Should Evolution be Taught in High School?? Pageant contestant answers...

[liveonearth]

This video is a composite of answers to this question by candidates for the Miss USA Crown. The vast majority don't believe in evolution, but most seem to think that both evolution and creationism should be taught in school. The California girl that got the crown is a science nerd! Yeay!! Miss Kentucky (~5:30ish) represents the south painfully well.

Comments

[ford-prefect42.livejournal.com]

At this point... I think that they ought to stop teaching either. It's a piece of teaching that isn't really *needed* by anyone for any purpose, and is a divisive issue to no actual purpose. Perhaps offer evolutionary biology as an elective. We've got enough major problems that getting distracted by minutia is unhelpful.

For the record, when there's a discrepancy in the "theories" between demonstrable science and religion, it isn't a tough call. I don't "believe" in evolution, I *know* that it takes place.

My big problem is that it is not the role of schools to teach values, to contradict or undermine parents, or to do anything other than to impart knowledge. Part of the problem with our country is that, for too long, the school systems have been corrupted into being indoctrination centers. They should be returned to teaching the "three Rs".

[vonheston.livejournal.com]

I thought Delaware 'got it' for a second, but then the last 60% of her answer confused me as it seemed to have nothing to do with the first 40%. Does she think 'evolution' is a class in its own right or something? Lol. These responses are (almost) all canned/generic.

Why do pageants even exist anymore? They are so 1960s. Do people even still watch them? (outside of people on the internet making fun of the hilariously stupid people who enter them, obviously)

what is the purpose of education?

[liveonearth.livejournal.com]

This discussion has me pondering. Why exactly do we as a society want our kids to be educated? What do we want to get out of it? Assuming, in so far as we collectively pay taxes and send our children to school, that we DO want them to be educated. In The Story of B, Daniel Quinn argues that rather than educating children, the purpose of school is keeping kids babysat and off the job market.

It is also reasonable to assert that early education is part of a child's introduction to his broader culture and values. It prepares him to be a citizen with integrity and a work ethic. There is certainly a problem with our melting pot society in that we have a hard time agreeing on the most fundamental values, so young students are taught less and less in order to avoid conflict. This has generated 1-3 generations of students with progressively less that they can agree on.

My underlying assumption is that early education is to build language and reasoning skills. Math is reasoning. Language is every subject, because you can't talk about anything without it. Science is about reasoning also, as the conclusions chase after the evidence. But at some point, when the abilities of reasoning and communication are well developed, the pursuit turns to knowledge. Building a network of understanding using information plugged into a reasoning mind.

Is there some aspect of education I am forgetting? Do you think there is a very different purpose?

[ford-prefect42.livejournal.com]

I'd also like to address for a few seconds why the other side of the evolution debate is willing to go to such lengths on this one. We'll note that no one much argues about teaching the big bang, or calculus, or the nonevolutionary aspects of biology, or astronomy, or pretty much any other science.

It's because evolution is the *one* thing that destroys their entire belief system. It means that humans are *not in any way* special, it means that you really are no different than your cat. That there are no moralities that matter, no heaven, no hell, no judgement, when you die, you don't go to a "better place", you rot in the ground.

To many people... That's intolerable, they will not, cannot, accept it and continue living their lives. The notion that their dead loved ones are simply *gone*, that all of their lives have merit solely based on what they leave behind (which for almost everyone is nothing). That when their child asks "what happens when we die", you have to answer "nothing, ever again".


Now, all that is an "appeal to consequence" and the evolutionary position has the virtue of being *correct*, but it is perhaps not necessary to think ill of those that go the other way with it.