Truth or Consequences

From The Panda's Thumb and elsewhere ...

The National Academy of Sciences and the National Science Teachers Association have refused to grant copyright permission to the Kansas State Board of Education to make use of publications by the two organizations in the state’s science education standards.

And of course they have. These materials are produced in order to facilitate good science education. How could these organizations in good conscience allow them to be used by those who want to subvert good science education?

So while these refusals may not in the end be terribly efficacious, I think that they may be necessary. What I wonder is why the presidents and provosts of all the Ivy League colleges, Stanford, Chicago, Duke, MIT, Caltech, and so on have not yet said to the parents in such school districts that their children's chances of being accepted into one of their universities is now ... well, zero. If you graduate from high school not understanding what a scientific theory is, you're not getting into Brown, okay?

I have no doubt that if such an announcement provokes any response at all from the inquisitors who would usher in a new dark age it will be something like, good riddance Swarthmore, we'd rather our kids go to Bob Jones University, anyway. Still, someone ought to let the other parents know just how their school boards are dictating their children's future.

There ought to be more public discussion of the long-term consequences of the attacks on science and enlightenment values. I'm talking to you, Shirley Tilghman.