education

REPORT: Academics' donations go overwhelmingly to Democrats

...The report also says that academics donated more than employees of oil companies and drug makers.

It's a conspiracy, see? All the universities are really brainwashing institutes. They pretend they're teaching you critical thinking, you know, how to think for yourself, but they're really turning you into a liberal! That's why all these people are supporting Democrats! That's why we need to get rid of tenure and put ignorant people into teaching positions in colleges so that they can allow us all to remain ignorant! Because what you don't know won't bother you!

--In fact, we should ban professors from being able to donate to political candidates altogether! They're a special interest, doncha know! Unrestricted campaign contributions are only for the Republicans. Can't let just anybody give money to Democrats, can we?

Via Think Progress, we learn this horror:

In 2005, the Kansas Board of Education received national ridicule when it rewrote public school standards to cast doubt on the mainstream evolution theories of Charles Darwin.

One of the board members who voted to teach intelligent design was Kenneth Willard, a conservative who is now the only member running as president-elect for the National Association of State Boards of Education. NASBE is a nonprofit organization of state school boards that “works to strengthen state leadership in educational policymaking.”

Willard was one of the Kansas board’s most vocal proponents of intelligent design....

With education scores falling behind the rest of the world, this is just what we need: a champion of willful ignorance in charge of a national education organization.

I stumble across The Secret website and think, "Well, I've heard of this pop concept, so I'll go take a look," and click past the splash screen (hello!) and see that they list "Featured Teachers."

Well....

It seems that women don't have much to offer in the Featured Teachers department. Well, four out of twenty-four people happen to be women.

Funny how this happens. Women don't innovate, and now, it seems, women have nothing to teach, at least about "The Secret." [cue dramatic music stinger]

So what is The Secret? Apparently a penis helps answer that question.

Apparently the Bible is now the litmus test against which all science must be measured. Never mind what we can observe in the world, religious dogma is the only truth to be taught in schools in Federal Way, near Seattle.

This week in Federal Way schools, it got a lot more inconvenient to show one of the top-grossing documentaries in U.S. history, the global-warming alert "An Inconvenient Truth."

After a parent who supports the teaching of creationism and opposes sex education complained about the film, the Federal Way School Board on Tuesday placed what it labeled a moratorium on showing the film.

That's right. Global warming is too un-"God"-ly of a concept for children.

"Condoms don't belong in school, and neither does Al Gore. He's not a schoolteacher," said Frosty Hardison, a parent of seven who also said that he believes the Earth is 14,000 years old. "The information that's being presented is a very cockeyed view of what the truth is. ... The Bible says that in the end times everything will burn up, but that perspective isn't in the DVD."

In other words, one can assume, Hardison believes global warming is a good thing. There's nothing like having people looking forward to Armageddon calling the shots in schools to scare the crap out of you.

School Board members adopted a three-point policy that says teachers who want to show the movie must ensure that a "credible, legitimate opposing view will be presented," that they must get the OK of the principal and the superintendent, and that any teachers who have shown the film must now present an "opposing view."

But not an opposing scientific view, but rather a view opposing science itself.

Let's look at some other examples where, following Federal Way's example, we should oppose science:

• The earth is round vs. the earth is flat
• The earth revolves around the sun vs. the heavens move on invisible spheres through ether
• The flu virus evolves vs. God makes the flu to punish humankind for homosexuality

Maybe it's time to buy stock in fundamentalist Christianist textbook companies.

I suppose Lawrence Summers would question whether women are even capable of handling such a position.

Harvard, unlike other Ivy League schools, has never had a female president and choosing one would be a milestone in its 371-year history.

The Globe said Elena Kagan, dean of Harvard's law school, and Drew Gilpin Faust, dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, are among the finalists in the top-secret selection process.

Well, Ivy is a female name, after all.