According to an article in Salon.com, The World Economic Forum ranked the US at "a mediocre 52nd among 139 nations in the quality of its university math and science instruction in 2010."
The article, How America will collapse (by 2025), lays out several scenarios in which the role of United States as a world superpower will diminish in the coming decades. While gigantic economic and foreign policy missteps may be the most to blame, the growth of technology in developing nations such as India and China are seen as contributing factors, exacerbated by the astonishingly poor quality of the American education system.
Support for legitimate science education seems to be waning, with a growing concern that a certain "alternate worldview" as it is sometimes called, is not given adequate attention in schools. This worldview (I won't name it, as I'm sure you can infer for yourselves what it is) is often said to be the victim of suppression by the "scientific elite" or "liberal-drive-by-gotcha media," or whatever sinister reality-based influence responsible for attempting to properly inform the public and our children, that is tantamount to a violation of the First Amendment.
Fear not.
The state of Kentucky has given its blessing for the construction of a new attraction that will help enlighten the public and stimulate their quest for knowledge. As reported in the New York Times, the Ark Experience, a Noah's Ark theme park is in the planning stages.
In the NY Times article Mike Zovath, a senior vice president of Answers in Genesis, one of the organizations responsible for this wellspring of wisdom, is quoted as saying “it’s our opportunity to present accurate, factual biblical information to people about a subject that they’re really interested in.”
Constitutionality of state support for this park is already in question but the problem runs much deeper than that. What's most worrisome is that this park is being given serious consideration as a means to educate.
When you take a good hard look at this project and the organizations behind it, and discover how well-organized their campaign is, you won't have too much difficulty drawing the line between this and the larger crisis we face as a society that is in a very obvious decline.
Wouldn't it make more sense to empower our citizens with real knowledge rather than teaching ancient mythology as fact? Shouldn't we be giving our children real tools to help them compete and succeed rather then replacing truth with fairy tales and stories of magic?
This should be a wake-up call for anyone raising a family. I'm worried that one day we may all wake up and realize that we are being led by people who ACTUALLY believe that the world was created by an old man in the sky 4,000 years ago in only 6 days.
Ummmmmmm....
hmm...
Nahhh.... people aren't that stupid, are they?
The link for the Salon.com article is here...
http://www.salon.com/news/us_economy/index.html?story=/news/feature/2010/12/06/america_collapse_2025
and the NY Times article is here...
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/06/us/06ark.html?_r=1
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment