Via Leiter Reports, we find Mark Fiore’s Superintelligent Design. Which might make you happy. This story, found via Chris Mooney, however, will quickly destroy any good mood the previous cartoon may have induced. So I recommend reading the cartoon again and leaving it at that.
O brave new quantum world!
What happened to Chiras’ book makes me puke. But to be fair, ludicrous political distortion comes in many forms in public schools. I don’t mean that as any kind of exoneration of the Texas Board of Education. My point is that the fundamental problem with public schools is profound intellectual naivete. It is not really a partisan problem even though it allows blatant partisan exploitation.
For example, our school district is obsessed with Cesar Chavez. There is much to admire in this man, but it isn’t logical to go as far as the schools here go. When my son attended Cesar Chavez Elementary, his chorus group sang a song about Cesar Chavez, with the line, “When I grow up, I want to be like Cesar Chavez”. For good measure, his history book the next year had a full-page promotion for Cesar Chavez in the middle of an unrelated section about American Indians.
I’m sorry, but I don’t want my son to grow up to be like Cesar Chavez. I also admire some things about Ronald Reagan (although I would never vote for him), but that does not mean that his name should dominate the local school system. The same historians (if you can call them that) who plugged for Cesar Chavez in my son’s California history book made it clear that they hated Reagan.