Å: education

Showing posts with label education. Show all posts

Sunday, January 27, 2008

Teaching Lies Jeopardizes America's Future

Came across this recent post on Atheist Revolution, while reading a particularly brilliantly written item, the subject of my next post. This article makes several very important points. Well worth reading.

My son is about to enter college. He is studying history and secondary education with an eye toward becoming a high school teacher. I have begun paying a little more attention to the subject of education and have become more than a little bit concerned. My concern is more about "Christian" education (home, parochial or ‘bible’ schools) and the possible damage this education (or lack thereof) may be doing to the future of America. This potential damage comes on more than one level: social, economic, and political.

(full post)

Monday, January 14, 2008

Evolutionary Politics: Why we should care what candidates think about biological evolution

From reasononline:

Biological evolution became a hot topic in the presidential campaign last May when Republican presidential hopefuls were asked during a debate if "there was anybody on the stage that does not agree, believe in evolution?" Three held up their hands, Sen. Sam Brownback (Kan.), Rep. Tom Tancredo (Colo.) and former Gov. Mike Huckabee (Ark.). Evolution deniers Brownback and Tancredo have now dropped out of the race. So what do all the remaining candidates—Republican and Democratic—think about biological evolution? And does it matter?

(full article)

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)

"From this distant vantage point [from the Voyager Spacecraft outside the orbit of Pluto], the Earth might not seem of particular interest. But for us, it's different. Look again at that dot. That's here, that's home, that's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

"The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

"Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

"The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

"It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."

- Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot

"The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what's true. We have a method, and that method helps us to reach not absolute truth, only asymptotic approaches to the truth — never there, just closer and closer, always finding vast new oceans of undiscovered possibilities. Cleverly designed experiments are the key." - Carl Sagan

Copyright Information

Content on this site may contain excerpts from material protected under copyright law without specific authorization by the copyright owner. Such material is quoted and/or linked here without profit for purposes of criticism, comment, news reporting and education, to spur critical thinking and discourse. This constitutes "fair use" of such material under U.S. Copyright Law, 17 U.S.C. §107.

Opinion and editorial material on this site is protected under US Copyright Law. Permission is hereby granted to reproduce such material from this site in whole or in part provided such reproduction includes a link back to the original source.

Sunday, January 27, 2008

Teaching Lies Jeopardizes America's Future

Monday, January 14, 2008

Evolutionary Politics: Why we should care what candidates think about biological evolution

Lives in the Balance

Food for Thought

Comments, Anyone?

Blog Archive

In Whack

Out of Whack

Just Whacked

A Special Kind of Stupid

Atheist Blogroll

Copyright Information