source:
http://www.newscientist.com/blog/shortsharpscience/
The US really is a country of contradictions: on the one hand, it has
the greatest number of Nobel Prize winning scientists and represents
all that is cutting-edge and exciting in scientific endeavour and
achievement.
On the other hand, this most powerful and advanced nation on earth
represents the most backward and medieval ideologies that would not
look out of place in an isolated goat-herding community somewhere in
Borat's Kazakhstan. The statistics are amusing and familiar: the
number of Americans that have seen UFOs and believe they were put on
earth by aliens is legendary.
More sinister, however is a particular breed of anti-science that is
surely and insidiously being fed to the US's young minds. While the
midterms ousted Ohio's Deborah Owens Fink, a prominent critic of
evolution on the state board of education, in favour of a candidate
backed by the pro-evolution group Help Ohio Public Education, other
states weren't so lucky. In Kansas, for example, two proponents of
intelligent design held onto their seats on the state's education
board - many now fear that when the new board convenes in January it
will overturn the anti-evolution standards adopted earlier.
But while the scientifically-minded fight for evolution to be taught in
public schools, a sneaky backdoor route into Creationist indoctrination
may be being overlooked. Parents across the States are removing their
children from government schools because of the lack of religious
emphasis there, in favour of homeschooling. Many of the parents, who
often have neither teaching nor scientific background, receive training
and textbooks from Christian organisations that promote "intelligent
design".
I have a couple of these books on my desk right now. At first, I
assumed it was a fairly amusing joke that someone was playing on me.
Surely, nobody in the 21st century would seriously use this rubbish, I
thought naively. The truth is horrifying. To deliberately lie to
children like this is tantamount to child-abuse and bodes ill for the
future of the nation.
Also worrying, is the fact that evangelical homeschoolers
proportionally took a phenomenal percentage of internships at the White
House in 2004 - what does this say about future government science
policy?