Wednesday, November 09, 2005

One Of The Old Jokes In The South Is

Thank god for Mississippi.

No matter what national ranking, when you state came in at 48 or 44 or 49, there was Mississippi at 50. Mississippi almost always pulled up the rear, so no matter how badly South Carolina, or Arkansas, Or Alabama scored, there was always Mississippi to point to as worse than us.

Now Mississippi can say, Thank god for Kansas.

The Education Board of US state Kansas on Tuesday adopted new science-curricula standards for the state's 445,000 public-school students that openly question the Evolution Theory of Charles Darwin.

The new standards, passed in a 6-4 vote after hours of sometimes hostile debate, are seen by most scientists and educators as a victory for creationism even though the regulations don't require that Bible teachings be presented, according to the CBS.

The newly approved regulations not only question the theory that all life has a common origin, they also rewrite the definition of science, holding that it is no longer limited to searching for natural explanations for natural phenomena.


This is the very best part of this story "they also rewrite the definition of science". Clearly this will soon be another state that is a backwater for education .

In the ultimate irony; On the same day the Kansas Board of Education votes to make their students dumber, all eight Pennsylvania board members who approved intelligent design for their schools were voted out of office.

All eight members up for re-election to the Pennsylvania school board that had been sued for introducing the teaching of intelligent design as an alternative to evolution in biology class were swept out of office yesterday by a slate of challengers who campaigned against the intelligent design policy.


One would hope that this lesson will be learned by any other school board considering adding ID.

For actual scientific information of evolution and Intelligent Design, hop over to Pandas Thumb, where there are pages of interesting reading.

TAG

4 comments:

Lynne said...

It will be interesting to see what happens when some of those Kansas school board members are up for reelection.

Anonymous said...

For those of us in SC, it will still be Thank God for Ms.

Do you think Ks would have approved the new standards after seeing what happened in Pa?

Jon said...

In Dover (a very red area of PA) it was rational parents who have forced the issue. I will be watching to see if any of the parents of Kansas have the spine to stand up

Anonymous said...

How do we get a progressive agenda done today?

The answer appears in your wallet. I imagine each of you have studied the union movement. The union movement has brought us the 40 hour work week and the minimum wage. The union movement had focused on the individual employers to get these benefits.

Today corporations have taken over the Republican party and even write the legislation that hurts ordinary people.

We need to form our own ad hoc union and instead of going on a work strike we need to go on a purchasing strike. We need to target some of the major contributors of money to the Republican party as they pull the levers of power and they have the most to lose and they can get the pressure every day instead of the officeholders that only run every 2, 4 and 6 years.

We need to go on strike against Walmart, Wendy's, Outback Steak House, Dominos Pizza, Red Lobster, Olive Garden, Eckerd, CVS and Walgreens, GE and Exxon/Mobil.

We need to call these companies and thell them we have gone on strike against them until they get the RNC to hold a press conference announcing that they will accede to our demands of a TEN dollar an hour minimum wage, an unemployment insurance benefit that will last 1 year instead of 6 months, a real prescription drug benefit under Medicare of 80 percent coverage and no privatization of social security and increasing the social security payroll tax,removing the 88,000 dollar a year FICA taxable income limit, and vote by mail throughout the US with paper ballots and an independent civil service that registers people to vote and counts votes. We need this and more. You make the demands, you go on strike. You have the money and the Republican contributors either do as we want or they go broke under our purchasing strike.

To learn how to force the Republican congress to pass progressive legislation, send email to webmaster@boycott-republicans.com with the subject PROGRESSIVE