep 1999 19:36:10 -0400
A Total Eclipse of Reason by JOHN RENNIE who is editor in chief of Scientific American. published in recent issue of Scientific American Kansas turned out the lights more permanently by endorsing ignorance of evolution. This past August took me to Munich for a viewing of the total solar eclipse. Years of casual study about total eclipses could not prepare me for the merciless beauty of our sun as an unfathomable black disk ringed in angry white fire. And the experience reminded me of how thin the veneer of human rationality could be: standing in a field under the weird end-of-the-world light, I felt some of the historical fear of those events, as though monsters might suddenly claw their way out of the earth to carry us away. But then the bright light of reason returned, and I got over it. Meanwhile, back in the U.S., the Kansas State Board of Education was trying to turn out the lights more permanently. Acting out of a covert social agenda, it decided that teachers could omit mentioning those inconvenient ideas, evolution and the big bang. This is just an embarrassment. And a betrayal of the majority in Kansas, who I believe know better. At the end of the 20th century, for an allegedly responsible governing body to endorse ignorance of evolution and modern cosmology as a more appropriate way to teach science is a grotesque perversion. The reasoning--I gag at calling it that, but carry on--behind this decision is that evolution and the big bang are just theories, not facts. As such, other explanations for how life and the universe came to be are not only equally valid, they're equally scientific. Never mind that biologists and astrophysicists find overwhelming evidence in support of these ideas. They must be biased. Why stop at evolution and cosmology, though? Let's make sure that the schoolkids of Kansas get a really first- rate education by loosening up the teaching standards for other so-called scientific ideas that are, after all, just theories. The atomic theory, for example. The theory of relativity. Heck, the Copernican theory--do we really know that the universe doesn't revolve around the earth? It sure looked that way during the eclipse. The irony is that so many people are worried about the state of science education in this country for the wrong reasons. As W. Wayt Gibbs reports in this issue in "The False Crisis in Science Education," although many policymakers are in a dither about poor science teaching leaving the U.S. uncompetitive, little suggests that American students are doing badly at all. The real crisis is not that science is being taught poorly; it's that meddlers in Kansas and elsewhere are stopping science from being taught, period. Joking about flat-earthers in Kansas is easy. Ranting about it, easier still. But I'm calling on educators and anyone else who can to act. If you are on the admissions board of a college or university anywhere in this country, please contact the Kansas State Board of Education or the office of Governor Bill Graves (785-296-3232 or email, governor () ink org). Make it clear that in light of the newly lowered education standards in Kansas, the qualifications of any students applying from that state in the future will have to be considered very carefully. Send a clear message to the parents in Kansas that this bad decision carries consequences for their children. If kids in Kansas aren't being taught properly about science, they won't be able to keep up with children taught competently elsewhere. It's called survival of the fittest. Maybe the Board of Education needs to learn about natural selection firsthand. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ JOHN RENNIE is editor in chief of Scientific American.
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