IP: A Total Eclipse of Reason

[David Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

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.


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JOHN RENNIE is editor in chief of Scientific American.