As for Tennwriter: I assure you that the science is in fact clear: evolution is pretty clearly an accurate description of how the world works. It is also crucial to an understanding of biology.

Ehzku,
These two snippets from your post don’t agree with each other.

You may get around this by using the fact/value division as in ‘Evolution is a fact, and should be taught as such, and enforced as such, but I don’t believe in imposing my beliefs on other people.’ Unfortunately science is pretty clear…evolution is bunkum. And my ‘fact’ is this is so, but I’ll be willing to let you continue on with your illogical belief because I don’t believe in forcing my beliefs down other’s throats.

You also protest that teachers spend only one or two days on evolution. Just how much time do you think a teacher has? There is a whole lot to be learned in Biology, and if its a General Science class that whole lot just got at least an order of magnitude worse. Besides, evolution is not really that complicated an idea. Its a rather simplistic and vague notion supported by a bit of speculation and some just so stories.

You seem to want some serious indoctrination with penalties if the students fail to ‘take’ the indoctrination.

Me, I’d be willing to accept a day of evolution which pointed out its nature in full (including warts and weaknesses), and allowed the student to maintain their own beliefs about what really are the facts as long as they can explain the Neo-darwinist Synthesis.

But then I’m a Conservative and I believe in Free Speech and Independence of Mind.

I’ll suggest that Darwinism might be part of the downfall of the academy. Believing in simplistic illogic is not good for the thoughtful brain. And once you get the Science Establishment with Big Government money involved, well….in one hand we have logic and truth, and in the other hand we have fame and fortune…How many men are there that are willing to buck the crowd for the right just so they can be spat upon? We need the separation of Science and State.

“no sex for you – oprah hater”

Philip just let the secret out of the bag. The weak men are simply PWed. The whole school system has become nothing more than a way to seperate people and there money. Up until the early 70’s many employers could use proficiency exams to determine if someone could do a job but a supreme court case ended that and now all employers have to go by are degrees. Since so many people need to get degree’s they have to dumb down the classes. Why are there so many Sociologists? It’s this very reason. I’ll trust the observations and judgements of an engineer on social issues before I trust a Sociologists.

The rot in higher education is tremendous. It seems that this will be the next great bubble. At least in the United States, students or their parents bear most of the cost of the education (god forbid the state making it free for all). Across Europe, government subsidizes higher education completely, leading to ridiculous situations where students in their late twenties have been indoctrinated with left-wing philosophy their whole lives at the tax-payer’s expense. At least in the United States costs become so high that people will decide against graduate degrees and enter the productive marketplace. Although in the United States, the huge proliferation of Law schools that supply the pawns to be used in a battle for the ruins of the once proud Common Law and the rising costs associated with them are an area where Europe seems to be more efficient — although I am not sure whether it’s a good thing that a state-controlled organ is that “efficient”.

Let me also add that I know many people who homeschool their children and the children are the better for it. However, these same highly educated, well employed, middle-class parents have decided while they needed advanced degrees and good job training that their children do not. Wake up! I do not like the fact that liberals have taken our educational institutions and the media hostage better than anyone else, but if you are not educating your children in an effort to keep them away from liberal educational institutions, you are sentencing them to a life of poverty. (Yes, I know, millionaire so and so had no eduction and they did fine. So what?)

Not all males are good in math and science, not all males are going to start their own business. Like I said, some of us just wanted to support themselves. And before you accuse me of being anti-intellectual because of this approach, I ussually applied myself to the subject mattter at hand more than other students in my class.

20 years of working in a female-dominated profession and 10 years of marriage have taught me one thing for sure. And that is that regardless of how stridently women preach feminism to the exclusion of all else, a woman’s focus is on her home, family and children (is my house clean, are my kids o.k.) and a man’s focus is on his work and his profession. Nothing right or wrong about that, it is just the way we are wired. How many millions, billions of women are going to reach the end of their lives and say “I missed my child’s first words” or “I missed the chance to make a home for my family” and pursued a career instead. Sometimes circumstances dicate otherwise, however, I don’t believe you will ever hear a man honestly say, “I wish I had stayed home and raised my children”. Except maybe John Lennon, and as far as I’m concerned, his “Imagine” type of thinking has already done enough damage in this world.

This is not meant to disparage women in any way. My wife is the most intelligent, courageous, moral, hardworking person I know, she is simply wired differently from me.

Finally to the person who said that conservative thought has as much currency in the publication of textbooks and the disemmination of ideas as liberal thought, my question is “What are you smoking?” it must be really good stuff.

Thanks for the opportunity to express myself, and I hope I did not offend anyone, at least not too much.

From this article and several in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, I do not get the least impression that Mary Grabar despises her students. Rather, she sounds like an unusually engaged and thoughtful teacher. That type of personal attack doesn’t belong here.