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01/24/2005: "Demagnetized Schools"

If some parents don’t want evolution taught in public schools, fine. They should have a right to send their kids to special schools where what is taught in science class is not what scientists believe. Instead, these science classes should be based on polls of what everyday people with no background in science would like science to be. This will certainly address the controversy over preferences by many parents for creationism (AKA cretinism), which has the same relationship to science as do alchemy and astrology. This is not an exaggeration – both alchemy and astrology share creationism’s yearning for easy, pretty truths. The appeal of alchemy is that great value like gold can be created from common base elements like lead. The allure of astrology is that the future can be predicted through straightforward calculations that bypass the messy complexities of human nature and random chance. The appeal of creationism is that our ancestry is golden rather than base, so that our future progress and prosperity are ordained in the heavens rather than having to be worked for. Our pseudo-science curriculum shouldn’t be limited to creationism, alchemy, and astrology either; all areas of science should be fair game! For example, math classes would teach that 2-1=3, the formula that the right wing uses as the basis for passing tax cuts with the purpose of increasing government revenues. In geology kids would learn that the center of the earth is full of oil that is continually created from the greenhouse gasses that find their way into the atmosphere, say from driving SUVs. Of course, is it fair that people should be able to have their kids taught things that aren’t true at public expense? To balance the equation, so to speak, we would need to make sure that people who want science-free schools are really sincere in their beliefs. Thus, any couple sending a child to one of these demagnetized schools should have to pledge to not make any use of a labor-saving technology originating in real science. While this means they’d have to live like Amish, it’s a small price to pay for bringing up children with Right attitudes about science, don’t you think?