> Doug Hayworth wrote (in reference to the high SAT scores in Kansas):
>
> << The study
> which sparked this discussion was concerned with the teaching
> of evolution, not with all of education; was anyone claiming
> that it was an exact indicator of the all aspects of education?
> >>
>
> This point is essentially correct, however,
> there is an unfortunate innuendo that seems to come off the
> pages of newspapers and science journals suggesting that
> the folk in Kansas are a bunch of blockheads. Whereas I
> cannot agree with their decision, depicting them as a "Okies"
> is not a productive way to resolve the issue either. Moreover,
> as with most of the other things I've had to learn the hard way,
> "Okies" can be very smart when it comes to their own area of
> expertise.
As a born and bred Okie (Drumright, Oklahoma--bet few have heard of that
place), who has a authentic Okie accent to go along with that birth, I must
point out that Kansans are not Okies. They didn't have the foresight to be
born a few miles south in beautiful Oklahoma. :-)
Concerning the issue the problem is a complex one. On the one hand parents
should have some say in what their children are taught--that is the
conservative position. On the other, society has an obligation to ensure
that everyone has knowledge of the facts and theories of the day in which
they live. To hide from evolution, as the conservatives want to do, is
nothing more than a modern form of ludditism. And eventually it backfires
because the children will eventually find out that evolutionists are not the
cream puff pushovers that they are portrayed as. Fleeing from knowledge is
not what Christian parents should do. But I think they do it because in
their heart of hearts they know they don't have the ammo in the form of
supportive data to defeat evolution, so they withdraw from the field. If
they really could fight evolution on an equal footing, they wouldn't want to
withdraw. Thus this political movement that wants to remove evolution is
evidence of the weakness of the anti-evolutionary intellectual arguments.
glenn
see http://www.flash.net/~mortongr/dmd.htm
for lots of creation/evolution information
>
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