Hopefully the so-called Libertarians will be all over this one… January 23, 2008
Posted by Evil Bender in Origins, Religion, Science, wingnuts.trackback
..but unfortunately I suspect that many will be in a hurry to defend this horribly-argued piece of trash over at the Cato institutes’s blog. The poster, Andrew J. Coulson, makes the old mistake of thinking that science is a democracy:
Free schools to teach science properly if they so desire, and quit fooling yourselves into imagining that you can force the rest of the public to understand science by having government ram it down their throats. Make science humble, exciting, and welcoming again, in the vein of Carl Sagan and Jacob Bronowski, instead of calling our religious fellow citizens rubes or worse, and treating them like recalcitrant children.
Yeah, I’m absolutely sure Carl Sagan would be thrilled with the idea of teaching anti-science in science classes. </snark> And since when is providing an education ramming anything people’s throats? Imagine the outrage if he’d suggested we teach English classes by providing “alternate theories” on how to punctuate, or if we let students decide which math was correct. Of course no one would ever be taken seriously if they advocate that, because facts don’t changed based on how many people know them.
I suspect that in Coulson’s ideal world would have the government having no say in schools. But the rest of us, for those who actually believe that education our children is an important goal, know that we must take a stand against misinformation. We can’t let local school boards teach Creationism as science, because it isn’t science, it’s religion. We can’t say “let people dictate to their own schools what is taught” if that would violate the First Amendment by promoting religion, and if it would ruin science education out of a misplaced desire to let popular opinion control curriculum.
Maybe Coulson doesn’t understand why school boards bring in experts to recommend curriculum, to set outcomes. Maybe he doesn’t get why we should let scientists, not those who are randomly polled, tell us what science is. But he should, because personal liberty isn’t supported by encouraging schools to teach religion as science: it is destroyed. Coulson would have us give up the fight in light of the fact that some people don’t believe in evolution. He would deny many of our children an education in the name of freedoms he clearly does not understand.
What possible reason could there be for teaching non-scientific explanations in a science class? If there were other scientific explanations than evolution, no one would object to offering them in biology classes. There aren’t, so we don’t. Is Coulson favoring intellectual affirmative action?
It certainly seems so. I would also ask why Coulson thinks high school science classrooms are the appropriate place to decide on the scientific merit of ideas. We don’t let high school students decide for themselves how geometry works, what the boiling point of water is, or how Spanish should be pronounced. Why would we let them pretend they (or their parents, or school board members, or teachers) are experts on evolutionary biology?
As a final aside, I should note that many of the values espoused by groups like Cato are right in line with my progressive beliefs. So why does it so often happen that in practice, so many so-called Libertarians seem to side with the enemies of freedom? I sincerely hope thoughtful Libertarians will speak out against Coulson’s stupidity.
A malicious and risk-loving part of me says “let them do it, and watch them find out that those schools are outcasts–no Harvard for little johnny!” But mostly I’m risk-averse and egalitarian, so we should avoid that sort of experiment.