It is BECAUSE of religion that the teaching of science and in general the quality of the education given to the American population has lagged behind in recent generations. We are steadily becoming more stupid, more docile and more religious as a society.
Sadaya
"It is really hard to find the real horse pulling this cart. Are the dittoheads all religious? Is Rush really religious? Were Bush/Cheney/Rove religious? Were any of the above motivated by their religion or did they just cite it because it added to their power? Religion has been blamed for many atrocities in history, perhaps properly so in some cases, but 'unbiased' historians frequently find other blameworthy influences.
It is my considered opinion that the historical aversion of religion to secular knowledge has made religious people too uneducated to have any meaningful influence on events in the world. However, those smart and venial enough to count believers can certainly figure out ways to use them."
2 comments:
One of my many perversions is a facination with statistics. If you want to know something about anything, there is some group doing an active and continuous statistical study, polling, counting, estimating, projecting, reporting the results and publically speculating on the implications of those results [if the data were found to be more than 5% accurate.]
Statistics do not reflect Sadaya's contentions, however, the sheer quantity of media pieces, decrying the woeful state of education, is staggering. It appears there are more public complaints regarding education than there are students.
The only statistic concerning religious populations that had something resembling truth concerned the Catholics in the US. Approximately 1/3 of the US adults were raised as Catholics [of one shade or another] and only 1/4 of the US adults chose to remain Catholic by membership or preference.
Church populations appear to be stable within a range of +/- 2% during the years 1990 - 2005. The "blip" following 9/11 was a temporary pimple. The ultra conservative Christian Faiths thought to have the greatest negative effects on education were in decline during the surveyed years.
More revealing than the population statistics are the results of the major opinion polls; we tend to believe the worst about everything; schools are going to pot, religious fanatics are in control of everything and the prevailing expectations are for everything to get steadily worse.
Apparently, the truth lies somewhere between public perceptions and reality.
My chosen society is a highly educated society. Most of the people in it with children choose neighborhoods by the quality of the schools. This can be highly local, One family chose a house on "this side of the power line" for the middle school when the child was early elementary. For the people that care there will always be adequate schools. For those that don't the third world awaits even here in the Good Old US of A.
Post a Comment